Does Your Life Have A Soundtrack?

Mine does.

Songs from the seventies remind me of being a socially awkward kid in our California suburb--a fish-out-of-water (or country girl stuck in the city.) I hear The Hollies or Electric Light Orchestra or old Fleetwood Mac and think about my cool older sister (and her boyfriend), who always knew what to say and how to make people laugh.

Play Journey or Styxx or Kansas and I think about my teenage years, about my own boyfriends and the angst-ridden (and mistake-plagued) years between fifteen and nineteen.

There's a strange gap between nineteen and twenty-nine, almost as though my internal music stopped.
Could've been the drinking, I suppose. Or being married for the wrong reasons.

But at twenty-nine both of those situations changed, and I heard the music again: Alanis Morrissette, Melissa Etheridge, Jewel.

When I hear Natalie Merchant, I think about getting married again, and about holding my newborn babies and crying because I loved them so much it hurt.

In the mid-2000's, music became a symbol of my rebirth as a whole person, separate from my identity as a wife/mother/veterinarian. I picked up the guitar again after thirty years, gave myself the gift of once-weekly lessons, learned to sing (sort of), and even performed a few times.

I still play and sing (mostly for myself.) But one of my favorite things now is mining for odd or underplayed music that captures the mood of whatever story I'm writing. Right now I'm working on a mystery where San Diego homicide detective Samantha Benning is taunted by a serial rapist who claims to know what happened to Sam's missing sister. As you might guess, the tone is pretty dark.

Here's a partial playlist:

Pearl Jam--Indifference

Rolling Stones--Gimme Shelter  (Not exactly B-side, but great shit-hits-the-fan music)

Led Zeppelin--Kashmir 

Pearl Jam--Footsteps

Pearl Jam--Of the Girl

Bush--Machinehead

Grace Potter and The Nocturnals--Nothing But the Water (get ready to be blown away!)

I'm sure your life has a soundtrack, too. What's on your playlist?

-T

Book Review: Wolverine Bros. Freight and Storage

Wolverine Bros. Freight & Storage: A Conway Sax Mystery by Steve Ulfelder
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Conway Sax is a complex character, and this book shows him at his brutal best.

When his friend and fellow barnburner, Eudora Spoon, asks Conway Sax to go to California and rescue her son, he can't say no. The book opens with a scene worthy of Richard Stark's Parker series--and includes Sax hefting a buck-naked Kenny over his shoulder and walking out of a gang hideout.

This is the fourth book in the series, and in my opinion, the most straightforward, enjoyable read. The first, Purgatory Chasm, was a heartbreaker. But I like Sax better now that he's come to terms with his core failures as a human. He sucks at relationships, but he's great at breaking heads.

As with his previous books, this author's writing has a throwback feel reminiscent of the best Noir writers of the fifties and sixties. This character is old school; a retired race car driver and recovering alcoholic with a destructive streak.

I dare you to read the first page and stop. If you're like me, you'll look up four hours later and wonder what happened to your afternoon.

Cheers...and Happy Reading!

T.D. Hart


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