Dave Brigham's Blog, page 12

You Didn't Build This, FLlW Did

After several months, I finally finished Meryle Secrest's Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography, a dense, well-researched, mostly engaging 564-page doorstop of a book.

I put the book on my wish list after reading T.C. Boyle's The Women, a fictional account of the world-famous architect's tangled web of romantic relationships. Boyle's a gifted writer, and I've read and enjoyed many of his books, but while I was reading The Women, I found myself wanting to read a biography, wondering, "How true to l...

YES!!

Congratulations, President Obama!

Now go ahead and sing us out, Homer.

(C)rock Redux

Today I received a small advance from Plus One Press, which will be publishing one of my short stories in the soon-to-be-available Tales From the House Band, Volume 2. The anthology features stories from numerous genres, with wildly varying themes, but all of them focused on music in one way or another.

I forget how I found out about Plus One's first volume of the series. But as soon as I did, I zipped an email to the publisher asking if there was room for me in the next volume. She said yes...

Sell! Sell! Sell!

I've been thinking for a while about trying to make some money off all the pictures I've taken over the last few years. I'm not fooling myself; I know I'm not a great photographer, but I think I've got a few images that would look cool on certain products.

So I've begun building up my product line at Zazzle. For the past two years I've been selling 30 different t-shirts associated with my first book, (C)rock Stories: Million Dollar Tales of Music, Mayhem and Immaturity. I bought one and award...

L-O-L-A

Ray Davies based the transvestite in The Kinks' song "Lola" on a black cross-dresser whom his band's manager danced with one night in a drunken stupor. It's quite possible that Davies used the name Lola in tribute to the woman who also inspired Barry Manilow in his song, "Copacabana."

Lola Falana.

If you're under 40, there's a good chance you've never heard of her. I can't say I know a lot about her, but I remember her popping up on TV here and there during my childhood. And I could never fo...

About My Lips

Regular readers know I love music, and that the Flaming Lips are my favorite band. "But how did that come about?" you ask. Well, I'm gonna tell you.

I'm a long-time subscriber to SPIN magazine, so long in fact that they actually pay me to read the thing, and every year on my birthday they throw me a giant party complete with food, beer, live music and a 12-month supply of Geritol.

I've stuck with the magazine through their new wave years, punk rock years, hip-hop years, indie rock years, the...

The Struggle

Like all writers, I struggle. And of course I wage those battles alone. I can't blame my boss or coworkers if I don't like an idea. And if I forget what a character did or said 20 pages earlier, I can't digitize an intern and send him into my laptop to figure it out.

And when reading works that go back years, even decades, I have no one but myself to blame for shoddy workmanship and blatant stylistic rip-offs. I was reminded of this when I recently stumbled across a copy of Frog Spit, a 'zin...

Remembrances of Big E's Past

While walking past a leather goods tent at the Eastern States Exhibition earlier this week, I flashed back to two belt buckles I had as an awkward teenager. One was heavy, made of dark metal in the shape of an 18-wheeler; the other was a bright oval with a red sky, blue ocean and a ship commemorating my love for the band Kansas.

I'm pretty sure I purchased both of the buckles at the fair.

I loved big rigs. I watched "BJ and the Bear" and the "Smokey & the Bandit" movies. I knew all the types...

Radio Clash

I can't get Flo-Rida's oral-sex request song, "Whistle," out of my head, and I blame summer camp counselors.

I mark the beginning of the end of my children's pop music innocence as Friday, August 10. That day I drove them to Connecticut for a long weekend visit with my family. There was a lot of traffic, and it was raining, so the trip took an extra hour. During those 150 minutes, Owen and Amelia demanded (OK, strongly requested) to listen to various pop radio stations. Because I'm a nice guy...

End of Summer

We've had a good summer here at Casa de Brigahan, but I'm ready for summer to end.

The first eight weeks went by fairly smoothly -- with Owen in camp for seven weeks and Amelia for most of that time, plus a week on the Cape. I cruised along on my children's book and my memoir, took a bunch of pictures for my Backside of America blog, and got stuff done around the house.

But camp for both kids ended two weeks ago, and while we've had a lot of fun since then, last week dragged quite a bit at t...