Five Midnights to Axl, or Thirty Minutes of Perfect Pop

Tonight marks my fifth midnight shift in a row, so things are a little blurry in the rag and bone shop of my soul, or the neurological equivalent thereof. However, I remain optimistic, if for no other reason but this morning at least thirty-seven people woke up and drove to Best Buy to pick up the new Guns 'N' Roses album.

The simple fact that Axl could finally excrete that beast before he started collecting Social Security is oddly inspiring...although maybe I feel that way because I've always been a fan of lost causes, ridiculously overdue "masterpieces" and unfinishable life-ruining works of pop art. I didn't go out and buy Chinese Democracy today (I was, ahem, sleeping) but I've made a point of not listening to any of the tracks just in case I do decide to pick it up at some later date. I just hope I enjoy it as much as I liked Chuck Klosterman's review of the thing. Just the fact that he says it's "more like reviewing a unicorn" makes the article worth reading.

Honestly, for me, pop culture as a big globby entity has been a little unsatisfying these days. I just finished the new Stephen King collection, and I liked it, and I'm already digging John Le Carre's A Most Wanted Man. I read the Peter Straub story "Little Red's Tango" from Poe's Children, and enjoyed that too (although I had to smile at Straub's introduction, where he rails against the publishers who put doll's heads on the horror novels of the '80s, only to have his current publisher plaster severed doll parts all over both covers of Poe's Children.) But I couldn't get more than twenty minutes into Tropic Thunder, and now that Mad Men is off the air again, I'm not getting much satisfaction from TV. On the upside, Rhapsody is allowing me to listen to the new Killers album as much as I want, and the lack of distractions is helping me press on with Renee's Remains -- which is arguably the most gratifying thing going on creatively in my life right now. And I suppose that's appropriate. The day that you start to like other people's stuff more consistently than your own is the day you have to drag yourself to the laptop, day after day...and it's only a matter of time until you're no longer writing but just engraving the tombstone.

As a bulwark against such free-floating malaise, then, I've been off-handedly assembling a mental playlist (it exists nowhere except my brain) of contemporary pop songs. The cheese factor is pretty high here, and I'm sure you can think of your own better examples, but for me, these are little three-minute bon bons of sonic bliss when everything clicks together. Unapologetically submitted:

30 Minutes of Perfect Pop

Inside Out - Eve 6
Stacy's Mom - Fountains of Wayne
Velvet Roof - Buffalo Tom
If I Could Talk - Lemonheads
Lit Up - Buckcherry
Sequestered in Memphis - The Hold Steady
Here in my Bedroom - Goldfinger
A Bell Will Ring - Oasis
Rough Boys - Pete Townsend
If I Can't Change Your Mind - Sugar

That's it. And if any of the tracks on Chinese Democracy come close to generating the same happy chill I get when I listen to these songs, then the last thirteen years of Axl's life will not have been misspent.

Hey, Satan!

We definitely need more songs that contain this salutation.

Just saying.

The Greatest Playlist of Cover Songs Never Recorded

My novel in progress, Renee's Remains, features a playlist of cover songs that with one exception have never actually been recorded. In the story this is appropriate because they were downloaded from a pirate file-sharing site that allows the user to take over the identity of the listener -- even after death.

Anyhow, here's the playlist. Can you spot the real cover song?

In Dreams – The Cure
Helter Skelter – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Hazy Shade of Winter – Pearl Jam
Come As You Are – Johnny Cash (Live at San Quentin)
L.A. Woman – Guns ‘N’ Roses
99 Problems – Tori Amos
Sweet Jane - Black Sabbath
Your Cheatin’ Heart – Portishead
I Will Survive – Joy Division
California Dreamin’ – Skinny Puppy
Fool on the Hill – Marilyn Manson
The End – Nine Inch Nails
Addicted to Love – Queens of the Stone Age
Love Removal Machine – Veruca Salt
Baker Street – Foo Fighters
Me and the Devil Blues – Hank Williams Sr.
We’ll Meet Again – Aphex Twin
Highway 61 Revisited – Slipknot
Don’t Fear the Reaper - Chevelle
Twist and Shout – P.J. Harvey
Tuesday’s Gone – Jane’s Addiction
Baby It’s Cold Outside – Cannibal Corpse
Love Hurts – Ani DiFranco with Scott Weiland
Only Love Can Break Your Heart – My Chemical Romance
Calm Like a Bomb – Siouxsie and the Banshees
Deadman’s Curve - Bauhaus
Wild Horses – Renee’s Remains

My New Editor(s)

Mark Tavani is my new editor at Ballantine, and I got to talk to him today for a while about The Black Wing. I'd met Mark before on trips to New York, but this was our first conversation after I found out he'd be helping guide TBW toward its pub date next November.

Now that my former editor Keith has moved on to bigger things, Mark is in many ways the ideal editor for the book. He read Chasing the Dead and Eat the Dark and helped champion my cause at Ballantine and Del Rey, and talking to him this afternoon I realized what a pleasure it was going to be working him. In our 15-minute conversation we spoke of horror novels, sleep deprivation, the World Series, the effect of outlying Philadelphia on the Presidential Election, and what the cover of The Black Wing would look like. I forgot to tell him about the excellent work of Tim Gough, but rest assured, I will.

Oh, and I've also been talking to my other new editor Shelly about my Star Wars horror novel, which also launches in a couple weeks. And there's the small issue of trying to come up with a title...

He served a dark and a hungry god...

Yes, I went to work yesterday dressed as Sweeney Todd. And I have to tell you, there's nothing like starting an IV on someone when you've got a bloody butcher's rag dangling from your back pocket.