The Writer's Life 2/1 - XLIX

In today’s NY Post Louis Bayard writes about a new book by Ben Yagoda, The B-Side, which excoriates music of the 50’s. I agreed with the auhor's opinion of each song cited except Yakety Yak, which I happened to hear last night on one of the streams. It is lively and well-written, early rock n roll at its best, expertly delivered by the Coasters. It is the amusing story of a mom laying down the rules to her son. It caontains one of my favorite lines: "...Just tell your hoodlum friends outside/You ain't got time to take a ride..." It was released in 1958, written, produced and arranged by the legendary Leiber and Stoller. The article does not mention Elvis or Jackie Wilson or the wonderful do-wop recordings of the era. Yagoda cites the Beatles and Beach Boys as the saviors of music. Few would criticize the work of those groups, which laid down so many fine tracks, but there is value in every era. Of course some songs, taken out of the specific period when they became popular, now seem lame. It’s easy to cherry pick. I’ll do it too. I will be glad if I never hear Hey Jude, particularly its last two minutes, or California Girls and, especially, In My Room ever again.

Somehow this has slipped by me. Since 2012 Johnny Depp has partnered with Harper Collins in publishing books. The first was Woody Guthrie’s novel House of Earth. The collaboration has also released Bob Gruen and Jody Denberg’s See Hear Yoko and, this week, Jonathan Shaw’s cult novel Narcisa: Our Lady of the Ashes, which was first published in 2008 and went out of print. Copies were going for $200. It’s now less than $13 at Amazon. Kudos, sir.

New Zealander Lydia Ko is the number one ranked female pro golfer in the world. She is 17. Tiger Woods was the previous youngest golf pro at 21.

My thanks to the young man who purchased a Ursula K. LeGuin fantasy, and to Bad News Billy, who bought the last two of the homemade CD's I had on hand. He does not know who's going to win, but he believes the Super Bowl is fixed. Let's see -- which team do I dislike less? No contest -- Seattle, so I'll root for the Seahawks. Of course, I expect the sinister Belichick to win, especially in light of Deflategate. What I'm really looking forward to is the food at the annual bash at Adam and Sharon's.

Vic's 4th novel: tinyurl.com/bszwlxh

Vic's 3rd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/7e9jty3

Vic's Short Story on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/k95k3nx
Vic's Short Story Collection: http://www.tiny.cc/Oycgb
Vic's 2nd Novel: http://tiny.cc/0iHLb Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/kx3d3uf
Vic's 1st Novel: http://tiny.cc/rP7o9

Vic's Rom-Com Screenplay: http://tinyurl.com/kny5llp

Vic's Horror Screenplay: http://tinyurl.com/cyckn3f

Vic's Blog: http://vicfortezza.blogspot.com/

Vic's Web Site: http://members.tripod.com/vic_fortezza/Literature/