music

About My Latest Story: “Animals with Nowhere to Go”

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I was so happy to see my story, “Animals with Nowhere to Go”, published this month (January) at Jerry Jazz Musician. I wrote “Animals” specifically to enter the Jerry Jazz 55th short fiction contest last fall. Even though it only wound up short-listed (go to “Chromesthesia “ here to read the wonderful winning story by Shannan Brady) it is an honor to see my work alongside so many other great creative people’s.

I discovered Jerry Jazz about fifteen years ago while researching material for my novel Notes on the Golden Country (still a few years to go before it’s out). At the time, I was writing a rather freeform essay on the effect that Ralph Ellison’s work had on American literature. You can read that brief essay here. JJM is a wonderful repository for all things Ralph Waldo Ellison. I’d found my people.

I am a writer who has a tendency to connect his fiction and essays to musical questions and mysteries. I often go find the Jerry Jazz Musician website whenever I’m feeling beat up and ragged out from projects I’m working on. It’s a great source of inspiration for jazz culture lovers on all sorts of levels with poetry, essays, fiction, photos, videos, and book reviews on everyone from John Coltrane and Thelonius Monk to James Baldwin and jazz chronicler Gary Giddins.

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It Always Comes Back to “Hey Joe”

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Hey Joe
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today marks the 44th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix’s death. He left this world when he was just 27. Thanks to my good friend Derrick Baldwin for reminding me of this. Derrick is one helluva keyboardist and I love it when his band gets him to sing.

Some people think you’re pathetic if you gush even just a smidge about Jimi. Those people don’t know shit and probably think people on “America’s Got Talent” are artists to follow for life. There’s more to art, though, than standing on stage and having yourself electrified into people’s homes.

Watch the video below and listen to what Jimi says about practicing. What separates Continue reading →

Joni Mitchell Speaking About Meeting Jimi Hendrix

~ davidbiddle ~ 4 Comments
For the next few months I am going to periodically offer commentary on video clips by famous artists on what it was like to meet Jimi Hendrix and what he meant to them. You can find most of these clips easily enough on YouTube, but there are special ones I want to highlight here at my website because of the special insights they give us into the creative process. Great artists speaking about other great artists provides us with unguarded insights into the life of the creative spirit.
 

Joni Mitchell
Cover of Joni Mitchell

Below is the first clip I want to offer. It starts out with a Joni Mitchell interview and ends with a weird video rendition of “Voodoo Chile.” Note how “Mitch” appears to know Italian. That’s impressive as hell.

Joni and Jimi were both on the rise in the late 1960s when they met. We all know how much Jimi revered the Beatles and Bob Dylan. It’s likely he respected a lot of the other innovators of that era as well. And there were many. Certainly by the time Jimi and Joni met, it was clear that Joni’s ability to mix complex melodies with real poetry (not just lyrics) was worthy of Hendrix’s attention.

Joni says that Jimi recorded her concert using a big reel-to-reel tape recorder and Continue reading →

On Noise and the Big Box of Questions

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The Essential Elvis Presley
Photo credit: Wikipedia

My novel, Beyond the Will of God, is now posted at NoiseTrade.com, an amazing website that lets artists offer their music and books to people for free. You can find all sorts of weird and amazing leading edge work at that site offered by everyone from 17-year-old guitar geniuses to hard-to-categorize 56-year-old psychedelic novelists writing for uncompromising lovers of music and weird ideas.

Beyond the Will of God was published on July 4, 2012. It’s been downloaded over 10,000 times from Amazon and even won the Indie Book-of-the-Month Award at WriteReadRate.com (sadly, now defunct). If you go to the NoiseTrade page for the book you’ll find some excellent quotes by respected reviewers. BWG Continue reading →

2013…(The Merman Turns Again): My Undercover Soundtrack

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DCBiddle HeadShot MedRez
New headshot. Woo Hoo!

I’ve got a guest post called “Sex, Drugs, Metaphysics, and Rock ‘n’ Roll” over at Roz Morris’s website My Memories of a Future Life. It’s a quick-read, but provides a tour of some of the recordings that influenced me as I worked directly on my novel Beyond the Will of God.

Roz runs a great shop and offers a feature setup weekly for authors to highlight their musical influences called “The Undercover Soundtrack.” You really ought to subscribe and check out some of the past features. Check out the link list at the beginning of each post. It’s a quick resource of all the links in a post that allows you to quickly follow each track the author refers to in their text. Also, one of the coolest things about Roz’s music site is the list of all the previous references you will find at the very bottom of the page. She’s posted so many great pieces on authors’ musical influences, if you just think of a musician or composer, you’ll likely find multiple links to their work in this massive database.

Roz is also the author of the “how to” book Nail Your Novel. It’s a fabulous resource if you’re struggling through writing a novel or if you know someone else who is (hint: give books by independently published authors for the holidays). I bought Nail Your Novel, first because I thought it was a manual on how to make love to an e-book, but also because the notes Continue reading →

The Rhythms Fall Slow

~ davidbiddle ~ 2 Comments

Source: purpleclover.com

A friend recently sent me a link to a very moving first-hand remembrance of Jeff Buckley called “Be Your Husband” from over at PurpleClover.com. The piece stayed with me all day until I recalled an alternative prologue to my novel Beyond the Will of God written a few years before I went to press with it. I decided against this particular prologue because at the time I didn’t want to insult the memory of Jeff. I hope that is not your perception here. I offer it just because I think it’s a great tribute in and of itself, and, in the end, this same spirit finds its way into my novel — a spirit you should not forget.

The Rhythms Fall Slow: On Jeff Buckley and the Eternal Life of Music

On May 29, 1997, exactly 660 days after the day Jerry Garcia died, Jeff Buckley decided to cool off in the Mississippi River on his way to a recording session in Memphis, Tennessee. According to the only eyewitness, Buckley, fully clothed, waded into the Mississippi for a swim right around dusk. He went out to where the water came up to his waist, lay back, began to float and sing at the top of Continue reading →

Beyond the Will of God Named EBook of the Month

~ davidbiddle ~ 1 Comment

My novel, Beyond the Will of God, won the E-Book of the month award at the innovative book site, “IWriteReadRate.com.” I am grateful and indebted to all who voted for this funky little psychedelic mystery. Here’s a clip from the IWRR announcement:

It was a close run race last month, with the most total votes yet – great stuff! Without further ado, the winner is…

Beyond the Will of God: A Psychedelic Mystery by David Biddle

Congratulations to David and we hope that he will find the critique helpful to support his writing journey, and continue to inspire his creativity and dedication for literature.

His winning ebook will be the featured one on the iWRR homepage during the current month. David joins our previous winners – to discover who they were, click here.

You can pick the book up through the IWRR site for $0.99. That’s a pretty good deal. I’m raising it back to $4.99 at Amazon later this week. It will go to $6.99 by the end of Continue reading →

Origins of a Psychedelic Novel: The Backstory on Beyond the Will of God

~ davidbiddle ~ 4 Comments
[Added note, 6/15/14: you can download “Beyond the Will of God” at NoiseTrade.com as a digital book for free right now…hurry because the offer will close soon…this was originally posted at the website Behind Blue Eyes, as noted at the end here, but the deals for digital downloads no longer apply. Still, go to NoiseTrade and it’s all free]
 

Jimi Hendrix (figure@Strobist #2)
Jimi Hendrix (figure@Strobist #2) (Photo credit: Jen Son)

It has to be admitted upfront that I was in an altered state of mind when I first came up with the idea for Beyond the Will of God. It was 1975. I was 17 and had just discovered the raw power of crazed electric guitar (Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Hot Tuna, and Jefferson Airplane to be precise—all night long). Until that weird autumn evening I had no idea how far the mind could go into the soul…and all just through letting loud guitar music take you over.

The next morning I was listening to Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland. The song “1983…(a Merman I Should Turn to Be)” came on. The best way to describe what Continue reading →

Behind Blue Eyes: #rockfiction center stage

~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

I discovered the hashtag #rockfiction about a month ago when I stumbled onto the Behind Blue Eyes website: http://behindblueeyes.ca/

Anne-Marie Klein is the author of a series of rock ‘n’ roll Behind Blue Eyes novels that trace the development of the fictitious young musician, Ian Harrington’s climb toward success during the 1970s heyday of popular music. Remember those days when Rock was King? Remember Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert? Blue Oyster Cult? Peter Frampton? Deep Purple?  Three Dog Night?  Continue reading →