Story #4 "Buzzards and Dreadful Crows"

"Buzzards and dreadful crows. A necessary evil, I suppose. There's something in this deal for everyone. Did you really think, that you were the only one?"

True story--For about a week after I came up with the concept of writing short stories based on song titles, I thought I might base it solely on Guided By Voices songs. I am a huge GbV fan and always will be. Robert Pollard has a knack for writing songs that are emotive but abstract. He can sing lyrics with strong imagery that never reveal the plot, so to speak. There's a special knack to that.

At the risk of getting to cerebral, I liken Pollard's writing to that of the French surrealists. I own one of his collages, and I definitely see a link.
His lyrics are very much the same.

I don't believe it is a desire to be random so much as to rebel against the directness of a pop song which can often be trite. Perhaps that's why Pollard was somewhat dismissive of "Hold on Hope" from one of their only major label albums "Do the Collapse." While that song was more direct it certainly wasn't superficial.
For the record, I consider Pollard to be one of the greatest American musical poets on par with Lou Reed or Bob Dylan.

The reason I considered but ultimately rejected using all Pollard songs as the basis of a book is that the sheer abstract quality makes it impossible to start with anything but the title. It's like building a house on a surreal foundation. That and it felt too narrow a brief, so to speak. What can I say, I've worked in advertising for nearly two decades. I'm used to working off of briefs. And the best briefs are ones that aren't too broad or too narrow.

The other reason I included other musicians is that I felt like it would open the door to different tones of voice and styles.

The subject matter of "Buzzards and Dreadful Crows," the song is somewhat incredulous. Buzzards and dreadful crows are a necessary evil, the singer supposes. Why are they necessary in the song is never quite clear. I like to think it's referencing that particular group of hangers-on or "friends" who swoop in to steal your beer during rehearsals or always want to get on the guest list because they're too cheap to pay for tickets, but that's just me.

In my story, "Buzzards and Dreadful Crows," an African American farmer who, after years of subsistence farming and general misery, discovers oil on his farm and now has to deal with a different kind of bird.

It ends quickly and purposefully before any action takes place. I wanted to build the tension leading up to someone who decides to take a stand but the rest is up to the reader to imagine.

I not only sequenced A-Sides and B-Sides like an album, but I wrote the stories accordingly. Some of the best Guided By Voices songs last less than two minutes. They are here and then gone, always leaving you wanting more but having the good sense to leave before they outstay their welcome. I mirrored that by keeping the story to a bare minimum.

Every writing course I took, from high school to college and beyond was a waste. Not because I didn't produce anything (although in most cases i didn't) but because without fail the teachers were either afraid or unable to explain what good storytelling is.

The one exception to my education was in high school. The most valuable advice I was given when writing poetry was from a one-eyed, one-breasted chain smoker named Marilyn Bates who always told the class "end with an image." She died in 2013. I wish she'd lived to see this book. I want to believe she would have critiqued some, liked some, loved one, and then insisted on dragging me to get coffee in Oakland by the University of Pittsburgh like old times.

A-Sides and B-Sides is available on iBook as well as Amazon and also Kobo and Nook. You can preview a nice chunk of it, too. Hope you'll consider buying if you like what you see. Here's what the cover looks like.

This GbV song comes in and out and covers a lot of territory in a very short time.