Songs, Books

Hey All,

I will not admit to being a fan of Nick Hornby.  I didn't like either of the film adaptations of his books that I've seen (About a Boy and High Fidelity. I don't much care for Hugh Grant, and don't even get me started on that wanker John Cusack).  I have read one of his other books, though, How to be Good, and I enjoyed it.  Not that I think Hornby's a particularly good writer (he's not bad, either), which is why I was initially skeptical when Andrew Eaton had me add Songbook to this list.

I have since relinquished my skepticism.  I read How to be Good at the right time.  I'd needed a light, easy read after a particularly taxing time in my life (or maybe I had just gone through a bout of reading some very heavy reads) and, funnily enough, I found myself in a similar head-space when Songbook presented itself to me.  I finished The Stranger, which was preceded by Helter Skelter, so something uplifting was in order.  I looked to my bookshelf, asked a few people what they might read, and landed on Hornby's ode to his favourite pieces of pop music.  It's been a good choice, as it's definitely an easy read.

Moreover, I was once in a band, with dreams of becoming a popular musician in a group with my good friends (If you watch this clip, and skip to around the 8:10 mark, you can see Green Day playing my band's equipment on live Australian television.  That's me with the shaved head, big sideburns, and wearing a Maple Leafs jersey.  Some of the memories I have from that trip are still my most fond of all time).  I abandoned that dream, but am still very much in love with music of all sorts.

Perhaps one day I'll pick up a new instrument, as I've threatened to do a few times since quitting the music industry.  Chances are it will be a bass instrument, as I'm always drawn to them, and the sounds they produce.  The first instrument I played was piano, inspired by my grandfather's playing, a self-taught musician who, as my father tells, it, used to torture his family for years while learning the violin, until my grandmother made him take up a new instrument, one that he could listen to through headphones.  So he got an organ.

I think I begged my parents for a piano after sitting on my grandfather's lap while he played that organ, probably playing me Fur Elise, a song that I eventually half-learned, and still brings joy to my heart, no matter how overplayed it might be.  Thus, my family got a piano and my three siblings were also roped into taking lessons.  Poor suckers.  I'm sure they all hated it.  They might tell you differently, but I'm pretty sure they did.  And now the piano my parents bought us sits idly, prettily, in the Andrachuk household, awaiting the days when my newest sister-in-law comes over and regales us all with her tickling of it's ivories.

Following the piano, I took up the bass.  Electric bass, to be precise.  Actually, before that, I started a rap group in the seventh grade with three friends, which morphed into a band.  I was the only one with access to a bass guitar (I borrowed my uncle's beautiful 1972 Fender Jazz Bass), so I became the band's bass player.  In high school music class I played the tuba.  I think it was kind of a gag for me, to be frank, to be able to play an instrument in which no one else expressed interest and, more so, stood out so much.  Either way, I was drawn to it.  Plus, no one really listens to the tuba in a song, anyway, what with all the trumpets and trombones hogging all the spotlight, so I was able to fake my way through a lot of songs.  I sat pretty high up in the class, at the back, and would amuse my friends by blowing as hard as I could and rattling both the ceiling tiles and my teacher at the same time.  The next instrument in my lineup was a didgeridoo I bought while on tour with my band in Australia, but I still cannot perform circular breathing.  Coming full circle, I got my bass back about a year ago from my cousin, who had borrowed it for a couple years, and have only picked it up a handful of times since.

Ever since I first began to understand and play music back, in the eighth grade, the first thing I normally note in any song I hear is the beat, and, more specifically, the rhythm of the song.  The last thing I usually note, or remember, are the lyrics.  I don't know if it's because I played bass that I'm drawn to the rhythmic part of a song, or if I was drawn to bass playing and other bass instruments because I seek the rhythm in songs.  It's more likely that I chose the bass as my instrument, though, out of ease and laziness.  Less strings, fewer notes to remember.  Yet, I can't ignore the fact that I love the sound, even the FEEL of deep, bassy notes.

How did I get so off track?  Enough about music, back to the book.

The chapter in Songbook on Rod Stewart got me thinking about how I find new music through the music I like. It's similar, in some cases, to Hornby: through the record labels on which the bands I like are signed.  My latest amazement is a label called Stones Throw.  Delicious music.  (A quick nod, here, to my friend Marco Buonocore.  Over the years he's recommended more good - often great -  music to me than anyone else.  I won't name those bands here, but the man, in spite of his strange insistence that L'il Wayne is a lyrical and musical genius, has some damn fine taste, and somehow manages to find music before anyone else I know).  Aloe Blacc and Mayer Hawthorne are two musicians I found through the Stones Throw podcast, which I found by searching for other, similar music, online.  I highly recommend both, and most nearly anything Peanut Butter Wolf gets his hands on.

Songbook, I should clarify, is a book made up of thirty-one chapters, each with a single song as a starting point.  Some chapters barely mention the song named in it's title, as Hornby weaves a small story around each one.  It's a really neat idea, kind of like a mix tape (or CD, if you will), of his favourite songs, with the back story for each one included.

Overall, the book has reignited my desire for sonic pleasures, for seeking out both new music and revisiting the music of my past.  Two chapters in Songbook are dedicated to Teenage Fanclub, the band whose song, "Starsign", was the source for the name of my old band (the one with whom I toured Australia).  That in itself has launched me back into those awful, wonderful days of high school, post-high school fame, and band camaraderie.

Okay, that's enough for now.  Not much about the book, I know, but this blog is about my responses to the books I read, not just the content of the books.  I'll end with yet another plea for a recommendation for my next book.  Anyone?

-Bryan