I Just Started Reading my First Book by Tom Robbins and… by Davin Michael Stedman

How do I write some novels, and make them truly come to life?

I just take my Staxx Brothers albums, which are already sequenced cinematically, and breath life into characters in those songs. The narrative voices are already there.

Every song is already a story. The videos are already my little movies – a literary proof of concept.

It has troubled me for some time that if I just wrote about my bands I would just literally be talking sh☆t about my friends and sounding really petty.

The stories of a decent band succeeding downward as a music industry collapses into plot only The Joker himself could devise,

streaming for milli-pennies, to make billions in sales for smart phones dependent on the productivity of musicians and porn stars, who bend over backwards to give themselves to their media masters for free.

Less than Free because they still have to pay for the privilege of the teal time experience of streaming their own art, because nobody listens to CDs.

Well that’s a tale somebody else can tell. Maybe that’s happening on the periphery. That’s just the writing on the wall.

The gross evil we all pretend is not the plot that still thickens.

I think I can write novels based on those albums. I know I can.

The knock on my songs was that they weren’t much about me, even when they were. That I was too detached from the tales I wove, even when I wasn’t. I was acting.

Well maybe it will make fine fiction, make the albums even better soundtracks, plots to sell film rights.

…rather than spill the beans and the hot tea about our own honest struggles in Roman a Clef fiction. Make the band disappear into the periphery, and let the songs speak for themselves.

Even there are some really great stories to tell. I guess that’s why they call it fiction. Because there is nothing more libel than the truth.

I read that sentiment the book The Rise & Fall of The Kray Twins by John Pearson, regarding the gangster Reggie Kray’s salacious affairs with members of Parliament, and it really stuck.

The truth was so libel because it could be proven at such a tremendous cost (to a hush hush patriarchy of genteel corruption), that it had to litigated as a blasphemous and damaging. The facade must hold, even hidden behind closed doors or in plain sight.

Powerful stuff.

☆ VOICE OF MOVIE TRAILER GUY: Imagine a world where no bands are left except Coldplay and Kid Rock to replace Sir Elton and Paul Simon to pack houses, because all the good one died as $300 local openers that never got signed.

Fake Rock was all that survived, recycling previous commercialized pentatonic riffs under empty Patriotic declarations, like “God is Country” and “Country is God.”

Equality became a brand,

“Ford Equals Chevy”

…and false equivalancies,

“Mudflaps and Big Tires do not necessarily equal a micro-penis, as does the inverse size of one’s Confederate flag.”

…bold chrome board room visions of multinationals selling more trucks to those that fear “globalists”. Banking on a populace conditioned to believe to believe Modern Country’s washboard abs and chart fodder was all there ever was to Rock & Roll.

An assembly line for people to not buy memberships to not buy music; music especially made for people that don’t like music.

A factory that kept going even after the workers went home with pink slips, to try their hand at YouTube tutorials and the Tequila & Whiskey river the music prescribed.

We all washed down the pain of what we hadn’t even known that we had lost. The future, now midi controlled by mind cleansing algorithms, welcomed the planned obsolescence of human ingenuity, and the new dawn of casually enforced mediocrity.

The worst idea was to even really try.

Davin’s new song has been released and has become a global earworm and Caribbean dancehall hit. Listen here on Reggaeville: DAVIN MICHAEL STEDMAN & ANTHONY RED ROSE – FREE YOUR MIND FEAT. SLY & ROBBIE WITH LENKY MARSDEN. The video is now available on Youtube.

– Musician and writer Davin Michael Stedman has many ventures, such as the AMAZING blog, 100milesofmusic.com, and is one of the driving forces behind the Staxx Brothers. This past spring he spent weeks networking in and reporting from Kingston, Jamaica. He will return there soon for more recording. His single with British band Sherlock Soul is now available as well.