5 on Friday - Set 90

Travis at Trav's Thoughts invites everyone to lay down a short set of music that takes their fancies for his 5 on Friday meme.

Susan @ West of Mars has been hosting Rocktober over at her blog, so for this week's 5 on Friday I'm taking part in the festivities.

Celebrate the collision of music and books however you see fit says the All-Access Pass on her blog. Susan invites us to share fiction, biographies or non-fiction that celebrates rock 'n roll in all its glory throughout the month of October. I'm sneaking in at the tail end, but the party's still in full swing. Let's rock!

Two of my dear blog buddies and writer friends have published stories set in the world of rock.


















Wylie Kinson's Law of Averages tells the story of British rocker Gabriel Law, known as the Dark Angel of Rock, who needs to reconnect with his missing songwriting spark and books a vacation spot in Bermuda to regroup.

For this week's first track, Jim Morrison from The Doors will stand in for Wylie's Dark Angel of Rock.

1 - Strange Days - The Doors



Megan Frost, worn-to-a-frazzle restaurateur - is already at the double-booked vacation home. When the Dark Angel realizes she doesn't know who he is, he's in no hurry to sort out the confusion.

I think if Gabriel dedicated a song to Megan on an upcoming tour, it would be this one:

2 - Little Wing - Sting



Wylie is giving away a free copy of Don't Ask, Never Tell, an anthology which includes Law of Averages to one lucky commenter.


















Hostess for Rocktober herself, Susan Helene Gottfried's Trevor's Song follows the story of a rock band whose sarcastic bass player finds it hard to weather the change in band dynamics when his lifelong friend and the band's lead singer builds a future with his lady love - especially when a secret Trevor keeps makes a friend's support even more prized.

Standing in for Trevor's bass playing in this next track is Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler.

3 - Supernaut - Black Sabbath



ShapeShifter front man Mitchell Voss is the rock god whose change in life path sets Trevor's equilibrium on edge. Standing in for Mitchell is Led Zeppelin's Uber Rock God Robert Plant.

4 - Communication Breakdown - Led Zeppelin



To finish out the set, here is my salute to Wylie and Susan and their fictional rockers.











5 - Paperback Writer - The Beatles

5 on Friday - Set 37 by Guest Blogger Susan Helene Gottfried

Travis at Trav's Thoughts invites everyone to lay down a short set of music that takes their fancies for his 5 on Friday meme.

Today I'm handing the microphone over to my good friend Susan Helene Gottfried here at A Piece of My Mind. Susan is one of those people I can't wait to meet in real life - we've been blog friends for several years now, and the idea of kicking back and swapping stories at a pub while we shout over the music appeals like nothing else.

Until then, gather round kids - let's find out what kind of music inspired Susan's fictional rock band ShapeShifter.

*passing mic to Susan*

~~~

Even though Julia claims the whole world knows who my fictional band, ShapeShifter, is and what they're like, I am not so sure. That's because I was having a conversation with a good friend the other night and she was surprised when I drew a comparison between lead singer/rhythm guitarist Mitchell Voss and someone very real.

So let me start this 5 on Friday post by giving you an idea of what ShapeShifter sounds like - to me. I do encourage everyone to create their own image of ShapeShifter, and to let it change and evolve as you read my books and blog and get to know the guys.

1 - Harvester of Sorrow - Metallica

First off is one of my all-time favorite songs, hands-down. It's Metallica. The song is from the ...And Justice For All album.

Harvester of Sorrow. Moscow show; the language is friendlier, the sound is rawer. Plus the charming scenes of the Moscow security not getting it.

What do I love about this song? The guitar sound. It's vintage, it's powerful. Yep, if ShapeShifter were real, they'd head in this musical direction.


Drink up, shoot in
Let the beatings begin
Distributor of pain
Your loss becomes my gain

Anger, misery
You'll suffer unto me

Harvester of sorrow
Language of the mad
Harvester of sorrow

- Hetfield / Ulrich



2 - Keep Away - Godsmack

Song #2 is easier. Sort of. It's Godsmack, and the song is Keep Away From Me. I'm not sure the song matters so much as the essence of Sully, the lead singer. He's sex personified - much as many of Mitchell's fans will tell you HE is.

This is how I often describe the band. Harvester of Sorrow meets Godsmack. In real life, I'm not sure it would work, but this is fiction.


Twisting everything around that you say, yeah
Smack me in my mouth
Two hundred times every other day
Oh, rag me, I don't hear you anymore, not yet
Find out what it means to me
I don't know who you are

Do like I told you
Stay away from me
Never misunderstand me
Keep away from me

- Salvatore Erna



3 - November Rain - Guns N' Roses

One of Trevor's most devoted fans - she convinces her friends to buy my books on a regular basis, in between nudging me for more from the man - says Guns n' Roses' November Rain makes her think of Trevor. It's a ballad, sung by tough-guy Axl Rose. Like Trevor himself, it's epic. And like Trevor himself, it's not what you'd expect from the guy.


Cause nothing lasts forever
And we both know hearts can change
And it's hard to hold a candle
In the cold November rain

Do you need some time on your own?
Do you need some time all alone?
Everybody needs some time on their own
Don't you know you need some time all alone

So never mind the darkness
We still can find a way
Cause nothing lasts forever
Even cold November rain

Don't you think that you need somebody?
Don't you think that you need someone?
Everybody needs somebody
You're not the only one

- Hudson / McKagan / Reed / Rose / Sorum / Stradlin



4 - Turn the Page - Metallica


Song #4 is an oldie but one of my all-time favorite songs. It has less to do with ShapeShifter directly and more with Trevor's Song. It's Bob Seger's Turn the Page, one of THE ultimate road dog songs of all time. This is a pretty recent version done by Metallica, who took an amazing song and elevated it to a level I'd never imagined.

This song fits because I'd originally wanted Trevor's Song to be a road dog book. Then, of course, Trevor took control and made it into what it is now - a better book.




Out there in the spotlight
You're a million miles away
Every ounce of energy
You try and give away
As the sweat pours out your body
Like the music that you play

Later in the evening
As you lie awake in bed
With the echoes of the amplifiers
Ringing in your head
You smoke the day's last cigarette
Remembering what she said

What she said

Yeah, and here I am
On the road again
There I am, up on that stage
Here I go playing star again
There I go, turn the page

- Bob Seger



5 - Prayer - Disturbed

It wasn't easy to think of a song that best describes Mitchell. He's very complex and some of his moodiness is entirely an act. I had to think of music that's deceptive. Powerful yet contained. Promising to blow free, yet at the same time, smooth and likable.

Who else but Disturbed fits that bill? David Draiman's voice is like honey, but his staccato delivery suggests there's something more going on underneath it all.

This song is called Prayer, and it's one of my all-time favorites from Disturbed. On the surface, it seems one thing but underneath, you'll feel the power and the contradictions and all the goodness, waiting to explode. It reminds me of Mitchell, complete with his moody passion.


Let me enlighten you
This is the way I pray
Living just isn't hard enough
Burn me alive inside
Living my life's not hard enough
Take everything away

Return to me
Turn to me
Leave me no one
Cast aside
You've made me turn away

- Donegan / Draiman / Kmak / Wengren

CLICK HERE to watch the video












~~~

Check out ShapeShifter's Musical Hanukkah Celebration over at Susan's contest page. During November and December, Susan will be donating 50% of her book sales to the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation. This program ensures music students at schools and community centres, as well as individual students, have actual instruments with which to practice.

Thursday Thirteen - 95 - 13 Reasons to Read ShapeShifter: The Demo Tapes Year 1 by Susan Helene Gottfried

Thursday Thirteen is back!!! Oh God, how I missed it! When the originators of the original Thursday Thirteen put it to bed due to a family illness for one of its creators, I felt its loss in my week like a gaping hole. I continued on with the basic format, renaming my posts Thursday Thoughts. I was just getting ready to put together my 8th version of Thursday Thoughts, when I discovered to my delirium of joy that Thursday Thirteen has been resurrected. Hallelujah!

And what timing, as I'm doing a book review for the incomparable Susan Helene Gottfried. I discovered Susan through Thursday Thirteen, so this is a real joy to be able to give you 13 Reasons to Read ShapeShifter: The Demo Tapes Year 1.

1 - ShapeShifter: The Demo Tapes Year 1 is a Lulu.com publication, under their Literature & Fiction category. This novella-length collection of episodic scenes introduces readers to the members of ShapeShifter, a metal band hailing from Riverview on the west coast of the United States.

2 - These scenes originally appeared on Susan's blog West of Mars between April 2006 and April 2007. She collected them into The Demo Tapes due to popular demand. Can't beat that!

3 - Susan's novel about ShapeShifter is called Trevor's Song, now being shopped to publishers. She began posting scenes about the characters in her novel to share their backstory with her blog readers. It didn't take long before Susan had her very own groupies, clamouring for more, more, more about Trevor and the boys.

4 - Trevor Wolff is by far the readers' favorite. He's the Very Bad Boy of Rock. The band's bass player has an acid sense of humor and a darkly attractive way with the ladies. Who can resist him? No one I have yet to meet...

5 - But Mitchell Voss is my personal favorite. He's the white-blonde, long-haired rock god - ShapeShifter's front man. He's also Trevor's best friend from childhood, a childhood that saw Mitchell pulling Trevor from the wreckage of his family and into the security of the Voss home. *swooning now*

6 - Daniel anchors the band from his drum set, as well as providing charm to the media when Bad Boy Trevor and Rock God Mitchell won't co-operate for the journalists. Eric plays lead guitar and lavishes long, thoughtful interviews on guitar magazine writers. They provide much-needed stability to balance the drama left in Trevor's and Mitchell's wakes.

7 - Susan's Demo Tapes begins at the very beginning, with a scene that brings Mitchell and Trevor together for the very first time. Mitchell thought he was just tagging along as an unwanted chaperone on his sister's date. Trevor thought he was checking out a new chick. Neither of them knew their lives would change that day in the lobby of the movie theatre. But a stadium-filling metal band was born the moment they met.

8 - Each scene works on its own as a brief snapshot from a larger work. The Demo Tapes delivers to readers what a real demo tape does for musicians. Susan shows us her chops. Her world of Riverview and ShapeShifter, the musicians, the road crew, the family relationships, the romantic entanglements - they're as real to me as the stubble on a tour bus morning. Having been a bass player's girlfriend myself, having done my share of lugging amp cords and gear into clubs, I recognize these guys every time I turn the next page.

9 - I really, really love Susan's dry humor. It shines best when she writes about Trevor.

"That didn't surprise Trevor in the least. He knew he was ugly. Trevor Wolff did not blame others for his own issues, thankyouverymuch. Not that being ugly was an issue; issues, you could fix somehow. Ugly, you were just stuck with."

10 - Susan creates truly distinct POV voices for her female and male characters. Trevor's world view is miles away from Kerri, the woman who wins Mitchell's heart from the adoring throng. She gives us Mitchell's middle class mom, dad and sister. We meet the early band groupies game enough to follow Trevor and Mitchell to a rather disreputable hotel. Then there's Val. She's Daniel's main squeeze, a talented chef who is picky about her ingredients, and a total bitch when she wants to be.

11 - The Thursday Thirteen format gave Susan a perfect platform to launch hilarious tidbits our way. Even if you'd never encountered a Thursday Thirteen before picking up The Demo Tapes, you'd assume a list of thirteen was dreamt up by ShapeShifter themselves, a la David Letterman's Top Ten.

This left me in tears of laughter, when I first read it on the blog, and again in The Demo Tapes:

"Thirteen Things Mitchell Used to Get the Green Out of His Hair

1. Lemon juice

2. Mountain Dew

3. Coffee

4. Milk

5. Tea (Might have worked better had they brewed it instead of rubbing wet tea bags on Mitchell's head.)

6. Toothpaste (Mitchell smelled minty fresh!)

7. Beer (Made it shiny.)

8. Honey

9. Mayonnaise

10. Mustard (What's one more condiment?)

11. Orange juice

12. Vodka

13. Corned Beef (This was Trevor's half-joking solution. At this point, Mitchell figured he had nothing to lose. Including, it turned out, the green.")

12 - Susan's backstory scenes cover an extensive range, from the boys' teenaged years just forming the band, through their 20's carving a place for themselves gig by gig, and into their prime as stadium rockers. The Demo Tapes gives us a little taste of every era. My personal favorite is their very beginning. Most likely because she's writing about my own high school years. And hits every target, every time.

13 - I leave you with an excerpt. Enjoy!

"The show tonight had been a disaster, there was no sugar-coating it. From the lead singer who fell off the stage and broke his guitar to the drummer putting a stick through the head of his snare and not having a backup handy to the lighting and the sound, there was only one good thing that could be said: not many people had been there. Patterson had counted about twenty, including himself and Sonya.

Trevor was, of course, grinning like the night had gone perfectly. For all that boy had been through, Trevor never stopped seeking the joy in life; it was that quality that Patterson had noticed the first time Amy had brought him home. It was that unfailing optimism that had led Patterson to take custody rather than let him face jail time.

Mitchell, though, was the opposite. Head down, shoulders slumped. It wasn't unreasonable to think that there'd be no more band come morning.

'Son,' Patterson said, trying to be gentle and not startle the boy.

It didn't work. Mitchell's head shot up and his eyes widened. 'Oh, hi, Dad,' he said when he recovered. He grimaced. 'You going to rub it in?'

'No,' Patterson said slowly, tilting his head at the empty spot on the bumper of his Bronco. As Mitchell sat, Patterson noticed Trevor hovering, just within earshot.

Well, Patterson figured, this would be good for Trevor to hear, too. 'Even if I could make it sound good, I wouldn't. You needed a night like this,' he said. 'You needed to know what it feels like to fall on your face.'

'What?' Mitchell half-rose to his feet, then caught himself, as if he was suddenly aware of who he was speaking to.

'You can't succeed without tasting failure,' Patterson said. 'If you never fail, you never get to find out what you're made of. So. What are you made of, Mitchell?'

Mitchell shook his head, his hair shaking and dancing, somehow as dejected as the boy.

Trevor tossed his own hair over his shoulder and lit a cigarette as he watched.

'Are you tough enough to suck tonight up, learn what you can, and move forward? Or is the band over now that you broke your guitar?'

'What am I supposed to play? You can't be a guitar player without a guitar.'

'True,' Patterson said. 'Is that the only problem?'

Mitchell cocked his head as he thought. 'I've been trying to save up for another one, but it's not doing so well. I had to dig into it to pay for the latest run of t-shirts.'

'Not taking your investment back out?'

Mitchell shook his head. 'I figured it was worth it. Didn't think this sort of thing would happen.'

'But it did, so where do you go from here?'

The boy grimaced. 'I figure out how to get a new guitar.'

'We'll steal you one if we need to,' Trevor said with a shrug. 'Sorry, Dad. You didn't hear that.'

'That's true. I didn't.' Patterson paused, noticing that Trevor had started to fade into the shadows.

Mitchell turned to Patterson. 'I want this.'

'This?'

'The band. A new guitar. Hell, a better guitar.'

'Fame, fortune, and all the rest?'

Mitchell grinned at his father. 'You betcha.'

'Then, son,' Patterson said, turning to him. 'You know what it's going to take to get there.'

'Yeah,' Mitchell said, wiping a hand over his face. 'A shitload of work.' He stood up and fumbled in his pocket. 'I'd better get busy. Trev, you ready?'

'To do what?' Trevor eyed Mitchell and looked ready to bolt. Patterson bit back a smile. Getting that particular boy to do anything he didn't want to was impossible.

'Go home and get some sleep,' Mitchell said, possibly the only thing that Trevor wouldn't rebel against just for the sake of rebelling. 'We need to find me a new guitar.'

Patterson held out his hand, palm up. 'I'll drive. You two can start plotting.'

With a grin that said it all, Mitchell handed over the keys."

- Susan Helene Gottfried, 2008

Poetry Train Monday - 37 - Gold That Burns

At the request of Susan, here is a bit of backstory for Guthrie Carmichael, the Scottish gamekeeper from my excerpt posted last week.




















Gold That Burns


At my birth, my father bid his love goodbye
She slipped away, my sister clutching to her breast
Five boys - poor Jean a wee thing and all
No girls to wash and peel and mend
Five boys too young to work. Too young
To stop the men with fists who took him off

I pulled upon her hand yet on we trudged
She knew our father's cough would never heal
The damp, the rot, the gaol's stone walls
Took on the spectre of his hollowed gaze
My sister raised us all with his firm hand
With mother's gentle kiss, and so we thrived

While Jean seemed yet a girl, so slight, so worn
No suitor, only brothers grown and safe, in service all
Though it would hurt her to the quick to know
Her dearest Guthrie poached from the estate
Putting guineas by to sail from these cruel shores
Determined that I be the man my father dare not dream

Risking stone gaol and iron door with every snare
Am I seeking life and fortune with my plan?
Or do I run from father's dying grasp, gaining no ground
Seeing only Jean's trusting gaze each time I
Lift the false shelf to hide the gold that burns


Copyright - Julia Smith - 2008