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October 30, 2020
Ben Tanzer's Playlist for His Story Collection "Upstate"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Ben Tanzer's story collection Upstate is a revised and edited edition of his collection The New York Stories. In his Book Notes post for The New York Stories, I stated that the collection displays "Tanzer's evolution into a master storyteller." This remastered release is even stronger than the original.
In his words, here is Ben Tanzer's Book Notes music playlist for his story collection Upstate:
Upstate/The New York Stories Book Notes REDUX
You were kind enough to have me here back when The New York Stories came out in 2015 and I started that Book Notes post with, "It is lovely to be back."
And so, while I stopped by in 2016 as well for the release of Be Cool - a memoir (sort of), and thank you for that, I appreciate the chance to revisit my Book Notes for the The New York Stories, now that it's been refreshed and is being rereleased as Upstate.
Given the rules of a refresh (as I understand them), I see this as less about cutting things than augmenting them. So, I don't want to toss any of my original ideas, as much as I want to build on them.
Cool?
Right on, and so, what does one listen to while refreshing a book, primarily up to and then during a pandemic?
I've got some thoughts on that.
I've been home a lot, and with my children no less, who are now teenagers and who have their own cultural interests, as well as working and writing, and listening to a lot of music.
A lot of music.
This has involved adjusting to utilizing platforms such as Spotify to access new music, and seek things out, something I really didn't do much of pre-COVID.
But I have to look at these platforms now, there's no outside world to hit. Though even more than that there's nothing new that isn't right here at my fingertips anyway.
Which is kind of a positive.
So, as the Upstate refresh started with the last days of pre-COVID life and then barrelled right into an all COVID life, I charged into trying to find a way to achieve some new traction at home, and that evolved into a full exploration of how all things, especially writing and entertainment, might look when never leaving the house.
Which brings us to now and this Book Notes Redux.
Thanks!
Matt & Kim/Daylight
There is an irony to my listening to Matt & Kim on repeat during the pandemic and as I refreshed The New York Stories. A friend had an extra ticket to see them in Chicago on October 22nd during their 10-year Anniversary tour and celebration of their sophomore release Grand. I wasn't really familiar with their music and went because I rarely see live music any more. The sheer joy of their performance was jolting, transformative, and made me appreciate creativity all the more. It also made me appreciate how inspiring it can be to revisit one's own work with fresh eyes. That, and the insight that joy can be hard to come by in Upstate, but like real life, when you find it, it can be glorious and needs to be celebrated.
Cordae/Lost & Found
Somewhere my children are hating the inclusion of this song. But here's the thing, Matt & Kim could have easily been the last show I ever saw live. Who knows how, if, this pandemic will end? Except that my younger son asked me to take him to see one of his favorite performers, Cordae, and it was my son's first live show. It was also February 5th. We went out in the cold, waited on line, avoided getting a contact high, waited through 1/2 dozen warm-up acts, and it was all so very wonderful for me. Father and son shit can be tough. It can be hard to talk, express things and connect. It's all over Upstate. And the thing is, my son will probably never ask me to take him to a show again. It was great, but he knows he can do it now without me. Still, we had that moment, and it has certainly sustained me since.
John Prine/In Spite of Ourselves (featuring Iris DeMent)
By April 7th when John Prine died we were well into the quarantine and I realized I wasn't nearly as familiar with Prine's music as I thought I was. And so I did what we do now, I turned to Spotify and played his music obsessively. And even though any number of songs made an impression ("Angel of Montgomery," "That's the Way the World Goes Round," "Summer's End"), this one kept coming-up and I was struck that my wife and I were going to need to get along as well as we ever had. Though even better, and of course, in spite of ourselves. Something the characters in Upstate endlessly struggle with and against too. It's Prine's craftsmanship and storytelling that lingers as much as anything. Well that and the idea that my wife and I are still somehow plugging along.
Last Dance Soundtrack
I can't imagine that it was just a Chicago thing. That thing being the righteousness that was the release of the Last Dance documentary on ESPN early on in the pandemic. Which please note, I write as a New Yorker and lover of the Knicks. Hence by all rights should hate the Bulls. However, it's not possible. Those Bulls teams were too great and Michael Jordan was too awesome. I watched Last Dance with bated breath and it was all so exciting and nostalgic, and Jordan was just something else. Not just his game and his ups and his ferocity either, but his pettiness, anger and bullying too. It was a beautiful horror show.
And then there was the soundtrack.
There are endless songs on the soundtrack I could wax poetically about. I apparently really loved Fatboy Slim and "Right Here, Right Now" back in the '90s, and I feel great affection for Lupe Fiasco, even if I'm not sure I remember listening to "Superstar." I love it now though.
That said, it is "Can I Kick It?" by A Tribe Called Quest I need to spend a moment on here. That it appeared in Last Dance was a bonus because at some point while working through my edits on Upstate the song popped-up on Spotify on some random list and I was enthralled. The use of Walk on the Wild Side, the repetition and beat. The whole flow and rhythm and New York vibe was addictive. I played it on repeat for hours at a time. And I really didn't know it when it came out, though I wasn't sure how this was. When I posted something to that effect on Facebook, asking how could I not have known this song existed then, a college friend who grew-up in New York City responded, "What do you expect, you grew-up upstate?" Yes I did. And I'm proud of it.
Beastie Boys/Anything, Everything
The Beastie Boys may appear in every Book Notes post I've ever done. And yes, I'm partial to New York, anything, all things. But this is also about the pandemic and the release of The Beastie Boys movie, and Adam Yauch somehow being dead, which I can't wrap my brain around. Though that too is an integral part of experiencing Upstate: our inability to make sense of the senseless and how we cope with this knowledge. Not always well. Well that and the Beastie's humor, wordplay and rapid fire streamlined beats, nearly punk, an aesthetic I always seek to capture in my work, and especially in these stories.
Taylor Swift/Betty
Look, T-Swift has been presence in our house ever since my older son was generous enough to abandon Hi-5 and the soundtrack to High School Musical and started setting his music aspirational higher than what Disney and children's television shows had to offer him (Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus excepted of course). And hey, T-Swift works for me mostly, some of it. I enjoyed the early country stuff and "Shake It Off" is always fun. And yes, I know how snobby that all sounds. However folklore really is something else. At a minimum it's a low-key, melancholic pandemic soundtrack at times sad, other times comforting, and it really hits a kind of high note with Betty, an ode to lost love and mistakes, something the characters in Upstate experience again and again, as they repeat the same mistakes, and aspire to something greater in terms of communication and making connections.
Run The Jewels 4/ooh la la
I love this song, though I love all of it really, and with all love to T-Swift, RTJ4 is the true soundtrack of the pandemic. Angry, funny, conversational, minimalist, full of flow and jabs and beats. It's just fucking fierce and it's ready to burn it all down if that's what's required to cleanse everything and move forward. Which is what Upstate aspires to at all times, and certainly over the last third of the book, as the characters look for some sort of refresh all their own.
All that and my original post. Still spot-on, glorious and as follows.
It is lovely to be back.
I should say upfront that as Largehearted Boy has very generously invited me to submit Book Notes essays in the past, I find myself considering a slightly different tack with my new release The New York Stories.
I worked on this collection over a ten-year period, writing in binges as I worked on other things, and so some of what I was listening to when working on these stories has been covered previously on this site.
Another thing that is unique, is that these stories were less driven by specific musical inspirations than other work I've done. The rhythms and tenor of "99 Problems," "You Can Make Him Like You," or "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine," speak to the musicians and the beats that spoke to me when I was working on those projects.
But what spoke to me on these stories was memory, and my associations with my hometown, the bars there, the neighborhoods I lived in, and the people I ran around with.
Further, the three collections within this collection are intended to loosely cross eras, the '80s, '90s and late aughts/2010 on respectively, and if not entirely riddled with time specific references, than certainly in the feeling of living in those eras, and the passage of time.
These Notes then are about the music I, or the characters themselves, would have been listening to during those time periods, which I guess means there will be some overlap after all. These stories may be fiction, but they are my fiction, and that doesn't mean we don't share some things in common.
One final note, these are songs that favor relationships, lost love, heartache, and confusion. They are also songs you hear in bars. All of which seems right for these stories, and most certainly appropriate.
Repetition Patterns - 1980s
"Bigmouth Strikes Again"/The Smiths
For every disaffected teenager during the '80s and for time immemorial.
"Fight the Power"/Public Enemy
It might be Sugar Hill Gang and Rapper's Delight or Run-DMC rocking their version of Walk This Way, but somewhere along the way small town dudes decided they needed rap music in their life and I don't think there is a more kick-ass rap song from the Reagan '80s than this one.
"Should I Stay Or Should I Go"/The Clash
I once had the chance to see The Clash in the gym of the college in my hometown. I remember not going because I was tired. On the other hand I wasn't too tired to see Blue Oyster Cult. It was the '80s.
"If You Leave"/OMD
Every high school mixed-tape included this song. MTV played the video on repeat. Molly Ringwald ruled. And while I tend to believe that any true debate over John Hughes' greatest movie is between The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles, my wife favors the latter and I prefer the former, we should never overlook the awesome outsiderness that was, and is, Pretty in Pink.
"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"/U2 or "Every Breath You Take"/The Police
These songs are practically from different eras within the same era, and frankly, they're both sort of stalkery, but they were inescapable, they spoke to our collective pain, and I saw both bands, and heard these songs, then, live, and in the moment, much as the characters in these stories would have aspired to do assuming the Police or U2 were playing in the Carrier Dome, Space, The Broome County Arena or Holledor Memorial Stadium.
So Different Now - 1990s
"Celebrity Skin"/Hole
During a moment when Kim Gordon is getting so much love, and this slot that could have easily gone to "Smells Like Teen Spirit," I am reminded how badass Hole was during the moment, and how much the following lyrics speak to these stories:
"You better watch out
For what you wish for
It better be worth it
So much to die for."
"I'm Always in Love"/Wilco
It's funny to me how dismissive we can be of Wilco now that they are elder statesmen and they're music is somewhat repetitive, if not neutered, in nature, because to do so is to forget just how wonderful Summerteeth and Yankee Foxtrot Hotel were.
"Sabotage"/The Beastie Boys
Cliche now I know, and yet I remember walking into a bar just before this song really broke, and the place went bananas, and this despite how long the Beasties had already been around. It was a moment that was just totally explosive and filled with violence and humor and exactly what I hope to do with every story I write.
"Loser"/Beck
I was in a bar in upstate New York the first time I heard this song and when it came on this group of women removed their shirts to reveal matching, but differently colored bras, began to dance in perfectly choreographed unison, and then when the song ended they put their shirts on and walked away. It was a half-naked flash mob before such things existed. That's all.
"Simple Song"/Avail
Small town dudes raging, joyful and kicking-ass.
After the Flood - The Aughts and Such
"Your Little Hoodrat Friend"/The Hold Steady
More cliche I know, and yet despite the fact that Buzzfeed is already mocking me for this choice, it is the first The Hold Steady song I heard and loved, and I've always felt that the characters in The Hold Steady's songs are kindred spirits with mine, small town, alcohol quafing, and searching for love and parties, though not necessarily in that order.
We Belong to The Staggering Evening/Ike Reilly
Possibly the greatest bar band ever, or of the last decade, and The New York Stories does love, and need, its bars, its bar bands, and its staggering evenings.
"99 Problems"/Jay-Z (The Grey Album remix)
I won't even ask you to set aside the blatant misogyny for even a moment, but do focus on the sparse lines, and the slamming beats, because I want to capture the aesthetic in everything I try to write, and all the time at that.
"Thresher's Flail"/Be Your Own Pet
Our children are us, and they are all our children, whether we have parented them ourselves or not, and they're fucking angry, just as we were.
"Monster"/Kanye West
To be greatly misunderstood is to be the worst feeling of all. To be able to not communicate it, torture. Mostly absent Yeezus' grandiosity, the characters in The New York Stories know this all too well, and in that way it provides a bookend for The Smiths and "igmouth Strikes Again."
Bonus Tracks:
There is no great explanation required here. The New York Stories culminates in an epic storm and flood, and so what kind of host would I be if I were to leave out some storm specific, and wholly, complimentary, late night bar tracks for you? No kind of host at all, yo.
"A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"/Bob Dylan
"Have You Ever Seen the Rain"/Creedence Clearwater Revival
"Riders on the Storm"/The Doors
"Purple Rain"/Prince
"November Rain"/Guns 'n' Roses
Ben Tanzer is the author of the books My Father’s House, You Can Make Him Like You, So Different Now, Orphans, and Lost in Space: A Father’s Journey There and Back Again, among others. Ben serves as Director of Publicity and Content Strategy at Curbside Splendor Publishing and can be found online at This Blog Will Change Your Life, the center of his growing lifestyle empire. He lives in Chicago with his wife and two sons.
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