Otherwhere: Tuesday Afternoon
It’s been a while since I’ve posted an Otherwhere entry. I was writing them weekly, but I’ve decided to do them more randomly now, just because some weeks I get a lot of good stuff and others I don’t. I had some links saved up and then some new good ones came in to my inbox this morning, spurring me on. So here’s the latest collection with a bonus video at the end. See if you can guess what it’s going to be.
Dealing with those pesky, daily writing blocks. (This is a podcast, but there’s a transcript.)
The threefold method for writing an antagonist
Okay and now, wait for it…you might have guessed, given the title of this post, that I would come up with a video to the one, the only, the lads from England–your Moody Blues Singing, of course, Tuesday Afternoon. (It’s from 1969, people, with Justin Hayward looking like a high school student.
J.D.
Oh Charlotte, I loved the Moody Blues! Haven’t listened in a long time but I had all those vinyls. Their albums aren’t divided into singles. To enjoy them you must take in the whole thing. Great studio band.
For a week I’ve been obsessed with “The Weight,” a song by The Band. We always hope to introduce conflict into our writing. The guitar player and alleged songwriter, Robbie Robertson, was from Toronto. The drummer and singer, Levon Helm, is from Turkey Scratch, Arkansas. A little conflict. My favorite thing about the lyric doesn’t involve conflict–other than me, as a listener, trying to decipher the meaning. It opens with “I just pulled into Nazareth, was feeling ’bout half past dead.” There and through the song are these religious references. It seems for all the world like a retelling of the birth of Christ. It turns out Martin guitars, the gold standard in acoustics, are made in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. That would be Nirvana for a guitarist and the song is written by their guitar player. Roberson wrote it after a visit to Levon’s state. The characters in the song, Carmen and Chester, are straight out of Levon’s life in Arkansas. Fascinating to me.
Thanks for the links. I’ll check them out.s
Charlotte Rains dixon
Okay, number one, back in the 90s I had a friend who was a Moody Blues super-fan. She and her husband followed them around whenever they could, sort of like Dead fans used to. So I went along to a couple concerts with her and actually hung out with the lads at a hotel bar afterward. I remember one of them was quite interested in Native Americans and had done a lot of research on them.
And, number two, “The Weight.” I love that song. Love it. I can hear it in my mind now–going to have to go find it online and listen to it. I too always thought it was a retelling of the story of the birth of Christ but I love the new info you provided. I’ll tell my son–he’s a guitarist (or used to be, before he had a child and a busy career) and a huge fan of all the old rock.