Boston-based author and screenwriter Mike Bernard joins host Charles to talk live music, nostalgia, and Mike’s novel Concert Dates — a fictional story following six friends whose lives intertwine through the legendary Cape Cod Coliseum, a converted hockey rink that hosted the who's who of classic rock from 1972 to 1983. Mike shares his own concert memories, from taking his grandmother to see Liberace to witnessing the J. Geils Band blow the roof off the old Boston Garden, and reveals how a Facebook group, a parking lot photographer, and an unexpected photo led to one of the book's most remarkable real-life connections. Whether you're a die-hard live music fan or just love a great story about friendship and growing up, this episode is for you.
In this episode, Charles sits down with Mike Bernard, a Boston-area author, screenwriter, and playwright who came to writing later in life and hasn't slowed down since. Mike has published eight novels, written a stage musical, and optioned multiple screenplays through prestigious competitions including the Academy Nicholl Fellowship, the Page International Screenwriting Awards, ScreenCraft, and the Nantucket Film Festival. The conversation weaves together music, memory, friendship, and the creative life — all anchored in the gritty, soulful sounds of the 1970s and early '80s.
Mike's live music journey begins with a memorable — if reluctant — first show: escorting his grandmother to see Liberace at the Cape Cod Melody Tent. His real musical awakening came when he saw the J. Geils Band at the old Boston Garden as a teenager, an experience he still counts among his best. The blues-driven energy of "House Party" and "Musta Got Lost" made a lifelong impression, and he draws a sharp distinction between that era of J. Geils and the MTV-era band that followed. Other standout shows include Elvis Costello at the Cape Cod Coliseum — where the opening silhouettes under blue light during "Watching the Detectives" hit him like a gut punch — and an extraordinary 1990 benefit concert at Worcester's Clark University featuring Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Timothy B. Schmit, Bob Seger, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, and Jimmy Buffett all on the same bill. And for pure comedic gold, Mike recounts the moment a Little River Band guitar pick landed — and stuck — to his bare thigh at the Melody Tent, with zero competition from the crowd for the souvenir.
Charles and Mike then discuss Mike's book Concert Dates; a fictional story told in interview form — inspired by Daisy Jones & The Six — that follows six friends who meet at a concert at age 15 and are reunited decades later through a video diary. The backdrop is the Cape Cod Coliseum, a converted hockey rink that hosted an extraordinary run of classic rock shows from 1972 to 1983, including Van Halen, The Clash, Talking Heads, Peter Frampton, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and J. Geils (twelve times). Mike also shares the remarkable story of connecting with photographer Rudy Childs — a previous Seeing Them Live guest — through a Facebook group dedicated to the Coliseum, only to discover that Rudy's candid parking lot photos included a picture of Mike and his own friends from a Clash show. Listeners who enjoy music, nostalgia, and deeply human storytelling will find Concert Dates — and Mike's wider catalog, including Crossing the Sagamore — well worth picking up on Amazon.
BANDS: Aerosmith, Black Sabbath, Billy Joel, Bob Seger, Bon Iver, Bonnie Raitt, Don Henley, Eagles (Glenn Frey, Timothy B. Schmit), Elvis Costello, Engelbert Humperdinck, Frankie Avalon, Huey Lewis and the News, J. Geils Band, Jackson Browne, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Buffett, Liberace, Little River Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Marshall Tucker Band, Neil Young, Ozzy Osbourne, Peter Frampton, R.E.M., Ray Charles, Seals and Crofts, Sly & the Family Stone, Talking Heads, The Clash, The Four Tops, Tom Petty, Van Halen.
VENUES: Boston Garden, Cape Cod Coliseum, Cape Cod Melody Tent, United Center (Chicago), University of Illinois lecture hall (Champaign).
[00:00:23] Mike: And they talk about this. It was a misty rain and I don't really know Bon Iver, I think he's very similar to like Neil Young. He has a very high pitch kinda stuff. But listening to them describe their moment at that concert where it was just nighttime with misty rain, a little bit of fog, and the lights hit it, and they were like, "It was religious." And I'm like, "Dude, I was at Elvis Costello in 1981. You don't have to tell me about religion."
[00:00:51] Charles: My guest today is Mike Bernard. Mike is an accomplished screenwriter, playwright, and the author of eight novels, a stage [00:01:00] musical, and multiple option screenplays. His work has been recognized internationally through placements of prestigious competitions like the Academy Nicholl Fellowship, Page International Screenwriting Awards, ScreenCraft, Nantucket Film Festival, and various New York and Los Angeles screenplay competitions.
[00:01:21] Mike began writing during a midlife pivot. His storytelling blends grit, humor, and heart, focusing on beautifully messy, relatable characters. He now lives on Cape Cod, where he wrote Concert Dates, a book about a nostalgic look at the legendary live music scene of the Cape Cod Coliseum in the 1970s and early '80s. Mike, welcome to Seeing Them Live.
[00:01:47] Mike: Oh, thank you. Thank you for that introduction. I didn't know I did half that stuff, so that's, kinda cool.
[00:01:54] Charles: Yeah, yeah. You're busy and I would say quite prolific with your novel writing, and [00:02:00] we'll get into that in a bit. I have listed here, you have eight books. Is that correct?
[00:02:04] Mike: Yeah. The way I usually introduce myself is, I started writing later in life, when all my kids and all my money went off to college, and the house was quiet, and I just ... I had a bunch of stories in me, and started writing some fiction stories, about Boston, and, uh, really about music and about how music, uh, affects us all, and how lucky we were to grow up at this time of 70s and '80s music. So, yeah, I've been busy.
[00:02:31] Charles: And we'll, and we'll get into that in a minute, cause yeah, I wanna touch on some of these other books other than just the concert Dates one. But yeah, I loved that book, and we'll talk about that in a bit here. Yeah, Mike, I was thinking this might be a Seeing Them Live first, where your first concert, well, technically isn't your first concert. It was a live music event you had to take your grandmother to.
[00:02:51] Mike: So dude, I can't believe you're gonna throw me under the bus so early into this podcast.
[00:02:57] Charles: No, no, no, no.
[00:02:58] Mike: That's so harsh. [00:03:00] So yes, I wanted to say my first concert was, like, a really cool, you know, Boston-based Aerosmith, or I snuck out from my parents' house. No. My first concert was I took my grand- My first show was... I can't believe you're doing this. My first show was I took my grandmother to see Liberace at the Cape Cod Melody Tent, and oh my God, it was amazing. There was no place to park because all the grandmothers needed to park closer to the tent, so I had to sneak her in and, and she's like, "You know, he's a wonderful boy. He lives with his mother." And I'm like, "Yes, Liberace is awesome, Nana."
[00:03:43] Charles: Well, you're, a good grandson. I was thinking like, what are my grandmothers like? One of my grandmother, my Grandma Zona, she was a big Engelbert Humperdinck fan.
[00:03:52] Mike: Same as my grandmother was, too. know, I think she had tickets to him, and I just said, I can't, I can't do it again. I can't do [00:04:00] it again.
[00:04:00] Charles: Yeah, Mike, we're not gonna count that as your first one.
[00:04:02] Mike: Yeah, it was charity. Yeah, I was trying to stay in the will. I wanted to get all the Hummels in the, uh, in the will.
[00:04:08] Charles: Yeah. But this Cape Cod Melody Tent, we'll end up there too on one of your last stories, your most surprising stories with the Little River Band. Yeah, your real first concert was, I guess in, it was in 1979, was it?
[00:04:23] Mike: Yeah, it was... So my first real concert to see a real band, not a single guy playing on a piano, it was J- J. Geils Band. So I'm from Boston. They were, I think Peter Wolf was a DJ in Boston for a while. So anyway, when, J. Geils played at the Boston Garden, I think I was 16 or 17 and, it was, you know, an arena filled, the old Boston Garden, sweaty, hot.
[00:04:49] The thing I remember the most was at the end, they played House Party and it was the Blow Your Face Out tour, and all the lights came up in Boston Garden and they dropped all these [00:05:00] balloons onto the stage and onto the crowd, and I was just, I don't know how many people it held, 26,000, 30,000. But I was like, "This is amazing." So, that was my first, at 16. That was a bit different from Liberace.
[00:05:14] Charles: Yeah, 'cause you also list that one as one of your best concerts too, that J. Geil show, unless that was a different show where they, that, them, was that a thing? They turn on the lights and you could see the crowd?
[00:05:24] Mike: Yeah, they just rocked out with this big song, um, House Party at the end, so it turned into be a house party at the Boston Garden. But yeah, that was my first concert, and I know we listed sort of like our best and worst concerts and, you know, I've had time to think about those. I think I may have changed them.
[00:05:40] Charles: Yeah, and 'cause you listen to this J. Geils album a lot with your friends on 8-track, right?
[00:05:46] Mike: Yeah. Well, it's interesting 'cause I graduated high school in 1981, so my musical influence was really the late '70s, and my J. Geils experiences was much more [00:06:00] blues-based than in the '80s they started playing for MTV and they would get like Centerfold and Freeze Frame, and I hate that stuff.
[00:06:08] My J. Geils concert experiences were much more blues-based. The House Party, the Musta Got Lost. You know, they're very, Motown-based, guitar, rock and roll House Party, Blow Your Face Out, that type of stuff. That was all the stuff that I loved. Once they got into the '80s, I didn't enjoy, I didn't see them after that at all.
[00:06:28] Charles: Yeah, it does, seems like a distinction between those two eras, so to speak, but, um, then you also listed this Elvis Costello show at the Cape Cod Coliseum with the setting of your book.
[00:06:40] Mike: Yeah. So it's funny, I know you give your guests, uh, the opportunity to list your best concerts, worst concerts. One of my favorites was Elvis Costello. I think it was 1981 or '82 at the Cape Cod Coliseum, which we'll talk about in the book, and it was just a really cool vibe when he opened up.
[00:06:56] But I realized my favorite concert, and [00:07:00] I just realized this yesterday. In 1990, Don Henley did kind of a tribute or a, trying to make money for the saving, a benefit concert for the saving of Walden Woods just outside here in Boston. And at that concert in 1990, it was Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Timothy B. Schmit. So you have three-fifths of the Eagles. Before they did the Hell Freezes Over tour, they played Eagles songs.
[00:07:26] So you had those three. You had, Jimmy Buffett, Bonnie Raitt, Bob Seger, Jackson Browne. All were at this concert in Worcester, Mass. They each played their... Oh, g- I told you all the, already the Eagles, but they each played their own hits, and at the time, in 1990, Glenn Frey I'm sorry, Don Henley had a bunch of hits.
[00:07:47] You know, Age of Innocence, Boys of Summer, all that. So it was like a greatest hits concert, and it was insane, and I forgot about that, which, you know, goes to the time. I'm like, "Oh, that's right, I went to that."
[00:07:59] Charles: No, [00:08:00] that sounds like a incredible lineup. It kind of reminds me, and again, we'll get to your book where, you talk about one of the characters has this pentalogy.
[00:08:08] Mike: Yeah, your top five.
[00:08:10] Charles: Top five albums. So I started thinking about that and I made this little list and I'm like, oh, wait a minute. You know, after a few days then you add more to this and it's like, oh my God, it's almost impossible to pick five unless you were going off desert island.
[00:08:23] Mike: So true. I know. So true, because it does change. It changes with mood. It changes with, you know, where you are in your life, and then it changes with, "Am I gonna listen to this every day for the rest of my life?" kind of thing. So, yeah, I mean, that's what music does. There's standards and stuff that you love, and then you go, "Oh, but I forgot about that."
[00:08:42] Charles: Yeah, 'cause the Elvis Costello show, you talked about, like, this blue light was coming from behind him.
[00:08:49] Mike: The first song they played was Watching the Detectives. And they had this, you know, five or six- people on stage that were him and his band, and they just had this [00:09:00] blue light behind them and they, so the five or six of them were just black silhouettes, shadows. And I was like, "Oh my God," it's just the visual, you know?
[00:09:09] And this was arena rock that I talk about at Cape Cod Coliseum. So we're all on the floor. We're shoulder to shoulder, and just this camaraderie when the lights hit, you know? Like the, like all of a sudden the lights dim in the stadium, and then boom, they hit you with these blue lights and you just see these silhouettes. And there's this bass riff of Watching The Detectives that opens, and you're like, "Holy shit." It just hits you in the gut. You're like, "This is awesome. This is music."
[00:09:37] Charles: No, it's amazing what lighting can do. I remember, 'cause it made me think, I saw R.E.M. on their Fables of the Reconstruction Tour in a lecture hall at U of I in Champaign, and I had great seats. And yeah, Michael Stipe, he sang the song So. Central Rain.
[00:09:53] Mike: Yes, yes. Beautiful.
[00:09:56] Charles: Had these yellow lights behind him, and it was like a silhouette [00:10:00] and yeah, it was so moving.
[00:10:02] Mike: It is. And it, you know, I'll tell you something else that was really so cool for me. I have three kids. They're all into music. My son's a musician, he's a singer-songwriter. He took his sister to see Bon Iver, which is a musical guy these days. But anyway, he took her to an outdoor concert like two summers ago.
[00:10:20] And they talk about this. It was a misty rain and I don't really know Bon Iver, I think he's very similar to like Neil Young. He has a very high pitch kinda stuff. But listening to them describe their moment at that concert where it was just nighttime with misty rain, a little bit of fog, and the lights hit it, and they were like, "It was religious." And I'm like, "Dude, I was at Elvis Costello in 1981. You don't have to tell me about religion."
[00:10:46] Charles: So that, that Cape Cod Coliseum, which we'll talk about more in a bit, it's like an old hockey rink, right?
[00:10:53] Mike: Yeah, yeah. So the Cape Cod Coliseum was built. So in, in the early '70s New England, everybody was building [00:11:00] hockey rinks because you had the big bad Bruins, okay? Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, they won the Stanley Cup, 1970, '72. So hockey was this huge phenomenon again. They started building rinks.
[00:11:13] So they built a hockey rink on Cape Cod, which is we're about 80 miles east of Boston. You know, we're in Oceantown. So anyway, they built this hockey rink, and they said, "We're gonna have minor league teams play here in the wintertime." And I think it held like 15,000, 18,000 people. So in the winter it was great. They could get minor league hockey teams playing there. But then in the summer they're like, "Well, this place is empty. What are we gonna do with this thing?"
[00:11:39] So Don Law, who was a local promoter. People up here would recognize the name Don Law Presents, which is on everybody's ticket stub. Don Law said, "I can, I can get acts to go play down there for you in the summertime."
[00:11:52] So they turned this arena into a stadium for music. If you see the movie, oh, God, it's the Cameron Crowe movie, [00:12:00] Almost Famous. Same idea. Arena rock, anything in the '70s. So it was the same type of idea. You're standing up front near the band. They put plywood over the ice and the acoustics were terrible, and the heat was unbearable, and it was probably the greatest shows you'd ever seen. It was amazing.
[00:12:19] Charles: Yeah. Yeah, I looked up that guy, Don Law, 'cause I think you mention him in your book, he's the chairman of Live Nation apparently.
[00:12:26] Mike: Huge. I mean, this guy started all the music concerts back in the '70s. Every ticket stub that you had said Don Law Presents.
[00:12:35] Charles: Apparently he's still, uh, doing his thing. But now, so your most surprising uh, is back at the Cape Cod Melody Tent, where you're, watching the Little River Band live, and it looks like they play there, I don't know, al- almost every summer in July it looks like, I looked up.
[00:12:52] Mike: Yeah. The Cape Cod Melody Tent, and I know we keep referencing the book, but it's sort of like, its evolution. You know, [00:13:00] bands start off, they're doing like small venues, maybe coffee houses, then they graduate and then, uh, you know, hopefully they make, uh, to arenas and then huge stadiums and then they go back to, like, nightclubs and small venues.
[00:13:14] And so at that, we call the Cape Cod Melody Tent kind of the back nine of somebody's career. I've seen a ton of concerts there, but they're all, like, at the end of their career. It's the, you know, The Four Tops were there, but there's only two of them now, so they have The Two Tops. I saw Huey Lewis and the News and this and that.
[00:13:33] So Little River Band is a great example of a band that will fill the Melody Tent, you know, but, will not have a big showing anywhere else. So, last year we went to go see the Little River Band, and we just get tickets. I don't even know if I know any of the songs. But anyway, I get there and I'm like, "Wow, I recognize a bunch of these songs." And, the funny story was, the Melody Tent is small and it's a s- a circular, it's like a circus [00:14:00] tent, and the stage actually goes around, right? So, you know, it takes about 30 minutes or something for the guy to fully circle.
[00:14:08] So Little River Band is playing and the guitarist is playing his solo if, I don't even know if Little River Band has a song that has a guitar solo in it. And he's going around in a circle and he's throwing out guitar picks as he's going around, right? And it's August, so it's hot. I'm wearing shorts. And the stage starts circling and he's in front of me, and he tosses his guitar pick into the stand. Comes my direction, I look down and there's a guitar pick stuck to my thigh ' cause it's hot and it's stuck.
[00:14:41] Now, the only thing I could think of is, if this were Bruce Springsteen or Bon Jovi or anyone, the crowd would be diving at me right now trying to get the guitar pick. Well, they didn't. They were all, like, repulsed. So I take the guitar pick off my thigh, like pull it back off, and I point it [00:15:00] to the guitar player, and I go, "You want this back?" And he's, like, looking at me like I'm the luckiest guy in the world. He's like, "No, dude, you keep that. You keep that guitar pick." And I'm like, "This isn't great."
[00:15:11] And I went home, I took a picture of it. It says Little River Band. I think the guy's name is Eddie. I don't even know. And I'm like, "Dude," and I'm calling all my friends, "I have a guitar pick from Little River Band, dude." Who?" It was on my leg.
[00:15:27] Charles: Oh my God. That's a good one. So yeah, and this place, this Melody Tent, I looked it up, holds up like 2,300 people.
[00:15:36] Mike: Oh, God, yeah, I was off by the numbers. Yeah, it's small.
[00:15:39] Charles: Pretty, small. I mean, that's off the internet. I don't know how accurate these are sometimes. So yeah, it's a small venue. So yeah, we started at the Melody Tent with Liberace, and we ended up with the same place, the Little River Band.
[00:15:51] Mike: We're going full circle. I'll tell you something, I, like, I've seen a bunch of people at the Melody Tent, because it's just as you age, you go see them. And the funniest story was a [00:16:00] couple years ago, I saw, who's the old singer? Frankie Avalon, who, with Grease, right? It was Frankie Avalon. And he's singing and the stage is going around very slowly. Halfway through the song he goes, "Will you turn this goddamn stage off? I'm getting dizzy."
[00:16:17] Charles: I could see that. I'm thinking, man, if it was going, like, really slow, it's almost like you're on a boat.
[00:16:22] Mike: He's like, "Turn this off. I'm gonna throw up."
[00:16:24] Charles: Oh, man, yeah. I could totally see that.
[00:16:28]
[00:16:53] Charles: So Mike, we could, maybe jump into your book here. The book's called Concert Dates, and I can't [00:17:00] tell you how much I enjoyed that book. Anybody who is into music and goes to a lot of concerts, and again, even if you don't, still a great read.
[00:17:08] But man, you took me back to my friends from high school and the shows we would go to and the crazy things we would do and the stories. And, yeah, I felt like I was right there with these characters. And, just made me think and look up things that I had done back during this time period. Yeah, I guess the book is set up as, like a video diary sort of, Mike?
[00:17:33] Mike: Yeah. So, well, first of all, thank you for reading it. Thank you for those comments. I hope that a story like this resonates with people and it makes them realize how lucky they were to have the music we had, and also how lucky they are and hopefully they have, good friends that they can rely on, but maybe reach out to an old friend you haven't talked to in a long time is the hope.
[00:17:54] So, yeah, it was a really fun story to write. I wrote it, if anyone [00:18:00] else out there is familiar with, Daisy Jones & The Six, it's all written in interview form. So it was very different for me. I write fiction, and, you know, you write sorta, like, storytelling. This was, it's basically six people that meet at a concert when they're 15 years old, and now we're gonna follow their life, but they're gonna be interviewed because one of the character's daughter is getting married, so they're doing sort of a video diary, okay?
[00:18:30] So you've got these six characters that are gonna sit and be interviewed and tell the story of how they met and how their lives changed and all the changes that they went through. Yeah, and then they end up at the daughter's wedding. So it's written in interview form. I have each of the characters sort of tell their side of the story, how they met, and it travels their, lifespan from 15 to 66 or 65.
[00:18:56] And so how the music changed, you know, how their styles changed, how their [00:19:00] relationships changed. It was really fun for me 'cause I just turned 63. And like you said, Charles, it's right in our wheelhouse, man. It's like these are the friends we made in the parking lots. These are the people we went to the concerts with. This was the song we listened to. These are the girls we couldn't get. These are the guys that we liked. So it's just a really fun, sort of universal story.
[00:19:21] Charles: And there's five main characters or so, and then, you know, the daughter that's getting married, she kinda comes in at the end there. The setup and the description of the Cape Cod Coliseum, the bad sound system, the hot, steamy inside the place once the show's going on, the great bands. Yeah, and the parking lot, scene. You know, the one character, eh, sometimes he goes to the show and sometimes he just sits in the parking lot, you know?
[00:19:49] Mike: He never, makes it in. I mean, that was the thing about the Cape Cod Coliseum. It was built, like, in a little dirt area, so the parking lot was where the party was. That's where the [00:20:00] parties are, you know, at most of these concerts, right? But back then it was like a little mini Woodstock, and that's where relationships were formed.
[00:20:09] People would meet up before and after the concerts. Like you said, sometimes they didn't even go into the concert. It was more fun just hanging out in the cars. But, what was really cool about the Cape Cod Coliseum, and when I did the research for this book, some of the bands that came through this venue are the who's who of rock and roll, okay?
[00:20:29] So this venue was open from 1972 to 1983. So, think about classic rock. That's your 1972 to '83, okay? They had from Ray Charles to Lynyrd Skynyrd was opening for Jeff Beck, okay? Van Halen, when, Eddie Van Halen was, like, 21 years old, 22 years old, they were just starting out. They opened for Black Sabbath, okay?
[00:20:53] You had Peter Frampton play there in 1976. That was his huge Frampton Comes Alive [00:21:00] album. I saw Talking Heads, The Clash, so you had the early '80s bands that came through there. J. Geils went through there, like, 12 times. So, you had a who's who. Sly & the Family Stone were there. Like, it was amazing.
[00:21:14] So, you had this who's who that came through this little hockey rink, right? And they would blow the doors off the place, and you didn't realize how lucky you were, probably because you were delirious 'cause it was so hot. Like, literally you were dying of sweat. Then you'd finally go out to the parking lot, and that's where the party was.
[00:21:32] But one, thing I wanted to mention, Charles, which was really cool, I know you've had a lot of guests and everybody talks about they have their ticket stubs, you know, they keep these, this paraphernalia from the concerts. Okay, I have posters. They're in the book, right? So you'll see, like, Seals and Crofts, Marshall Tucker, Peter Fram- they all were opening acts.
[00:21:52] Billy Joel was an opening act. So anyway, they have posters for these concerts and listing who's playing, and then at the bottom [00:22:00] of the poster it would say, "For those 18 and over, one free beer with admission." What could go wrong? They're giving beer to you as you walk into the concert. I mean, what a great time to be alive.
[00:22:16] Charles: Yeah. I saw that, and one of the characters mentions it in the book. But yeah, that's kind of a crazy, benefit, I suppose, right? One, free beer. Wow. Wow. Yeah, it's like, you know, going to see somebody at the United Center now, it's like $22 for a beer.
[00:22:31] Mike: For a beer. And these tickets too, you look at those stubs, I think they were $4.50, maybe $12, but $8 seemed to be the range. But yeah, you can't even afford to see a show now, really.
[00:22:41] Charles: Yeah, 'cause at the beginning and I think, what, throughout the book, you list the bands that played that year and stuff.
[00:22:47] Mike: Yeah. At the beginning of each chapter I'll break it down, who played in, you know, '76, '77, and '78. And then, you know, I follow their stories, ' 80, '81, and then they sold the place. And just, look at how music changed from [00:23:00] '73 even to '81, and then you have the '90s. One of my favorite parts in that book is when, and I won't give everything away, but, you know, they're in the car and, someone's pregnant.
[00:23:10] And they're afraid. They run to the hospital, and they can't find a CD to play good music because it's the '90s. And they're like, "All the music sucks. I can't find a good CD to play." And then they go, call your friend. He'll know what song to play."
[00:23:23] Charles: I highly recommend this book. This is a really good book to check out, and there are pictures in there, and yeah, it was funny. As I was getting towards the end of the book, there's like what you'd call, what, candid shots of people hanging out in the parking lot and stuff, and they're credited, I don't know if all of them were, but some of them were, to Rudy Childs, who I mentioned to you, he was a guest on Seeing Them Live.
[00:23:45] Mike: Yeah, it's amazing. So Rudy's a great guy. Been to a million concerts. He's a award-winning documentary filmmaker. So what's interesting with this is, when I was doing research to write this book, there's a Facebook page down here on Cape Cod, [00:24:00] and it's called, Cape Cod Coliseum Remembered, and that was part of my inspiration for writing it.
[00:24:05] I saw that it had you know, like 5,000 members or something. I'm like, wow, there's a lot of people out there. So, I put this posting up on the Facebook page and I said, "Hey, I'm writing a book. If anybody has any stories or pictures, I'd love to hear from you." That was probably a mistake because I got calls like, " Hey, man, I'm still in the parking lot, dude, if you could come pick me up."
[00:24:26] Or, "Hey, man, I could fill your pages. I got stories." So I weeded those out, and then I found Rudy Childs, and Rudy was a dude that he was just a concertgoer. He went to concerts and he would take pictures with an old, like, Kodak Instamatic camera, right? And he would go to a Fotomat, have them developed, and he has, thousands of pictures.
[00:24:47] And luckily, he had a ton from the Cape Cod Coliseum of people in the parking lot, of the concert itself. He's got, you know, Tom Petty. He's got Ozzy Osbourne. He's got a million great pictures. So the funny story, Charles, [00:25:00] is I called Rudy, and he had reached out to me and I said, "Yeah, I'd love to see some of the pictures."
[00:25:04] So, I go to his place and he's got the computer up and he's scrolling through all these pictures from the Cape Cod Coliseum. He's like, boom, boom, you know, 1978, '79. He's just sort of like scrolling. And at one point I go, "Wait, wait, wait, stop." I go, "Go back." And he goes back a couple and I was like, "Holy shit, that's me."
[00:25:21] Charles: Wow, really?
[00:25:22] Mike: It was my buddies, and it's in the book. You'll see, I think I credit underneath, it says BC High Boys. It's my friends. That's us at The Clash concert. I'm like, "Oh my God, dude, you have me and my friends." He would just walk around the parking lot and he goes, "I know it sounds creepy, but I would walk around and I would just take pictures." But it would like, you know, he was into photography. And now he's got all these candids and I go, "Oh my God, that's me and my friends." Isn't It crazy?
[00:25:51] Charles: Yeah. Rudy, he ranks up there the top, craziest concert stories you might ever hear.
[00:25:58] Mike: Oh, yeah. Yeah. [00:26:00] He a lot of heavy metal stuff, some crazy... He's met everybody. Crazy.
[00:26:04] Charles: Yeah, and just the way he would try to get backstage and do all these crazy things. But yeah, his episode's called Tossed By Sharon, Rudy's Ozzy Encounter.
[00:26:14] Mike: I love it.
[00:26:16] Charles: His stories are fantastic. But you've got um, seven other books you've published. And was one just recently then, Mike?
[00:26:24] Mike: Yeah. I've got one that just came out two weeks ago.
[00:26:27] Charles: Yeah, right. Great. Okay.
[00:26:29] Mike: That one just came out. It's available. They're all available on Amazon. You can look up my name, Mike Bernard. But all my stories are fiction. As I said, I'm from Boston, so they're all, very Boston-centric, very, Irish Catholic, guilt-ridden, passive-aggressive mother family dramas.
[00:26:46] But I've got sort of a Boston trilogy. So if you're familiar, now same thing would play in Chicago or anywhere where there's like, you know, a tight-knit community, triple-decker houses. Think, Good Will Hunting, those types of backgrounds. But, my [00:27:00] stories are all about family dynamic. There's one story that I think your audience would really enjoy beyond Concert Dates.
[00:27:08] It's the book called Crossing the Sagamore, which is very heavily influenced from music, eight-track tapes, bunch of guys hopping in an old '74 Bonneville and driving cross-country to get their friend's body and bring it back to Cape Cod. That's got a lot of music. That was sort of the preamble to write Concert Dates.
[00:27:26] But I don't know. I enjoy writing family drama, family dynamic, kind of romantic comedies.
[00:27:30] Charles: Yeah, 'cause in some interviews I listened to, which you're talking about various books, you frame it that you kinda went about it backwards sort of. You had great success with these screenplays, but you wanted more control right?
[00:27:43] Mike: Exactly. That's really more freedom. Really, more freedom. Screenplays are very formulaic. It's this has to happen by page 10, this has to happen by page 20. It's all a formula. It has to be 90 to 110 pages. Anything more than 110 pages, they're not gonna read.
[00:27:59] So it's [00:28:00] very structured, and it's very dialogue driven. And so yeah, my first four stories I wrote as screenplays. ' Cause it was just easier for me, and it gave me the bones of the story, so I knew beginning, middle, and end. And so then I wrote this one story, family drama. Kind of funny story about, brothers and sisters growing up in the same house and how you're so different.
[00:28:22] And so I wrote that screenplay, and a producer I was working with said, "You should make this a novel." I'm like, "Oh, God, I don't have the patience. I'm so ADD. No, I don't, it's so long." And they go, "No, try it." So it was very freeing. It allowed me to break, just go deeper with every character, go wider, write about what they're thinking, write about the descriptions more, rather than just, you know, guy enters bar, says this, boom, boom, boom.
[00:28:48] So yeah, so they started as screenplays, and then I published them as novels, and for me, it's just been great just to get my stories out into the universe. I mean, you read Concert Dates. That's [00:29:00] phenomenal for me, you know? I got some guy in Chicago that read my book, and I'm doing a podcast now. I'm like, how cool am I?
[00:29:05] Charles: Yeah, But, your, screenplays, you're quite successful with that, from what I understand.
[00:29:10] Mike: Yeah, I've been fortunate. I've optioned three, but, you know, it's a whole different game, Hollywood. I've got a chance to get one of them made that I think has the best chance of getting made. But I've been out to California. I've done the meetings. My kids were like, "When are we moving to Hollywood?"
[00:29:25] I'm like, "Don't butter your popcorn yet, kids." I'm just happy to have the novels to get to an audience so that people can read them. I don't know if any of them will ever be films. I think that's a goal, and if they get developed into movies, then maybe a, a wide audience can enjoy the stories.
[00:29:42] But I'm not gonna wait on it. 'Cause I've been to the meetings, I've been to Hollywood. They need the money to get the actor, they need the actor to get the money. It's out of my world. It's out of my world. But, you know, I've, I've been able to option screenplays, so if they get made, you'll be the first guy I call, dude. We'll be on.
[00:29:56] Charles: Yeah, getting into the meetings and the room with these people, I mean, That's about [00:30:00] as, far as you can take it yeah, until they really eventually go through with it. But, I mean, that's a huge success I would imagine.
[00:30:07] Mike: Yeah, I got lucky with this, Crossing the Sagamore was my first screenplay, so it got optioned. But it was sort of like a drug. Like, I go, "Oh, wow, I got optioned." But, you know, everybody said, "Well, you've been optioned. Now go write something else. You know, you gotta keep writing."
[00:30:23] So I go, "Well, I already got one option. What do I need to do that for?" They go, "Well, you gotta keep writing." So yeah, I got lucky, and if they get made, that's awesome. But look, I'm 63 years old. I started writing, like, 10 years ago, like I said, when the house got quiet and I had no money. So this is my second, third act, I guess.
[00:30:40] And so I'm really happy to be doing things like this and getting my stories out there at 63, right? I started writing in my 50s. And, I love telling these stories. I love talking about my characters and music. Guys our age, man, we got a lot of stories. And I think it's very universal.
[00:30:57] In my books, everyone [00:31:00] is gonna see someone they know, whether it's themself, their parents, their brother, their friends. You're gonna know. It's all universal. They're fun, funny, reads. I'm not that smart, so I don't have a lot of big words. So, it's just fun for me.
[00:31:14] Charles: The dialogue, it's very relatable. And yeah, I would definitely wanna check out Crossing the Sagamore. I'll be picking that one up 'cause, like I said, I really enjoyed that Concert Dates book, and I recommend, highly recommend people go and check it out 'cause it's great, especially if you're a live music fan. you will not be disappointed. Well, Mike, anything else you wanna chat about or plug? Or, yeah, I saw you on Amazon, so yeah, all of your stuff's there, all your books, bio.
[00:31:44] Mike: Yep, all my stuff's on Amazon, Mike Bernard, and, I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. I love the fact that you've read my stuff, and, yeah, I think everybody would, enjoy it, and hopefully one day we'll see you at the movies.
[00:31:56] Charles: Yeah, right, exactly. Hopefully.
[00:31:58] Mike: Until then, we'll just keep listening [00:32:00] to music.
[00:32:00] Charles: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Mike, thanks so much for taking time, and being on Seeing Them Live and staying up maybe a little bit later.
[00:32:08] Mike: Dude, back in the day, I'd be going out at this time, and now it's like, what? 9:00?
[00:32:12] Charles: Yeah, I know.
[00:32:13] Mike: Oh my God, I'm an hour past my bedtime.
[00:32:15] Charles: Exactly. I know, my friends and I, we'd just, like, be going out at 10:00 or something. It was insane, but not anymore. But yeah, I really appreciate it, and, check out Mike's books on Amazon, and thanks again for being on Seeing Them Live.
[00:32:28] Mike: All right, thank you so much.