Welcome to Starfish and Coffee—where the strange gets a seat at the table, and the coffee’s always strong.

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 hole...

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 at: https://www.youtube.com/@IntoTheFog 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 and you can find it here:

Hope you get a kick out of it…

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.

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!

Here's some information about the book:

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.

I hope you enjoy this one - it was great fun and illuminating too. If just one person picks up a book by either poet, maybe my work here is done.

https://www.juliagordonbramer.com

Here's a documentary about Sylvia which touches on the occult side a grand total of zero times - but will give you a decent background into her:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjDL1cijCuY

If you're in the dark about the end to this story, on February 11, 1963, Plath got up at around seven a.m. and tended to her children. She left them milk, bread, and butter so that they’d have something to eat when they woke up, put extra blankets in their room, and carefully taped the edges of their door.

Then, Plath went into the kitchen, turned on the gas, and lay down on the floor (though some reports will conflictingly say she placed her head in the oven). Carbon monoxide filled the room. Before long, Sylvia Plath had died. She was only 30 years old.

Her family, ashamed of her suicide, reported that she’d died of “virus pneumonia.”

Ted Hughes himself was devastated - they had been separated for six months, due to his affair with Assia Wevill - who for the record, also died by suicide on 23 March 1969 after murdering her four-year-old Shura in their London home.

I mention this only because I like Ted Hughes a lot as a writer, but when you start digging, sometimes you can wish you had left the shovel where you found it.

You can buy a copy of Julia's book here.

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.

Thanks for tuning in.

Be cool to each other!

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:

https://www.youtube.com/@BeastoTV

Their official site is here:

http://www.beastoblanco.com

Thanks for tuning in - be cool to each other!

This week, we (seems like a long time ago that I first sat down with JJ to start this podast) bat the ball around and look at AI in music: where it might go, what you might do with it, why you might hate it and how you might feel about the whole thing. It really is the Wild West when it comes to music and robots replacing humans.

You can listen to the music we are talking about right here:

https://www.sionsmithmusic.com/johnnybeatnik

You can also find it on Spotify and YouTube etc (interestingly, you can't find it on Apple Music and I'm yet to find out why - I'll come back to that!).

Hello again people of earth.

This week, my guest on Starfish and Coffee is the writer 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 Keith’s website 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.