Mark B wrote:
"I'm presently into the third of George's books so I've been
able to overcome my annoyance at all the music. I even knew
one of the songs recently. If you don't, the music references
are not going to mean anything and be annoying.
Realistically, why don't people people in a book that is
usually set in a short time period listen to the same song
occasionally?"
I was thinking a bit today about the use of music in books.
My unexamined impression had been that it is the equivalent
of a movie soundtrack. However, once I thought about it, I
realized that they are two different things. For instance, is
it the same thing to say a stripper is grinding to a heavy
funk tune as to say she is stripping to
"Cosmic Slop"? A movie viewer can get something from a song
whether or not they have ever heard it before, but the same
doesn't really apply to a book. If you don't know the
Funkadelic song, you have little idea what it sounds like
from the title, alone. Maybe the answer is to offer both the
title and a description, "the steady electronic bass beat of
Parliament's 'Flashlight,'" or something like that. Of
course, then I wouldn't get to feel like such a know-it-all
for recognizing all of the tunes.
I'm not the first to mention the real solution -- these books
should be crossmarketed with accompanying CDs. Wasn't there a
blues CD to go along with Vachss's "Safe House." And
[S]Affiliated was supposed to issue CDs wrapped with books of
the same size. As far as I can tell, though, only one of
these came out, the awful "Street Sweeper." The far better
"dark," by Kenji Jasper, was [S]Afilliated, but no CD and it
was normal trade paperback size.
Mark
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