Sounds Good is One! Thanks For Reading

One Year Old Today (Or Thereabouts) + A Short Story Below...

Hi, and happy birthday to me – or rather happy birthday to this – “Sounds Good!” on Substack is one. A year of writing and sending out newsletters. If you’re signed up and following you might remember that as recent as two weeks ago I shared all the Friday playlists in one go – 50 weeks of A Little Something For The Weekend playlists. I called that that anniversary of the newsletter since I’d signed up and set up the account a couple of weeks before regular posting got underway.

But now it’s official.

Substack even told me. I got a wee email saying good one. Or something like that.

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So today I just wanted to check in with you and see what you think and wonder if the format is to your liking. Should I switch it up?

Currently I post about film or TV on a Monday, then it’s books and writing on Wednesdays (today) and music with a playlist on Friday. I feel like that covers enough of my pop-culture passions, and if I wanted to write about pro-wrestling I could do that on the Monday, or if I wanted to write about horror movies (as I have) I could also look at the music or the writing aspect, I don’t have to just keep it movie-related and Monday-oriented. So I feel free enough to move. And I like knowing what the topic – broadly – needs to be when I wake up on Substack Writing Day each time.

But what do you think? I don’t monitor the stats like a stat-monitoring hawk. But I do know that the Wednesday newsletter performs poorest. People aren’t as into books/writing – or at least the way I cover it – as the music and movies days. And that makes total sense to me. Even if it’s a little sad, and even if I sometimes put the most effort into the Wednesday missives – including sharing my own short stories or poems and feeling a bit vulnerable for doing so. Lol.

No worries though.

Are you wanting more ‘review’ styled pieces? Are you happy with the content in general? Do you want a total switch-up? I’m keen to hear your suggestions. I’ll keep going in the way I am if the response is ultimately *crickets* but I’ll certainly mix it up if you ask. Maybe you want to be surprised each time rather than having a themed day? Do let me know.

I’ve been writing a few short-stories of late. I’ve had a request from my publisher to see if I have new poems for a potential second volume (I do. I have thousands. I’ll think about choosing some really good ones to make a second book). And I’m also thinking about pulling together an e-book of some of my music reviews. A giant survey of nearly 20 years of reviewing gigs and albums. I thought it might be interesting to try do a chronological sweep – some humourous takes, some of the big wind-ups, some of the best pieces of writing about music. So, again, it’s just a vague idea for now – but I’m going to look further into it. I might even try to print up some physical copies. We’ll see. The e-book is certainly easier, but they get lost straight away as another drop in a vast ocean.

Beyond those projects and ideas – and this newsletter – I am continuing to put out a lot of work on my website (Off The Tracks). I write reviews, poems, stories, blog posts and I host a podcast there. But I’m not doing much with the podcast at the moment. Might try and fire that back up for 2022…

My big dream for this year is to write a horror story – or two. I feel like I have it in me. But it’s requiring research – which is fun. That’s to say, reading other horror writers, beyond Stephen King. I love King, and have reconnected with his work hugely over the last year or two, collecting up all of the books last year and replacing older volumes – but there are more horror writers out there to read, newer and fresher styles. So that’s simmering away on the back-burner for 2022 as well.

Anyway, you can always click on this Linktree to keep up with everything I’m doing online.

So, below, I’m going to leave you with one of my new short stories. You don’t have to tell me what you think – but I’m putting it here so I’m definitely open for feedback. And most certainly I’m keen to know how you feel about this “Sounds Good!” newsletter. If you want changes to your reading then I want to know about it.

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Thanks and all the best to you and yours – and I am hugely appreciative for your support.

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Short Story: Eclipsed -

I was the DJ at my brother’s 21st birthday. I was reluctant too, If I’d had my way, I’d have been at the Red Hot Chili Peppers gig instead. I say “DJ” – it was simply my job to make sure the CDs went on the stereo. It was the early 1990s. Guns N Roses was the theme for the night. Get in the ring motherfuckers. When my uncle got in the ring, he said his hellos and after handing over his gift he said softly but with purpose, “I’ve got a tape I’d like to play”. I heard it in the voice David Byrne uses at the start of the Stop Making Sense concert film, right before he launches into the acoustic version of Psycho Killer and does the jittery dance. He almost falls right over.

Anyway, this tape was not Talking Heads. It was Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. And right as he finished saying that he had a tape he’d like to play he lifted it up from his shirt’s top pocket. A finger either side, a very gentle lift. He loved that tape.

We never played it that night. We didn’t have a cassette deck. (And I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it wouldn’t work with this crowd. I mean one guy had eaten his own vomit on camera, another had pulled his pants down and mooned the video operator. A third guy had walked along and jammed his finger in the hole right at exactly the right moment, I suppose).

At any rate, my brother would never have even heard the tape. He passed out in bed well before midnight, had to be revived to have happy birthday yelled in his general direction. At 21, that’s probably some sort of success.

Many years later, the millennium was the reason for a full-family party. And after filling our cars with gas and unplugging the computers we let our hair down. Mambo # 5 was the big song of the night. (I’d have preferred Guns N Roses!) Curtis Mayfield had died just a day or two earlier and I was desperate to get some on the stereo, but no one seemed to care. I even moped about thinking I was like the character in that Owen Marshall story, The Day Hemingway Died. The only thing that made me laugh was knowing no one would get the reference. And that was a layer of irony.

My uncle turned up – different shirt, same sort of top-pocket, same tape too! This time, he was quieter, less hopeful. He simply slid it up to show off the first inch of the cover. And said, “maybe later? If we’re all still up?”

The night would go on for hours and hours. Some guy tried to pash a girl and she didn’t like it so bit his tongue. My mate took me around the back of the party-shed to tell me I needed to ring the cops in the morning and it wasn’t looking good.  There was bad news back in Wellington…

Worse though, there was terrible music on the stereo.

I not only had a little bit of trouble coming into my life. There was also a little bit of Monica…a little bit of Erica…Rita…Tina…Sandra…Mary and Jessica….

BAH!

We drank foul concoctions and could not get drunk. It was bed-hunting time. Members of our gang were dwindling. Anyone wanted anywhere to crash. A few of us were up to try to turn a nothing night into something.

It was the wee small hours.

And then it dawned on us.

We needed to be in the driveway, looking up at the peak, the sun starting to peek up over that mighty hill. Those of us left holding drinks but with little intention of any further drinking.

There was silence from the stereo. No “DJ” on duty. So, I ran inside and began a frantic search. We had no tape deck still, but I found a copy of Dark Side of The Moon on CD (because, hey, every home has one – all you need to do is look).

The deckchairs made new shapes in the driveway and then you could hear screams from the stereo, a build-up and up and up as the music was rising and then: “Breathe, breathe in the air….”

My uncle looked over at me. His eyes were closed. And he was beaming. Instant recognition. This was his Y2K meltdown. And he loved it. Suddenly he was drinking again. Big gulps of this music going down and all around in him. I didn’t quite understand the significance of listening to the Dark Side of the Moon as the sun came up on the first day of the year 2000. But I was happy to be the  facilitator.

Then I started hearing those words in a surprising new context: “Look around, choose your own ground/For long you live and high you fly/And smiles you’ll give and tears you’ll cry”.

We were there in the driveway as 5am came and went, and the long night behind it was just one more, and the power was still on, so that was a clue that the computers would tick over, and nothing had exploded and many of us were still breathing (“breathe, breathe in the air…”) A new year was on us, and in just a few days I would be arrested for receiving stolen goods.

But in this moment we were alive and well enough, and our watches had not stopped. And time was ticking, and the clocks on the Dark Side album were the signifier there. And it meant a lot to my uncle to be sat with a vodka and orange in an oversized wine glass listening to The Dark Side of the Moon as the sun came up.

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And all you create
And all you destroy
And all that you do
And all that you say
And all that you eat
And everyone you meet (everyone you meet)
And all that you slight
And everyone you fight
And all that is now
And all that is gone
And all that’s to come
And everything under the sun is in tune
But the sun is eclipsed by the moon