Remember back when you first wanted to become a rock critic? Or perhaps first started reading rock reviews. Those are the days of The Flowers Lied, my new rock ‘n’ roll coming-of-age novel.
Writerman, the narrator, is a rock critic wannabe obsessed with music – favorites include Captain Beefheart, the Blue Oyster Cult, the 13th Floor Elevators, John Coltrane, Pearls Before Swine, Slim Harpo, Neil Young, Sam Rivers the New York Dolls and, of course, Bob Dylan.
If you grew up in the ‘60s or ‘70s, or ever wondered what it was really like to be a teenager back then, I think you’ll dig this novel.
Witness Writerman fighting his record buying addition at Odyssey Records as store owner Lucky Larry guzzles Green Death and applies the “upsell”, attending a Neil Young concert in 1973 and confronting Neil backstage, pursuing the Visions of Johanna chick of this dreams and ending up naked at the top of a Ferris wheel, alone with his best friend’s girl.
What the critics say about my novels:
“If Lester Bangs had ever published a novel it might have read like this frothing debut…” – Rolling Stone
“Radioactive as Godzilla!” – Richard Meltzer
“Kerouac in the 21st Century.” – Dennis McNally
“Penned in a staccato amphetamine grammar…” – Simon Warner
“Holden Caulfield meets Lord Buckley?” – Paul Krassner
Great review of my novel, The Flowers Lied, went live at the online magazine, Ragazine, March 13, 2016. Here’s an image of it but please link to the site to read it. (By the way, the book is available here.)
Reviewer M. Sedlof writes:
It’s not easy to go through life driven by an intense desire to be part of a scene that really doesn’t think it needs you. Such is the quandary of Michael Stein in The Flowers Lied, Part Two of the Freak Scene Trilogy by Michael Goldberg that began with True Love Scars. After suffering ritualistic tribulations of young love in Scars, Stein (aka, Writerman), returns to the college scene older, wiser, increasingly hell-bent on becoming the rock ‘n’ roll writer of his dreams…
And if you are in the Bay Area on May 7, 2016, come hear me read from it at the Octopus Literary Salon while Grammy-winning experimental guitarist Henry Kaiser improvises.
I’ll be reading from my new novel, The Flowers Lied, and the Grammy-winning experimental guitarist Henry Kaiser will be improvising when we do “a post-beat happening – words + music” on May 6, 2016 at The Octopus Literary Salon in Oakland, CA.
And please let your Bay Area friends know about this.
Here’s more info:
Celebrating ex-Rolling Stone Senior Writer Michael Goldberg’s new rock ‘n’ roll novel, The Flowers Lied, Goldberg and Grammy winning experimental guitarist Henry Kaiser will collaborate on “a post-beat happening” at The Octopus Literary Salon in Oakland, CA on Saturday, May 7, 2016. Goldberg will read from his new novel while Kaiser improvises on electric guitar. Plus a solo set by Kaiser. Note that no meat will be served during this event! Free.
What the critics say about Goldberg’s novels:
“Radioactive as Godzilla!” – Richard Meltzer
“Kerouac in the 21st Century.” – Dennis McNally
“Penned in a staccato amphetamine grammar…” – Simon Warner
“Holden Caulfield meets Lord Buckley?” – Paul Krassner
“Our hero drinks and drugs and dances to the nightingale tune while birds fly high by the light of the moon.” – Larry Ratso Sloman
“Reads like a fever dream from the dying days of the Summer of Love.” – Alina Simone
“If Lester Bangs had ever published a novel it might read something like this frothing debut by longtime music journalist Michael Goldberg.” – Colin Fleming, Rolling Stone
Michael Goldberg was a senior writer at Rolling Stone magazine for a decade. He has interviewed Jerry Garcia, Patti Smith, George Harrison, Captain Beefheart, Stevie Wonder, Sleater-Kinney, James Brown, Frank Zappa, Berry Gordy Jr., John Fogerty, Neil Young, Lou Reed, Black Flag, The Replacements, Flipper, Robbie Robertson, Sonic Youth and many more. In 1994 Goldberg launched the first Web music magazine, Addicted To Noise, and “invented music journalism on the web,” as journalist Denise Sullivan put it. Goldberg currently writes a column, The Drama You’ve Been Craving,” for Addicted To Noise and feature stories for the online animal rights magazine, The Daily Pitchfork.
“The Flowers Lied,” the second of the Freak Scene Dream Trilogy, is a story of love, friendship and the search for identity, set in the early ‘70s. Although it takes place in the past, themes running through the book — trying to live an authentic life, struggling against the powers that be, navigating the terrain between love and lust, loyalty and betrayal — are as relevant today as ever. Goldberg’s first novel, True Love Scars, was published in 2014.
Henry Kaiser in action – not to be missed.
Grammy winner Henry Kaiser is widely recognized as one of the most creative and innovative guitarists, improvisers, and producers in the fields of rock, jazz, world, and contemporary experimental musics. The California-based musician is one of the most extensively recorded as well, having appeared on more than 250 different albums and contributed to countless television and film soundtracks.
A restless collaborator who constantly seeks the most diverse and personally challenging contexts for his music, Mr. Kaiser not only produces and contributes to a staggering number of recorded projects, he performs frequently throughout the USA, Canada, Europe and Japan, with several regular groupings as well as solo guitar concerts and concerts of freely improvised music with a host of diverse instrumentalists. Among the numerous artists Kaiser has recorded or performed with are Herbie Hancock, Richard Thompson, David Lindley, Jerry Garcia, Steve Lacy, Fred Frith, Terry Riley, Negativland, Michael Stipe, Jim O’Rourke, Victoria Williams, Diamanda Galas and Cecil Taylor. Kaiser’s latest album, The Celestial Squid, was released last year.
The Octopus Literary Salon is located at 2101 Webster St #170, Oakland, CA 94612
Just wanted to offer a preview of the cover art from my upcoming novel, The Flowers Lied.
The book, a rock ‘n’ roll coming-of-age novel, will be available in October.
If you are interested in reviewing it, let me know and I’ll get you an advance copy. Post a comment letting me know and I’ll be in touch.
Here’s some advance praise:
“There was a time when (rock) music was the living pulse of a generation, when wanting to be a rock critic was a credible dream. That is the era of the Freak Scene Dream Trilogy, an ambitious and ultimately successful attempt at recasting the coming-of-age-in-the-wake-of-the-sixties-experience in innovative but authentic language, Kerouac in the 21st century. It jitters around in ever-accumulating fine detail that traces young love and desire and the pure true heart of the era, the music. It was a pivotal time, and Volume II, ‘The Flowers Lied,’ captures it.” — DENNIS MCNALLY, author of “A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead” and “Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, The Beat Generation & America”
“Goldberg presents us with a beautiful evocation of the Seventies where the music wasn’t just the soundtrack to our lives but the auteur of them. Writerman, our hero, drinks and drugs and dances to the nightingale tune while birds fly high by the light of the moon. Oh, oh, oh, oh Writerman!” — LARRY RATSO SLOMAN, author of “On the Road with Bob Dylan”
“Aspiring rock journalist Michael Stein (aka Writerman) returns in the second installment of Goldberg’s Freak Scene Dream Trilogy, picking up the narrative where he left off and fumbling his way across the countercultural landscape of the early Seventies like some less jaded, wannabe-hippie version of Holden Caulfield. This slightly-older-but-not-necessarily-wiser Stein, along with his inner circle of equally confused post-adolescents, is more fleshed-out as a character than in the previous (though superb) ‘True Love Scars.’ As a result the scenarios he finds himself thrust into, not to mention the occasional disaster of his own making, ring with an additional authenticity that will leave anyone who lived through the same era nodding with recognition. Some will even fidget uncomfortably in their seats, as I did—credit to Goldberg’s keen ability to channel his/our own misspent youth while sketching a series of remarkably believable portraits.
“Among the more memorable scenes: a hamfisted attempt to get his rock journalism published in the college newspaper, even more awkward attempts to get laid (that include at least one success, with his best friend’s girlfriend, no less, in a gondola at the top of a Ferris wheel), getting thrown out of a Neil Young concert by one of Bill Graham’s goons, navigating a surreal Halloween party while peaking on LSD, and kibitzing with a popular Lester Bangs-esque rock-crit. Along the way we get cameos from Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Captain Beefheart, the New York Dolls, Slim Harpo, James Brown, John Fowles, Sartre, Dostoyevsky and Godard. Settle in, crack open a bottle and/or spark a doob, and get ready for an emotional rollercoaster ride. Oh, and don’t touch the Thorens.” — FRED MILLS, editor, Blurt magazine
And a few excerpts from reviews of my previous novel, True Love Scars:
“If Lester Bangs had ever published a novel it might have read something like this frothing debut by longtime music journalist Michael Goldberg… Readers from any musical era will come away with a deeper appreciation of how nostalgia can shape our lives, for better and for worse.” — COLIN FLEMING, Rolling Stone
“Michael Goldberg is comparable to Kerouac in a 21st century way, someone trying to use that language and energy and find a new way of doing it.” — MARK MORDUE, author of “Dastgah: Diary of a Head Trip”
“Penned in a staccato amphetamine grammar, its narrative is fractured and deranged, often unsettling but frequently compelling, an unsparing portrait of the teen condition: assured then despairing, would-be sex god then impotent has-been, an only child battling the wills of his domineering father and interfering mom in the anonymous, suburban fringes of Marin County.” — SIMON WARNER, author of “Text and Drugs and Rock’n’Roll: The Beats and Rock Culture”
“Just call it a portrait of the rock critic as a young freakster bro, coming of age in the glorious peace-and-love innocence of the Sixties dream, only to crash precipitously, post-Altamont into the drug-ridden paranoia of the Seventies, characterized by the doom and gloom of the Stones’ sinister “Sister Morphine” and the apocalyptic caw-caw-caw of a pair of ubiquitous crows.” — ROY TRAKIN, Trakin Care of Business column
I’m thrilled that my novel, “True Love Scars,” made four best-of lists for 2014.
Perfect Sound Forever publisher Jason Gross included “True Love Scars” in his best books of 2014 list. (His list of best books is down past the music lists.)
Triple R Radio host/ Addicted To Noise Australia publisher Brian Wise included True Love Scars in his ten best books of 2014 list. (Brian’s list is down the page a bit.)
Former Billboard magazine columnist/ current “Trakin Care Of Business” columnist Roy Trakin included “True Love Scars” in his best books of 2014 list.
And while I’m at it, there’s a cool review of “True Love Scars” in the latest issue of Ragazine. Writer M. Sedlof manages to both write about my novel (he digs it) and provide some insight into my subtle approach to marketing “True Love Scars.” You can read his review here.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Goldberg’s virginal sex scenes unwind at the same racing-heart-awkward-self-conscious-anxious pace one can almost remember from those good old, bad old days when the forbidden fruit was all one ever wanted then-and-forever-after, only how to get it without letting it slip through your hands like sand, when all you ever did was what it took to make like you cared, when all you knew about caring was what you heard at home, an attitude you didn’t know you didn’t have that may have cost you big time. …
“This was life in California during the denoument days-months-years of Summer of Love, Altamont, the winding up-down of Vietnam, of Roman Polanski and Charlie Manson, Sharon Tate … of Haight and Half Moon Bay, of kids who didn’t surf, who confused and burned-out ended up discovering what the core of life is really like, deep inside, where if you’re lucky enough to find yourself before you die you might even claw your way out. It’s one kid’s story, and then some.”
“… a gonzo look back at misspent youth in the 1960s called True Love Scars — the first in a projected Days of Crazy Wild trilogy. It’s a crackling good read, fillled with humor, pathos, drug use and Dylan references (seriously, I think there’s one on every page). Some of the book is quite harrowing — The Wonder Years, this ain’t. But Goldberg’s freewheelin’ style captures a certain late 60s/early 70s vibe (think the autobiographical writings of Lester Bangs) that makes True Love Scars a pleasure through and through. Check it out.
Jason Gross’s blog:
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[I published True Love Scars in August of 2014.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
This article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel about my novel, True Love Scars, was published recently.
I think the article does a great job of conveying some of what the book is about.
Writes journalist Wallace Baine:
The period of the early 1970s isn’t just a setting for Michael Goldberg’s new novel “True Love Scars.” It’s the orientation for everything in the book, the language, the tone, the references, the narrative.
“I was trying to get at the experience of being young in that time period,” said UC Santa Cruz grad Goldberg, a long-time writer for Rolling Stone. “Not just the drugs and the sex, but the deeper stuff, trying to figure out who you are in the world. I was trying to take the rock & roll of that time and get it on the page.”
The result is an unusual story, fueled by a prose designed to evoke the rambunctious, radical music of the era, with a rhythm and poetic sensibility much more like the rock records of the time than many other novels.
And at the end of the story:
[Goldberg] talks about one scene in the book taking place on the houseboats of Sausalito. “I was listening to the Stones’ (1971 album) ‘Sticky Fingers’ over and over again while I was writing that, really trying to get the mood of that album on the page. I wanted the chapter to feel like what it was like to listen to some of those songs in that period.
“Frankly, I think the ‘sound’ of the narration is quite original. The big idea that I kept in mind as I wrote was that anything goes, that this was as if a 24-year-old and his friend went to a bar in 1975, had a few drinks and then the 24-year-old turned to his friend and said, ‘Let me tell you how my heart was broken…’”
I’ll be doing a very special reading in the Bay Area on Dec. 13 at 3 pm. As I read, Grammy-winning experimental guitarist Henry Kaiser will improvise on guitar.
The event, titled “a post-beat happening – words + guitar,” will take place at Down Home Music in El Cerrito, CA. Be there!
—
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
novelist michael goldberg +
experimental guitarist henry kaiser
december 13, 2014, 3 pm
Henry will join me in a reading/performance for the first time at the world-renowned world music/roots music record emporium, Down Home Music, located at 10341 San Pablo Avenue, El Cerrito, CA.
I’ll read from my critically acclaimed rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars, as Grammy award winning musician Henry Kaiser improvises on electric guitar.
Inspired by the fabled Beat jazz readings of the ‘50s, Henry and I will join together to make a new kind of post-Beat, post-rock noise.
There’s no charge. It’s FREE!!
I invite you all to attend.
Here’s a photo of me.
Copies of the book are available at Down Home Music, and online of course. Use the handy link in the right hand column to order a copy.
Grammy winner Henry Kaiser is widely recognized as one of the most creative and innovative guitarists, improvisers, and producers in the fields of rock, jazz, world, and contemporary experimental musics.
The California-based musician is one of the most extensively recorded as well, having appeared on more than 250 different albums and contributed to countless television and film soundtracks.
A restless collaborator who constantly seeks the most diverse and personally challenging contexts for his music, Mr. Kaiser not only produces and contributes to a staggering number of recorded projects, he performs frequently throughout the USA, Canada, Europe and Japan, with several regular groupings as well as solo guitar concerts and concerts of freely improvised music with a host of diverse instrumentalists.
Among the numerous artists Kaiser has recorded or performed with are Herbie Hancock, Richard Thompson, David Lindley, Jerry Garcia, Steve Lacy, Fred Frith, Terry Riley, Negativland, Michael Stipe, Jim O’Rourke, Victoria Williams, Diamanda Galas and Cecil Taylor.
Don’t know how I managed to miss this, but last month my friends at R.E.M.H.Q. did a cool post about an interview with Peter Buck I did prior to the release of New Adventures In Hi-Fi, back in 1996.
And they included a nice plug for my novel, “True Love Scars.”
You can check out the post and read the interview with Peter Buck here.
Coming up this Friday, August 17, 2014 at the Make-Out Room in San Francisco is the momentous LitQuake “Rock ‘N’ Roll Circus: A Cavalcade of Stars,” an evening of music critics reading from their latest books.
The lineup: Gina Arnold (author of the book “Exile In Guyville”), former San Francisco Chronicle pop music critic Joel Selvin (“Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues”), Kerouac/Grateful Dead biographer Dennis McNally (“On Highway 61: Music, Race, and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom”), Addicted To Noise founder/former Rolling Stone Senior Writer Michael Goldberg (“True Love Scars”), musician Bruce Cockburn (“Rumours of Glory”), rock journalist and author Denise Sullivan (“Shaman’s Blues: The Art and Influences Behind Jim Morrison and the Doors”), rock historian and college teacher Richie Unterberger (“Jingle Jangle Morning: Folk-Rock in the 1960s”) and best-selling authors Keith and Kent Zimmerman (“Shining Star: Braving the Elements of Earth, Wind & Fire”).
Providing music will be Camper Van Beethoven cofounder Victor Krummenacher.
The evening starts at 7 pm and admission is a cheap $10.
And finally, for today and maybe Tuesday the Kindle version of “True Love Scars” is available for $2.99. A bargain at three times the price. Soon it will be again priced at $9.99, so get it on the cheap now.
—
[Rolling Stone has a great review of “True Love Scars” in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Early this year I read an incredible book about self-publishing called “Write. Publish. Repeat. (The No-Luck-Required Guide to Self-Publishing Success) by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant.
Turned out these guys, Platt and Truant, along with writer David Wright, have got a cottage industry going. They have written a lot of novels during the past few years and they’re selling books. Enough books that the three of them are making a living off the sales.
They have a website, Sterling & Stone, where, along with blogging about writing and their various projects, David Wright conducts interviews with writers and other artists.
He calls his interview series “Eight Questions.”
He asked me to participate in an interview, and I was happy to do so.
(By the way, from now until Saturday Octover 11, 2014, the Kindle version of my novel, True Love Scars, is on sale for $2.99 here.)
Here’s how the interview begins:
Michael Goldberg was a Senior Writer at Rolling Stone for a decade and wrote for Esquire, downbeat, Wired, Details, NME, British Mirabella, Creem, Crawdaddy, New York Rocker and many other publications. Goldberg founded the first web rock ‘n’ roll magazine in ’94, Addicted To Noise. Newsweek called him an “internet visionary.” Goldberg was editor-in-chief of SonicNet in the late ’90s, published Neumu.net during the first half of the 2000s and was editor-in-chief at MOG (now Beats Music) in the late 2000s. He currently publishes a popular music blog, Days Of The Crazy-Wild. Goldberg spent over six years writing the Freak Scene Dream Trilogy of which True Love Scars is the first book.
What is your daily creative routine like?
I’ve been a professional writer for nearly 40 years. For years I wrote stories about musicians and the music business. When I was writing journalism fulltime, there were days when I spent the whole day researching and preparing to interview an artist and did no writing. There were days when I just hung out with a musician or a band and took detailed notes and interviewed them. There were days when I spent the entire day on the phone doing additional reporting for the story. And there were days (and nights) when all I did was write. One time I flew to London, spent a week researching a cover story on Boy George, flew to New York and wrote the story on deadline in the New York Rolling Stone office in a borrowed office.
So I learned that I didn’t need a specific routine, or rather, the routine was that every day I got up and did what needed to be done to further the story. Prepare. Report. Write. But I’m an obsessive, workaholic. When I’m working on a project, I’m 150% focused on it and all my waking and sleeping mind is focused on is that project.
So when I started seriously working on what turned into three novels – the Freak Scene Dream Trilogy, of which True Love Scars is the first – I obsessively worked on that project. I brought my laptop everywhere. I wrote in cafes, airports, on planes, on hotel beds, in my office, on the dining room table…
When I went for walks I would make notes on my iPhone or on scarps of paper.
I probably wrote for at least six hours a day, sometimes eight or nine hours, seven days a week. I worked that way for over six years. I wrote and revised, wrote and revised, wrote and revised. When the first draft was done I went back to the beginning and wrote and revised, wrote and revised. Same for the third draft. Every word in the book was scrutinized. I probably spent three or four years getting the unique voice that tells the story just right.
I led a fiction writing group for three years – Sept. 2010 ‘til Oct. 2013 – and what I told the writers in my group, over and over, was they had to write every day. And I really believe that. When you write every day, your subconscious is working overtime on your book. Obviously it’s best if you can write for a couple hours each day, but even 15 minutes keeps the novel or short story alive in your subconscious.
Right now I’m in novel promotion mode which means I’m focused, 24/7, on promoting my first novel, True Love Scars.
I get up at 7:30 or 8 am and I get a bowl or uncooked oatmeal, blueberries, cut up apple, almond milk, and flax and eat it while I scan the New York Times. I’ve also got Feedly on my iphone with writing/publishing news. I scan through all the stories that happened after I went to bed. I run up to my office and do a quick blog post or two to my Days of the Crazy-Wild culture blog.
Then I go take my dog for a walk, go to the gym for an hour workout (very, very important to survive as a writer). Get home and work for an hour or two – emailing media people, doing blog posts about a new review of my book or an interview that ran somewhere, maybe come up with a new ad for Goodreads, research other sites where I might be able to promote the book, etc. etc. Eat lunch – an almond butter sandwich and a huge salad with vinegar and some vegan chili for a dressing, and then it’s time to get back to work. I’ll work from 2 to 6 or 6:30, have dinner and hang out with my wife and then by 8 pm we both get back to work and work on our projects until 10 or 10:30 and then I’ll read for an hour or so.
What are some of your best creative habits and what are some of the bad ones you struggle with?
I’m very self-disciplined. When I was working on the trilogy, I worked pretty much every day, seven days a week, for years and years. I read my work aloud every week to a veteran novelist who taught me a lot about writing fiction. I would read for two hours – he would stop me every 15 minutes or so and give me feedback. He was able to help me see what needed more work. Sometimes I’d be writing and revising a chapter for two months.
I don’t believe in writer’s block. I don’t really believe in the idea of inspiration. In other words, I sit down and I start writing. And if I don’t have anything to say, well I’ll start writing about how I don’t have anything to say. Weirdly, I always have something to say. And I don’t believe in waiting for inspiration. There are times when I’m totally in the zone and a scene is unfolding in this unbelievable way and the voice is perfect and words and phrases are appearing out of thin air and it’s mind-blowing. Other times it’s just all about getting my idea of what happens next down on the page knowing that I’ll be revising and revising and revising and so I never worry about whether the writing is any good ‘cause I know I’ll be fixing it anyway. Often, the next day, when I look at what I wrote, I find that much of it is useable, and even if some isn’t, it’s a hell of a lot easier to sit down to 3000 words and edit it into shape, than to sit down to a blank page. So the trick is to vomit what’s inside onto the page without any editing and then come back and edit.
I do want to note that at the end of the interview, I was asked: What do you want your legacy to be?
I answered the question, but after my final comment, I added :-), but that didn’t make the edit.
So when you read that final answer, keep in mind two things:
1) I’m smiling as I answer that question.
2) We all got a right to dream of greatness.
—
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
At this year’s LitQuake festival, a who’s who of music writers including University of San Francisco professor/ former rock critic Gina Arnold (author of the book “Exile In Guyville”), former San Francisco Chronicle pop music critic Joel Selvin (“Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues”), Kerouac/Grateful Dead biographer Dennis McNally (“A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead”) will read from their most recent books on Friday, October 17, 2014 at the Make-Out Room in San Francisco’s Mission district.
The high profile lineup also includes Addicted To Noise founder/former Rolling Stone Senior Writer Michael Goldberg (“True Love Scars”), musician Bruce Cockburn (“Rumours of Glory”), rock journalist and author Denise Sullivan (“Shaman’s Blues: The Art and Influences Behind Jim Morrison and the Doors”), rock historian and college teacher Richie Unterberger (“Jingle Jangle Morning: Folk-Rock in the 1960s”) and best-selling authors Keith and Kent Zimmerman (“Shining Star: Braving the Elements of Earth, Wind & Fire”).
Providing music will be Camper Van Beethoven cofounder Victor Krummenacher.
The evening will start at 7 pm and admission is a bargain at $10.
I think this will be a great evening. Kinda of like a greatest hits of recent music books. Each of us will read our best 7 minutes.
We’ll have our books for sale, and if you want a personal message written by the author, all you have to do is ask.
Meanwhile, I’ve got the Kindle version of my book. True Love Scars, on sale this week for $2.99. I can tell you it would be a bargain at twice the price.
