TAKE IT FROM THE TOP
With Beyonce taking on her first dramatic, non-singing film role in "Obsessed" and Billy Bob Thornton getting so all-bent-out-of-shape about the mere mention of his acting career during interviews for his new Boxmasters CD, it seems that the whole musician-turned-actor thing is so over.
So what is a poor renaissance-minded musician to do? Just make music? Oh God forbid.
It's time to pick up a pen, and transform into an author. No, no, no, not a cheesy celebrity autobiography. Please no. You want to be accepted as serious artist, don't you? You need some serious lit cred. You need to write a novel. Or at least a collection of short stories.
Of course, you won't be the first. The rocker-turned-writer tradition stretches back at least as far as John Lennon's "In His Own Write" and Bob Dylan's "Tarantula."
And before you just dive into that blank laptop screen, you might want to sift through some of the other musicianly musings that have actually seen the light of the publishing day. Here are some examples of the opening lines from some of the best rockers-turned fiction writers that we could dig up.
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
“He lives in absolute terror of a saxophone he has kept under his bed for four years. He played it since his mouth learned to blow, then put it under the bed four years ago because he had grown bored of it and moved on to affairs with lovelier instruments; a clarinet for two months, a flute for awhile, the drums. He went back to the saxophone and couldn’t face it unashamed, so he put it under the bed and learned to play sociology, the jewel of all musical instruments.”
(Mike Doughty’s “Whose Music?” from “Slanky: Poems,” 1996)
Mike Doughty performs the Question Jar Show at Revolution Hall in Troy on Wednesday (November 18).
Tags: Mike Doughty, Revolution Hall, Troy
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Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
“we had to call the police again on the mexican bachelors next door. it’s kind of a thrill to call the police on somebody, and my husband and i agreed that we weren’t being reckless because we had asked them twice already to turn the music down and it was 2 a.m. and the last time this happened the baby woke up. we live in an apartment complex and although each unit has a front door, most of the residents use their garages to enter their apartments. we knew, therefore, that the mexicans drove a mercedes and a lexus, a detail that made an impression on my husband, who appreciates fine automobiles. we could also see that the inside of their garage was plastered with absolut vodka ads and pinups of naked women. so we knew the mexican bachelors were young, upscale, and liked to party, and that was fine, but enough was enough.”
(Shawn Colvin’s “Bonefields” from “Songs Without Rhyme: Prose By Celebrated Songwriters,” 2001)
At the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock on Sunday, November 1, Shawn Colvin plays a benefit concert for Sky Lake Lodge, a Shambhala Buddhist meditation center in Rosendale. Dean Batstone opens the show.
Tags: Bearsville, Shawn Colvin, Theater, Woodstock
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Monday, August 24th, 2009
Nineteen ninety-seven was the year the Green Haven Prison went insane. The winter hadn’t produced a single snowstorm that lasted for more than an hour before turning to rain and slush, and what should have been covered with a velvety-smooth blanket of white went on being gray and lifeless and pitiful, as if God Himself saw to it that the twenty-five hundred inmates and corrections officers living and working inside nine concrete cell blocks never once forgot where they were and why they were put there in the first place.”
– from Vincent Zandri’s novel “As Catch Can,” 1999
Writer-drummer Vincent Zandri and his bandmates in the Blisterz are hosting and headlining the semi-regular “punk rock night” at Jillian’s in Albany on Wednesday, August 26. Also performing will be Wipe Out Marshall and Catching Cadence.
Tags: Albany, As Catch Can, Blisterz, Jillian's, Vincent Zandri
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Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
“The news came as quite a shock to me. I’d just gone down to the Indian store on Westbourne Grove to pick up a pint of milk and some bread for toast when the headline on the Daily Mirror displayed in a rack of papers across the road outside the newsagents caught my eye: MICK JAGGER DEAD, it screamed across the rain-soaked street.”
(Graham Parker’s “Me and the Stones” from “Carp Fishing on Valium and Other Tales of the Stranger Road Traveled,” 2000)
Tags: Carp, fiction, Fishing, Graham, on Valium, Parker, Writing
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Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
“I can see them now. Two of my friends from school are hunched over a computer, compiling a list. Not just a list, mind you. The List. The list that everyone at Clairman Country Day School lives and dies by.
“Shawna Gilbert and Essie Reynolds are poised right about now above my name.”
Nerissa and her sister Katryna Nields will perform at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival at Dodds Farm in Hillsdale on Friday-Sunday, July 24-26. The festival gets underway on Thursday, July 23.
(Nerissa Nields’ “Plastic Angel
,” 2005)
Tags: fiction, Nerissa Nields, Plastic Angel, Writing
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Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
“So the clown was walking along the edge of the ocean with God and he said, ‘God, I am so sad.’ And God says, ‘Why are you so sad, beautiful clown?’ And the beautiful clown says, ‘I am sad because I cannot seem to make people laugh.’
“Let yourself slowly down into the perfumed waters of the bathing pool of the narrative pilgrimage. Don’t ask. Just feel. Feel sexy. To feel sexy is, simply, to feel. We will now begin.”
(Jane Siberry’s “Goodbye Sweet Pumpkinhead” from “Songs Without Rhyme: Prose By Celebrated Songwriters
,” 2001)
Tags: fiction, Goodbye Sweet Pumpkinhead, Jane Siberry, Writing
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Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
“Speaking man to man, the most important element in deriving the maximum enjoyment from crackers is the choice of a companion to help you enjoy them. She must be someone whom you admire. A beautiful woman, elegant and accustomed to sophistication, a woman whose company is a challenge to enlist, a woman that’s hard to get.”
(Mason Williams’ “How to Derive the Maximum Enjoyment from Crackers” from “Boneless Roast,” 1967)
Tags: fiction, Mason Williams, Writing
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Friday, June 12th, 2009
“When I was in acting school I met a girl in my cold-reading class who happened to live in the same apartment building as I did. She had a remarkably voluptuous figure, and she always wore her blond hair in a ponytail on the right side of her head. She favored lipstick in the shade of fluorescent blood. I can’t remember her name now, but I do remember that she once borrowed three dollars from me to buy champagne.”
(Rosanne Cash’s “Acting School” from “Bodies of Water
,” 1996)
Tags: authors, fiction, musicians, Rosanne Cash, Writing
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Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
“Catherine Tekakwitha, who are you? Are you (1656-1680)? Is that enough? Are you the Iroquois Virgin? Are you the Lily of the Shores of the Mohawk River? Can I love you in my own way? I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That’s what sitting on your ass does to your face. I’ve come after you, Catherine Tekakwitha. I want to know what goes on under that rosy blanket.”
Leonard Cohen: Beautiful Losers (1966)
Tags: Beautiful Losers, fiction, Leonard Cohen, Writing
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Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
“Harley Watts looked down a long, flat stretch of Interstate 40 west of Shamrock, Texas, the way a man would size up an old acquaintance from across a crowded barroom. You know, that one ambiguous instant between the time you see them and they see you when you have to decide whether you’re glad to see them or not. Actually Harley and I-40 were more than casual acquaintances.”
(Steve Earle’s “Wheeler County” from “Doghouse Roses” 2001)
Tags: Doghouse Roses, fiction, Steve Earle, Writing
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Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
“To Athene then. Young Gnossos Pappadopoulis, furry Pooh Bear, keeper of the flame, voyaged back from the asphalt seas of the great wasted land: oh highways U.S. 40 and unyielding 66, I am home to the glacier-gnawed gorges, the fingers of lakes, the golden girls of Westchester and Shaker Heights. See me loud with lies, big boots stomping, mind awash with schemes.”
Richard Farina: Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (Twentieth-Century Classics – 1966)
“
Tags: fiction, Richard Farina, Writing
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Friday, May 15th, 2009
“Houston, Texas, 1956: Landscaped by whitewashed tree trunks, oyster-shell parking lots, roadside watermelon stands, sawdust dance floors, and Penecostal tent revivals, it proudly proclaimed itself ‘The murder capital of the world.’ It remains unclear whether such dubious distinction was substantiated by statistical evidence, no doubt the Chamber of Commerce had facts to the contrary; but in the hometown of my childhood, statements made loud, stayed loud.”
(Rodney Crowell’s “I Walk the Line Revisited” from “Songs Without Rhyme: Prose By Celebrated Songwriters,” 2001)
Tags: fiction, I Walk The Line, Revisited, Rodney Crowell, Writing
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