Musical Wednesdays: We Are Sex Bob-Omb!

The bands that populate Brian Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim books, like all great fictional bands, are so well realized that you can hear them through their lyrics, through the way the sound is drawn coming out of their instruments, through the way the other characters react to the music.  Sex Bob-Omb is a noisy garage rock band, Crash and the Boys are an even noisier, surlier band (their songs are only seconds long). Every band has its own personality, and the music is essential to the story.

For a film adaptation, translating the experience of "reading the band" into hearing it can be a tough trick to pull off.  The worst reaction, I would imagine, would be for the fans to say "that doesn't sound like Sex Bob-Omb." Luckily, Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. the World sounds exactly like Scott Pilgrim, with the help of Beck and Broken Social Scene.  The soundtrack is pretty exuberant (much like the movie--full review coming Friday), and the songs written specifically for the movie are the strongest parts.  I particularly love Sex Bob-Omb's Garbage Truck.

If there's one criticism I have, it's that the soundtrack is missing some songs, like a few Legend of Zelda themes that are only in the movie (at one point, when Scott sees Ramona in the subspace highway inside his head, the Zelda "Great Fairy" music plays.  There, that's the geekiest sentence you will ever see on this blog.  At least until Friday).  But the songs that are on here more than make up for what's not.  This is one of those soundtracks that is much, much more than a collection of songs featured in the movie: it's a stand-alone album, like Karen O's soundtrack for Where the Wild Things Are, or one of Wes Anderson's. 

The one song I really wish they had included (and this is true for both the movie and the soundtrack) is one of my favorite jokes in the first comic book, when Crash and the Boys introduce a song: "This song is called 'Last Song Kills Audience,' and it'll be our last song tonight."  But as a whole, this album is so carefully put-together, and so much fun to listen to, that it's hard to dwell on any complaints.

Musical Wednesdays: New Albums?

It's late in the summer, which seems to be a slow time for new music.  I've been listening to the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack today, but not enough to have anything coherent to say about it.  Believe me, I tried. Come back next week for a review of that one. 

So no review this week, just a really funny piece from the Onion:

Desperate Pandora Employees Scrambling To Find Song Area Man Likes

Are there any albums out this week I should know about?  Or are things staying quiet until the weather cools off?

Musical Wednesdays: Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows

I will preface today's post by saying this: John Prine is awesome.  His songs are so good that Kris Kristofferson said they (other country and folk songwriters) would have to break his thumbs.  He co-wrote the "perfect country and western song" ("perfect" because it contains mama, trucks, prison, getting drunk, and trains).  He's a country singer who the other country singers look up to; the same goes for folk singers.  He has a hell of a sense of humor and an equally sharp sense of storytelling, which comes out in songs like In Spite of Ourselves and Spanish Pipedream.

This summer, a John Prine tribute album, Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows, came out, and it's outstanding.  It has tracks by the Avett Brothers, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, Old Crow Medicine Show, and many others.  There's such a strong feeling of admiration on every track, not only for the man who wrote the songs, but for the songs themselves.  The artists all interpret the songs only as far as bending them to their sound, and I think the album is better because of it: to diverge too much would take away from the song, while trying too hard to adhere to the originals would make the covers seem pale and boring.  So by my criteria, there are some perfect covers on this album.

Really, I don't have much more of a review than that.  I've had this album on repeat for a few days now, and I intend to keep it in heavy rotation--in all of its twangy, tongue-in-cheek glory--for the foreseeable future.  Even the weaker tracks are saved because the songs themselves are so good.  And the good tracks are incredible.  So for today I'll leave the deep thoughts on John Prine to Bob Dylan, who said this (please read this next part in a Bob Dylan voice):

"Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs. I remember when Kris Kristofferson first brought him on the scene. All that stuff about “Sam Stone” the soldier junky daddy and “Donald and Lydia,” where people make love from ten miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that."

One last thought on the tribute album: if you switched the adjectives in the title, it probably would be just as true to Prine's work.

Musical Wednesdays: The Suburbs

For the past few weeks, I've been hearing individual tracks from the Arcade Fire's new album, The Suburbs, on the radio.  To be honest, I wasn't overly impressed.  The songs were okay, and some of them were great a few minutes in, but there was no single that completely wowed me.  I was worried, because the band's earlier albums, Funeral and Neon Bible, are some of my favorites.  I stopped worrying when I heard the whole album, though.

I've read a lot of music critics who talk about the album as a dead object, an artifact of the pre-iTunes world.  "People put their music on shuffle," they say.  I am paraphrasing.  But the new Arcade Fire album disagrees.  Like the Decemberists' Hazards of Love, "The Suburbs" is a long-player, an album designed to go together as a whole.  And when I finally listened to it as that, I felt like I understood what they were doing.

The first track, the title track, is like a statement of the album's themes:

"Kids wanna be so hard
But in my dreams we're still screamin' and runnin' through the yard
And all of the walls that they built in the seventies finally fall
And all of the houses they build in the seventies finally fall
Meant nothin' at all"

The spread of the suburbs vs. the fear of the bomb is, I think, the driving idea of the album.  A landscape of poorly-built houses that keeps on expanding, but toward what?  And what happens to the people who keep on building and expanding these suburbs?  I know these aren't exactly new themes, but I think this is the first record that does real justice to these ideas.

My current favorite track on the album, "City With No Children," touches on something that was present in the opening tracks of "Funeral," the idea of a neighborhood after the adults have gone.  In this song, the kids from that album have grown up, and the neighborhood is a wreck.  There's an allusion to the Sermon on the Mount, with the idea that the meek shall inherit the earth and the mourners will be comforted.  The narrator of the song, and the whole album, seems to look around for that comfort, distraught over the suburban sprawl he has inherited.

I don't think any band uses setting in their songs quite like the Arcade Fire, and the new album really expands on that, asking what happens when the landscape becomes too much to bear, when it takes on a life of its own.  The album is huge, its themes and images spreading out as it goes on to encompass the regrets and nostalgia of its narrator.  It ends with a look back and the statement that "If I could have it back, all the time that we wasted, I'd only waste it again."  Sure, there are allusions to natural disasters, atomic cataclysm, and abandoned neighborhoods scattered throughout the album, but the resounding point of the album is that the most destructive force, the element that obliterates the memories and forces the narrator out into a more terrifying world, is time.

Musical Wednesdays: A White House Tribute to Paul McCartney

Tonight, PBS will air a new In Performance at the White House, a concert celebrating Paul McCartney as he's awarded the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song (he's the third person to ever receive it).  The ceremony actually took place about a month ago, and included performances by Emmylou Harris, Stevie Wonder, and many others. 

I love that these performances are occurring at the White House, because let's face it, they didn't happen there for eight years.  Even the first Gershwin Prize concert, honoring Paul Simon, took place at the Warner Theater, a few blocks from the White House.  So I like that they're bringing them inside, because it makes it less like the administration sees itself as above the popular culture of the country.

So by way of a preview, here is a video of Jack White at the concert, performing McCartney's "Mother Nature's Son."  Enjoy, and tune in tonight.  I hear Obama joins in for a big "Hey Jude" sing-along. 

Musical Wednesdays: Summer Music Edition

I'm just going to say it: I don't really have a topic for today's post.  I thought about opening with a joke about not being at the Pitchfork festival and decided against it, and I thought about listing what I've been listening to this summer, but I came up a bit short.  But it's my first week back, and I can't really be out of musical topics, can I?  So here we go.

One of my favorite newer records right now is American Slang, by the Gaslight Anthem.  They are a band from the New Jersey shore, and they really embody the idea of that (and I mean the old idea, the broken-down splendor of Asbury Park and the shadiness of Atlantic City).  They're channeling Springsteen, and their first song I heard, "Old White Lincoln" throws out references to Tom Waits and sailor tattoos.  There's something not quite nostalgic about the lyrics, as though they were already trying to hold onto a time that passed.  The new album's title track has some amazing lyrics ("They cut me to ribbons and taught me drive/I've got your name tattooed inside of my arm) and to me, it feels like summer.  The band is touring with the Hold Steady later this year, but nowhere convenient for me to see them.

The other album I'm really loving this summer is Brothers by the Black Keys.  It's more Motown-influenced than their earlier records, and I love that they're moving in this direction.  I still can't believe sometimes that there are only two people in this band, because they have such a full sound and their songs have a wider range than some much larger acts.  Plus, I like the fact that they're geeks who play incredibly bluesy, soulful music.  Standout tracks on the new album include "Ten-Cent Pistol" and "Tighten Up."  And "Next Girl."  And "Sinister Kid."  The whole album is worth listening to, and then worth listening to on repeat.  There's also a deluxe vinyl edition.

So that's it for today.  Hopefully, now that I'm living in a city, I'll be able to go to more shows and report back.  The lead singer of Dr. Dog is playing a solo show at the end of August, and the Avett Brothers are playing up in Bethlehem around my birthday.  Either show would be a great end-of-summer show, I think.

Musical Wednesdays: Sufjan and the National!

After reading this interview, I was a little worried about Sufjan Stevens' future.  It seems like he was going through a bit of a crisis, in which expectations are so high after you've released a masterpiece that it scares you out of doing anything else (see also: Harper Lee and J.D. Salinger).  I thought maybe he'd vanish, Jeff Mangum style, and become one of those legends who plays at someone else's show every six years or so.  Maybe his BQE project was the equivalent of Mangum's field recordings of a Romanian circus.

For me, Illinois was one of those records that I wanted to live inside of, with songs that haunted me long after I'd heard them.  The song Chicago was so definitive, so descriptive of my understanding of faith in America, that it was almost a hymn.  It stirs me the way Leaves of Grass does, or the way the Band's music does.  And music that has that effect on a lot of people can terrify its creator--so I can understand why Sufjan has acted like something of a hermit for the past few years.  But that interview, like I said, made me worry that he was going to go away.

But there's hope yet!  Sufjan is recording a new album, and he's working with the National!  There's not much more to say yet, but the fact that it's being recorded makes me happy.  And maybe since the National started out in Ohio, that state will be Sufjan's next subject.  Even if it's not an album inspired by one of the states, I am excited to see what Stevens will produce next.   

Musical Wednesdays: Ugly Casanova

Today I'm sending you over to Oh Young Lions, where Corey Beasley has a review of the new Ugly Casanova song.  You can also hear the song there; if you haven't heard Ugly Casanova, they're a side-project of Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock, and to borrow from Mr. Beasley:

"This is Brock living his toothless woodsman dream, something from which he usually restrains himself in Modest Mouse, at least slightly."

If that doesn't get you over there to hear the song, I just don't know what will.

Musical Wednesdays: High Violet

If you haven't heard the National's new album, High Violet, yet, you need to find it and listen to it. I would tell you exactly why, but it's hard to say exactly. It's just a beautiful album, with some of the smartest songs the band has ever recorded.

It's kind of melancholy, with song titles like "Sorrow" and "Afraid of Everyone," but at the same time it's an album you can listen to over and over without getting sick of. I think it might be because of lead singer Matt Berninger's voice--it's this really sonorous bass that takes lyrics like "I gave my heart to the Army, the only sentimental thing I could think of," and seems to stretch out every vowel even as the line clips past. And the emotions they're expressing seem real, and the band seems like a serious rock band rather than a trendy pop act that will disappear within a few months.

"I still owe money to the money, to the money I owe," is one of my favorite lyrics on the album, from one of my favorite songs, "Bloodbuzz Ohio." There's a recurring use of water imagery on the album, and in lines like this one, it seems that the whole record is about trying not to sink. From the first track, "Terrible Love," there's water as a barrier, as a comfort, as a threat, and I love that thematic line that goes through most of the songs.

This is easily one of my favorite albums of the year, and it's really interesting to see the band mature with each album. I hope they keep improving with every record. "High Violet" is available as an mp3 on Amazon for only $5.99, and on vinyl.

Musical Wednesdays: Sing Sing Sing Every Song We Know

I will admit that when I first listened to the Hold Steady's new album, Heaven is Whenever, I wasn't overly-impressed. There were some stand-out songs, of course, but nothing that matched the moment in "Stuck Between Stations" when the piano filled in that little break before Craig Finn started singing "We drink and we dry up." Or the break in "Stevie Nix" before the "17 forever/33 forever" section. I started to wonder if the loss of Franz Nicolay meant something essential had left the band. The whole thing seemed a little bit older, and a little bit sadder, and I wondered if they still had the power of their first three albums.

It's an album that I needed to hear a few times, and now I'm finding that I like it a lot more than I first thought I would. Sure, the piano is gone, but I don't think that's the biggest change. Craig Finn's lyrics have shifted slightly, and this album takes on the voice of someone who has walked away from the scenes of his youth and is torn between nostalgia and imparting the hard lessons he learned there. The opening song, "The Sweet Part of the City," is one of my favorites, a look back at the events and themes of Separation Sunday that acts as kind of a memoir of where the band came from. The last few lines, "We were bored so we started a band. We like to play for you, we like to pray for you," are almost a manifesto of what the band is about: a rock and roll band obsessed with the big Catholic themes.

Another of the great tracks on the album, "The Weekenders," is a song about the couple in the earlier song "Chips Ahoy," and it has the feeling of something that has ended. The narrator is remembering, and wishing they could do it again, but he doesn't delude himself. What's really interesting is that the characters who recur in the earlier albums don't turn up, at least in name, in this album. Hallelujah, Gideon, and Charlemagne vanished into the Midwest, and the band telling their story seems to have moved on. It feels like a book where you really loved the characters has ended, and the author has moved on to different stories.

I read a review that called this a transitional record, and I think that's accurate. The band is shifting their focus, both lyrically and musically, and I think they address the dangers of this in one of the tracks, "Soft in the Center." The song is filled with advice, one line of which is, "You can't tell people what the want to hear if you also want to tell the truth." Another one is simply, "the center is a dangerous place." He's referring to frozen lakes, but he might also be talking about these middle albums, when a band is slowly shifting toward a newer sound.

The more I listen to this record, the more I wonder if it's the band's last album about the Twin Cities; and why shouldn't it be? They've moved to Brooklyn and developed a much larger fan base--maybe it's time to tell a different set of stories, about a different cast of characters. If this is how they end that chapter of the Hold Steady, I think it's a fitting end. It will be interesting to see how the next one begins.

Musical Wednesdays: Nerdy Links

My friends Kevin Mead and Travis Helwig have a mixtape!

The Mountain Goats finally take a stand against Justin Beiber. I should probably note that I'm not entirely sure what a Justin Beiber is, but I think I'm going to agree with the creator of this website.

I really love the "Book Notes" feature over on Largehearted Boy. Music is such an important part of how I work, and I like to see what other writers put on the playlists for their work.

And finally...not nerdy, but completely awesome: Oh Boy Records is putting out a John Prine cover album featuring the Avett Brothers, Justin Vernon, Conor Oberst and many other great artists. It'll be available June 22nd.

Musical Wednesdays: Song of the Week

The lead singer of Art Brut, has a new side project called "Everybody Was in the French Resistance...Now!" and although their album got a pretty terrible review, this song, "G.I.R.L.F.R.E.N." is really fun. I heard this song on the radio Sunday night, and it is an unabashedly ridiculous, catchy song. It should also be noted that the song is a call-back to the Modern Lovers' "Girlfriend," where Jonathan Richman misspells the word.

Musical Wednesdays: Links!

I don't know what to write about today, so here are a few music-related links:

If you haven't yet, check out Huntronik, a frequent commenter on this blog and someone who writes about and performs music.

MIA's new video is getting a lot of attention. I haven't watched it yet, but you can find a link to her website in that article.

And if you do watch the video, head over here afterward (Explanation).

And finally, the New York Times has an excellent article about the National, and they're streaming their new album, High Violet.

Enjoy!

Musical Wednesdays: Songs for Bees

I wasn't sure what I was going to post today--I actually thought about making up a playlist of songs about volcanoes to tie into what's going on over in Iceland, but my list came up short. And by "short," I mean I thought of two songs: Mount Eerie's "Get the Hell Out of the Way of the Volcano" and "Volcanoes" by Islands. But this morning, I woke up thinking about bees, and songs about bees, and since I was already in a playlist kind of mindset, I started thinking of songs about bees. Plus, there's that new song by the National, "Bloodbuzz Ohio," which has the lyric "I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees."

I'm including songs about hornets and wasps in this list, too, but mostly because "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades" by Sufjan Stevens is too good to keep off of here. So here are the tracks I've come up with so far:

1. Hornets! Hornets! by the Hold Steady
2. Muzzle of Bees by Wilco
3. Birds and the Bees by the Bird and the Bee
4. The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades by Sufjan Stevens
5. Pollen by Mirah
6. Honey Bee by Tom Petty
7. Another Set of Bees in the Museum by Olivia Tremor Control
8. Honey, Honey by Feist
9. Bloodbuzz Ohio by the National
10. Evil Bee by Menomena

Anything else? Send them along! And if you haven't done so yet, check out that National Song. It's the first single off of their new album "High Violet," due out May 11th. And while we're on that subject, check out the first song from that album, premiered on Jimmy Fallon's show:

Musical Wednesday: Craig Finn Preaches to the Converted

Last Friday, I went to a Hold Steady show in Jermyn, PA. They’re touring all summer to promote their new album, Heaven is Whenever, which comes out in a few weeks, but for this show, they mostly stuck to older songs because you can’t have a big sing-along when no one knows the new album’s songs yet. They did probably five or six songs off of the new record in their hour-and-a-half set, including the first single, “Hurricane J” and “We Can Get Together,” which I posted the live video of a few weeks ago; they also premiered a new one, “The Sweet Part of the City,” which was in the vein of “Certain Songs” and “Lord, I’m Discouraged.”

I was really surprised by the crowd at this show. I only know three or four Hold Steady fans, and they’re all, well, geeks. English majors who go crazy over the literary allusions and overarching themes of redemption and temptation and all of the biblical insanity in Craig Finn’s lyrics. But the fans at this show were…different. They seemed to be a bunch of bro-dudes who severely missed the point of the songs. All they hear are the whoa’s and the guitar solos, and while those are things I also love about the Hold Steady, the real heart of the band for me are the lyrics and the stories. I actually overheard two of them talking about drinking a lot of whiskey and getting all fucked up, “just like Craig Finn would,” and I had to fight the urge to turn around and berate them for completely missing the point. These songs aren’t glorifying what the characters are doing—they’re about these characters hitting bottom and slowly crawling their way back.

Craig Finn performs like a Pentecostal preacher; he moves around the stage, eyes wide like he’s delivering the gospel or predictions of damnation. He gets the audience clapping, raising their hands like they’re testifying, chanting back at him. I love it; what other working band (other than the E Street Band) gets onstage and delivers anything close to a tent revival?

The only problem with this, though, is that it felt a lot like preaching to the converted. If the goal of constant tours is partially to drum up new listeners, then how does a band that puts on a show that is really for the die-hard fans draw in new people? Maybe a newcomer to the band sees the fervor and the familiarity and can’t help but dive in; but maybe some other newcomers feel that the fan base is a closed system because the conversation between the performers and the audience is so intimate. Just something to wonder about; I mean, I am already firmly in the camp of Hold Steady fans.

There were some songs they didn’t do that I really would have liked to hear, and a few they played that aren’t among my favorites. Even though Separation Sunday is one of my favorite albums, the song “Hornets! Hornets!” just doesn’t do it for me, and that was the second-to-last song. I still haven’t heard “How a Resurrection Really Feels” live, but I bet if I keep going to their shows, they’ll eventually play it. And where’s the fun in a resurrection if you don’t have to wait for it?

And as promised, I want to let everyone know that Record Store Day is this Saturday! Go support your local record store! The Hold Steady (see, this is related) will have an extremely limited edition of the new record available at some stores. Hope I get one.

Musical Wednesdays: Baseball Edition

"I ain't ever had a job, I just always played baseball."

-Satchel Paige

Well, it's that time of year again. The weather is getting warmer, the afternoons longer, the Bruce Springsteen songs more relevant. That's right, my friends: baseball season. So today's post is two of my favorite songs about the sport. One of them is a classic performed by the Hold Steady, and the other is a love song for baseball sung by a Scottish band.

First up: "Piazza, New York Catcher" by Belle & Sebastian

And "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," as performed by the Hold Steady. There used to be a video of the band recording this one, but it appears to have disappeared, which is a shame because there's a great moment after the song ends when Craig Finn takes a swig of beer. It's like his way of saying, "Play Ball." Since the video is gone, I think it falls to all of us here to have a cold beer to kick off the season.

Musical Wednesdays: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

"Now, the making of a good mixtape is a very subtle art. Many do's and don'ts. First of all, you're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing."

-High Fidelity

Talking about Crazy Heart last week really set me thinking about soundtracks, and what makes one really memorable or perfect for a movie. Like a mixtape, there's an art to it, and it goes beyond just picking good songs. Anyone can pick twelve good songs (okay, not anyone, but most people) and put them all into their movie, but at its best, the soundtrack should convey a time and a place, a mood, the mental state of the characters involved. It can be used ironically, playing a happy song as everything goes wrong, or to underscore what's happening inside of a character. A soundtrack has the power to take a song that isn't great and transform it (I'm thinking of the jukebox scene in Say Anything) or to take a song that's already great and give you an entirely new association with it ("Tiny Dancer" in Almost Famous).

For me, Almost Famous has the ultimate soundtrack. You can probably say that about any of Cameron Crowe’s movies, which use forty years of pop music in every scene, but this one is the best pairing of music to image. From that scene with “Tiny Dancer” on the bus to the clip of “Misty Mountain Hop” as the car rolls into New York City, the music choices work on every level. There’s a sense of time, a sense of the shifting musical scene in the early 70s, and the feeling of an impending crash. At times, the soundtrack almost seems to be in conversation with the movie: there’s a part early on where two characters discuss Lou Reed sounding like David Bowie, and much later in the movie, a Bowie cover of “Waiting for the Man” plays over the action of the story. It’s just this little moment that shows how much care went into connecting the soundtrack to the plot.

I could probably go on for 2000 words about what makes a good soundtrack and what completely ruins it for me (but I won’t). Sometimes what works in one movie is horrible in another. An example: I love the way the soundtrack of 500 Days of Summer works, and the way the characters interact with the songs. The repeated use of the Smiths that initially connects the characters works really well, and the point where “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” moves from Joseph-Gordon Leavitt’s computer speakers to being played over the action is a well-crafted moment. They call attention to the music in the soundtrack, but it’s in such a character-defining and relevant way that it seems natural to do so. Contrast this with the moment in the movie Garden State when the characters call attention to the Shins’ “New Slang,” a moment that I think completely takes the audience out of the narrative.

What are your favorite soundtracks? I’m a personal fan of Wes Anderson’s because I think in addition to using great songs he utilizes them really well. Cameron Crowe always has really great music in his movies as well—I would argue that the soundtrack in Elizabethtown is its own character. What are the best? What are the worst?

Musical Wednesdays: RIP Alex Chilton, 1950-2010

"Did you know that 'The Letter' by the Box Tops is a minute and fifty eight seconds long? It means nothing. But it takes them less than two minutes to accomplish what it takes Jethro Tull hours to not accomplish!" – Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs, “Almost Famous”

You have probably heard by now that Alex Chilton, legendary musician from the Box Tops and Big Star, passed away last week. “The Letter” remains one of my favorite pop songs ever, and it launched the incredible career of an artist who never seemed to slow down. Chilton embodied the idea of the “working musician,” the guy who would stop between tours long enough to record an album, or to appear on someone else’s.

He never became a rock star, at least not to most people, but he was much more than that: he was a presence. Through shifts in style, often within the space of an album, he played whatever influenced him, whatever moved him. He went from teen pop star to pioneering rocker to guest on the Replacements’ Alex Chilton to covering jazz standards on an acoustic guitar. He encompassed the music that came before him and five decades of shifting musical tastes in the second half of the 20th century.

Chilton was supposed to play at this year’s South by Southwest festival, a show that instead became a tribute featuring M. Ward, Mike Mills, and Sondre Lerche. Here are a few videos from that tribute, a fitting goodbye to such an influential artist.

Musical Wednesdays: Dancing About Architecture

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

-Anonymous

I was thinking this week about the uses of music in fiction, because I’m currently reading Haruki Murakami and he uses jazz in his books like Woody Allen does in his movies. It makes sense—if I remember correctly, Murakami owned a jazz club before he became a writer. Maybe he still owns a jazz club. But he’s a writer who seems to always have a soundtrack going. There’s the classical music in the beginning of “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,” and the acoustic guitar in “Norwegian Wood.” These aren’t just briefly touched upon; these are essential to the novels. And more than that, I think there's an expectation that the readers have at least a basic knowledge of the bands or the songs involved.

So I was wondering what readers think of using music in books: is there a time factor involved, or a level of cultural saturation that needs to be reached before music should be included in fiction? Is it okay to use the Beatles but not Pavement? Where is the threshold? To me, it would seem that the key is how ingrained into the culture the music is--the Kinks are a band that most people know, while a reference to MC5, a band formed at the same time, might not register with as many readers because they never got to the same level of popularity outside of Detroit.

My thought on it is a lot like Stephen King’s thought about the use of brand names in his books: “Do you look in the medicine cabinet and see blank bottles?” Similarly, do you turn on the radio and just hear music? No, you hear the classic rock station, or George Clinton, or Neko Case. To ignore that seems inorganic to me. I use music a lot in my writing because it's an important part of my day--to forget to include music would be taking some truth from the stories I'm trying to tell.

But running counter to this is the possibility of becoming dated. If you write a story featuring some band that briefly flared up only to become a minor pop culture touchstone, your story is going to suffer from being a story of that moment. It might distract a reader from the flow of that story if they have to wonder who the hell you're talking about, or what genre the music is in.

So my questions for today: what are the best uses of music in fiction that you've read? And what are the worst?

Musical Wednesdays: I Should Have Gone to Bonnaroo Last Year

Last summer, a few of us tossed around the idea of going to Bonnaroo, the four-day music festival held in Manchester, TN. The line-up was incredible, with Bruce Springsteen, Neko Case, Wilco, David Byrne, the Decemberists...so many bands I love, more than enough to make up for the inclusion of acts I don't really care for (Phish, Animal Collective). But last year, we couldn't afford the trip and the tickets, so we decided not to go. I remember thinking, "Well, maybe next year."

Now that it's March, I've started thinking about the summer, and about the festivals that occur during the summer. So today, I went on the the Bonnaroo website and the first thing I saw was "The Dave Matthews Band." And a bit further down that same row, Weezer (not 1997 Weezer, mind you, but current unrecognizable Weezer). And Kings of Leon. And a half-dozen bands that I've heard exactly once, only to change the station. I will not name names.

It seems like the line-up is the exact opposite of last year's. There are some good bands buried in this list, ranging from Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes to Jimmy Cliff to Steve Martin (I'm sorry. Mr. Steve Martin.), but I just don't see how they're enough to overcome some of the other more dubious choices. I am looking at the list, but I am failing to be at all interested. I'd rather see the bands individually, I think. I can't see taking the time or spending the money when I'm less than enthused about most of the acts. I'm sure they'll announce more artists soon, and I'll see if I change my mind.

Until then, I'll say (again) "Maybe next year."