Starfish and Coffee is a podcast about music or the occult but I’ve also been known to fall in a hole, so don’t hold me to that. Here’s links to the major platforms but you can find it wherever you get your podcasts:
EPISODE 029: PAUL WILD
This week, we’re kicking things off with Paul Wild, author of a bold new book titled Jim Morrison, Secret Teacher of the Occult: A Journey to the Other Side. And let me tell you—it’s not just another Doors cash-in. This is a serious, mind-bending dive into what Jim was really doing up there on stage. The words, the rituals, the madness… maybe even the method behind it.
Paul’s got a deep background in spiritual and occult studies, and he’s managed to pull something rare: a fresh angle on Morrison. Just when you thought there was nothing new to say, Paul yanks a full-grown white rabbit out of the hat and says, “Look again.”
Whether you're a lifelong Doors disciple or just curious about what happens when rock stars start channeling the other side—this one’s for you.
Let’s go down the rabbit, whole....
EPISODE 028: PETER LAWS
This week’s guest is Peter Laws who creates, writes, directs and makes the tea at the Into The Fog podcast on YouTube - I say ‘podcast’ but it’s more like a real TV show. You can find it here but if you venture in, make sure you have an awful lot of time on your hands because it’s not a ten minute foray into Ghost World. He has a very tall stack of episodes, each of them excellent in their own right and really, it’s up to you to find your favourite on there but I guarantee you, there are many.
In this episode we talk about the show, Ouija Boards and generally get into the guts of why people like us get into this sort of thing and can’t let go. (One of my favourites is a two parter called Clophill: The Church That Horrified a Nation which is as good a place to dive in as any.
EPISODE 027: IAN KAHN
Ian Kahn knows books. He knows lots of books. He runs Lux Mentis where you'll find all manner of curiosities, not least, quite a killer selection of occult volumes. It's a long old episode that's for sure but if you're into books and collecting... hopefully we got it covered!
I've had this one sitting around for a while, so apologies all round.
#Slacker.
EPISODE 026: Julia Gordon Bramer
This talk was recorded earlier this year as - professional tarot reader - Julia Gordon Bramer was coming up to the release date of her book "The Occult Sylvia Plath: The Hidden Spiritual Life of the Visionary Poet" - and then the file got all kinds of messed up on a certain recording platform but with some time (too much time) and patience, presto: restored!
Sharing her more than 15 years of compelling research—including analysis of Sylvia Plath’s unpublished calendars, notebooks, scrapbooks, book annotations and underlinings, as well as published memoirs, biographies, letters, journals, and interviews with Plath and her husband, friends, and family—Plath scholar Julia Gordon-Bramer reveals Sylvia Plath’s enduring interest and active practice in mysticism and the occult from childhood until her tragic death in 1963.
However, as much as Plath is a contender for head space when I'm going down these roads, I'm far more interested in Ted Hughes and his relationship - personal and work wise -with Plath. I find it fascinating that two great poets of a generation that existed not so long ago, would sit around in their evenings and fire up the Ouija board.
I'd love the poetry world to be like this again - they never told us these things at school, instead, they left us to decide for ourselves that it was boring because we didn't understand a damn thing about what was really going on.
EPISODE 025: Tricia Romano
Tricia Romano wrote a big-ass book that’s for sure. You only have to pick it up and flip through it once to see how much work has gone into it - and if you’re into American Culture of Years Gone By, this is the tome for you. It’s called The Freaks Came Out To Write - and boy, did they ever…
It’s the story of how if you had something to say, you could more or less turn up at the office of The Village Voice and if they thought you had something to say, you could get yourself a gig. Most probably thought it was fleeting but somehow ‘fleeting’ turned into years which, if you look at it another way, reads: ‘career’.
…but that is that story. This story is about Tricia Romano and how she put it together though of course, we do talk about the content of the book here and there as well. I hope you get as much of a kick out of it as I did putting it together.
If you need a copy - and you do need a copy - as discussed on the show, it’s pretty hard to find in the UK but copies are available on amazon at a reasonable price (especially if you’ve got a Prime membership) and you can find that link here.
EPISODE 024: Chuck Garric and Calico Cooper of Beasto Blanco
This weeks guests are Chuck Garric and Calico Cooper of Beasto Blanco (and of course, the Alice Cooper band). It’s a little short by the usual Starfish standards because of busy, busy schedules at their side but hey… it’s the guys in Beasto Blanco, so I’ll take any time I can get.
For some clarity as to what's going on: Chuck is sequestered in a hotel room and Calico is on the way to said hotel, driven by her Dad... and we all know there ain't no show without Punch.
Their new album Kinetica is out now wherever you get your music and it’s worth hitting YouTube to check out the videos from the album which you can find here.
EPISODE 022: KEITH A. PEARSON
As you’ll come to see - I randomly came across Keith’s first book by chance and perhaps ten days later, found I had read six on the bounce. That’s good innings by any standard - this man’s words are like cracked cocaine for people who just can’t help themselves.
For want of a better description, I would suggest his work is something like: “Richard Curtis writes Doctor Who” (and now that’s written in stone, he can steal it for public consumption).
Having found them hyper-enjoyable in every way imaginable (and is that not, after all, the entire point of reading fiction), I figured let’s get this man on the show and see what makes him tick.
Thus… here lies episode twenty-two of the podcast - it’s a good one. Aside from being fun, if you’re in the writing game yourself, you’ll find some useful business conversation going on too.
You can find his site here.
And from there you can figure it out yourself. There are plenty of links to his books on amazon/audible - read them in order (as I am) or just dive in as you see fit.
Thanks for tuning in again - be cool to each other..
EPISODE 021: Mark Hodkinson
This week, I’ve hooked up with Mark Hodkinson - author of one of my favourite books of the year, titled No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy (there’s an amazon link right there) - to be honest it was hard to resist. There are so many talking points, we probably could have gone on holiday together for a week and still not covered everything I wanted to dig around in.
As you’ll come to see, the main drag of the book is that of a working class man who somewhat unwittingly collected thousands of books throughout the course of his life, but more than that, it’s the story of how he got there when nobody in his family read - which for want of a better mirror to hold up, is a marked difference from my life.
Digging into some highlights, we mostly talk books and music (natch), growing up in the north across the 70s and 80s, name-checking many of the greats along the way: Salinger, Bukowski, Henry Rollins, Sillitoe and er… Catherine Cookson for some reason (hey, it might be good for the algorithms - I don’t recall ever seeing a podcast that mentions her) before diving a little into what it takes to publish a book and some of the differences between going it alone and having a publisher drive the car. We even get to touch on lofty subjects such as whether there even is a class system anymore.
You can find Mark’s homepage here where you can find his books and links to other projects. He also does this (which we never talked about) and is responsible for (which is the best thing Charlie Chaplin has done in decades).
EPISODE 020: Alex Smith
This week, my guest is Alex Smith - author of the much loved (by me and many others) DCI Robbie Kett series of crime novels. Alex is an indie author, so much of our talk revolves around that and when we really get into it, you’ll see why so many authors prefer that route to the traditional one (though I did forget to mention that perhaps not everybody who can string 80,000 words together should publish - much like the long forgotten phrase “just because you can get into it doesn’t mean you should wear it”.
The new Kett novel - Lucky Number Seven - is released this coming Friday (August 4th if you’re late to the party), so that’s my weekend sorted, but as I aways say, if you’re intrigued, you’ve got to start at the beginning.
Footnote: We did this interview a few weeks ago but I figured it would be smart to hold it back until the new book was within striking distance, thus any mentions of said item ‘coming down the line’ are now null and void because it’s here.
EPISODE 019: Christopher Josiffe/GEF THE TALKING MONGOOSE
I’ve looked forward to doing this one for a long time! The story of Gef The Talking Mongoose (late of the Isle of Man) sadly gets less notorious every year. I’ve tried my best to spread the word but this episode features Christopher Josiffe who is an actual expert on Gef - maybe between us, we can spread this incredible tale further afield in all the right ways… though as you’ll hear in the episode, a movie is coming down the line any time now featuring Neil Gaiman as Gef. I can’t beat that, but I can certainly back it up.
In this episode, we dig into Gef and his brilliant story but if you want to know more, Mr Josiffe has written the book on Gef and you can find that . Between that and this, there’s not much more to know… Gef will always be a complete enigma.
One thing I do know for sure though: Mr Josiffe will return - there’s far too much good stuff in his head to let him go that easily.