A Short Guide to Writing About Music Book

Patterson's Take a Walk on the Dark Side caught my attention with its constant flow of interesting information of the history of rock and roll. More specifically the myths and legends behind famous musicians. Most cases have to do with musicians finding interest in the occult and having ironic things happen other incidences are sheer acts of coincidence or are they?

The theme of this book is to make the reader question whether it was just coincidence that caused a terrible fate to happen to multiple five star musicians. And another thing is to take a look and see how short life can be, even when we are at the top of our game (in this case charts). Most of these musicians made a lasting impact on what we listen to today and while life in the fast lane may sound fun it is not void of death.

How Patterson goes about this book is to start out on one musician or band, then go on explaining something more or less "spooky" about it. Sometimes it will start out with a curse and describe how each curse has influenced a band. Curses like the Buddy Holly curse and the curse of 27. The author himself doesn't give much of a voice at all but he doesn't need to. The story of what happened is good enough to draw attention (certainly got me addicted). The story is captivating enough to the point where an author's snarky comments would ruin it. He perfectly describes what is going on and for the rest of the style, there isn't much to complain about.

"Characters" in the book are musicians and people musicians were interested in. One of my favorite musicians of all time is Waylon Jennings and his story with Buddy Holly is told in spades. To briefly describe the tragic irony: Holly had chartered a small airplane to avoid freezing weather stuck in a bus and Jennings decided to give up his seat to another person in the band (Valens) and he rode the bus. Before leaving for his flight Holly said "I hope your old bus freezes over" and Jennings retorted "Yeah well I hope your old plane crashes". Hours after the flight the plane crashes, no survivors, It was the last thing Jennings said to his good friend Buddy Holly, and it would haunt him for decades. Cases like these are constant (yet not repetitive) and you kind of hurt for the person who just lost their friend (especially with last words like those) or your jaw drops when these people go through that.

The setting constantly changes and is never completely in depth. Like I said before it's about the story and the tragic irony. The setting being lacking is not so much of a bad thing. The story moves along with a pace and setting that is easy to fallow and picture. He does not describe a room for five pages but he gets the story across and that is what counts.

The plot is mostly about curses and to tell the truth it's kind of spooky. There is the curse of Buddy Holly (his story being told earlier) where all but one (Jennings) of the musicians who worked with him died on his birthday or day of death. His day of death was predicted 100 percent accurately to the hour of when he would die. The prediction was made on a Ouija board two years before he died. Don't believe yet? Lynyrd Skynyrd produces a phenomenal album called Street Survivors. In the album cover it shows them surrounded by fire, weeks later most of the band dies in a plane crash. Occurrences like these are what the book is made of (and I do apologize if I gave away parts). These are what make people question their own beliefs. Do they believe these are random acts of coincidence or is there a greater force at play and did these musicians sign their fate when they started?

This book does not make a many connections to current events. You can connect why a band is not around or why people make references to some of the curses. For example Amy Winehouse died of age 27 following others like Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and Jim Morrison. But this book really connected with me because I love rock and roll and just about every musician referenced I listen to on a daily basis.

To conclude if you find curses and spooky coincidence than you will get a kick out of this book. If you're like me and love rock and roll this will be a great read. You get to know more about great artists and be captivated with how some left this world. Great read, I had a few goose- bumps, I'm passionate about what I listen to, would recommend