Music for a Book: The Big Finish

It’s time to wrap up my seventh straight day of blogging with two songs that represent This Must Be the Place as a whole!

The character of Amy, a movie special effects nerd—literally, a maker of monsters—dies within the first ten pages, and her death (and life, in that order) propels the action of the book.  Appropriately enough, the song that spoke to me about letting Amy go is by another Amy: Aimee Mann.  I love me some Aimee Mann, and I specifiy *some*, because if I listen to too much of her gorgeous and impossibly sad music, I get a serious case of the blues.  Which I mean as a compliment.  The whole album, @#%&*! Smilers, is fantastic, but “Great Beyond” captured Arthur and Mona’s mood as they said goodbye to the monster-maker they both once knew.

And now, to close down my book soundtrack with the one song (and the one album) that helped shape the tone and the story of This Must Be the Place more than any other: Guster’s “Satellite,” from their 2006 album Ganging Up on the Sun.  Guster is a local Boston band, though I first heard of them when I was in college in Buffalo; they’re a little bittersweet and completely catchy, witty and grooveable, a cross between Fountains of Wayne and Fleetwood Mac with a style all their own.  This album came out the summer I started writing, as I was messing around with the first sentences and paragraphs and chapters; Ruby Falls and the Darby-Jones and Arthur and Mona and Oneida and Eugene all stand on the foundation of this album, on these lyrics:

Just a little out of reach

Ed. note: This video is SERIOUSLY cool.  And I think Joseph Cornell would approve.