NEWS – Donald F Glut

Recently Don did a video interview with Honey Gregory. If you’d like to watch it, it was launched on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcWXiM7UyME

This coming Saturday, Don will be a guest at …!

Don’s good friend and “blood bro” Count Gore de Vol is now showing Don’s latest movie Tales of Frankenstein on his online TV show! It goes up at 6:00 and plays on demand 24/7 until the 23rd at countgore.com. If you haven’t see it yet, here’s your chance!

Just arrived at Don’s door — both LPs and CDs! Available from Sundazed Music (https://sundazed.com/penny-arkade-not-the-freeze-2lp.aspx). Don on bass guitar, keyboards and a bit of backup warbling. With Mike Stax’ (Ugly Things magazine) wonderful liner notes (part of which are quote:

A sunshine pop delight with equal parts psych, folk-rock, and even a little garage!

Taking its title from their mind-liquefying 12 minute psych opus, this expanded edition of Not The Freeze combines the cuts from the coveted sole LP pressing with additional tracks that were previously only available on CD. Your spiritual guide on this journey from the frontal lobe to the cerebellum is Mike Stax, the author of Swim Through The Darkness, his book about Craig Smith aka Maitreya Kali, leader of the Arkade!

While the first Sundazed release was being prepared, Don Glut discovered, quite by accident, a ¼” tape of the demo sessions that preceded the album. “Around that time, I was listening to a lot of my old reel-to-reel tapes,” he remembers. “I was looking for some old radio programs that I had recorded, and in this stack of tapes that I was listening to I came across something just labeled on the side of the box ‘Penny Arkade.’ I thought, ‘What in the world is this?’”

Don tried rewinding the tape and flipping it over, but couldn’t get the music to play forwards, so he sent it to Bob Irwin at Sundazed. Bob was able to play the tape, and discovered an entire cache of early Penny Arkade recordings. The unexpected find included alternate versions of “Swim,” “Voodoo Spell,” “Lights of Dawn” (with Nesmith on maracas), and “Century of Distance” (which Craig would later rewrite as “Love is Our Existence”), as well as a formative reading of what would later become “Not the Freeze.”

At this stage the innovative song suite—titled “The Freeze”—was pieced together solely from Ducey’s compositions, and clocked in at a more modest seven minutes. It was only later that some of Smith’s songs were incorporated into the piece. Even more interestingly the tape yielded four songs that the band had dropped from their repertoire before the Not the Freeze album: Craig’s snappy proto-power pop winner “Split Decision,” and three of Chris Ducey’s songs, “Sick and Tired,” the ragtime-flavored “You Couldn’t Conquer Me” and the superb “No Rhyme or Reason.”

“I’ve done a lot of things,” Don reflects. “I’ve written and directed movies, I’ve written eighty published books, I’ve written hundreds of comic book stories and TV shows and all that, but the thing I put the most pride in, the thing I get the most joy out of, is the music—playing it, listening to it… To me the most important thing was the music.”

His pride is not misplaced. More than a half century of distance later, the music of the Penny Arkade continues to sparkle and shine.

– Mike Stax

Publisher/Editor Rich Sala just posted on FaceBook this cover for an upcoming issue — and Don is happy to say that Rich asked him to write a story based on that Sanjulian painting. It was a challenge. Most stories about evil Santas have tended to owe something, often a lot, to that classic EC story that was included in the Tales from the Crypt movie. The challenge was coming up with a story that was different while remaining true to that cover image. At least for once the cover didn’t also come with an existing title! You’ll have to wait a few months to see how Don did! Ho, Ho, Horror!

Dpm thanks sculScott C Fensterer for a really fun interview. If anyone would like to hear it, it’s now on YouTube, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecq0_bbmkUw

After several years hiatus, mostly due to the pandemic, Don will be returning to his old volunteer job preparing dinosaur fossils in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County’s Dinolab! As soon as the paperwork is processed, he will be back at his old Thursday late morning-middle afternoon slot. The Dinolab is on the 2nd floor and visitors can look through the lab window and see the preparators working away. Maybe Don will meet some of you if you happen to stop by.

Don thanks to Peter Richardson for including him in his excellent (2-edition) book on the Warren magazines.

This just came out. Don has an essay in it about the first time he saw the movie King Kong.

Don thanks Ed Lute (our last names rhyme!) for the terrific article he wrote about Don’s Gold Key Comics characters Dagar and Tragg (as well as others) in the current issue of BACK ISSUE magazine. And very nicely illustrated.

Don loves getting good surprises like this in the mail — The Art of Dracula of Transylvania, written and illustrated by his good friend Ricardo Delgado, a gorgeously illustrated hardcover book for which I had the privilege of writing the forward. Don heartily endorses this book and knows that for Ricardo it was a labor of love (which clearly shows). All that’s missing from it is Ricardo’s autograph, which Don intend to get next time they have lunch at the Coral Cafe in Burbank.

Out at last and available from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C5YVY9TY/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2J2TMWVR1FWVJ&keywords=glut+classic+movie+monsters&qid=1684861867&s=books&sprefix=glut+cl%2Cstripbooks%2C289&sr=1-2

This issue includes a lengthy, detailed interview with Don, mostly about making movies. Somehow Alex managed to avoid asking the usual, cliche questions that many interviewers tend to ask, where Don’s responses are by rote sounding like “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.”

This interview with Don was just posted on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsOF0bKyN6U

Don received a request from paleontologist friend David Gillette to use clips from my Edwin H. Colbert video interview in Dave’s documentary about Ned; received proofs for an an article by Peter Richardson on the Warrant and Warren horror comics magazines for a journal published in the UK; and asked by curator John Gray to contribute to his Frankenstein exhibition opening next month at the Gardyne Theatre in the UK.

Out soon! Don wrote the cover story — based on this artwork by Pat Broderick and long-time collaborator Bill Black.

For a recent interview in which Don talks about how to write comic book stories, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvJE4p9moLs

To hear a new (and long!) interview with Don focusing on the old live “spook shows,” go to https://spookshowmovie.com/podcast/

Don’s first movie Dinosaur Valley Girls will be reissued later this year by Wild Eye Releasing on Blu-Ray — restored, with the bonus features included on the most recent Frontline Entertainment DVD, plus new extras including a 2nd commentary track featuring Courtney Joyner interviewing Don, plus a video tour through his museum-house and prehistoric collection. Coinciding with this reissue, Strange Particle Press will be bringing back into print Don’s novelization of the movie and maybe also his making of book.” Looks like another busy year!

Available at Amazon …

Don wrote a foreword … and it contains the illustrations Rick did for his “New Adventures of Frankenstein” stories when they were issued in magazine format by Druktenis Publishing. The book looks terrific!

Interview with Don about his writing for the Dino-Riders TV cartoon show in this issue, out now.

This now up on YouTube, 1st in a series …

Once again Don is a talking head bonus feature.

It’s out! And thanks to Don’s friend C Courtney Joyner, he has a bonus feature — about Tarzan in the comics: