The Circuitous Route

My first concert was Rush w/ Riot (not to be confused with Quiet Riot) at the Hartford Civic Center in 1981. In the ensuing 30 years (oh, man, I just realized as I'm writing this that I've been going to concerts for 30 years....), I've seen countless bands, both big-name acts (The Police, Green Day, The Pretenders) and lesser-known lights of the music world (Phantom Tollbooth, Operation Ivy). I've been to civic centers, theaters, rock clubs, high school auditoriums, parking lots and basements to see bands rock out.

I love music. About 10 years ago I wondered whether I could list every band -- headliner and each and every opening act -- that I'd ever seen. I couldn't do it, but my effort was not in vain. As I thought about all the shows I'd seen, I recalled funny or crazy or stupid things that had gone on during the show, or on the way there, or afterward.

I started writing these things down. Some of them eventually made it into my first book, (C)rock Stories: Million-Dollar Tales of Music, Mayhem and Immaturity -- such as the time some friends and I got ripped off while trying to scalp Echo & the Bunnymen tickets in Boston -- and others didn't -- like the time my friend Ken and I chatted with members of Dream Syndicate after their show at the long-defunct Channel club in Boston.

I decided that I needed to turn these memories into fiction. I won't bore you with the details of writing and rewriting these stories, but I will tell you that there were times over the 10 years it took to get the book from concept to publication that I thought about giving up.

I don't have the best work ethic when it comes to writing, as evidenced by the fact that I got excited recently when I rewrote the first paragraph of my novel-in-the-works...and then promptly ignored the second paragraph until, well, let's just say I don't have an answer for that yet.

But as I worked on "(C)rock Stories," I began to think of it as my writing legacy, or at least part of it, and possibly the most important element. I've written plenty of stories over the years, some I'm proud of, some I want to disown. But "(C)rock Stories" brings together two things that I'm most passionate about: music and writing.

So I stuck with it, knowing that I had to finish no matter what. I have a problem with making plans and not following through on them. When I was 22, for instance, I told myself I had to be in a band and put out some records before I was 40, because I so enjoyed my time playing in a band in college.

Well, I never fulfilled that promise to myself. But I think of the completion of my short story collection as a way of giving myself some peace on that account.

So, with a novel hovering in my subconscious, I need to do what I did when I found myself lounging too much instead of finishing "(C)rock Stories:" I need to make a schedule and stick to it. I don't want it to be 10 more years before I get another book on the market.

So now it's time to get to the second 'graph.