THE BOYS NEW BOOK FROM RON AND CLINT HOWARD IS GREAT!

? AND THE MYSTERIANS AN AMERICAN ICON STORY: NEW BOOK!

? Mark and the Mysterians

? and the Mysterians are an American garage rock band. from Bay City and Saginaw in Michigan who were initially active between 1962 and 1969.

Much of the band's music consisted of electric organ-driven garage rock and an enigmatic image inspired by the 1957 Japanese science fiction film The Mysterians.  In addition, the band's sound was also marked by raw-resonating lead vocals of "?" 

Their original line up consisted of Question Mark (Rudy Martinez) (lead vocals), Frank Rodriguez (Organ Keyboards), Frank Lugo (bass guitar), Robert Martinez (drums), and Bobby (Robert Lee) Balderrama (lead guitar),

Great News!! Lead guitarist Robert Lee Balderrama (Bobby) just published an autobiography about the history of ? and the Mysterians and you can order your copy today! It is an exciting story about this group of young guys from the Saginaw Bay area, whose parents were farmworkers that came to Michigan for work and stayed. These guys followed their dream to large success!

Robert Lee (Bobby) Balderrama author/lead guitarist

Their most famous song, 96 Tears was recorded in a basement in Bay City, Michigan for just $50.00. The only Garage Rock tune to go to NUMBER ONE in the nation . . . 

Robert Lee Balderrama owns his own publishing company and he direct mails his books straight to the reader! 

Information about ordering the book

RLB Publishing, PO Box 106, Essexville, MI. 48732, 

Book special! $25 for the book with 2 commemorative pens that feature the  ? and the Mysterians LOGO

Please send a check or money order to the author, Robert Lee Balderrama, and include if you would like an autograph. 

Order Tee Shirts and other Merch HERE

JEMEKER THOMPSON THE INSPIRATIONAL FORMER QUEEN PIN OF LA

Jemeker Thompson, beautiful, brilliant and a very talented entrepreneur is also known as the "Queen Pin," rose to the top of the cocaine trade during the peak of the 1980s crack epidemic in Los Angeles, California.

Evicted from her home in South Central Los Angeles at a young age, Thompson, became very determined to make money and to be in control of her own life. While still in school, she partnered with an older man by the name of Anthony M. "Daff" Mosley. Together, they ran a successful cocaine-trafficking business in L.A. The two would later marry and have one child together, a son they named Anthony.

After several months in the drug game, Thompson and Daff decided to expand their business by moving to a more in-demand drug, crack-cocaine. Shortly thereafter, tragedy struck: Daff was killed while washing his car. Eventually, a devastated Thompson trudged on, continuing to expand the business she'd started with her late husband by making additional connections and moving into new territories throughout the United States.

Around this same time, Thompson also invested in her L.A.-based hair business, selling hair to celebrities, and traveling and holding shows to market her products.

Also during this time, Thompson had begun dating a man known as "Cheese" who would later flip and begin cooperating with authorities.

Thompson subsequently fled L.A. and went into hiding.

On the run for two years, in 1993, Thompson—or the "Queen Pin," as she was known by both the police and media—finally decided to return to L.A. to attend her son's 6th-grade graduation ceremony, where law-enforcement officials, suspecting her attendance, were promptly waiting.

She was subsequently arrested, tried on and convicted of charges related to drug-trafficking, and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Thompson was released from prison in 2005, after serving 13 years in a maximum-security prison alongside scary women like Griselda Blanco and Squeaky Fromme.

She was never caught on a wiretap, never caught making a drug deal, never caught with drugs... yet they gave her the maximum sentence on the testimony of her ex.  If circumstances had been different, this woman might have been CEO of any number of companies. I believe she is inspirational in many ways.

Jermeker now Jemeker Hairston now serves as an evangelical minister at Second Chance Ministries in South Central, Los Angeles, which she also owns. According to Thompson, her ministerial mission is to show others that, through God, they'll always have a second chance in life. "I'm here today to tell somebody else that you don't have to do what I did," she said. "You don’t have to be like the other kids in the neighborhood. I had a second chance." She is so smart..not your average criminal. Good for you Ms. Hairston.

Queen Pin

retrokimmer@gmail.com

CLEVE HATTERSLEY OF GREEZY WHEELS HAS A NEW RETRO BIO BOOK!

This is my new favorite book! Cleve is a fun /snarky guy to hang out with for the Holidays. I wish I could have followed him around back in the day..

GreezyWheels.com:

By his own admission, Cleve Hattersley stumbled through a life of adjacent stardom. Best known as the leader of Greezy Wheels, the house band of the Armadillo World Headquarters, the Austinite's memoir offers a long, strange trip across America's countercultures, like a Beat Forrest Gump. Serendipities range from sublime (Jimi Hendrix auditioning at the Night Owl in NYC) to surreal (living across the street from the Manson family in the Haight), with the author marveling at his dumb luck most of all. And yet, it's Hattersley the hustler who positioned himself in Greenwich Village in the early Sixties, at the Fillmore on the West Coast later in the decade, in Austin's progressive Seventies, and in running the Lone Star Cafe back in NYC through the cocaine-fueled, cameoed Eighties.

The songwriter's narration is as erratic as an after-hours, smoked-out jam session, jumping from his prison stint for smuggling pot to running Kinky Friedman's political campaigns with an anachronistic nonchalance, but his informal and gossip-spilling telling never fails to entertain. Beyond the anecdotes, Hattersley's life seems to be a testament to saying yes but keeping your shit together enough to get out alive and, maybe more importantly, maintain a helluva a story to tell.

Buy the book below!

Life Is A Butt Dial: Tales From A Life Among the Tragically Hip

Meeting James Brown was one of the highlights of his career. Booking the hardest-working man in show business was a major coup, something he dared not believe possible. Brown’s career had sagged a bit, and he needed to make some noise in New York City. “He was one of those guys who wasn’t just the center of the room when he walked in; he was The Room,” says Hattersley.

Hattersley’s greatest childhood hero was Mickey Mantle. Besides having been born on his birthday, he played for his favorite team, the New York Yankees. When he finally met Mantle at the Lone Star Cafe, he had nothing for him to autograph. As Mantle and Billy Martin wobbled into the revolving door (and Mantle had to rotate through the door twice, before finding his way in), Hattersley could tell it might be best to take them upstairs to the closed-off area.

With these and many other tales from years gone by, LIFE IS A BUTT DIAL will fill mature readers with a sense of nostalgia for the freewheeling ‘60s and ‘70s and give younger readers a connection (education!) to those turbulent times.

About The Author

Cleve Hattersley is a member of the Austin Music Hall of Fame with his band Greezy Wheels, which recorded two albums on London Records and served as the house band of Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas. He managed the Lone Star Cafe and Blue Note Jazz Club in New York, and traveled the world with Kinky Friedman.