Musical Interludes: When Is A Christmas Song Not A Christmas Song?

It's getting to be that time of year. Christmas. The songs are going on endlessly in the malls, and people are thinking of unwrapping presents. We're thinking of unwrapping each other. We heard one of the familiar ones earlier... and it seems by listening to the lyrics... that it's not really a Christmas song. It does take into account spending time by the fireplace, which we always recommend, but is it a Christmas song or not? Listen to Old Blue Eyes and decide for yourself.

Musical Interludes: Breathless

We're both fond of the Irish band The Corrs, the sisters and brother musical outfit that really ought to get themselves back together. So we thought we'd take time today to bring up two of our favourite songs live in concert. Enjoy!

Musical Interludes: Zoo TV

We thought we might go with a concert clip today, from U2. The Zoo TV tour followed up their albums Achtung Baby and Zooropa, featuring a mix of the old and the new. This clip, from Sydney, features two songs from The Joshua Tree, namely Running To Stand Still and Where The Streets Have No Name. The two songs are a stark contrast to each other; the first is a slow ballad about despair and addiction, while the second is an open ended song, open to countless interpretation, and a staple of live tours to this day. Enjoy, and if you're a fan, let us know, particularly if you've seen the band in concert.

Musical Interludes: Mel Gibson Really Hates The English

"Historical accuracy? Oh, really, who would expect that out of one of my movies? Seriously, no one will complain, aside from a few stuffy academics in an ivory tower." ~ Roland Emmerich, 1999

"Damned English!" Mel Gibson, 1999

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, and we thought we'd do a music blog for the occasion. We're choosing a selection of film music, one of those examples in the cinema where the score is far and away the best part of the movie. This is John Williams, the master, with a cue from Roland Emmerich's film The Patriot. The music is stirring... the movie, on the other hand, wrecks havoc with the historical timeline and events of the American Revolution. And paints the British as if they're psychotics and monsters. One would think Mel Gibson had issues with them.

And of course the film gives us a brood of children, not one of whom seems to age a bit over the years of the Revolution. Seriously, are we all to believe these kids have had their growth stunted by smoking tobacco?

Happy Fourth of July!

Musical Interludes: A Night At The Concert Hall

During the midst of our book Same Time Tomorrow (we're still working on it... we just get distracted, yes... that'll do), our two main characters, Chloe and Gabriel, go out to attend a classical music concert together in New York. We thought we'd take time out to present some classical music today. It's not one of the selections we use in the book, but we've been listening to this, and it's a beautiful and elegant symphony.

The orchestra is the Wiener Philharmoniker, the conductor is the late Carlos Kleiber, and the music is the Second Symphony, by the great composer Johannes Brahms.

Enjoy, and tell us in the comments if you've heard the music before, or if as a writer you could find yourself writing a sequence set during a classical concert.

Musical Interludes: Get Tangled Up, You Tango On

It's been said that the tango is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire. We didn't actually write a tango moment into Same Time Tomorrow, but it's something we can keep in mind for the follow up. Our leading characters would no doubt enjoy the moment.

The music in this clip below will be familiar to you, even if you don't know the title, Por Una Cabeza. If you've seen True Lies or Scent Of A Woman, you've heard it before. Just listen to the music, and you'll get the idea why it's such a passionate dance.

So, in closing... have you ever done the tango? Or is this the sort of thing that would fit into your writing?

Musical Interludes: Could It Be Magic

Throughout Same Time Tomorrow, we have instances where music plays its part in the story. Our two characters, Chloe and Gabriel, first interact online, of all places, in a forum for Barry Manilow. Chloe is a fan, while Gabriel is not. At first, tempers flare between the two when Gabriel gets snarky. Then we moved things in another direction. That is a starting point for the two, and we thought for our first in an occasional series of blogs centred on music that we'd have a look at Mr. Manilow in concert. And so here we have one of his classics....

Is That A Lucky Charm In Your Pocket, Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?

It's that time of year again, St. Patrick's Day, where across the world we celebrate a Roman-British saint who may have driven the snakes out of Ireland while dispensing Christianity to the Irish... and we celebrate by getting hammered. Scarlett and I thought we'd mark the day with some amusements and some music.

We'll be spending the evening rubbing shamrocks on each other... looking for lucky charms and buried treasures. Mostly in between the sheets. If you happen to hear something that sounds like an old fashioned Irish Banshee wail, well, that's just us. No need to be alarmed or call in an exorcist.

We'll leave you then with something musically inclined... U2, performing Walk On live at Slane Castle in Ireland. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Crossed Wires And Wedding Music

Scarlett and I had ourselves a rather odd turn while writing a specific passage in Same Time Tomorrow. We’ve been finishing off the wedding sequence, getting things polished off. This sort of thing gets passed back and forth between us as we go along, and we’d come to the point where the ceremony comes to an end.

Scarlett wrote a passage, and asked me what I thought of it. Of course, I loved it. It’s Chloe’s point of view during the kiss, and she started out by having Chloe thinking the exact same thing that Gabriel is thinking. Then she asked me what I thought of the Mandy reference. This is the moment that confused me. You see, one of the early moments between the characters has them interacting online, long before they meet. Chloe is most definitely a Barry Manilow fan. Gabriel is certainly not. Despite that difference, they find that they like each other anyway as they get to know each other, and the relationship grows from there.

I was confused by the question. I don’t know the song, beyond the tune and the title, so I looked at the passage, wondering if some little bit of dialogue or something else there referenced some obscure lyric of the song. In the end, that wasn’t the case. It turns out that Scarlett deleted the line before saving it, and hadn’t realized it.

This is one of those moments in collaborative writing where confusion runs both ways, and you find yourself wondering just what on earth is my partner talking about? Of course, it also makes it all the more amusing afterwards!

Have you ever had misunderstandings with a friend or colleague over something you'd written or omitted from an email? That's what happened here.  I've actually lost a good friend just because she misunderstood a text message from me (sarcasm does not translate well to text messages!). I almost had a serious rift with another good friend because of a similar error in an email. Fortunately, James and I didn't come to blows—though now that I think about it, blows might have been quite nice.

The important thing in a collaboration is to ask if something your writing partner has written isn't clear.

Otherwise you’ll be running into confusion unlimited!

In this case, problem solved. We wrote in a bit of a reference involving the violinist at the ceremony… playing, of course.... Mandy.