Creating They Just Seem A Little Weird with Doug Brod

Pretty much anyone who’s ever had a conversation with me about my favourite bands knows that my Mount Rushmore of seventies rock are KISS, Aerosmith, Cheap Trick and Starz. So imagine my surprise when I discovered a new book called They Just Seem A Little Weird that discusses the influence these four bands have had on rock and roll. I mean KISS, Aerosmith and Cheap Trick, okay, but I didn’t think that anyone who wrote about seventies rock would have included Starz. 

I don’t know about you, but I love reading books about music, it’s influence on popular culture and the bands that changed our lives.  As a former editor of Spin Magazine, I would have thought that Doug Brod would be an unlikely candidate to write a book arguing on behalf of bands like these.  Of course I soon found out how wrong I was to make that presumption. 

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Steve Waxman:  How did this whole idea of writing about these four bands begin for you? 

Doug Brod: I've always been a fan of KISS, Cheap Trick and Aerosmith and I came kind of late to the party with Starz. I didn't really get to know too much about them until they did a bunch of reunion shows in the early 2000s, in New Jersey and in Manhattan and that's when I started getting into them. But I was always thinking of a book idea. I wanted to write a book, I wanted to write a music book. And it dawned on me that members of all four of the bands played on Gene Simmons' 1978 solo album. You had Joe Perry guesting on guitar, you had Rick Nielsen on guitar, and Richie Ranno from Starz also played guitar on the album. And I thought that that would be a really cool, jumping off point to sort of investigate how these four bands interacted. How they converged. What they shared during the 70s and beyond.

For the full interview go to: imstevewaxman.com

They Just Seem A Little Weird is beautifully written and a vivid look behind the curtain of seventies hard rock the book is available now and you can order your own copy through Amazon. I’d also like to take this opportunity to say that if you’ve never heard Starz, their albums are available on your favourite streaming service. I highly recommend their self titled debut and their second album, Violation. You won’t be disappointed. Oh, and about that title, if you didn’t already recognize it, it’s a lyric from Cheap Tricks hit single “Surrender.”

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