A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from David Samuel Barr, inquiring if the character in Star Trek: A Time to Love, An Haslam An, might have been named after Annie Haslam. Annie was the lead singer in the symphonic rock band Renaissance and sure enough, he was correct. At the time I was writing that chapter, I had their music playing and when I needed a name, I adapted hers. (Renaissance was an oddity in the 1970s; never making the Top 40 play list, usually relegated to the Progressive Rock FM stations. I liked them a lot and still do. )This thrilled David since he is a music industry veteran and befriended Annie some years back. We got to talking, he paid me a visit and handed off to her autographed copies of Love and Star Trek: A Time to Hate.Annie loved hearing about this and was coming to New York soon so a lunch was arranged
That sort of thing happens to me waaaay too often. I think the best one was meeting up with “Uncle” Floyd Vivino in the green room of some talk show, where I’d been invited as the guest of Proctor & Bergman. My zine at the time, INSIDE JOKE, had started as a Floyd fanzine and had sort of morphed (at least partly) into a Firesign zine (before I spun off a separate Firesign newsletter). Exciting about you meeting Haslam – I was a major Renaissance fan in college, doubtless wore deep grooves into my Scheherezade album (which I still have), and saw them perform live (in ’76 I think) at Rutgers. Thank you for directing us to her eponymous website!