has there ever been a piece of fiction about being a working rock musician that was not completely embarassing?

because I haven't read one

even when the author writes passable lyrics, something about them being placed in the context of a novel makes me want to melt into a little puddle. i guess because lyrics work differently within music, but the lyrics of a fictional band can never really be put in that context

Maybe Lionel Shriver, Checker and The Derailleurs?

(I liked it when I was, jeez, twenty years old, so maybe that's not a recommendation you should trust.)

Lionel Shriver herself is such an embarrassment that I can't imagine anything she'd have to say on the subject of rock and/or roll would be even tolerable.

I didn't hate Joe Hill's Heart Shaped Box, though...

Lionel Shriver herself is such an embarrassment that I can't imagine anything she'd have to say on the subject of rock and/or roll would be even tolerable.

yes

Well, I haven't quite finished 'Utopia Avenue' yet, but it's not "completely embarrassing".

then you’re not gonna want to know what book inspired this thread

Ha!

I was gonna say 'Espedair Street' probably isn't totally embarrassing but it's been decades since I read it.

Does the film "The Green Room" count as a reading?

speaking of Joe Hill, the protagonist of Stephen King's Revival is a plausible bar band guitarist

it's been ages since I read DeLillo's Great Jones Street; I remember it as more weird than embarrassing

Probably not. I am pretty suspicious. Of course there have been several good non-fiction books on the topic. Black Monk Time or Nico: The End aka Nico, Songs They Never Play on the Radio to name two.

I don’t even like it when it isn’t the whole topic of the novel but just makes an appearance. There is just some temptation to romanticize that is always given into and the effect is that of a silent or stage actor who never figured out they had to behave differently for a sound film.

Paperback Writer about The Beatles, now that is good and not embarrassing, because it is funny and satirical.

Still out of print, probably belongs on $900 Grandmothers thread.

Clearly this is the only creative interpretation of the rock life that is accurate, to quote myself from Twitter earlier:

The things you learn. I have just discovered the existence of the not-at-all 'what the hell' title/concept of the 1982 TV cartoon _Meatballs and Spaghetti_, pitched as a cross between Meat Loaf and Sonny and Cher, apparently. pic.twitter.com/LXtwyNLlwy

— Ned Raggett (@NedRaggett) July 24, 2020

Lol

stared at that sample episode for quite a while struggling to determine if i'd ever seen that. pretty sure the answer is "no" but you never can be sure with garbage cartoons of that era. also really struggling to get used to the (seemingly randomly applied) laugh-track, even though i spent thousands of hours as a child watching cartoons with that ---- it just seems so so weird right now!

great thread question, btw. pretty sure the answer is 'no' now that you mention it.

but i'm assuming "fiction" to mean "print fiction" - feel like there are plenty of fiction movies which, if not getting everything 100% right, are not completely embarassing.

Yeah, I was thinking 'Espedair Street'

Thing is, the implication is that 'this is a successful band' and this is the lead singer/guitarist, usually.

1. It's never a band that are struggling or 'doing ok'
2. Nor is he (usually he) a drummer, and never the bassist.
3. More crucially, the cited lyrics are never any good.

I remember reading good reviews of a book by M. Osman from Suede about a fictional character being in a band.

Roddy Doyle’s ‘The Commitments’ is surely the exception to the rule. Caveat: it’s about 30 years since I read it.

Though I guess, it’s slightly different to what OP has in mind i.e. trying to break through and fail rather than day to day life of a jobbing muso.

The Exes by Pagan Kennedy.

A couple of embarrassing ones that I’ve enjoyed parts of a long time ago:

Jonathan Coe - The Dwarves of Death
Jerzy Kosinski - Pinball

Pamela Lu's Ambient Parking Lot?

Is the premise here that it's written from the perspective of a working rock musician? If so I'm not sure if I can think of any.

That would rule out, say, The Buddha of Suburbia, where rock bands feature prominently but the narrator is always looking on from the sidelines. Perhaps that works because of the distance that creates (although that doesn't save Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, which is probably the most embarrassing use of rock music in any major novel).

There are working musicians in White Tears by Hari Kunzru, which sidesteps a lot of the usual problems, but the characters are predominantly producers/archivists and perhaps not what we're talking about here.

Feel like there's probably a pulpy Elmore Leonard-style thriller that makes a decent fist of it but I can't say I've read one.

It’s not really the main focus of the plot, and it’s about a jazz musician, but Jackie Kay’s ‘Trumpet’ is great and I remember the music being written about pleasingly.

In remembering Jonathan Coe's 'Dwarves of Death' I seem to remember he dealt with the description of music quite well, but there is an excruciatingly bad and unnecessary extended comedy routine in middle of it about waiting for buses on a council estate in South London. I still shudder to recall it though I read the book more than 15 years ago.

(Checking Jonathan Coe's website he says:

The story grew out of my experience of playing in a band called The Peer Group during the mid-1980s. The band was formed in 1985, when I was still studying at Warwick University. Most of the other members, however, were medical students at Guy’s Hospital in South London, so that was where our rehearsals usually took place. We began by playing mainly my own compositions, which tended to be tuneful, jazzy instrumentals in the vein associated with Canterbury-school bands like Caravan and Hatfield and the North.

Consider that fair warning!

Again, with read ages ago caveat: Twelve Bar Blues, Patrick Neate.

I think Jonathan Lethem's You Don't Love Me Yet is not bad in this respect!

The best book I ever read about "being a working rock musician" insofar as astute observation was the YA book "Rockstar Superstar" by Blake Nelson.

It's clever-- it's about a high-school age bassist who is in a band called Mad Skillz and is drawn into an up-and-coming buzz band called Tiny Masters Of Today (the NYC band grabbed their name from this novel I think). The protagonist doesn't really 'get' what is happening, like, that his old band is square and his new band is buzz, it's a great book.

nell zink’s doxology isn’t entirely about this, but about a quarter of it is, and that’s a great book

I was also gonna suggest The Commitments until I re-read the OP to check. (Also based on reading it 30 years ago - but it's shorter to read than the movie is to watch, so you can't go too far wrong.)

http://justbackdated.blogspot.com/2020/07/utopia-avenue-by-david-mitchell.html

Which Ira Robbins had linked to. He is mentioned briefly in that review. The full review is his book is here: http://justbackdated.blogspot.com/2020/06/marc-bolan-killed-in-crash-by-ira.html

Lethem generally writes well about music I think.

Yes. HIs piece on James Brown was great.

from the synopsis for Powder by Kevin Sampson on Amazon : "Can any young pop group evade the pitfalls of fame, sex, drugs and all their inherent baggage? Will the Grams headline Glastonbury? And, crucially, can their guitarist achieve orgasm with a fully-limbed lover?"

Elizabeth Hand has a book about a rock band called Wylding Hall that I have yet to read. Usually I enjoy her stuff but like I said, I am mostly wary of such novels but maybe horror elements make it worth it.

Not about working rock musicians, rather jazzbo scenesters, but the Terry Southern short stories "The Night Bird Blew for Dr. Warner" and "You're Too Hip, Baby" are grebt.

Powder by Kevin Sampson

iirc I tapped out less than halfway through this

'Powder' is rubbish, as you'd probably expect and the absolute literary analogue to the ppl that come up in the '...swagger of Oasis' thread.

Luke Sutherland's first book I recall as being pretty great.

Isn't there a fairly recent book about some post-punk band from the outer suburbs of Glasgow in the 1980s?

xp It wasn't an endorsement, agree the book is entirely as awful as the blurb makes it sound

Oh yeah! Absolutely :)

In a way, most well-written musician biographies could fulfill this remit, some feel like fiction.

Has anyone mentioned Tom Perotta's first book, "The Wishbones?" "Dave Raymond, lead guitarist of New Jersey wedding band The Wishbones, dreams of rock fame. Unfortunately, the future of the band is in jeopardy. Then the Wishbones get a gig on a cable TV show fronted by a Nazi, and Dave's problems grow even more complex."

'Powder' is rubbish, as you'd probably expect and the absolute literary analogue to the ppl that come up in the '...swagger of Oasis' thread.

Luke Sutherland's first book I recall as being pretty great.

Isn't there a fairly recent book about some post-punk band from the outer suburbs of Glasgow in the 1980s?

I am a huge fan of Tom Perrota’s Bad Haircut, my friend and I and have been quoting it for decades including last night, maybe should try The Wishbones.

XP - Ah yeah, thanks! I should check that out once I'm done with Chris Frantz's book.

How are you liking that Chris Frantz book?

this is memorial device is kind of clever but how many dialect-soaked episodic multinarrator novels of 1980s scotland do we really need

again, utopia avenue is the book that inspired this thread, although it's a thought i've had many times before. i'm actually having fun reading utopia avenue but it's definitely based on a fantasy concept of being in a band than in any kind of reality.

don't get caught up in the wording of my question, i'm asking about any novel/short story that convincingly portrays what it's like to be a working musician, whether as a "rock star" or someone in a shitty bar band or anywhere in between

i was wondering if "the commitments" holds up. i liked it as a teen.

in my memory "great jones street" and "heart shaped box" are about rock stars but don't really talk much about the work or process of being a musician.

Pamela Lu's Ambient Parking Lot?

― with hidden noise, Friday, July 24, 2020 1:33 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is an amazing book, and Lu's other writing is also essential. Now I want to know who you are! Lu is kind of a cult figure.

In line with Lu's inheritance of New Narrative forms, I'd say that Dennis Cooper wrote some good stuff about being in a band. "Welcome to Horror Hospital" is a masterful story, one that I've taught a few times actually.

'a visit from the goon squad' maybe ?

XXXXXXXP - I'm right at the beginning, he's just been born :)

Goon Squad makes sense, though I never read it. my mother gave me a signed copy of it and i put it out on a curb because i was like "what is this shit" then read it on an airplane two years later lol

this is memorial device is kind of clever but how many dialect-soaked episodic multinarrator novels of 1980s scotland do we really need

I'm having trouble coming up with a fiction example (non-fiction, sure). Jonathan Lethem's 'You Don't Love Me Yet' and Arthur Philips 'The Song Is You' -- these two have become totally conflated in my mind, but I remember them both being embarrassing in similar ways (male muses for female musicians, songs are written instantly out of a passionate moment, etc). Richard Powers' 'Orfeo' is a good novel about music, but not about fictional musicians (it has fictional characters experiencing real pieces of music).

How many have you got?

feel like trainspotting fills that niche for better or worse

There are some decent jazz novels though. I thought Nathaniel Rich's 'King Zeno' was pretty decent (about a fictitious Buddy Bolden character), and I've heard Michael Ondaatje's Buddy Bolden book is good.

How much of Goon Squad is actually about the musician? I have a hard time remembering that book except for the PowerPoint chapter which I loved.

^same, I don't even remember a musician chapter

There are some decent jazz novels though. I thought Nathaniel Rich's 'King Zeno' was pretty decent (about a fictitious Buddy Bolden character), and I've heard Michael Ondaatje's Buddy Bolden book is good.

~this guy~

also jazz related: nathanial mackey's from a broken bottle traces of perfume still emanate sequence, tho it's not exactly a realist recounting of a musician's day to day.

coming through slaughter is powerful indeed, though it took me two reads to get the hang of ondaatje's prose style.

having mentioned Revival, I can't omit Larry Underwood, the one-hit wonder of "Baby Can You Dig Your Man" fame ... as a portrait of a working rock musician in the dystopian aftermath of a global pandemic, The Stand is embarrassing yet timely

Absolutely not having Goon Squad in here. I enjoyed it but the sections about music are easily the worst bits.

There was one recently that was getting plugged like crazy: Poppy something? I nearly went Poppy Nogood but that's summat else reilly..

Albert Goldman's Lennon biography-of-sorts may well count more as fiction, though it also elaborates on, maybe inflates some bits the subject himself volunteered long ago, like in the Playboy interview, where, among other things, he mentioned putting an old Liverpool acquaintance in the hospital for "calling me gay, " or words to that effect (I think in the book they met at a homecoming, after Lennon had spent some time on island holiday with Brian Epstein, and old acquaintance queried, "How was the honeymoon?") Also anecdotes about "actual" gay escapes, who knows---but also bits that I hope are actual, like Yoko and her Fluxus buddies in New York, way before she met John---an artistic colleague named George Macunias (spelling) was also a skilled handyman, and did repairs for his friends and neighbors on the fly, upsetting the normie building-super-landlord--Goodfellas--City-inspectors-on-the-take way--and thereby reminding me of De Niro's guerrilla repairs in Brazil. Goldman is a pretty good storyteller, however much of a bottom-feeder overall.

Also this, which I posted about on ILB's Samuel Delaney thread:

Delany's Heavenly Breakfast, which I took as a novel, but wiki sez, Heavenly Breakfast: An Essay on the Winter of Love is a 1979 memoir by author, professor, and critic Samuel R. Delany.[1] It details the time he spent living in a commune in New York City during the winter of 1967-1968,[2] although altering some details.[3]
Heavenly Breakfast was also the name of the rock band that lived in the commune, which consisted of Steve Wiseman, Susan Schweers, Bert Lee (later of the Central Park Sheiks)[4], and Delany.[5]

A fairly cosmic rock-jazz-folk-etc. way of life, often day to day ; some good bits about timing the echo from a waterfall or something for flute solos-as-duets---also duh lots of polydolly sexandrugs for heavenly breakfast.
Think I once saw listing of an LP by a group of this name, but dunno if same or maybe took their name from book.
A goodread, as I anciently recall.

I enjoyed the guy who might have been whispered about as "The Next Jandek!" in Goon Squad, and thought the finale starring him was pretty fine.

Also agree w favorable mention of Heart-Shaped Box, based on the first chapters, where the star is this middle-aged, maybe mid-level pro, fussing around the house while his assistant looks around online for investments, and cops something that he shouldn't have, safety-wise, from eBay, I think. Thinga are going to go to Hell or worse, but not via A Deal With Thee Devil or any of that old rock novel shit, it seems---also like that the star was raised on a farm and hated it, but never has been able to stop waking up at the crack of dawn, which is still a pisser and made for shitty times on tour, for sure.

Also liked the rock biz aspects of Great Jones Street, although that's where the icon (who has pretty good lyrics) is taking a break and becomes audience for several monologists, fave or which is based on William Borroughs and his character Doc Benway. OMG that gets to be one talky novel.

Haven't read it but the Louise Wener book here sounds like it might fit the criteria

https://www.villagevoice.com/2012/10/29/eight-musicians-whove-proved-themselves-damn-fine-authors/

Thanks Jordan, that reminds me of this: Diary of a POLL Star: what are your most/least favorite books by musos?

Kazuo Ishiguro's Nocturnes, despite classy title, is a collection of stories about knocking around in various corners of the music industry, mostly pretty grassroots. Characters can be funny, scruffy, slick, snide, sympathetic, troublesome.
In a similar vein, enjoyed screen version of The Commitments when it first came out, but still haven't read novel.

a visit from the goon squad is completely embarrassing

Also Anne Tyler's A Slipping Down Life, with lyrics that seemed like a rootsnik take-off on early REM--b-but then I saw that it was first published in 1970! So maybe it was Stipe's inspiration? Anyway sadfunnycomingofage, kept me reading.

Coming Through Slaughter I recall as short chapters, perfectly timed bursts and aftermath of imagery and action.

i read harlan ellison's "spider kiss" a long time ago because greil marcus recommended it. it's a roman a clef loosely based on jerry lee lewis. pretty readable, if i recall, tho you might need to have a heavy tolerance for ellison's writing to find it "good."

Wait, is there a Jennifer Egan book that involves someone (maybe someone's shut-in brother who killed himself?) having made an imaginary music career for themselves, like hand-making a whole discography and also writing the reviews etc? Was that Goon Squad, or maybe another author entirely? I remember reading this around 2011 - 2012.

Somewhere, maybe in a pre-Web mail order catalog, I once read about an artist, maybe in California, who designed covers and labels for silent records, even got them into stores (properly advertised, I assume). Later he maybe did some with music---not seeing any of this in a search just now.

It's possible that this is a specific issue with rock bands or maybe it just flags up how bad most writers are at other people's lives. Like maybe there are novels where the main character is the landscape gardener and all the real world landscape gardeners are like "this fucking guy".

Jordan and dow - https://www.mingeringmike.com/

That's the guy, thanks! Might be a thread about him.

this one:
RFI: Mingering Mike (DC Outsider Music/Art)

dow, Heavenly Breakfast is lovely, also has an amazing bit about looking at the spaces between the trees in a forest that is somehow wildly profound and not at all stupid.

Last year I read a mystery novel called Long and Faraway Gone that was very solid and well written EXCEPT it was set in OKC and there was a fairly prominent character who was painfully a stand-in for Wayne Coyne and his band’s name was I shit you not...The Barking Johnsons. Very tough to get past that.

I just finished _Freedom_ and the rock musician character is self-absorbed and hopeless.

So it’s realistic then?

(was gonna say)

Get ready.

Just when things were starting to look up. pic.twitter.com/MwZlpYtDdt

— Stephen Thomas Erlewine (@sterlewine) January 29, 2021

Tim Buckley was planning an album based on Joseph Conrad's Outcast of the Islands, but that's presumably not what's meant by a Rock Novel.

Not 'rock music' per se, but I ready this years ago and liked it:

https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1575280214l/49050072._SY475_.jpg