For Those About to ROCK

Never mind why (I don't put all of my life here on the blog for your inspection, okay?) but I wanted to know how one would go about starting a rock band, so I browsed a bunch of books and ended up buying For Those About to Rock : A Road Map to Being in a Band, by Dave Bidini.

The engaging little book was written with teens in mind, and in fact the author tried to evict this mother of two college boys on the very first page: "...you have no right reading this book. It isn't for you. It's for the people who wouldn't be caught dead sitting next to you on the bus." But I figured what ol' Dave didn't know wouldn't hurt him, so I kept going.

I've been thinking lately, and this book is backing up my theory, that creating music must be very similar to writing fiction. Simply put, both are about expressing what's on the creator's mind and in his heart. And "making it" (achieving success) is something that happens inside the artist. However high or low you set the bar, it's your bar to set; and you haven't made it until you believe you have made it.

Here's another parallel between fiction writers and music-makers:

Rik Emmett, of the hard-rock band Triumph (Rik dropped the c in his name after it was misprinted on an album), once told me, "There are two kinds of musicians: Those who want to play and those who have to play."

I've been plagued with headaches for the past several weeks, so I'm scheduled to have a CT scan a couple of hours from now. My Number One Son has advised me to tell the technicians right up front that I'm a romance novelist. Apparently, the kid thinks my brain might look a little...uh...different from a normal one.

Maybe I won't tell them anything. If I'm right about musicians and writers being so much alike, maybe the techies will take one look at my brain and wonder if I'm a rock star.