Gulch

A Book Review of Sorts: A Rock n’ Roll History of Helena, MT

Part I

Yeowz! Clank! Bang and Twang Baby! That’s how I always thought my first Rock n’ Roll essay would start. But it doesn’t, baby, no it doesn’t. So, quiet on down and hunker in close ‘cause this story doesn’t start with on-stage explosions of light and your spine being caressed by that electric devil. You know the one – he’s conjured by that infernal instrument of hell itself, the gee-tar. No, baby, my story of rock n’ roll starts with gray clouds and murky puddles lying on the sidewalks, all content like, knowing they ain’t gonna dry up that day.

So hunker down and listen. . .

Jen and I had been hanging out in downtown Portland on one of the first non-rainy days in weeks. We had just moved there that fall and we were still getting to know the town. Walking through Pioneer Courthouse Square, we paused to watch the spectacle of a hundred tuba players belting out Christmas songs, apparently an annual tradition. After watching for a minute or two, I decided that the players with shiny brass tubas were much cooler than those blowing on the ends of the plastic-looking white ones.

With the universe thus in place, we continued our stroll. We were walking across the square towards the river when two tall guys walking towards us smiled. A not-so-instant recognition program fired off in my brain. It was Colin and Mark, two guys with whom I went to high school and hadn’t really seen since graduation five years before.

“Hey, it’s Will,” Mark said, the quick grin that I remembered crossing his face.

They stopped and I introduced Jen. We paused on the sidewalk and made the sort of awkward small talk that happens when you run into a person that you genuinely like, but haven’t seen in a long time.

Even though Helena, our home town, is the fifth biggest city in the state of Montana, it is psychologically and geographically a small place. This probably appealed to our parents but felt confining at one time or another to everyone who grew up there. Although I was never great friends with Colin or Mark, we had friends in common and our social passports would let us hang out in the same cliques and crowds occasionally. Helena wasn’t big enough to not know even your casual acquaintances pretty well.

Both of them looked the same. Mark is a tall blond guy with a boyish face that radiates warmth. Colin, who has dark hair and an endless supply of cool eyeglasses, was friendly yet quiet, introspective in a way that can make him seem aloof. I knew him better than Mark, we had ended up being in a lot of the same classes our senior year and we would talk occasionally about books and music. Mark was living in Missoula and was visiting Colin, who had also moved to Portland.

“What are you up to here?” I asked Colin.

“Oh, well, I’m playing some music and I make pizzas. I have a show coming up soon. You guys should come see it,” he said. “It’s at the Satyricon.” I said I’d like that and Jen and I headed towards the river and they headed towards the Square.

***
On a whim this week, I picked up a copy of Colin’s book, Let It Be. Since I ran into him and Mark in Portland six year ago, Colin went from playing solo shows to forming The Decemberists, a band that plays what was called college rock when we were growing up. The Decemberists are successful enough that they have a good following and and tour in places that were only seen in dreams and on television when we were kids in Helena.

Let It Be is part of Continuum Publishing's 33 1/3 book series written by musicians about albums that inspired them. It’s the sort of stuff that's written for fans and die hard music addicts like the characters from High Fidelity. Colin’s book is, theoretically, about the Replacements album of the same name. In reality, though, it is half autobiography and half rock and roll tour of his childhood in Helena. In it Colin describes his experimentation with alternative, college, punk, and modern music while growing up in a city where most people thought the Eagle’s Desperado was as good as it got.

Reading the book was half trip down memory lane and half introduction to a bizarro musical universe that took place in a city just like my own. The book opens with a story of a young Colin and Mark walking down to the mall to buy the Replacements tape. I knew the store well where they bought it, Pegasus Music, but I doubt that I ever looked at the same racks.

There is something both startling and fun about reading a book where I know 95% of the people in it (most names haven’t been changed) and yet, when Colin talks about music, my memory barely recognizes anything. When he was buying that Replacements tape at Pegasus Music, I was probably there the next week getting an AC/DC album. When he was listening to dubbed tapes of the Sex Pistols, I was hitting “record” on the old duel deck Sony boom box to make an illicit copy of my friend’s NWA tape. I thought that the musical world Colin writes about discovering in Let It Be didn’t exist in my Helena and it’s surprising to read that it did.

It’s not that I didn’t have any musical taste growing up. Well, not entirely. Helena really was a black hole when it came to new or alternative music – somehow the physical laws governing pop culture would cause it to bend and shoot around Helena leaving us empty and dark. Missoula to the west might have good concerts and Bozeman to the east had a college radio station, but we were trapped in a dark void. Sure, we had two pop radio stations, which was a lot for Montana, but even those didn’t seem to be on the mailing list for current, edgy stuff or music written in the last twelve months. If you didn’t have an out of state lifeline – such as a friend or a relative like the uncle that Colin describes – then you better have friends with taste. I didn’t.

Things slowly got better – the cable company finally picked up MTV and my brother went off to college in California. He would bring his new cd’s and mixed tapes home in the summer. One night, when I was in high school, I was cruising drag in my white station wagon with a group of friends when I pushed my new tape into the player. They Might Be Giants’ Flood came crackling loudly out of the stock Toyota speakers.

“Jesus Christ, what the hell is that?” One friend demand.

“Turn it off before someone hears it,” another guy chimed in from the back seat.

It was summer and our windows were rolled down. We were parked at a red light and hoping that a car full of girls might pull up in the lane next to us. Just then, a car came driving up and everyone in the back seat ducked their heads down.

I sighed and popped it out.

***

In the book, Colin describes going to see the Nylons when they came to town. I'm sad to say that I missed this spandex filled acapella show. The first real concert I went to – one where I liked the music and my parents hadn’t dragged me there – was at the Myrna Loy for Colin’s early band, Happy Cactus. I had a crush on a girl that was in the same theater crowd as Colin. Before the show, I practiced smiling at her in the mirror and tried to think of witty things to say. When I got to the concert, though, she only had eyes for Colin. She would stare at him in a way that I didn’t really understand but that I didn’t like either. I, of course, wanted to be stared at that same way. Every guy who has ever been to a concert feels this way but when it’s a friend of yours up on that stage, and it’s his first concert, you can almost feel the hot fingers of possibility brush against you as it passes by.

Colin sang about the escapist dream of being a mechanic in Seattle and about the evil that comes when you don’t enjoy life. “Mussolini never ate ice cream,” he sang to the dancing crowd below him. Happy Cactus filled and rocked the small auditorium and changed the way I experienced music. Instead of being perfect yet synthetic out of my little stereo speakers, it was raw and organic and you could watch the musicians work at it. They generated energy and fed off the crowds’ enthusiasm and I thought I could actually see the notes come together and form the songs. It was, simply, my first live local concert and it was great.

In the introduction to an REM cover that they played about half way through the show, Colin jokingly remarked that Michael Stipe had written the song before he sold out. I shook my head, somewhat annoyed. I had just started getting into REM, and here Colin was, already walking away from them. Of course, it was always like that with Colin. By the time I discovered a band, he was already on to something else. And after reading Let It Be, I understand why.

You can download a few mp3's of the Decemberists, courtesy of their label Kill Rock Stars, here.

The Artist Explains Himself

Tonight I find myself sweltering in the front row of a crowded church. People sit on the sides and in the balcony and spill out into the lobby. Their attention is riveted on the man behind the podium. He is well dressed, intelligent looking, and full of energy. The crowd is silent as he tells a bleak story about humanity and the lowest of carnal sins. And then, in response to a question from the audience, he explains that when he went to church as a boy, his parents would use that time when he and his sisters were out to have sex in other rooms of their house.

I am not, of course, at a religious service. Instead, I have come to the First Unitarian Church to hear the author Chuck Palahniuk give a reading from his new book. Powell's City of Books, which is hosting the reading, uses the church when the audience will be larger than what they can handle in their store.

One of the great things about Portland is the fact that it is usually a major stop on any author tour. Thanks to Powell's, a host of other independent bookstores, and a fairly literate population, most authors who are out promoting a new book will stop here. I tend to be a word junkie and in the five years that I've lived in Portland, I've heard virtually every currently-publishing author that I read, from Dave Eggers to Douglas Coupland, give a talk.

Across the art world there are very few events like an author reading. It is not too often when the general, scruffy public is let into a room and allowed to question an artist. In fact, there are very few public events where an artist has to get up and talk about his art and life in front of a large crowd. A book reading can be a fascinating glimpse into the world behind the words.

Readings usually follow a set pattern. The author gives a short introduction, then he or she reads from whatever book they are promoting, and then they take questions from the audience. The session then breaks up, a line forms, and the author autographs books until the wee hours of the night. The whole thing, minus the signing, lasts anywhere from one to two hours. These events are usually free and there is never any pressure to actually buy the new book.

Tonight's reading is one of the very best that I have attended. Palahniuk, who lives in Portland, starts off the night by explaining that it is the first time in five years that he has done one of these without taking a Zoloft. His nervousness is visible in a fidgeting leg but he soon grows comfortable. Palahniuk is most famous for the novel Fight Club and his books often have a dark edge, his characters are people on the fringe of society who are in the process of falling off the edge.

One of the things I like about readings is having the chance to see what an author sounds and looks like. Reading a book is like spending time in someone's mind. There is often only a two inch picture and single paragraph biography on the book's jacket to let us know whose mind we are visiting. Palahniuk, to my surprise, looks like a writer. Some of the writers, especially those who tend to attract a cult following, present themselves like rock stars. Palahniuk is wearing khaki pants, a tucked in dress shirt, and wears metal-framed glasses. He comes across as confident and, well, professor-ish. He talks, as most of the bests writers do, how he writes.

Instead of reading from his current book, he reads from a work in progress – a chapter from large novel whose first draft he has just mailed to his editor. He gives the audience a good feast by reading for a full 19 pages, which is much longer than most authors dare. He is a dark writer and his subject matter is a profane and bleak world that I can hope only exists in fiction but which depresses me to think that it probably doesn't. He calls his selection tonight “the darkest thing I'll ever read” and is somewhat surprised when more people in the audience don't confess to crying while he reads. He gives out stuffed animals to the few who do.

One criticism I have of Palahniuk is that I often think he tries to be shocking just to get noticed and, well, for the sake of being shocking. His reading tonight doesn't really shock me on a fundamental level (it is pretty screwed up though) and I find it sad that I can't remember when the last time I read something that, well, freaked me out. Maybe when I read the Exorcist in the 6th grade, I guess. Palahniuk, though, is an expert craftsman and wordsmith and his prose can border on poetry. I find he is at his best when he is explaining real things - how to make soap, what happens at a santa rampage. My favorite book of his (and I've not read them all) is Fugitives and Refugees.

Another great thing about author readings is the chance to see who shows up for these things. While there are always people from every part of society at readings, specific authors attract specific crowds. The crowd at Palahniuk's reading, unsurprisingly, tends toward the black-clothed, red-haired counter-culture set and, surprisingly, to the high school crowd.

The question and answer period that comes after the reading is both fascinating and awkard. Questions at readingstend to fall into set categories. I'm amazed that for the number of readings I've attended, I've heard very few original questions. One category always concerns what the author thought about the movie based on his book. I hate this category as it takes up a lot of time. Authors never seem to be part of the movie making process and never have much information to share. I tend to be a movie junkie also, but I think people's obsession about the 'movie version' when they are at a book readings is disappointing. However, I find it interesting to learn that Palahniuk is in discussions to turn Fight Club into a Broadway musical.

My favorite category of questions is about the technicalities of writing. Questions in this category usually include "from where do you get your ideas?", "what is your process for writing?" and "what authors do you read?" Here the author usually talks a bit about his motivation and actually shares a bit of how he approaches his craft. Many authors set a specific time period every day when they write. Palahniuk, on the other hand, only writes when he has a good idea and he discloses that a lot of his ideas come from random conversations with strangers that he meets on planes.

The last last question category is one of expertise and naivety. Usually asked by younger audience members, the questions are “how do I get published?” and “I'm also a writer, though unpublished, and I have X theory about your books, what do you think?" People shift uncomfortably in their chairs when these types of questions are asked. Although they annoy me also, it's just natural – people want advice from the people they admire and the great thing about readings is that they get to ask for it.

Palahniuk gives out giant, fabric flowers to everyone who asks a question. Their bright colors offset the dark humor of his writing and his answers. When someone asks him why he writes, Palahniuk explains “I write to entertain myself” and I think this is the best and, perhaps, most true answer an author can give.

***
Powell's calendar of future events and readings can be found here.

Mental Snacks

Since coming to Mexico, I have read a fair number of books (it's amazing what a lot of time on buses and beaches will do for your literary habits).  Jen and I have been fortunate to trade our beat-up paperbacks for other dog-eared volumes at the hostels on our route.  I think it says something about who is traveling here that most of the English books we pick out (amongst the German, French, and Spanish ones) are from British publishers.

Here then is what I've been feeding my mind (in order read):

• Prince of Doom by Dan.  This unpublished manuscript by my freshman roommate and good friend will soon be available in hardback form at all fine bookstores (and you can get a free copy when you buy $50 worth of toner at Staples.)


• American Gods by Neil Gaimen.  A story of old (and perhaps tired) gods in the new world.


• High Fidelity by Nick Hornby.  This book, which I've read before, catches the male voice quite well.  It is, of course, much better than the movie.


• Jane Eyre by Charolette Bronte.  A coming of age and early feminist tale that I should have read long before I took my English GRE's I suppose. I enjoyed it more than I ever thought I would.


• Tehanu by Ursulla K LeGuin.  A part of the Earthsea Cycle.  I read the first book (A Wizard of Earthsea) for a high school English class (which might explain why I never got around to Jane Eyre).


• Trouble Is My Business by Raymond Chandler.  Hardboiled detective fiction from the master of hardboiled.  Men with fedoras and dangerous dames populate this book of short stories.


• Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.  An end of the world satire with Ice-9 and crazy religions.


• A Canticle for Lebowitz by Walter Miller; Also an end of the world story.


• The Fourth Hand by John Irving.  A whimsical story of a newscaster who gets a hand transplant and what happens when the wife of the donor requests visitation rights.


• Reefer Madness by Eric Schlosser.  The author of Fast Food Nation takes on the US shadow economy by exploring the economics of pot, illegal immigrants, and porn as commodities.  Highly interesting and highly recommended.


• Memoir of a Geisha by Arthur Golden.  I found myself comparing this book in my head to Jane Eyre.  I feel like I learned a lot from this novel.

Recommendation

I just finished the book Fugitives and Refugees: a Walk in Portland, Oregon by Fight Club author Chuck Palahnuik. It is a gritty guide and counter-culture history book (and author memoir) about Portland. It contains so many cool facts and new things to do that I wish I had read the slim volume months before I left town. If you live in Portland, you should really read this book.

Things I've Been Reading

• The literary equivalent of a 42-hour Grayhound bus ride. Which, I guess, is the point.


• Learning about my Neighborhood


• Be Prepared!


• If this book was an old god, it would have wear black sunglasses. Or have a long, white beard. Or something.


• The Description on the Back Said it was Cooler than Zero but it's Much Better Than That


• Not Unlike My Own Journal


• One of the Characters is a Sheep Man. This is a Good Thing.


• I Suggest a New Title: Slow Paced Book of the Long Winded


• It makes me want to spend time in a well. You know, in a good way.


• More Eros than Mortality, which is fine by me.


• I like the pictures more than the words.


• Two of My Favorite Things


• Any book that has the phrase "sipping espresso as thick as the devil's sweat" is a good book by me


• Too Much Politics, Not Enough Monsters


• Floating Cities, Monsters, and Pirates - What Every Book Should Be About


• The Gentle Solidifcation of the World


• It's Not So Much Perdido as It Is Decayendo


• Realizing after a dozen pages or so that the title has nothing to do with the Anasazi


• Reinforcing my stereotypes about state fairs and cruise ships


• Booking My Ticket to Macondo


• Wishing They Said "Yargh!" A Bit More


• Don't Panic!


• Wishing (the book) was more factual and less factualistic.


• As close to a cookbook as I'll probably ever get


• Mojo. Mucho Mojo.


• Tip 41 - Since most people love themselves, if you can be more like other people then it stands to reason you'll be more popular. Tip 58 - Looking up makes you seem more attractive. Tip 28 - One way to stay awake at dinner parties is to talk about yourself. Tip 32 - If the dog barks every time you open the oven it's time to clean it.


• Colin Meloy’s Rock n’ Roll History of Helena, MT


• Little square boxes of self-important angst


• Ah, so that's the difference between the IMF and WTO.


• Now that's an adventure. Of course, when your name's THOR you can't just work in a cubicle
  


• Into the wilderness of violence, fundamentalism, and faith in the American West
  


• Lots of Mental Snacks
  


• It wasn't so much impossible as it was sad and sort of self absorbed
  


• Not nearly as much about Isaac Newton's sex life as I would have figured


• Now that's a travel tale