Song of the Day - The Last Goodbye by The Jeff Buckley Band
A critic recently went off on us for mentioning too many songs in our book. This was not an unexpected criticism. Going into writing the book, Seton and I talked a lot about how music back in '94 was so prevalent in our lives. We listened to it at parties, summer jobs, family cookouts, etc. We also listened to it as a coping device as we reflected on losing loved ones to tragedy and/or breakups. When you are young what is being played during that time period becomes a part of who you are (and were) because a song is indeed a time capsule holding that memory. As you age, not so much. Time for the classical...
For example, I recently heard "I Love Rock and Roll" by Joan Jett and The Blackhearts and I was instantly back in the sixth grade at the Morse Pond School on the playground. In my mind, I could see my friend Mike Gomes holding his "boom box" in the air while the song played. I also saw the class bully coming over to me and bloodying my nose (not for my lunch money because he stomped on my brown bag) just for the fun of it. Mike jumped down, ran over, and protected me - he was that kind of kid.
So when Seton and I talked about using music we wanted it to be an actual character in the book. We knew not everyone would know all of the songs and to us that was ok because when you read a book you go into the characters' lives. You become them. But we also thought wouldn't it be cool for the book to live on in the virtual world by having the back stories of each song. So if we briefly mention 20 or so songs in the book people could then go to our site and get twenty or more stories and also hear the songs themselves enhancing the experience. As far as we know, this is a new approach, but it is also a fresh one. With Ipads etc we will not be surprised if they'll soon be links to buying the song mentioned in the book you are reading. If it's not already being done.
The story of choosing The Last Goodbye by the Jeff Buckley Band is one of those "meant to be" moments. The character Dermot (who makes mixed tapes for everything) has decided no longer to make them (we don't want to spoil the book so we won't say why). Anyway, he is down Cape and decides to put on the radio. Well, talking with Seton we naturally thought of WKKL - the Cape Cod Community College station that always entertained us when we were downCape. Dermot needed a song he had never heard before since it wouldn't be on a mixed tape and it also had to be hauntingly beautiful. Seton and I couldn't think of anything and then it happened. I woke up in the middle of the night humming a song trying to remember what it was and then it came to me. The Last Goodbye by the Jeff Buckley Band. I immediately hopped out of bed and ran to my computer to search for when that song had come out. I knew it was the early to mid 90's but was it before '94? I googled it and couldn't believe it. It had been released in August of '94. The scene we were working on was the end of August of '94. Then I scanned down to see something that made me stare at the screen for a good ten minutes. Jeff Buckley had passed away a couple of years after the song was released. But it was not that he had died, but how he had died. It was the same way that our character Colin lost his two friends. I listened to the song and down to the guitar that sounded like a wailing gull, I knew it was a "meant to be" moment for the scene. I called Seton at 6 a.m. and played it for him and he was speechless.
"That's it, bro." was all he said.
So, again, the music in this book does not apply to the Beethoven crowd, but those are not the readers we are going after. If we were going after them we'd probably write about Beethoven. Just a thought. We want good readers who are willing to jump into the time period we created with our use of music. In the case of The Last Goodbye it's late August 1994 on Cape Cod in the middle of the night on a lonely highway known to Cape Codders as route 6.
Reading this on Facebook? Visit the original post to watch the videos.
-Ted
For example, I recently heard "I Love Rock and Roll" by Joan Jett and The Blackhearts and I was instantly back in the sixth grade at the Morse Pond School on the playground. In my mind, I could see my friend Mike Gomes holding his "boom box" in the air while the song played. I also saw the class bully coming over to me and bloodying my nose (not for my lunch money because he stomped on my brown bag) just for the fun of it. Mike jumped down, ran over, and protected me - he was that kind of kid.
So when Seton and I talked about using music we wanted it to be an actual character in the book. We knew not everyone would know all of the songs and to us that was ok because when you read a book you go into the characters' lives. You become them. But we also thought wouldn't it be cool for the book to live on in the virtual world by having the back stories of each song. So if we briefly mention 20 or so songs in the book people could then go to our site and get twenty or more stories and also hear the songs themselves enhancing the experience. As far as we know, this is a new approach, but it is also a fresh one. With Ipads etc we will not be surprised if they'll soon be links to buying the song mentioned in the book you are reading. If it's not already being done.
The story of choosing The Last Goodbye by the Jeff Buckley Band is one of those "meant to be" moments. The character Dermot (who makes mixed tapes for everything) has decided no longer to make them (we don't want to spoil the book so we won't say why). Anyway, he is down Cape and decides to put on the radio. Well, talking with Seton we naturally thought of WKKL - the Cape Cod Community College station that always entertained us when we were downCape. Dermot needed a song he had never heard before since it wouldn't be on a mixed tape and it also had to be hauntingly beautiful. Seton and I couldn't think of anything and then it happened. I woke up in the middle of the night humming a song trying to remember what it was and then it came to me. The Last Goodbye by the Jeff Buckley Band. I immediately hopped out of bed and ran to my computer to search for when that song had come out. I knew it was the early to mid 90's but was it before '94? I googled it and couldn't believe it. It had been released in August of '94. The scene we were working on was the end of August of '94. Then I scanned down to see something that made me stare at the screen for a good ten minutes. Jeff Buckley had passed away a couple of years after the song was released. But it was not that he had died, but how he had died. It was the same way that our character Colin lost his two friends. I listened to the song and down to the guitar that sounded like a wailing gull, I knew it was a "meant to be" moment for the scene. I called Seton at 6 a.m. and played it for him and he was speechless.
"That's it, bro." was all he said.
So, again, the music in this book does not apply to the Beethoven crowd, but those are not the readers we are going after. If we were going after them we'd probably write about Beethoven. Just a thought. We want good readers who are willing to jump into the time period we created with our use of music. In the case of The Last Goodbye it's late August 1994 on Cape Cod in the middle of the night on a lonely highway known to Cape Codders as route 6.
Reading this on Facebook? Visit the original post to watch the videos.
-Ted
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