Tickets are now on sale for a special show I’m hosting in August called Songs About Books. A couple of months ago, I interviewed five Northwest musicians about their reading lives and what their songwriting processes are like. I then assigned them each a book:
Ryan Barrett (The Pica Beats): The Possibility of an Island, by Michel Houellebecq
Alex Guy (Led to Sea): Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov
Levi Fuller: Bluets, by Maggie Nelson
Johanna Kunin (Bright Archer): Set This House in Order: A Romance of Souls, by Matt Ruff
Joshua Morrison: The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt.
And then they each spent a few months reading, re-reading, and writing five songs in response to their assigned book. They’ll debut those songs at this show. Tickets are $12, which gets you a CD featuring 15 of the songs. The books are all excellent, the musicians are wonderful, and it should be a great time. Get your tickets now.
Iggy Pop already released an album inspired by “The Possibility of an Island” — “Preliminaires”, from 2009. Houllebecq even got a writing credit on one of the songs. It’s pretty good — smart and jazzy, with not too much of the plodding rock crud that the Ig is sometimes prone to (along with everyone else in the world). Hearing Iggy Pop sing jazz is a bizarre experience but pleasant if you let it in.
I’ve had that book in my room unread for a few years now. I read The Elemetary Particles long ago and dug it….so I guess I should get around to opening it?