Gifted writer, Patrick O’Neil makes a well-deserved return to Life Elsewhere to talk about the latest volume of his memoir, Anarchy At The Circle K. An in your face gut-wrenching, and at times humorous tale of Patrick’s stint as a roadie, road manager, and drug addict during punk’s heyday of the 1980s. Crisscrossing the highways of America, on tour with such influential punk bands as Dead Kennedys, TSOL, Flipper, and Subhumans. O’Neil writes a brutally honest and no holds barred memoir depicting the sleepless nights behind the wheel, never-ending string of decrepit nightclubs, a plethora of ruthless promoters, depressing dressing rooms, copious amounts of cheap beer, clandestine drug buys, riotous crowds, intense violence, inadvertent OD’s, and seedy motel one night stands. This book is an insider’s look at life on the road from back in the day and you’re along for the ride. 

Also in the show, a remarkable new music discovery, Finding Home by Maya Youssef, a multi-award-winning musician, and composer from Syria. She is hailed as ‘queen of the qanun,’ the 78-stringed Middle Eastern plucked zither. Her music is rooted in the Arabic classical tradition but forges pathways into Western classical and contemporary styles. Finding Home is a journey through memories and the essence of home both within and without. Maya wrote this album during a time of spiritual awakening. Over time she has come to accept the loss of her homeland and is in the process of grieving. Maya recalls “The world which existed before the war started, despite it naturally having problems, was a beautiful world with a booming economy, artistic scene, film festivals and visiting international artists, Damascus was the third safest city in the world. The loss of that world was heart-wrenching and, in a way, steered me towards a universal concept of home. I feel that the world is my home and humanity is my home. I want to take people through a transformative journey, where they land in that place of home for themselves”.

The gun statistics are courtesy of Giffords Law Center

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