MIKE STAX – Books
Mike Stax also does not have an article in Wikipedia, though there is a short article on the fanzine Ugly Things that he founded in 1983 (the Tell-Tale Hearts were also formed that year). To my mind, there can be little doubt of his “notability”. An article in the San Diego Union Tribune on May 23, 2013 about an upcoming concert over three days celebrating the 30th anniversary of Ugly Things quotes another San Diego musician and rock critic Bart Mendoza (who is in the Shambles): “To me, Ugly Things is the top music magazine in the world. It’s even better than (top English music publication) Mojo, because it has more pages and covers more ground with more depth. Mike’s coverage of music is the template everybody has to match, not only for content but for research. No one else does such comprehensive articles.”
Mike Stax’s exhaustively researched article over four issues in Ugly Things on the Misunderstood led to the publication of a book on the band called Like, Misunderstood that was co-written with the band’s lead singer Rick Brown; as quoted in the Union Tribune article, Stax says: “They came pretty close to making it in London, they got a deal with Fontana Records, had a single out and had media (coverage). Then, the [U.S. military] draft claimed the lead singer, and they were finished overnight, just as they were on the verge of success. They would have been the first psychedelic band, with an album out before before [Jimi] Hendrix and Pink Floyd. They were cheated. Their music was world-class.”
More recently, and representing 15 years of research, Mike Stax published another acclaimed book called Swim Through the Darkness: My Search for Craig Smith and the Mystery of Maitreya Kali, about a pop and folk musician named Craig Smith who worked with Andy Williams, Glen Campbell and the Monkees and later descended into mental illness and became a “psychedelic messiah” called Maitreya Kali, who released two albums in the early 1970’s.
(September 2017)
