Archive for the ‘music’ Category

Write-a-thon, Day 5: Write another day

Posted: June 27, 2013 in music, Record reviews, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
5

Wordstock Oct 2011
(Image borrowed from the 2011 Wordstock Festival.)

This morning I had a job interview and this afternoon I worked onsite for a freelance client. In one day I went from health care to lubrication analysis to trains in the mountains in 1947. You have to be flexible if you want to survive in the novel-writing game.

Today I followed William Stafford’s direction to “lower your standards and keep on writing.” I’ll never type “The End” if I simultaneously move forward and return to rewrite. I’ll return later. So I forced myself to finish Chapter 5 already, even though the ending is lame, and plowed ahead in Chapter 6. In Chapter 6 we get somewhere, literally, and I’ll have some real scenery-chewing. I have to agree with Ms. Mukherjee:

“I remembered loving Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady when I studied it for my Ph.D. comps,” Bharati Mukherjee said. “This summer I tried to reread it. I soon abandoned the book, screaming, ‘Enough complex interiority, just give me a couple of big head-butting scenes!’ ” (“Read It Again, Sam,” The New York Times Book Review, 4 December 2011)

In real life, I’m too well-behaved for big head-butting, but in fiction I can be someone else (a big head-butter). I’m warming up the exclamation points right now!

Box score
– I’ve written for five days out of five
– 6.5 total hours
– Here’s the Clarion West Write-a-thon
– Here’s my first post on the Write-a-thon

Random Pick of the Day
Charles Earland, Black Talk! (1968)
If you love jazz and particularly the organ, you’ll dig Black Talk!. The title track is supposedly a variation on “Eleanor Rigby.” I can’t hear the dots connect, but nevermind. Charles Earland and his sextet transform the pop music of their era into something fresh and new. The standouts are their reworkings of “Aquarius” and “More Today Than Yesterday.” The latter is particularly astonishing, a soulful, funky romp that’s as light and joyous as Charles Mingus’ “Haitian Fight Song” (1957) is dark and murderous. They’re even about the same length, 11:13 for Earland, 11:57 for Mingus. 

Random Pick of the Day 2.0
Foghat, “Take Me to the River,” Night Shift (1976)
And now a band that needs no introduction, probably because no one wants to meet them. Foghat sucks the phone, and yet detractors such as myself are unable to explain “Slow Ride” (1975), which I can occasionally listen to (if I’m in a car), or their stellar version of “Take Me to the River,” which is in the same league as the versions turned in by The Commitments and Talking Heads. Bachman-Turner Overdrive could only dream of rocking this hard.

Write-a-thon, Day 4: Train kept a-rollin’

Posted: June 26, 2013 in music, Record reviews, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

Refusing to read

Yesterday I promised you a guest blogger, mystery novelist Deborah Donnelly. Due to circumstances beyond our control, Ms. Donnelly will not eventuate. Not on Day 4, anyway. She says hi.

New kids on the block
I’m speaking now to the new readers I’ve just detected, thanks to the stats dished out by WordPress. Are you lost? You’re not getting your money back! What you’ve stumbled on is a blog about popular music, but right now I’m engaged in a six-week write-a-thon that ends August 2. I don’t want to abandon music entirely, so I’m finishing each post with the musical picks and pans I wrote over the past few months. I’ve already run out of pans. And people say I hate everything!

The writing cartoons have aged for years in my lifelong collection. The cultural references may provoke laughs but the themes are timeless.

I’ve cleverly hidden indexes to the first two years of this blog (November 2010 to November 2012) in the left-hand column under Blogroll. You’re on your own for Year 3.

Not all who wander want to find their way back to the freeway
Day 4 for me was like urban in-fill in most U.S. cities: packing more people into already established neighborhoods. Yesterday I solved the challenge of the chapter that goes forever on by breaking it up. Chapter 5 became much more manageable after I evicted a third of it. That section became Chapter 6. A few stray paragraphs became the opening of Chapter 7.

My task today was to write a real ending for Chapter 5 and a real beginning for Chapter 6. I didn’t finish either but I know I’m headed in the right direction because I was surprised by some of what I wrote. “Where do I get my ideas? I don’t. They get me,” Lewis Carroll said.

The problem with writing a novel the way I’m writing a novel, with a set of ideas rather than a set of ideas and a roadmap, is that I plunge into chapters without knowing exactly where they’re going or what they’re trying to accomplish. Everything takes longer than it should, even though I’m enjoying every minute of it. Maybe I don’t want it to end?

I wouldn’t recommend my method to anyone. Maybe someday I’ll listen to me.

Box score
– I’ve written for four days out of four
– 5.5 total hours

Random Pick of the Day
The Vines, Highly Evolved (2002)
These Aussies bow to Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots, but I suspect they would sell their souls to be a catchy little pop band. All the tempo changes and other experiments on Highly Evolved could’ve been Duran Duran reimagined as a grunge act circa 1992. This is especially true on my favorite tracks, “Outtathaway” and “Sunshinin.”

The real treat on this album is “Factory,” in which The Vines pretend to be Nirvana pretending to be The Beatles.

Random Rock ’n’ Roll Image of the Day
Aerosmith and J. Geils Band at Fenway Park, 14 August 2010: Steven Tyler in a Sox jersey at a white grand piano atop the Green Monster belting out “Dream On.”

Write-a-thon, Day 3: This is not my beautiful plot

Posted: June 25, 2013 in music, Record reviews, Writing
Tags: , , , , , ,
6

Yanking the page

I’ve written about typewriters before, particularly how you had to cut your manuscript with scissors and tape it back together if you had a big idea in the late innings and wanted to rearrange your plot.

These days, of course, rearranging your writing is so simple and quick that you can do it at the merest flick of an idea and then change it again and save your file and then doubt what you did and get lost in your changes until the Undo command is no longer helpful. What technology gives us with one hand it subverts with the other.

So it was today with Chapter 5, in which a group of my characters (and you, the reader) take a ride on my railroad. This is my setting and I want to make sure readers can follow the action as my book lurches forward. But Chapter 5 was beginning to extend itself as if Ken Burns was making an award-winning series about trains, minus the awards.

Using the power vested in me by cut and paste, I broke the chapter up and suddenly found myself in the middle of Chapter 6. Then I broke it again and found myself in the middle of Chapter 6 with the beginning of Chapter 7. I then asked myself, well, how did I get here?

I don’t know, but I decided, for the purpose of this Write-a-thon, to give up on my desire to get everything right the first time and just write the damn story. I can go back six weeks from now and create cliff-hanging chapter endings involving snakes at the bottom of a pit or the wrong people in the same bunk. My guess is that I have 25 chapters to write and I’d dearly love to break into double digits soon.

That’s today’s report on the Clarion West Write-a-thon. (Here’s the link if you’re interested in who’s teaching at Clarion this year. The Class of 2013 is in the middle of their first week.)

Random Pick of the Day
Get the Blessing, Oc Dc (2011)
This jazz album is so-so, to my ears, although lots of it sounds like old-school soul or early-’70s funk. Know who would be right at home on this disc? Classic Rock instrumental dude Dennis Coffey (“Scorpio,” “Taurus”).

I’m recommending this album solely for the title track. I’ve played “Oc Dc” every day for a week! I love hand-clapping. If you don’t love dissonance, you’ll exit at 1:39.

Random Pan of the Day
Orpheus, Orpheus (1968)
The two male singers in Orpheus weren’t The Righteous Brothers, Jan and Dean, or even Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. This never stopped non-singers like Sonny and Cher, and sure enough, Orpheus produced one chart success, “I Can’t Find the Time to Tell You,” a barely passable mix of psychedelia and bubblegum.

The rest of Orpheus ain’t much. Their assault on The Left Banke’s “Walk Away, Renee” cannot be forgiven. But I liked how they almost turned The Zombies’ “She’s Not There” into a lounge act, particularly the drumming and the bass solo underneath the nonsense syllables. I rated Oc Dc as a Pick based on one song, but Orpheus, based on one song, didn’t charm me.

Write-a-thon, Day 2: Deliver me from distraction

Posted: June 24, 2013 in Miscellaneous, music, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
8

Call me Scooter

Writing is dark and lonely work, and no one has to do it. No one will even care much if it doesn’t get done at all, so that choosing to do it and to try to do it well is enough of an existential errand, enough of a first step, and for whatever my money and counsel’s worth, enough of a last step, too. (Richard Ford)

No one has to do it. And because no one has to do it, because no one is standing over you with a whip and a chair, it’s very easy not to do it. I’ve written more words in my favorite coffee shop in Portland and on the fifth floor of the Vancouver Community Library than I have at home. That’s because both places have plenty of plugs for my wheezy laptop (the coffee shop also has raspberry coffee cake) and I can’t connect to the Internet in either. Well, I might be able to connect if I knew their wireless passwords, but I’ve never asked, and even if I knew them, my laptop would probably refuse to cooperate. It’s a real pal that way.

Today, after an interview for an editing job, some miscellaneous job-search stuff, and a walk in the fleeting sunshine, I got down to the business of fiction. But because I was working at home, I was immediately distracted by my email. I dealt with a couple of recruiters, answered messages I didn’t have to answer, and shut it down.

Then a question arose in what I was writing, and instead of scribbling it in my notebook to look up later, as I would if I were between bites of raspberry coffee cake, I succumbed to the Great God Google. Of course, I spent more time online than I needed.

I finally got in my hour and a half, but I would’ve been more efficient if I could learn to keep our instant-gratification culture at arm’s length. I probably could’ve hit two hours. If you blow 30 minutes online, you don’t get those 30 minutes back somewhere else.

Elizabeth Benedict said it best: “Write like a maniac. No one else will do it for you.”

Tomorrow’s challenge: How to end Chapter 5!

Random Pick of the Day
Paul Anka, Rock Swings (2005)
I respect Paul Anka for his creativity; he wrote for Buddy Holly and Frank Sinatra, and how many people can say that? But Anka is also responsible for three crimes against humanity: “Put Your Head on My Shoulder,” “Puppy Love,” and the ultimate in offensiveness at the molecular level, “(You’re) Having My Baby.”
Havin’ my baby
What a lovely way of sayin’ what you’re thinkin’ of me
Havin’ my ba– [sound of Hulk smashing puny human]

But admit it, Run-DMSteve, the man can sing. Rock Swings, an album of covers of mainstream and alternative hits from the 1980s and ’90s, stomps Pat Boone’s I’m In a Metal Mood (1997) into the dirt. Boone doesn’t take his metal originals seriously, plus he wouldn’t know how to deliver a song if he worked for FedEx.

Rock Swings is not Richard Cheese and his deliberately cornball covers (Aperitif for Destruction, 2005). Anka rearranges his choice of songs to find their essence, then delivers them as if they were the American songbook. Not every song works, but frankly I was stunned by his interpretations of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Throw in Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” and you’ve got a disc that just slips in as a Buy.

Clarion West Write-a-thon, Day 1: Easy-breezy lemon-squeezy

Posted: June 23, 2013 in music, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
4

Write every day

I subscribed to The Writer when I was in high school. I remember reading about a writing couple, Borden Deal and Babs Deal. (They don’t make names like that anymore. Can’t get the stuff.) They always said to each other, “Well, I’ve hit 50 pages, looks like I’m writing a novel.”

Well, I’ve hit 50 pages. Actually, 56. Looks like I’m writing a novel. I’ve put together a notebook of reference material and I even have a vague sense of where I’m going. I hope to show some real progress by the time this marathon ends on August 2. I’ll report in every day on what I’m up to.

Today Special D and I went to some garage sales, met some interesting people with interesting junk in their garages, and then I wrote a cover letter and answered three essay questions for a job I want. This is one of the weirdest forms of writing, making yourself sound like the greatest thing since Kim Kardashian met Kanye West. After a creative nap to rinse my brain, I worked on my book for an hour and a half. I hope my 300 fellow Write-a-thonners had good luck as well!

My thanks again to the three people who have pledged actual money to support Clarion West and see me through this thing:

Karen G. Anderson
Mitch Katz
Laurel Sercombe

My book is set in the summer of 1947 in what’s called the Intermountain West. I’ve been reading books from that era and earlier to help put me in the right frame of mind. I didn’t get far with John Steinbeck’s East of Eden (his descriptions of the Salinas Valley are beautiful, but his characters are like sermons). Right now I’m reading Hal Borland’s Country Editor’s Boy, a memoir set in Colorado in the teens and ’20s. The writing can be kind of earnest, but this is a man who even in middle age could recall his boyhood and put it in words. Like Ray Bradbury, without the airborne prose.

Borland wrote When the Legends Die, which was made into a film with Richard Widmark. He also wrote a memoir called The Dog Who Came to Stay. The title sums up that book so perfectly that I probably don’t have to read it.

BTW, Special D has also entered the Write-a-thon, but we refuse to be called Babs and Bord.

See you tomorrow!

Not-So-Random Pick of the Day
Boston, Boston (1976)
I am not Boston’s fan, but today is Accused of Lurking’s birthday and he definitely is. Lurk holds a special spot in my life, and so out of friendship and love I listened to all of Boston for the first time since the Normans invaded New England.

I am still not their fan, but I credit computer wiz Tom Scholz with creating not just one of the best-selling albums of all time, but a debut album that could easily stand in for his greatest hits. Scholz had all the talent he needed from the first note of the first track, and how many musicians can make that claim? In fact, in the beginning Boston was solely Tom Scholz. The only person I can think of who made a similar splash all by himself was Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails, Pretty Hate Machine, 1989).

But there’s more to Boston than the music. In the summer and fall of 1976, I could not go to a party without hearing this album. Thus the songs on Boston will always conjure for me my old joie de vivre, my youthful hopes, and the geometry of certain females.

Random Pan of the Day
3OH!3, Omens (2013)
Boston may not be my style but it beats the brains out of this thing. Not only did these derivative snore masters from the 303 area code choose a name as stupid as Fun., !!!, Toad the Wet Sprocket, and Portugal. The Man, they’re responsible for Kei$ha. Tom Scholz never did any of that to us.

R.I.P.: Slim Whitman, multi-octave country yodeler, who wanted to be remembered as a nice guy. “I don’t think you’ve ever heard anything bad about me, and I’d like to keep it that way. I’d like my son to remember me as a good dad. I’d like the people to remember me as having a good voice and a clean suit.”

Older Entries
Newer Entries