Story and Song

by Alafair Burke

While I was listening to Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" for the gamillionth time yesterday, I realized I had a video clip playing in my head, and it wasn't footage of Adele performing her hit song.  It was of Chuck and Blair from the season finale of Gossip Girl, clasping hands from their hoisted chairs at a crashed wedding, one final romantic night in their tragic union before Blair is to be married off to a prince.

Yes, I watch Gossip Girl.   Go ahead.  Laugh.  I'll wait.  But the fact that I have the same taste in TV as your fourteen year old daughter is not the point of this post.  My point is about a good soundtrack.  Sometimes the connection between a song and the story it helps narrate becomes so indelibly etched into the brain that the two can never be separated.

If you don't believe me, check out the love between these two doomed, slo-mo youngsters.  "We could have had it all."  I'll love this song forever, and it will forever remind me of Chuck and Blair.

Adele and Gossip Girl aren't the only song/story combination linked together in my mind.  My playlist seems to be filled with songs from soundtracks.  Here are some of my favorite uses of song to accompany story.

Queen and David Bowie's "Under Pressure" in Grosse Point Blank

You can feel John Cusack seeing the life he hasn't lived in that adorable baby's eyes.  "Cause love's such an old fashioned word, And love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night, And love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves.  This is our last dance.  Under Pressure."

Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" from Say Anything

And speaking of John Cusack, I see the life I could have lived with him everytime I hear "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel.  "I see the doorway to a thousand churches in your eyes, the resolution of all the fruitless searches."

Dear Husband, at some point before I die, I need to be serenaded with a boom box beneath my window. Oh, I want to be that complete.

Journey's "Wheel in the Sky" in the Sopranos

David Chase used music brilliantly through this series.  When it comes to Journey, most people will remember "Don't Stop Believing" in that final, controversial scene, but I always remember "Wheel in the Sky" playing at the end of the episode Bust Out in season 2.  Tony has just ended a particularly bad-behaving day, having ruined a friend's sporting goods business and beaten a murder rap.  He takes the helm of his new boat, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake.  "The wheel in the sky keeps on turning, Don't know where I'll be tomorrow."  It's Tony Soprano's anthem.

Thompson Twins' "If You Were Here" from Sixteen Candles

If you were a straight girl in the 80s, Admit it: A part of you is still in love with Jake Ryan.  Dear Husband, I also need you to wait for me outside my sister's wedding in a red Porsche, then sit crosslegged on a table with me and a birthday cake.  "If you were here, I could deceive you.  And if you were here, you would believe."

Jackson Browne's "Somebody's Baby" in Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Every time I see Jennifer Jason Leigh, I hear this song, and vice versa.  Poor girl, losing her virginity to that scum bag in the high school dugout.  "She's gonna be somebody's baby tonight."

Cat Stevens' "The Wind" in Almost Famous

Another Cameron Crowe movie, no surprise.  Most people will remember that epic bus tour scene with the Elton John's Tiny Dancer singalong, but I also love this scene with Penny Lane dancing to Cat Stevens.  These kinds of moments in this film are the reason I still haven't given up on Kate Hudson.  "Where I'll end up, well I think only God really knows."

Cat Stevens' "Don't Be Shy" from Harold and Maude

And speaking of Cat Stevens, his song "Don't Be Shy" always makes me think of the moment we met Harold as he was about to hang himself.  "Don't wear fear or nobody will know you're there."

Elliot Smith's "Needle in the Hay" in Royal Tenenbaums

And speaking of songs to kill yourself by, I love the use of this song in this scene.  "I'm going to kill myself tomorrow."

Kate Bush's "This Woman's Work" in, Um, Everything

I just learned from Wikipedia that this Kate Bush song, one of my favorites, has been used in a slew of stuff I don't watch, like CSI, Ghost Whisperer, Alias, Without a Trace, and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  But since the 80s (also known as the best era ever), the song always makes me cry thanks to this scene in She's Having a Baby.  "Give me these moments back, give them back to me."

More recently, I also really enjoyed Ricky Gervais' use of the song in the series finale of the Extras to show his friend Maggie's plight.

I know that some writers find inspiration in music.  Our own Jonathan Hayes even created a playlist to accompany A Hard Death (love his warning that it's "not for kids, unless they're bad kids").  I'm not one of those people, but did last year decide while listening to Lady Gaga's Bad Romance that it was the perfect song to narrate 212.  Here's the resulting book trailer, complete with ads that pop up when you use copyrighted music on You Tube.

So, how about it?  What are the songs and stories that are forever married in your minds?

Love and Music

by Alafair Burke

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all.  Even though this is a pretty stupid holiday -- originally linked to romance through a tale of birds hooking up, now propogated to sell greeting cards -- I still sort of like it.  Remember those little paper cards we used to exchange in grade school?

Those adorable but culinarily-suspect heartshaped Necco candies?

Those overpriced dinners at overbooked restaurants?  Oh, wait, that's another entry on the con side of the ledger.

Anyway, I have enough fondness for Valentine's Day that I wanted my blog to have some connection to the concept of overwhelming swooniness that we're all supposed to feel this day.  The only problem is that talking about love sort of makes me want to hurl.  Don't get me wrong.  I feel love.  I still get that little hiccup in my chest when I look at my husband when he doesn't know I'm watching him.  But somehow I suspect most of you don't want to read an entire blog post filled with sentences like that last one.  Ick, that's sweeter than those Necco wafers.

A writer's cynicism of the words we typically use to explain love might strike some as odd, but I think it stems from too many greeting cards, bad romance scenes, and sappy lyrics.  Love pulls you up weightless into the fluffy white clouds, turns you inside out, and then throws you on your ass, but in a good way.  Love is also so subjective that the previous sentence might not mean anything to anyone besides me.

I was trying to identify any other experience that feels like being in love.  The closest I came was that feeling you (or at least, I) get when in the presence of a truly magical musical moment.  I don't simply mean ones reaction to a sappy love song (though this one happens to be a fave).

Every once in a while, I am so pulled in by musical talent, I can't move.  I don't want to breath, just in case the air moving into my lungs interferes with the magesty of that moment.  I want to stop time to linger in the perfection.  I want to be able to experience it again and again.

Have you ever had that feeling? I hope for your sake the answer is yes.

I suppose it would be impressive to say these moments came during O Patria Mia from the Verdi's Aida.  But that's not how I roll.  (In fact, I don't know what O Patria Mia is.  I just found it on Google.)

My most recent love and music moment came last week when I saw Prince in concert at Madison Square Garden.  His incredible talent, the memories of listening to that music in high school, and my happiness about seeing him in New York with a good friend all culminated in one of those all-out weepy, goose-bumpy moments.  (Even though bootleg video won't do the performance justice, I went hunting for a clip, which will probably be pulled by his copyright lawyers by the time you read this.)

Another performance that had me swooning was Fantasia's tribute to Patti LaBelle.  I know.  It sounds as bad as a puppy on a unicorn, but, damn, that woman can sing.  And somehow through all those notes, she manages to convey the utter respect and love she has for Miss Patti.  Check them out and then try to tell me you don't feel it.  (Make sure to hold out for the mutual lovefest starting at 2:04 and Patti's awesome move at 3:39.)

And don't forget Mary J Blige's emotional performance of No More Drama at the 2002 Grammy Awards, which brought both the singer and members of the audience to tears. 

Maybe I'm totally out there, but the feeling I get watching a singer put every part of himself or herself into a single experience makes me feel ... love(ish). 

So, here are my questions for the day:

1) Your verdict on Valentine's Day: yay or nay?

2) Any musical performances that induce tears, chills, or paralysis?

Music, Music Everywhere

by J.D. Rhoades

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m one of those people who likes to have some music on when I write. For one thing, having the headphones on is good for drowning out the other noises in the house. There’s also something about music that tickles the creative lobes of my brain and stimulates better writing.

One of the things that’s really delighted me about the Internet in recent years is the way it’s expanded access to music. I’ve discovered dozens of new artists through friends posting their favorite music on Facebook or their blogs. Sites like Amazon.com, Rhapsody and iTumes  have made it easy--perhjaps too easy-- to buy music and download it to your Mp3 player or computer with one click of a button.

But even beyond that, I’ve discovered a number of ways to find and enjoy tunes on the Web. Some do charge a subscription fee, but the majority are free. So, for those of you who may not be familiar, I’d like to share with you some of the stuff I play through the computer while I write and/or goof off.

I’m not trying to start one of those endless and tedious debates over Apple’s hegemony, but I honestly don’t understand why anyone bothers with iTunes when there’s Rhapsody. You can buy and download music at both places, but Rhapsody, for a modest monthly fee (10-15 bucks a month, depending on your plan), allows you to “stream” literally millions of songs--everything from classics to recent major releases-- to your computer, as many times as you like. One plan allows you to download and play music on a variety of Rhapsody-compatible portable players for no extra charge. All you have to do is plug the player once every 30 days to renew the subscriptions. If you want to burn tracks to a CD, you do have to purchase them, but it's only  99 cents for most tracks.  The  Rhapsody software also plays your already existing MP3 library. 

If you want to hear a mix in a specific genre or style, check out Pandora.com.  You sign up for a free account, and then create “stations” based on your preferences. Plug in a specific artist or song and something called the “Music Genome Project” will find it, play it, then find songs with similar attributes and play those. As I write this, I’m listening to my “Neville Brothers” station, which treats me to (of course) the Nevilles, along with artists like Little Feat,  Jimmie Vaughn, The Subdudes, etc. I also have a “Deathcore Metal”  Station, a Chicago Blues station, and many more. You can spend some money and upgrade the service, but I find the free one suits me just fine. It’s also available for streaming through a variety of Wi-fi enabled BluRay players.

If you want to be the DJ, there’s always blip.fm. Sign in, search for a song you want to “blip”, and use it to start your own playlist. As you get more familiar with it, you can meet and subscribe to other DJs whose music you like, gather your own listeners, and save songs you hear to your own favorites. There’s even video if you want it. .

If you really want to stretch out and be adventurous,  let me recommend shoutcast.com, It’s another free service that provides you with access to online radio stations across the world. Some of the feeds are live from broadcast stations with a ‘net presence, some are homegrown stations created by hobbyists. You can get Top 40, Country, whatever you're into, but the worldwide natrue of the stations lets you search for and easily find some interesting stuff. For instance, I’ve lately found myself listening a lot  to Serbian pop music from Radio Desetka in Belgrade.  Wonderfully cheesy.

One of my favorite memories of my college days was hanging around and doing the occasional fill-in shift at the college radio station, WXYC-FM. College radio at the time was a blast. Volunteer student DJ’s, freed from the tyranny of commercial playlists, would play damn near anything. True, the results could be a little hit or miss, but that was part of the fun. One of my favorite jocks from those days, a guy named Keith Weston, has preserved some of the spirit of those days with his website, Deeper Into Music. The website’s banner promises “obscure songs mixed with familiar chestnuts,” which about sums it up. It’s a great mix of some of my favorite bands from back in the day mixed with some very tasty modern indie rock. Check it out.

So tell us, dear 'Rati: where, if at all, do you go to find music on the 'net? Any goodies you'd like to share?

KEROUAC, JOYCE AND THE SOUND OF MUSIC

By Stephen Jay Schwartz

I know I’m not the first Murderati to talk about music.  We’ve shared numerous blogs about the kinds of music that inspire us.  Some of us find it essential to listen to music while writing, others get too involved in listening to the music to get any good writing done.

I myself cannot listen to music when I write, except when it is piped into a café and presented as background noise.

Of course, to all hard-and-fast rules, there is always an exception.  A few years ago I faced a two-week writer’s block.  I had never experienced anything like this and I was stymied.  I broke through by putting the ear buds in and playing classic rock at volume level “eleven.”  It was a con-job on my conscious self, creating a diversion that allowed my subconscious to sneak on through.  All my conscious mind knew was that my fingers were typing.   I had no idea what was coming out.  I broke through the block in two nights, and ended up with some pretty inspired stuff.  It was an exhausting experiment and one that could not be sustained for long.

The thing is, I find music so alluring, so all-encompassing, that when I listen I just want to dive in.  I can’t focus on the writing.  For me, music is the alpha and omega.  It is the everything.  And I tell you what, I would not be the writer I am if music wasn’t in my life.

Strong statement, I know.  But I truly believe my writing is indebted to the music I studied as a child, from fourth grade into my twenties.  I played classical clarinet early on and moved to jazz when I entered high school.  Once I segued to saxophone, music became downright sexy.  I continued private instruction in classical and jazz and my world opened up when one of my teachers introduced me to the fusion artists of the Seventies.  Chick Corea, Al Dimeola, Herbie Hancock.  I studied jazz performance for a short time in college, at what was then called North Texas State University.  There I was introduced to the masters of bop -- Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Dexter Gordon (whom I saw live at the Kool Jazz Festival), and Oscar Peterson. 

But I started skipping my Sight Singing and Ear Training class (the class was pure punishment and I was failing it anyway) to follow my English teacher to his office to continue the argument we’d been having for weeks.  He was a nationally renowned poet and he knew instantly that I needed some literary ass-kicking.  My writing was rife with clichés and it was his job to stamp them out.

At the same time I began discovering writers whose words read like music.  I found writers who satisfied my love for music with the music they created in their words.

Authors like, well, James Joyce.  How many here have sat transfixed by the words and sounds that roll off the pages of “The Artist as a Young Man”?  And, while I’ve never been able to get more than a few pages into “Finnegans Wake,” just listen to this first paragraph:

“riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggly isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war:  nor had topsawyer’s rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County’s gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time:  nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick:  not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old Isaac:  not yet, though all’s fair in vanessy, were sosie sethers wroth with twone nathandjoe.  Rot a peck of pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.”

Okay, so let’s not worry so much about what the fuck this means.  Just read it.  Out loud.  Listen to the music: “…while they went doublin their mumper,” “nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick…”  Avoice from afire is “a voice from afar,” but is also the voice of God from the burning bush.  There’s a lot more in Joyce than just lyrical sentences and I’m certainly not studied enough to blog about the dimension of his writing.  But I can talk about the musicality of his words.  And do you hear the Irish accent?  Look at the word “thuartpeatrick,” which is “thought Patrick.”  Now, read the paragraph in your best brogue.  It’s beautiful.

When I read words on a page I hear consonants and vowels that form rhythms of staccato and legato.  I hear triplets and eighth notes and the ghosting of jazz riffs leading into melodies and cadences.  Words cannot help but create rhythm.  Words spoken are sounds and sounds are percussive.  Or melodic.  And then a combination of both that leads to the phrasing of symphonies.

And we have so many wonderful words to choose our sounds from.  We have combinations of words that roll with onomatopoeia, words that click and cough and bend upwards and down, words that modulate into fevered meters, alternating four-four to seven-four to three-four and back to measure one. 

The authors whose works I love have an innate sense of the music of words, whether they are conscious of this fact or not.  Dickens has his own musical style, which is different from the musicality of Steinbeck.  And yet I can be lulled into a state of catatonic stasis from the reading aloud of either.

And maybe that’s why I nearly jumped out of my skin the first time I heard Jack Kerouac read his work.  I was watching this hip little documentary called “Whatever Happened to Kerouac” when his voice emerged reading “Doctor Sax.”  What I heard was a saxophone solo in spoken words. 

I picked up the seminal Beat Generation novel “On the Road” and read it straight through.  What surprised me, however, was how slow it seemed to read.  There were moments of literary genius, but mostly I felt it needed an editor’s touch.  Too many long run-on sentences.  It just wasn’t working for me.  But then all these Kerouac recordings began to surface and I ended up listening to him read from “On the Road.”  And I got it.  Once you’ve heard him read you can’t help but read his work with the same energy and rhythm.  I soon saw that no word was wasted, each and every word was an eighth or half note that emerged from the intricate, never-ending bebop solo in his head.

It’s no surprise that folks like Zoot Simms and Steve Allen liked to jam with Kerouac, trading musical “riffs” with his musical words.  I pulled a You Tube clip from the Steve Allen Show to give you a sense of what I’m saying here.  Check it out.  It’s about a five-minute segment.  Listen to it all the way to the end.  If this is your first introduction to Kerouac, then let me now say THANK YOU for letting me be your guide. 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzCF6hgEfto&feature=related

And songwriters can be musical poets with their words, too.  I can think of a dozen songs by The Beatles and The Doors that include poetry capable of singing on their own, without instrumental accompaniment. 

How about this gem of a lyric from Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London”:  

“Little old lady got mutilated late last night.” 

The alliteration is to die for.  Then listen to Zevon singing the line, hear his phrasing, his dragging out of “late last night,” (the dotted-eighth note coming off the upbeat of the first note of the next measure with the word “last”) and you get the full sense of how the sentence works rhythmically.  The performance gives the line its true punch, just as Kerouac’s writing comes fully to life through his readings.

It’s interesting how even musical notes on a sheet of staff paper need the musician to complete the picture.  I remember my first lesson in jazz performance in college.  My instructor put a Charlie Parker solo in front of me and told me to play.  Before I got ten bars in, my teacher said, “I can’t believe you’re reading the notes.”  I said, “Uh, yeah.”  “Don’t read what’s on the page,” he said.  “Interpret it.”

It took me a few weeks to get what he was saying.  I was reading the notes, but the music required a performance. 

Although I always read my work aloud while writing, I never really knew if things were working until I heard Ray Porter read the audio book version of Boulevard.  This man, an accomplished actor and veteran audio book reader, performed my work.   He took notes on a page and turned them into music. 

I stopped studying music because I wanted to communicate in a more direct way.  I wanted to deliver cleaner, more thought-provoking messages.  Writing seemed to be the answer.  So, it’s kind of funny that I’ve come to value the way sound and music have influenced my writing.  It’s funny how I needed to hear Jack Kerouac reading his work before I really got the message. 

What “musical” writing—from poetry, prose, or song lyric—has captured your eye, and why? 

Hallelujah, Everybody Say Cheese

by J.D. Rhoades

It's Christmas Eve Eve, as we sometimes say.  I've got to tell you, the motivation to do anything useful has fallen off drastically for me, the closer I get to the 25th. I'm ready for a few days off. Hell, I've been ready for a few days off since I came back from Thanksgiving. So rather than ruminations on writing, marketing, life,  the universe, or everything, I offer you a few laughs for the holidays.

By now, you've probably seen dozens of those YouTube videos of insanely complex Christmas light displays. And everyone by now has heard of the popular video game Guitar Hero. Well, according to this blog, "former Disney Special Effects Guru Ric Turner" has combined the two concepts: 

Using a Nintendo Wii and few high tech lighting controllers from Light-O-rama, Ric has rigged up his very own neighbor-terrorizing, virtual guitar challenge: Christmas Light Hero.

Check it out:

 I think it's worth it just to see the grin on the kid's face.

From the sublime to the...well, kind of disturbing, here's Euro-disco-sensation  Gunther, with the Ding Dong Song (somewhat NSFW):

Pray to the Baby Jesus that that's meant to be a joke.

Speaking of things that were meant to be a joke, this Kansas City Homeowner:

Had his heart in the right place when he hung up this "display" of a decorating mishap. (No, it's not real). But he soon discovered that it might have been a little too realistic:

I would hear screech after screech in front of my house from people slamming on the brakes or quickly turning into my driveway and, many times, into my yard. I really needed to take him down as I'm sure there would have been wrecks...a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder, almost killed herself by putting it against the house and didn't realize it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy).

As Murderati's Resident Redneck, I of  course,  have to share with you my favorite Christmas song, Robert Earl Keen's "Merry Christmas From the Family."

Happy Holidays Y'all!