"The playback: late night, Brooklyn, a pot of cofee, and a chair by the window..."
During the trip, I read Rob Sheffield's Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time. If any of you watch the Vh-1 shows like I Love the 90s, then you've probably seen Sheffield as a commentator; he's a writer for Rolling Stone. Kind of like the book I talked about yesterday, I was a little turned off at first. The cover is a bit cartoony, but I knew the bulk of the story was about dealing with the loss of his wife. And, hey, I love a good trauma memoir! Seriously, though, this is another good one. It is terifying to read how his wife had a pulmonary embolism. She simply stood up one day and collapsed dead. There was no warning. He was in the kitchen. It was Mother's Day. She had been completely healthy. And she was gone. I at least knew Blane was dying. That was hard enough to deal with at the time, but AIDS was nowhere near being considered anything close to a managed disease at that point. It just sounds horrible. And terifying.

The first few chapters where he sets up his childhood and leading up to meeting her are fine, as are the chapters about their dating and marriage. But the narrative does become gripping when he describes the time after her death and the music he would listen to as the nights stretched into morning. Each chapter does start with the image of a cassette liner listing several songs. Part of the fun is looking at the list and remembering music from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. For some, it might be an odd balance with the seriousness of the narrative, but it worked for me. I especially liked when he says that they both loved pop music. They were not music snobs. One of the things that makes him sad is when he listens to Hanson's "MMMBop" because he knows she would have loved it. As a fan of pop music, I was happy to read a story from a music afficianado who sees the good in the popular.

For many of us, music is our soundtrack, and certain songs will always remind us of people and the past. I can't hear "Saving the Best for Last" by Vanessa Williams and not think of Blane. Or U2's "She Moves in Mysterious Ways." I liked this book a lot.
- posted by Nels @ 8:52 PM | | | Link |