Love in an Undead Age Playlist
CAUTION: This post contains spoilers – big ones. Big as in a-plot-twist-so-crazy-it-hits-you-upside-the-head big. If you haven’t read the book but plan to, when it says spoilers below, skip ahead to the next song. Better yet, read the book and then come back to this.
I included all the links because when I synch this with my Goodreads blog, not all the thumbnails for the videos are coming through. If you’re reading this on Goodreads, you might want to pop over to Miranda’s Journal here on amgeever.com
That said, no one has ever asked me if music influences my writing and I’ve always wished they would. I decided not to wait like I did when I was a teenager who wanted to go to the Homecoming dance. The short answer is… sometimes.
Here’s some of what I listened to when I was writing Love in an Undead Age. Some of it even changed the story.
Anti-Flag:
If you’re unfamiliar with Anti-Flag, then you are missing out on the best political punk rock going. Seriously. Anti-Flag’s songs are full of catchy hooks, sing along choruses, ripping guitar, the most unique bass riffs ever (ever!), and incredible musicianship, all wrapped up in a simple idea: that people of the world have more in common than not, and can change the world for the better if they work together and resist attempts to divide them. If you have not seen their live show, you are missing out. To quote an early reviewer, “Live, they bleeping explode.”
The band was nice enough to let me use a lyric from Good & Ready as the epigraph for the book. Here’s some of what I was listening to at the time, or is referenced in the book.
The handsome singer in the black, long-sleeved shirt is my brother, Justin Sane.
The Buzzcocks
I was lucky enough to see The Buzzcocks live when I studied abroad at The University of Wales, Aberystwyth. A seminal British punk rock band, they have influenced countless bands since. When I first started LIUA, I was going to have a punk rock lyric at the start of every chapter. This quickly went by the wayside as it was #1 – way too much work, and #2 – would have involved securing and paying for the rights to use the lyrics (see #1, plus more dinero than this struggling writer had to spend). For the Miranda chapter after dinner at the Santorello’s, this was going to be it.
!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!
Matisyahu
Sometimes I get stuck on a song, and when I say stuck, I mean STUCK. Like listen to it on repeat for hours on end over the week, for months on end. When I started writing LIUA, the love story was NOT Miranda and Mario. Surprise! Mario was barely a character, more like a background bogeyman. But Miranda’s anger toward him just felt so personal, much more than an evil yet removed character should incite. My husband suggested that perhaps I could make them ex-lovers, which would explain it. So then I wrote a sex scene with them, to get a handle on the intensity that Miranda later channeled into hating him. Several re-writes later it became that sex scene. As I kept listening to this song, an idea started to take hold. What if there was more to their story? What if Miranda ran away with him at the end, even though he was a bad guy? But Miranda would never run away with the bad guy–ever. I couldn’t figure out how to reconcile this, so I talked to my husband. He liked the new love story idea but thought that if Miranda ran away with Mario at the end, then he had to be a good guy. He had to be on the same side, even if she didn’t know it. And that changed everything about where the story would go.
The Killers
My favorite song from the Hot Fuss record, one I listened to as much as Anti-Flag and Matisyahu while writing LIUA. I always thought of this song as being about Miranda, who had lost so much and faked it just to get through another day. Who smiled like she meant it when she didn’t.
The Adverts
Gary Gilmore’s Eyes is one of the songs from Punk Rock Name That Tune. PRNTT was much longer scene in the first draft of LIUA, more about that below.
The Adverts are a really amazing band. Gary Gilmore was convicted of a double murder and executed in Utah. I think he was the last person in America to be killed by firing squad. He was also an organ donor, and you guessed it! One of the organs he donated were his eyes. I was singing this song by fourth or fifth grade, which probably explains a lot about me. More Punk Rock Name That Tune songs are below.
Black Randy and the Metrosquad
Early punk rock doesn’t play nice. The intro of Marlon Brando is so over-the-top culturally insensitive to Native Americans that it just might make your head explode. The actor Marlon Brando was an activist for the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the 1970s - this song makes fun of him because he took himself very seriously. And… it’s really culturally insensitive, especially by today’s standards. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Black Randy and the Metrosquad are one of the seminal Los Angeles punk rock bands of the late 1970s and early 1980s. My brother, Patrick, lived in L.A. then (and later went to school at UC Santa Cruz) and that’s where he discovered punk rock. He brought it back to Pittsburgh when I was in second grade. My little brother, Justin, and I were in a hard-core early Beatles phase at the time and thought punk rock was the worst! Which is ironic, since Justin went on to make Anti-Flag his career. Anyway, Patrick introduced me to Black Randy when I lived in San Francisco in the 1990s. Tragically, Black Randy died of a drug overdose, cutting the band’s career short. Their music is amazing. In the years since, punk rock has become so rigidly genre-ized that Black Randy probably wouldn’t be considered punk by the kids today… they use a synthizer and organ – heresy! That’s why history is so important, even (or especially) for music.
Janis Joplin:
I read a book on the craft of writing that suggested having a motto for every character. This motto should reflect a fundamental truth about them. Every decision that character makes should, ultimately, reflect that truth, even if it doesn’t seem to on its face. I immediately thought of two songs for Miranda – this is one of them (the other was Broken Bones by Anti-Flag). Plus, it’s Janis Joplin… and she was AMAZING. Had she not died of a drug overdose, she would definitely have survived the Zombie Apocalypse. And wtf is it with rockers and drug overdoses?
Punk Rock Name That Tune
Punk Rock Name That Tune was a much longer scene in the first draft of LIUA. But my writing group told me that they got bored with it because they didn’t know the songs, which meant it was not going to be fun for my readers (just for me and fans of early punk rock). So I shortened the scene, then cut it down to a passing reference. Here are some of the songs that were in it. A lyric from Drink Drank Punk is still in the book. Let me know if you find it.
The Weirdos – We Got the Neutron Bomb
We Got the Neutron Bomb
That’s it for now. I’m keeping a list of what I’m listening to now, so expect a similar post after the second book is released!