Crime of the Century Coverage Roundup for March

Instead of clogging up your feeds with every collab or reference of my book elsewhere on the web, I thought I’d do a little roundup/summary post of them, in case you missed it, and to return the favour to friends of the blog who’ve promoted my work. Now it’s my turn to give you a shoutout! Without further ado, let’s get started! A big thank you to Mary Devlin, Mike Ladano, and David Oman for shouting out my book on their platforms.

Collab with my friend Mary

I’ve featured my friend Mary Devlin on the blog before: I interviewed her and featured her song “Lover’s Hands” on the blog. She’s a great musician and I highly recommend listening to her music. She’s also a successful TikTok creator with over 42,000 followers, and you can find her page here: @beatledirt. She really knows all about 60s music and classic rock and I love her conversational style of making videos, so engaging and captivating. In this video, the approach taken reminds me a bit of one of my favourite creators on YouTube, Bailey Sarian who does get ready with me true crime videos where she does her makeup and talks true crime. Anyway, she made a video in collaboration with me where she talks about Charles Manson and Helter Skelter, which is a big part of Chapter 5 of Crime of the Century. Lots of interesting facts in this video and a teaser for why you should get yourself a copy of Crime of the Century. I love how she makes connections between the 60s and the present, putting things in context for younger viewers and making the 60s approachable and relatable.

@beatledirt

historical connections really make me realize how small of a world we live in remember to check out “crime of the century” by angie moon for more true crime and classic rock crossivers! @crazyonclassicrock (also just to be clear, all references to manson as “charlie” are purely ironic and in a mocking form. i am wholly against the manson family and do not romanticize them). fyp classicrock truecrime truecrimecommunity rockmusic thebeatles beatles beatlestok

♬ Rock and Roll Session – Canal Records JP

Here’s what Mary had to say about my book:

“If you want to learn more about Charles Manson’s connections to The Beatles and the music industry at large, then you should really pick up my friend Angie Moon’s book, it’s called Crime of the Century. In Crime of the Century, Angie combined one of my two special interests, which is classic rock and true crime. And I’ve known Angie for a really long time. We’ve been online friends since the Tumblr days when we were both teenagers and I’m really really proud of her for putting out this book so that’s why I’m sharing it with all of you guys.”

Shoutout and kind words from Mike Ladano

Mike Ladano is a longtime follower of The Diversity of Classic Rock. I think he’s been following me since the beginning, back when I had that School of Rock theme on the blog (if you remember that era, you’re a real one). If you’re in the WordPress classic rock fandom, then you probably know who he is, but in case you don’t, he’s a classic rock expert, prolific writer with hundreds of blog posts of Record Store Tales, podcaster and host of Grab a Stack of Rock, avid collector of CDs and vinyl, and. If you’re into the 70s/80s hard rock side of classic rock, then you’ll love his blog because it’s mainly focused on that era. On a YouTube stream he did an unboxing of my book and said some really kind words about the book that I’d like to share with you. He also talks about this YouTube stream, including talking about my book on his blog.

The video is here on Darcyska’s channel on YouTube and Mike talks about my book in the beginning:

Here’s what Mike had to say about me and the book:

“I want to start with something very special here. This is a brand new music book just released by somebody from the WordPress community, Angie Moon, and she has run the Crazy on Classic Rock WordPress site for years now, probably a decade and it’s grown and grown and grown and finally she’s written her first book and this comes direct from the author. It’s always nice to support the author and you know all of the proceeds are going directly to her. But this is her very first book called Crime of the Century: Classic Rock & True Crime by Angie Moon. And look at that really nice design too. She’s very talented with visual design.”

Mike also announced that I’ll be on his podcast soon to talk about the book. So keep your eyes peeled!

Interview with David Oman

David Oman is a blogger in the mod subculture who writes about music on his blog, Played By David. He’s interviewed a few of my vintage community pals like Naomi and Eliza. He approached me a few weeks ago asking if I wanted to be featured on his blog and I said yes and the interview has been published on his blog and you can read it now! In the interview, I talk about the usual topics of fashion and music as well as stuff about the book. Here are a couple little excerpts as a teaser:

First one where I talk about why I love 60s fashion:

“I loved how colourful the 60s were and how much of a revolution the decade was in so many ways from fashion to music to history. You look at the beginning and end of the decade and it’s like two totally different eras and that can be reflected in bands like The Beatles: Please Please Me to Abbey Road: the range! Like you’re telling me The Shadows’ “Apache” and Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” were released in the same decade? Incredible! As my boomer uncle once put it, there is no other decade like the 60s and there will never be another decade like the 60s. I only wish I had lived back then!

Fashion wise, I’ve broadened my horizons a lot lately, but as a teenager I loved how youthful the clothes were and I loved that 60’s fashion was a response to the 50’s: a completely different look and it really echoed the 1920s with the flapper being a response to the Gibson Girl. I loved the rebelliousness and the free spiritedness and optimism of the 60’s, even in the face of what was going on: all the unrest and war.

What really made the 60’s special is that young people got to be young people and they wanted to express their individuality and not be like their parents and this could be seen in not just music, but fashion too! Earlier eras can look a bit costume like, but 60’s fashion is so timeless and you see so much more modernity in it than in previous decades. As someone who loves summer, the best era of fashion for summer clothes is the 60’s: short dresses, simple minimalistic pared down dressing, so much more comfortable and practical.

In general, I love the bright colours, the patterns, the multicultural influences, and the space age look – I was really into outer space when I was a kid.”

And here’s what I had to say about the biggest challenge of writing Crime of the Century:

“It took about two years to really finish up writing everything and I could have done it faster if I wasn’t battling a chronic illness and I wasn’t finding more and more classic rock and true crime stories – and even then I have a list of some stories that I found out only after the fact that I’ll be saving for Crime of the Century 2. I guess that section could be called The Ones That Got Away.

With a chronic illness, you have your ups and downs and that was the biggest challenge in writing this book. I had adenomyosis and that meant very painful unpredictable cramps and back pain all throughout the month and that made it very difficult to work. Some days I could power through, but other days I just couldn’t. Having chronic pain also does a number on your mental health, both physical and mental health are so linked. The pain isn’t just ouch physically, it’s also mental – it hurts the soul. I was like “why am I in so much pain?” “what did I do to deserve this?” “will I ever get better?” “will the doctors believe me when I say I’m in pain?” “when will I finally have my surgery?” Every day that went by, I reminded myself, that’s one day with chronic pain you’ll never deal with again, and I reminded myself of this when recovering from surgery.

But I think that this battle taught me to be grateful for the good days, reach out to my friends and family when I need it and build connections, slow down and take care of myself, be resourceful and find relief for my pain where I’d least expect to, and that I can indeed bounce back and feel better than ever. By the time I got my hysterectomy, I was mostly finished with my book, but still had some chapters to write and editing to do, and I was really pleased with how much I did while battling this awful disease. I’m too hard on myself and I need to give myself more credit! In the end, I won. I beat adenomyosis and I’ve published a book.”

Last but not least, Crime of the Century’s first review!

One of my friends said some really kind words on my Goodreads page about my book and I wanted to share it with you.

“If you love true crime or rock n’ roll, (or both!) I highly recommend reading Crime of the Century. As someone who grew up enjoying vintage music and listening to true crime documentaries, I’m amazed at how linked these two interests of mine can be! Angie Moon perfectly details the connections between the most famous musicians and infamous criminals: from rock star’s encountering serial killers, to musicians becoming killers themselves. Despite my knowledge on these subjects, I found myself learning so much thanks to reading this book. I’m glad I found a read so unique and entertaining, that I find myself turning the pages when I should be getting a good night’s sleep! It’s definitely worth it!”

That last bit there is the ultimate compliment. That’s what I strive to do with my writing about classic rock. I want to write about classic rock in a comprehensive and educational, but still very entertaining way that you won’t want to put down. My goal with this book was to write something that is such a breeze to read and you won’t want to put it down. I want this book to be your companion on a plane trip, bus trip, road trip, to the beach, wherever you read books.

If you enjoyed Crime of the Century, I encourage you to write reviews on your blogs, talk about it on YouTube, write a review on Amazon, write a review on Goodreads, and recommend it to your friends. Word of mouth is incredibly valuable for a new author and reviews only take a moment and help me a tonne because people are more likely to buy books that have received reviews and it helps boost me in the algorithm and these days it’s all about the algorithm. Thank you so much everyone for your support!

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