A lot of writers I know talk about the music they listen to while they write, how it inspires them. I have never been musically inclined and I need almost total silence to write most of the time. I find music distracting, particularly if it has lyrics, or if I associate it with something else, like a movie soundtrack or something.
There have been three notable exceptions, Gully Gods (from Four In The Morning) The Crawlin’ Chaos Blues, and Merkabah Rider.
I still don’t listen to music while I’m writing, but for these three works there are certain songs I’ve found myself listening to (usually in the car) to get me in the mindset. Particularly for Gully Gods and Crawlin’ Chaos, which both mention a couple of these tracks in the body of the story.
‘It was real hot that night, August in Houston. Me and B and Cripto was chillin’ in the Subway parking lot smokin’ beedies and eatin’ footlongs over the trunk of his ride (a tricked out two toned black and grey’92 Buick Roadmaster nigga called The Batmobile – had chrome bats on the dub spinners) and listenin’ to ‘Face when a pickup full of Southside Cholos pulled up and got out…’
‘Face is Brad T. Jordan, the Houston rapper Scarface, formerly of the Geto Boys. If you’ve seen Office Space you’ve heard him. Apparently like me, Mike Judge is a big fan. He even appears as the pimp Upgrayyde in Judge’s Idiocracy.
Something about Scarface’s voice and delivery reminds me of one of my all time favorite musicians, Chester Burnett AKA Howlin’ Wolf. But I’ll talk about him later. Like the Wolf, Scarface has a distinctively deep voice, almost like a minister’s. I would call him a minister of rage and darkness. His lyrics are vivid and emotionally evocative (‘I’ve got this killer up inside/of me I can’t talk to my mother/so I talk to my diary – and ‘Outside I see the cop cars flashin they lights/Raindrops symbolizing God is saving the life/The sun shining so they say the devil beatin his wife/The body bloody underneath the sheet is waitin for Christ/The streets is hungry- so I know they watchin -waitin to strike/But anything you ever got for easy came with a price’), and he swings wildly from violent, reprehensible glorification of a violent life, to deeply spiritual condemnation – but in the latter, never preachy or accusatory. He’s a pioneer of the southern Dirty South sound, something the movie Hustle & Flow portrays pretty well.
The song J-Hoss and Bruce Wayne are listening to in the parking lot is an old but a goody that sets the tone for the entire novella – Scarface’s Never Seen A Man Cry Till I Seen A Man Die –
Another one from Scarface that I listened to again and again and sort of informed the mentality of my protagonist and the various characters was G-Code –
‘She so damn fine. She move perfect. Like a curtain in the breeze, her hips be swayin.’
She smile and come in close and we be grindin’ up against each other. She smell real good.
“You like this music?” she ask. She got to lean in close and talk in my ear, and her breath is hot and sweet like gum.
“Uh huh,” I say. “It’s old ain’t it?”
“Yeah,” she say. “A couple years. Tres Delincuentes. You know what they’re saying?”
She cross her wrists behind the back of my neck and watch me and I put my hands on her waist, feel it sliding side to side, warm under my hands.
“Uh uh,” I say.
The song in this passage is Delinquent Habits by Tres Delincuentes. It’s kind of a West Coast Mexican hip hop tune, but it’s a great party song. I love the incorporation of the mariachi brass.
‘Then I hear the music. It ain’t from the party. It’s this heavy 808 thumpin,’ comin’ down the ave. Ain’t no oompa doompa, neither. It’s somethin’ old school. Familiar.
I turn my head, cheek to the street, and see a pair of headlights comin’ slow down the block. Brights be on, bright as a pair of suns. They higher off the ground than a car.
It stop a couple feet away.
All of us be in the headlights, but nobody lay offa me. They just all of ‘em turn and look.
The doors open and the music gets louder. I ain’t heard that shit in forever. It be The D.O.C. My pops used to play that shit in his ride. Ridin’ with him with the stereo bumpin,’ be one of the only memories I got of him.
A couple dark shapes get out and stand in front of the headlights. Them lights is so bright you can’t see shit but two motherfuckers standing there like a couple of shadows.’
The song in this passage is ‘It’s Funky Enough’ by the D.O.C. It’s pretty old, but I figured the Liberians might’ve just been getting into it. It’s got a menacing beat, very aggressive sounding, well suited to the scene, but it’s probably one of the most G-rated songs on this page, funny enough. The D.O.C. is one of hip-hop’s great tragedies. He did one promising solo album and promptly lost his voice in an injury sustained in a car accident. He’s gone on to be a successful producer and I heard he might be at last getting some kind of corrective surgery this year.
Stallone and Merciless throw Pocho in the chair and grab hold of him. Gravefilla take the guns over to a table and start layin’ ‘em in a drawer.
I go over with the pliers. The brown brown make me feel like this a video game or somethin’ – like I ain’t even in my body. I ain’t even doin’ what I doin.’
Hitler turn on the boombox, and some heavy shit old school shit come thumpin’ out. Music to murder by.
“Yo, fuck you mayates,” Pocho yell. He sound all fucked up ‘cause his teeth busted. “You just better fuckin’ kill me. ‘Cause I get loose I’ma kill me some niggers.”
I reach out with the pliers and I catch that piece of skin and bone between his nostrils. His whole body lock up like I got him by the nuts.
“You like movies, mayne. How you like the Three Stooges?”
For that scene I had two songs in mind. Firstly the Boston-born group Gang Starr and their Take It Personal. The world lost a real talent when MC Guru (Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal) passed away recently. Talk about your distinctive voices.
The other was NWA’s Real Niggaz Don’t Die – possibly one of the angriest, most intense and vitriolic mainstays in their catalog. If you’re easily offended, don’t click on this one.
I’ve already talked about Howlin’ Wolf’s influence on my Lovecraftian blues short story The Crawlin’ Chaos Blues over at Greg Mitchell’s blog. I hate repeating myself, so go take a look at it.
Back?
OK then.
Songs that show up in The Crawlin’ Chaos Blues –
When I first seen King Yeller, he was leanin’ on a beer sign watchin’ that Lake Street L clackin’ overhead, one bent Kool stuck in his lips, beatin’ out ‘I Ain’t Superstitious’ as best he could on a rusty ‘ol National with a pocket knife for a slide.
Crammed into the corner with a jumpin’ band was the man hisself, Howlin’ Wolf, all three hundred pounds of him, black as pig iron and sweatin’ like a steam engine, crawling on all fours, rollin’ his eyes, and flickin’ his tongue like a snake. He was wailin’ ‘Evil’ into a microphone and he sure looked like a man possessed by a devil. He was too big for the place, so goddamned big when he stood up and put his harp between his hands and blew he looked about to swallow it whole.
Yeller had picked out one of them fine biscuits in the crowd and was singin’ straight at her. She was that devil-eyed type woman lay her business on you, make you forget your own name, how much money you got in your pocket. She seen what Yeller was about right off, and she give him a smile over her man’s shoulder. That gap in her two front teeth let you know she liked to get her jelly rolled. He played ‘Come On In My Kitchen’ at her, and then ‘One Way Out,’ and by the time he finished up, her man had took notice.
Now for The Merkabah Rider series, there are a few tracks I listen to to put me in the mood, though of course, none of them actually appear in the books.
As you might suspect, most of them are Ennio Morricone pieces. In particular these.
And legendary bluegrass mandolin master Bill Monroe’s My Last Days On Earth. If any song encompasses the entirety of the series and the feel I’m trying to portray, it’d be this one.
My friend Ryan Gerossie also put together this book trailer using music we both composed and played (I did the Jaw harp and the monotonous guitar tune) for the indie film we did together in 2009, Meaner Than Hell (you can watch the trailer on the sidebar). This tune is sort of my default Rider theme (though if I had my way I’d find a way to mix some kind of klezmer or Hebrew chanting in there).
Anyway, listen. Broaden your horizons. Enjoy.
Delirium Tremens 