Showing posts with label rock n roll. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rock n roll. Show all posts

Saturday, March 12, 2022

Thoughts and Inspiration from Dave Grohl’s The Storyteller

by

Scott D. Parker

The urge came out of nowhere. Somehow, last year, I had the overwhelming desire to buy the new Foo Fighters album, Medicine at Midnight. That was odd considering I’d never purchased any of their albums up to that time. Heck, I knew only a handful of their songs and one main video, but buy the record I did and it became my favorite album of the year.

So when Dave Grohl, the founder and front man of the band, published his memoirs, The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music, in the fall of 2021, I was primed and ready for it.

But I wasn’t ready for what it did to me.

A Parallel Life


With my newfound interest in all things Foo and Grohl, I learned Dave was only five weeks younger than I was. Back in 1991, when Nirvana released their seminal album “Nevermind” and set a dividing line in the history of rock music—there was a Before Nevermind and an After Nevermind—I probably knew that the trio were my age, but it didn’t register. Bands who made records I could buy were always older than me, right? Turns out, Dave was the youngest. He was like the younger brother of one of the two other guys in the band, brought along on account of his ferocious drumming style. I think we all know that Dave was at the right place at the right time, just before Nirvana blew away the general public with their sound.

But Dave was already a veteran of that scene. He had been intoxicated with the punk rock sound of Washington DC even though he was a suburban kid from Virginia. Even without a proper drum kit (he used pillows), the music flowed through him and he practiced and practiced the drums and well as strumming and picking out songs on his guitar.

Good fortune, luck, whatever you want to call it arrived one day when Dave, the seventeen-year-old struggling high school student, was given the chance to audition for the punk rock band Scream. He nailed the audition and, when invited to join the band, lead singer Peter Stahl finally thought to ask the young man his age. Naturally, Dave lied. “Twenty-one.” Peter and the other members of Virginia-based Scream accepted Dave’s word and Scream had a new drummer.

But Dave had one crucial thing to do, and even as I listened to Dave recount the story via the audiobook, fully knowing how it would turn out, it was a tense moment. Dave had to talk with his mother, a public school teacher, and convince her to let him drop out of school and tour with the band. Her words were surprising: “You’d better be good.”

As a listener to Dave’s journey, I found myself joining in his long days of traveling the country in a van, stretching out pennies per day on food, sleeping like sardines in said van, only to explode for an hour a day on stage. As a parent myself, however, I found Virginia Grohl’s faith in her son heart-warming yet also inspirational. The main job of a parent is to raise our children to be good, functioning, adults capable of holding down a job and making it on their own. She must have recognized that Dave was not going to be a typical nine-to-five kind of person and let him go. Even though my son is now twenty, I think back to when he was seventeen and ask myself if I could have let him go.

Turning it back on myself, however, I thought back to when I was seventeen. I was a junior in high school, just like Dave was. Could I have left the comfort of my suburban Houston home to tour with a rock band? Would my parents have let me? The answer to both is no.

That Guy From Nirvana


The four-year stretch when Dave toured America and Europe with Scream on less than a shoe-string budget helped forge his character into what he would become. His frugality he learned from his single mother, who raised Dave and his sister via her public school job and other jobs she took to make ends meet. He learned to make do with less and be happy about it. I found it telling that when he received his first check after joining Nirvana—an astounding-for-him $400—he blew it on a Nintendo and other assorted things he didn’t really need. Soon, he was back to scraping by, barely choking down the three-for-a-dollar corn dogs from a gas station. Still, he learned his lesson.

It’s common knowledge that Dave auditioned for Nirvana at a time when Scream was a slowly sinking ship. He joined the band with Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic and set to work on Nirvana’s sophomore album, Nevermind. It was great to hear Dave’s thoughts and memories about Kurt, especially how unprepared the trio was for the instant international fame they garnered with that fall 1991 album and, most importantly, the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video. Soon, the very people who poked fun of Dave in high school were now attending Nirvana shows. The alternative, punk rock mentality in which Dave and Kurt and Krist thrived was being co-opted by the mainstream. Dave struggled with it, but he managed to get through the deluge while Kurt did not.

I made the choice to listen to this book because Dave narrates his own story, and it is exactly the way to consume this book. You get Dave’s snide tonal shifts depending on if he’s talking about a funny memory, but you can also hear his somber voice as he talks about how Kurt’s death affected him. In interviews about this book, Dave mentioned he wrote the passages about Kurt last. I wonder if he recorded them last as well.

The Indie Spirit of Foo Fighters


In the immediate aftermath of Kurt’s death, Dave left music. He didn’t even listen to the radio. The very thing that pumped in his veins, that compelled him to become a high-school dropout was now the same thing he couldn’t endure. He wanted to distance himself from Nirvana, from Kurt, and, as he came to realize, from himself. After nearly picking up a hitchhiker in Ireland—the young man was wearing a Kurt Cobain t-shirt, the sight of which caused Dave to duck his head and pass by—Dave knew he must return to music.

As an indie author, I enjoy performing all aspects of writing and publishing myself. True, some tasks are more mundane than others, but that is the price I’m willing to pay. I knew about Foo Fighters back in 1995 but never bought the debut record. What I truly never understood, however, was that, save for a single guitar part in one song, Dave wrote and performed every bit of that twelve-song debut. And he did it all in six days in the studio. That astounded me, but what I really latched onto was how that creativity in the wake of Kurt Cobain’s suicide was Dave’s road out of his depression.

You see, I’ve been struggling with my own career as a writer, wondering if it is all worth it or if I should just hang it up. Why bother, I’d tell myself. No one cares if I write or don’t. In fact, those thoughts have so permeated my thinking that I actually have stopped. It’s been a month since I last wrote new words on anything other than blog posts.

But I have spent countless words on examining myself, and in this time of re-examining what kind of fiction writing career I want, I listened to Dave’s book. I hear him talk about his own struggles, his own doubts and fears, how he, even to this day, still struggles and wonders if he’s good enough.

Dave is a wonderful storyteller, weaving in and out of various tales from the road. All are remarkable and all had me questioning myself and my creative life choices. Late in the book, he described the feeling of being invited to perform—solo—at the Oscars. And it was the Beatles’ “Blackbird.” So, no pressure, right? He was scared, so scared that he nearly declined. But he and his daughter, Violet, had recently performed the song at her school talent show and she encouraged him to do the song. You see, she was scared to perform but she overcame her fears and knocked it out of the park. The child served as inspiration for the father.

In concluding this story, Dave wrote the following:

"Courage is the defining factor in the life of any artist. The courage to bare your innermost feelings, to reveal your true voice, or to stand in front of an audience and lay it all out there for the world to see. The emotional vulnerability that is often necessary to summon a great song can also work against you when you’re sharing your song for the world to hear. This is the paralyzing conflict of any sensitive artist, a feeling I’ve experienced with every lyric I’ve sung to someone other than myself. Will they like it? Am I good enough? It is the courage to be yourself that bridges those opposing emotions, and when it does, magic can happen."

Dave’s book arrived at the perfect time in my life and the inspirational journey he went on and continues to undertake hit me in the exact place I needed it: my creative spirit. It needed a jolt to get me out of the doldrums. My spirit needed to come around and be reminded that every single creative person—whether an indie writer, a rock star, or anyone in between—has moments of doubt. But if we just keep going and keep making our art, magic can happen.

It is remarkable to get an inside look at an established and famous rock star who is my age. The bass player, Nate Mendel, is four days older than me so I should have been a Foo Fighters fans from the jump. But I wasn’t. Instead, it took me twenty-seven years to come around.

Now, I’m there and not only am I on YouTube watching tons of videos but I’m rummaging through my wife’s CD collection and pulling every Foo Fighters album she has. The music is fantastic, but Dave Grohl’s message is even better.

Sunday, November 10, 2019

A Rock Drummer Amateur PI, by Jonathan Brown


One of the best things about a crime fiction convention is all the people you meet. This happens in the hallways and book signing lines and most definitely at the bar. Last week in Dallas, I ran into Shawn Reilly Simmons (who I met at a previous convention, natch), and she introduced me to Jonathan Brown. His debut novel came out on Monday. All he had to say was "rock drummer" and "amateur PI," and I was asking if he'd come over to Do Some Damage and tell us more. Take it away, Jonathan . . .
When I busted out of the doors of the Musician’s Institute of Technology in Hollywood I jumped into the music scene as a drummer for hire. I took any gig that would pay me 50 bucks—but it was usually considerably less than that. While mowing down shows and carving up LA’s musical landscape I took notes—actual notes—journal style.
I met characters rich with every personality trait in the rainbow, of every ethnicity and all levels of ego, from the painfully shy to the diva-for-no-damn-reason. As I laid down groove upon groove I clocked every move. I spied every tic, heard every spoken word and observed all mannerisms. If I were on the FBI’s radar at the time the Profiler Division would have considered recruiting me.
As I moved from one crappy apartment to another I took my notes with me and eventually came up with a protagonist: Lou Crasher. The “Crash” in Crasher is a nod to cymbals crashing—yeah, I’m clever like that.
When my editor read an early version of The Big Crescendo she told me I had way too many characters. I didn’t disagree with her. “But there were so many people in the bars, streets, pawnshops and liquor stores in those days,” I told her. She said that although the characters have great depth and description and come across very real most of them are “drive by” characters. She was correct yet again. I over-wrote those cats because I’ve always paid attention to the “drive bys” as well as the main cats holding down the conversation. Alas, they didn’t move my story along so I had to clip ’em. I shed no tears over those peripheral players because the story is the boss, not me.
So who is Lou? Lou is a good natured, cocktail swilling, wisecracking rock drummer turned amateur PI who far too often finds his neck beneath the bad guy’s boot heel. But Crasher won’t lie down for anybody, so while removing said boot from said neck he ultimately solves crimes. Well, for the most part anyway, which is why the word “amateur” precedes P.I. In addition to fighting crime he somehow manages to make it to his gigs on time.
While getting to know Lou he’ll take you on a rock n roll ride through the L.A. music scene; he’ll chase a dame who may not be what she seems, he’ll attempt to bust up an underground musical gear theft ring, which, unfortunately dumps him into the seedy drug world. Oh, and a heavyweight coke snorting music producer will dispatch Lou to find a vintage snare drum that may or may not have belonged to the late great Frederick Douglas. If Lou’s wisecracking doesn’t get his head split open and if he can keep his cocktails under control he might just win this thing.
The Big Crescendo dropped November 4. Word on the street is the printer is running low on toner and the books are flying off the shelves. Get it while the gettin’s hot. You don’t want to be without a chair when the music stops. The follow up Don’t Shoot The Drummer is perilously close to being done and will be spread to the masses at the end of 2020 on Down and Out Books. Ya oughtta snag that one too!

Jonathan began taking fiction writing seriously in 2010. A handful of his short stories are in Shotgun Honey Online magazine. In 2018 Brown released a noir novella titled: Moose’s Law…A Doug ‘Moose’ McCrae Story. Moose fans are demanding this be a series and knowing Brown, he’ll deliver. He’s narrated the audiobook (his first) and that will join his print book on Amazon in December 2019. Brown also wrote A Boxing Trainer’s Journey…A Novel Based On the Life of Angelo Dundee for Mentoris Books. Kirkus Reviews called it, “A journalistically rigorous depiction of both Angelo Dundee and boxing.” Mentoris has since commissioned Brown to narrate the audiobook for Dundee as well as write a novel based on the life of Vince Lombardi. Find out more at www.jonathanbrownwriter.com.
In addition to teaching drums and writing Jonathan works as a personal trainer. And although he has never laced up the gloves in a serious way like his idol Muhammad Ali, he does have a background in Hapkido karate. Currently he and his wife enjoy the good life in sunny Southern California. As a button at the close of every fitness class he imparts his favorite phrase to his clients: All of the world’s problems can be solved with love!
Find The Big Crescendo at Down & Out Books, IndieBound, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or iBooks.

Sunday, March 19, 2017

It's Gotta Be Rock 'n' Roll Music, If You Wanna Dance With Me

Everything's got to come from somewhere. Rock 'n' roll came from Chuck Berry.

 Chuck Berry, 1926-2017



He talked to Rolling Stone in 1969 about rock's role. “Like any music, it brings you together, because if two people like the same music, they can be standing beside each other shaking and they wind up dancing, and that’s a matter of communication ... so I say it's a means of communication, more so than other music, to the kids.”

Johnny B. Goode, 1958


Reelin' and Rockin', 1972

Nadine, 1987