Sunburns, poor acoustics, craning to see around someone’s too high lawn chair – outdoor concert season in the PNW is a unique slice of summer. With our place in music history secured thanks to early grunge, various venues across Seattle offering live music year-round, and with summer concerts taking our musical enjoyment to an 11, it’s hard not to have bands on the brain. Enjoy some fiction to help you lean into the music a little more. Are you ready to rock ‘n’ read?
We begin in Egypt in the early 2000’s with Red Like Orange by Shārl ʻAql, a.k.a. Charles Akl. Local moves to Cairo after a breakup, where he finds a new roommate and an old accordion. The two decide to take up instruments and become musicians, despite no actual musical experience, and their world unexpectedly expands as they find themselves in new music circles, chasing success and wondering what it means to “make it” in music and in life.
The Whyte Python World Tour by Travis Kennedy takes us on a wild ride when the CIA maneuvers the world-famous metal band Whyte Python to infiltrate the Iron Curtain in a PsyOp code named ‘Operation: Facemelt’. Full of misfit characters, soviet spies, and 80’s nostalgia, this novel is part thriller, part romp.
For the 1970’s, we have Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine by Callie Collins, a novel about married Texas bar owners who invite a young and upcoming blues musician to stay for the summer in the hopes it will save their struggling honky-tonk. What follows is a journey of yearning, identity, music, and belonging.
In the late 1960’s, Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell is a tale of a London psychedelic-folk band’s swift rise to fame, but Mitchell puts his unique stamp on the storytelling with subtle references to characters in his greater literary universe, cameos of 60’s musical luminaries, and chapter titles that are the actual songs created by the eponymous band.
Set in a changing 1950’s San Francisco, On the Rooftop by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton follows the jazz girl group ‘The Sensations’ as they grow from young girls to women with their own dreams, dreams separate from those of their mother who has pushed them towards stardom and success their whole lives.
Lastly, in Mitch Albiom’s The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto, enigmatic guitarist Frankie Presto, born during the Spanish Civil War and sent to America at age 9, creates enchanting music and literally changes lives with his magic strings. His journey of heartbreak, music, betrayal, and love, is narrated by Music itself, with cameos throughout of music icons of the 20th century, from Django to Tony Bennett to Carole King.
If none of these genres were quite your groove there are plenty more books that feature musicians and bands, from rom coms to thrillers to fantasy. Or maybe you’ll skip the books and go straight to the source, the music – wander the CD collections or check out our streaming services. The beat and the books go on at the library!
~posted by Chelsea M.