Bookstores are wonderful places. I prefer the used, independent variety, with their uneven shelves plumped with cracked and dusty spines, but I'm not above Barnes and Noble, either. Which is where I found myself on Saturday. I had intended to run in and pick up Dennis Lehane's new novel. Twenty minutes later, however, I emerged with a memoir by Juliana Hatfield. I knew of Juliana Hatfield in a very limited way--as the bassist and sweet, angelic backing vocalist on The Lemonheads' classic It's a Shame About Ray. I can't admit to being any sort of diehard Lemonheads fan, but I do like that album a lot, and Ben and I have been playing "My Drug Buddy" live for many years. The Lemonheads gig was just a one-off stint for her though. She is better known by the general public as a solo artist whose catchy power-pop songs put her on the alternative/post-punk map in the early '90s and have kept her there, for the most part, ever since. She was supposed to be the next big thing, but that never really happened, at least to the degree expected of her. Did I mention she hails from Boston and is something of a local underground celebrity around here?
Anyway, I picked up the book, which had just come out in hardcover, and read the first chapter. She opens the memoir with her sitting backstage at a grimy club somewhere, about to go on, when the owner of the club comes back and gives her shit for taking a shot of Patron from the bartender when what she should have done was traded in one of her measly free-drink tickets for a Bud Light or watered-down well drink. Here she was in her late 30's, single, childless, about to go on at some rat-infested, puke-floored shithole of a club, playing for peanuts (oh, right, and free-drink tickets, though she barely drinks), and this asshole's giving her hell over a shot of tequila that she wanted to pay for in the first place. It was then that she decided she wasn't sure she could carry on with her rock-n-roll dream. The problem was, what else was she going to do? She wasn't qualified for, much less interested in, anything else.
Something about the way she described her relationship with music struck a chord with me--no pun intended. She could hardly carry on, and yet she could in no way give it up, either. Music was bringing her a great deal of fatigue, financial hardship, heartache, loneliness, and frustration, and still there was no other choice for her. She had to keep going, keep hacking away.
Or did she? That is what she promised to explore in her story.
This was good enough for me. I plunked down $20 on a hardcover written by someone who had never written a book before, and of whom I had never heard more than a song or two, and proceeded to spend a chunk of my weekend barreling through Juliana's (we're on a first-name basis now) memoir. This isn't meant to be a book report, but rather a brief and likely semi-useless anecdote about choosing something spontaneously, out of the blue. It is, on a very small scale, reflective of this recent compulsion I have to be make bold decisions, take risks--whatever that means. This is not something at which I am always very good. I am systematically spontaneous--meaning I am always game for anything and can find fun in most situations, yet I have a terrible habit of trying to think things through in advance, and too deeply. It is a trait that has served me fairly well, as I have come to trust my own instincts and oftentimes feel that others don't think things through nearly enough, but still there is always room for more decisiveness, more spontaneity, in my life, and probably yours, too.
The book? It's ain't Lehane, that I can tell you. I wasn't expecting it to be, though. For me, a musician who can relate to JH on some level, I find it very readable, funny, insightful, and enlightening. (It just occurred to me I don't even know the title, in case you were wondering; sorry.) That's not my point, though. The point is, keep your eyes, and your mind, open, to something new today that you may not have otherwise embraced. Who knows where it may lead you?
And you heard it here first: Juliana is going to sing on the next Jo Henley record. She just doesn't know it yet...
Tomorrow: Get out there and VOTE! No excuses!!!!
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