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September 13, 2022
Michael Pedersen's Playlist for His Memoir "Boy Friends"
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.
Michael Pedersen's memoir Boy Friends is an illuminating and moving portrait of friendship.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
"Pedersen offers an extended reverie on the dynamics of male friendship, an underexplored literary landscape...A consistently intimate and often moving memoir of friendship."
In his own words, here is Michael Pedersen's Book Notes music playlist for his memoir Boy Friends:
The below excerpt borrowed from the Q&A between Michael Pedersen and Shirley Manson (Garbage) in the Waterstones (UK) Special Edition of the book.
Shirley: As a fellow artist who has had their work described by others for decades and knowing just how frustrating that experience can be, I would like to give you the opportunity to describe this book yourself to the reader.
Michael: First up, muckle thanks for that, chère Shirley.
Boy Friends is a sloppy word casserole baked in celebration of friendship in all its weird and wonderous manifestations — a tribute to friends here, there and elsewhere. A slice goes to those hungry for the ones they miss. Another for sharezies between chums who can’t get enough of each other. Served shrewdly, it’s a dish that never empties.
I could say more, but I’ll edge towards being laconic because this reminds me of a bit from an Alasdair Gray interview I’ve long lionised – the interviewer asks him to describe his mammoth book Lanark in his own words.
‘It’s a Scottish petty-bourgeois model of the universe,’ he quickly retorts.
The interviewer, baffled at the brevity, responds, ‘Just like that?’
To which Alasdair replies, ‘Yes, I’ve rehearsed it and honed it down to as few words as possible.’
Apropos Alasdair’s punchy answer, I’m already coming in verbose and overweight.
n.b. Of course, music was key in the writing of this book. I think of each friendship that punctuated my life as having had its own bespoke soundtrack. I’m also missing a friend who was a singer-songwriter who wowed audiences the world over. I revisit him via his own music, the songs we loved together, and those he recommended to me.
The playlist……..:
Young Fathers — Only God Knows
Young Fathers grew up in Edinburgh around the same time as me. Their progression from honeyed boy band to hip-hop gnarly to pop with prowess to uncategorisable brilliance has been marvellous to behold.
Within the belly of the book I attend a, likely historic, Young Fathers concert at Leith Theatre. The sermons this band uncage upon crowds are stupendous. To listen to YF live is to be engulfed within a cosmic storm.
One human in particular in the band is a dear friend of mine, although I have a fraternal love for them all. Young Fathers have soundtracked Edinburgh for many of us. When they won the Mercury Music Prize and my literary production house (Neu! Reekie!) got to host and curate their home town victory show, I got to feel like we owned the city for a night (liberally / as part of a behemoth fair-living collective of course).
It was no surprise to see them featured several times over on the Trainspotting 2 film soundtrack. This track, in fact, is an exclusive to T2.
Only god knows when the beast was feeding
Taking from our mouths when we ain't eating
Shedding more blood than we are bleeding
Rachel Sermanni — The Fog
When Scott passed I found myself hiding away in an Italian hilltop retreat in Umbria, Italy. The guardians of Cascaroni being two cherished friends Bréon and Garry. From the top tier of Cascaroni, we catapulted music across the canopies and flooded the valley below. The sound of the music disturbed the speckled butterflies in the overgrown amphitheatre and made the frog spawn tremble. The songs flumed all the way to Montone.
The first song I felt compelled to play after a Scott binge was this folk-pop undulating epic. The song harmonised with the sanctuary’s calm, and Rachel’s voice lifted us up into the celestial ether. Showing their appreciation for this Etruscan disco, the barking let loose their nonpareil call of reciprocal adulation.
And who wouldn’t fallow a song down a rabbit hole that opens with the line — Deep, deep down under mountains I have heard them call my name! It could be the first line of a long-lost Tolkien novel.
The song ends with ‘Mercy, Mercy’ whilst Rachel lilts in the chest chamber for many moons after.
Withered Hand —Love in The Time of Ecstasy
Withered Hand plays a show in my book. Plays and then delivers words of sapience; words that come sure as a sermon. This is an accidental tribute show to Scott in a fantastic place called Ullapool in The Highlands of Scotland. Ullapool backwards is Loopallu, which is fun to say and was the banner of an indie music festival in this verdant part of Scotland. At the show, Withered Hand goes on last and describes Scott as a Wounded Healer having spent serious time thinking on the matter.
Withered Hand’s songs are as quirky, esoteric and fun as his sobriquet. I once heard him called Neil Young for the MySpace generation. I once heard him described as the greatest loss the Jehovah’s Witnesses ever suffered. I once heard he sung the word LOVE over and over as the chorus of a song building the audience up into a release of rapture. I once heard his real name was Dan. I cannot attest to the verisimilitude of any of that, but can attest to his lustre.
Soko — We Might Be Dead By Tomorrow
After one of the liveliest (that’s to say most crapulent and carousing) summers of my life living in London (an epoch that features in the book), I finally broke up with the great City and conjured a move to Cambodia. This was 2009. After cementing this decision, I ventured out into the night chancing upon a gig in a new (short-lived) music venue in Kentish Town called The Flowerpot. The artist that loped to stage, Ukulele in hand, was Soko. I was mesmerised and have followed her career ever since harvesting inspiration from her at every stage. My fluorescent pink Soko ‘Feel Feelings’ top is one I wear when reading from the book to give me moxie and pluck.
This song is a reminder to live, live, live, and long live the love in us.
Counting Crows — Mrs Potter’s Lullaby
Because this band were my emotional compass in my teens and they still simmer with charm. Here’s a bit on them pinched from my own book. ‘Any which way, that song and others in their oeuvre made me fantasise about life morphing into a Dawson’s Creek-style drama series. Adam, the puissant singer of Counting Crows, had lit a cosmic candle in my sky. A beacon I’d always known was there, one that I believed would guide me home whenever lost and far away. I did not take quite so easily to Oasis. The Bangles on the other hand, absolutely.’
Garbage — Only Happy When It Rains
Oh because Shirley Manson is one of the most vivacious, artistically shrewd and glorious makers of (mellifluous) art Scotland has produced. Song after song, style after style, of unabashed splendour.
And because Shirley has pretty much came on board as an ambassador for the book — blurbing it, hosting an in-conversation, creating a secret chapter with me that has been put to ink in the aforementioned special edition. I couldn’t be more thankful and swooning.
I'm only happy when it rains / Pour your misery down on me — you get the gist.
Big Thief — Not
As I was making the final edits I had this song on repeat in my ears and in my dreams. Four fantabulous, unconnected, friends all unfortunately missed a big show we were doing because they’d committed (with gusto) to a concert going on at Glasgow’s iconic Barrowlands venue. The band was Big Thief. It piqued my attention, this troupe that could command the devotion of many of my dearest. I found this song first and then rapaciously consumed their entire back catalogue. I can’t wait to see them live. Words were taughtened to these trenchant sentiments and sounds.
Scott Hutchison/Frightened Rabbit —Poke
The stunning lyrics Scott has sculpted for this song would work printed as a poem. They come both whispering and wailing, come with poetics, with thrum and thrash, as entrancing as the pull of moon and magnets he summons in the song.
Poke also features the most deftly executed C*** bomb I’ve ever encountered — in music, books or elsewhere.
Scott was a genius and I miss him every day. This song is one of the rawest introductions to him as a lexically charged, tenderness heavy, gifted songwriter and human. It’s equally the hardest and the most beautiful one for me to listen to.
Here is the whole song because I’m not qualified to prune, pare or dissect it.
Poke at my iris
Why can't I cry about this?
Maybe there is something that you know that I don't
We adopt brand new language
Communicate through pursed lips
And you try not to put on any sexy clothes or graces
I might never catch a mouse
And present it in my mouth
To make you feel you're with someone who deserves to be with you
But there's one thing we've got going
And it's the only thing worth knowing
It's got lots to do with magnets and the pull of the moon
Why won't our love keel over as it chokes on a bone?
And we can mourn its passing
And then bury it in snow
Or should we kick its cunt in
And watch as it dies from bleeding?
If you don't want to be with me just say and I will go
Oooh Oooh Oooh Oooh Oooh
Well we can change our partners
This is a progressive dance but
Remember it was me who dragged you up to the sweaty floor
Well this has been a reel
I've got shin-splints and a stitch from weed
But like a drunken night it's the best bits that are coloured in
You should look through some old photos
I adored you in every one of those
If someone took a picture of us now they'd need to be told
That we had ever clung and tied
A navy knot with arms at night
I'd say she was his sister but she doesn't have his nose
And now we're unrelated and rid of all the shit we hated
But I hate when I feel like this
And I never hated you.
Michael Pedersen is a prize-winning Scottish poet and author. He has published two successful chapbooks and an acclaimed debut collection Play With Me. His second collection, Oyster, was published in 2017 and was illustrated by and performed as a live show with Frightened Rabbit's Scott Hutchinson. Pedersen has been named a Canongate Future 40; was a finalist in the 2018 Writer of the Year at The Herald Scottish Culture Awards; was awarded the 2014 John Mather Trust Rising Star of Literature Award; and won the 2015 Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship. Pedersen also co-founded Neu! Reekie!, a prize-winning arts collective known for producing cutting edge shows around the world.
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