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Posts Tagged Bob Dylan
The Undercover Soundtrack – EJ Runyon
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on December 3, 2014
'We become readers in our listening'
Once a week I host a writer who uses music as part of their creative environment – perhaps to connect with a character, populate a mysterious place, or hold a moment still to explore its depths. This week my guest is writing coach EJ Runyon @EJRunyon
Soundtrack by Thee Midniters, Simon & Garfunkel, Nancy Wilson, Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt, Otis Redding, Consuelo Velazquez, The Righteous Brothers, Hank Williams
A House of Light & Stone, a tale set in the 60s, could easily have used the expected rock 'n roll music of its day. Instead, I've featured a mention in the novel of other songs within the tale of Duffy Chavez. I've gone with a local, specific East Los Angeles song, Sad Girl (by Thee Midniters). Then a semi-folk song of the time, April Come She Will (Simon & Garfunkel) and followed with a light jazz tune, How Glad I Am (Nancy Wilson). The music was in my ear as I wrote and ended up in my novel as well.
In Duffy's world, like in Roz's work, there are a number of pieces that have special meaning for this character. We move from nostalgia with the Spanish-language songs and into an American sound of more yearnings. It's with the mention of a Bob Dylan tune , Mr. Tambourine Man where a frisson of change is now in the air around Duffy. This song shows up at a point where we see a bit deeper into her past.
If you give a listen to the songs in this post, you'll almost be able to write your own novel from them. These tunes tell a tale of their own as a playlist. Beginning with Lo Siento Mi Vida (Linda Ronstadt) and then to I've Been Loving You Too Long (Otis Redding), there's an arc you can follow and a sense of storytelling in the lyrics.
This is what I love the most about writing to music. When lyricists tell us a story, we become readers in our listening. From there, the inspiration for our own work seems a natural progression if you are open to it, just as I was inspired in the case of Duffy's world.
Thief to belief
Duffy knows she must choose to either be a thief and liar all her life or believe in herself enough to risk using her gifts of imagination and ingenuity for good.
To tell that tale, I began writing by considering what my scene's mood might be. I would ask myself what in the setting could reflect each mood. And also, month after month through this child's journey, how do I show the passing of time for her poetically. And music seemed to be the key with music being such a large part of her young life.
And while listening to my own collection of music, Besame Querido (Consuelo Velázquez), Unchained Melody (The Righteous Brothers), Mr Tambourine Man (Bob Dylan), these tunes are the ones I heard as I wrote and that managed to sneak into the novel itself.
In this novel, we follow a year in the life of one young girl. While reading Duffy's story, one can hear the emotions of the music I listened to while writing. The music underscores a story that's powerful, dark, and uplifting. As the songs felt to me when I wrote, so they matter to young Duffy as she traverses a year on Elliott Street.
A bit of foreshadowing of the novel's theme is reflected in Otis Redding's song 'I've Been Loving You Too Long'. Duffy's story is a novel about letting go, as well as about our holding onto our pasts.
Songs as signposts
This isn't a film we watch with those catchy songs we all know to be signposts to a set range of time we can all identify. These signposts are woven into the telling of Duffy's quest to be a 'real girl'. They're used in her tale to serve the scene. The songs within Duffy's life show her steps along the quest. Duffy is also being taught to play violin during her summer months. One of the joys I had writing those scenes was searching the web for actual lesson books a child might have used during that time and weaving its title into the story.
The lyrics of Simon & Garfunkel's April Come She Will runs through the year, month by month, as does Duffy's quest, chapter by chapter, from one Christmas day to the end of the following year. It's almost as if I've planted lyric-based Easter eggs for folks to find if they are knowledgeable of the lyrics of these songs.
Music as character
Duffy's world is often impoverished. It's always colourful. Hopefully, it's also reflected in the use of these tunes throughout my chapters. If there were a theme for A House of Light & Stone, it might be Duffy's separateness that seems to be reflected with I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry (Hank Williams)
Duffy's mother spends most of the novel listening to one song over and over. The repetition of the Otis Redding song, and how it affects so many of the characters, makes it seem as if that one song is a character all its own. And in a way, that is why, while not licensing the tune to use its lyrics, I did describe the iconic album cover to a T. This was in the hope that readers familiar to the time would pull in the lyrics on their own, in spite of none being quoted in the book.
EJ Runyon was born and raised in East Los Angeles, California. She now spends her time in Las Cruces, New Mexico. EJ runs the coaching website for writers, Bridge to Story. Her books have garnered rather nice, if few, reviews. She's currently working on her fourth book, Revision for Beginners, all her releases, including A House of Light & Stone, are from the UK Press, Inspired Quill. Find EJ on Facebook, or Twitter as @EJRunyon and at her author website.
A House of Light And Stone, American flavour, authors, Bob Dylan, childhood, Christmas, coming of age, Consuelo Velazquez, Desert Island Discs, drama, EJ Runyon, entertainment, Hank Williams, House of Light & Stone, Linda Ronstadt, literary novels, Memory, music, music for writers, music for writing, My Memories of a Future Life, Nail Your Novel, Nancy Wilson, nostalgia, Otis Redding, playlist for writers, Roz Morris, Simon & Garfunkel, Spanish songs, The Righteous Brothers, The Undercover Soundtrack, Thee Midniters, undercover soundtrack, violin, violin lesson books, Women Writers, writers, writing, writing to music
The Undercover Soundtrack – Trevor Richardson
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on September 24, 2014
'When I listen to Tom Waits I feel my brain chemistry change'
Once a week I host a writer who uses music as part of their creative environment – perhaps to connect with a character, populate a mysterious place, or hold a moment still to explore its depths. This week my guest is author and creative evangelist Trevor Richardson @theSubtopian
Soundtrack by Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Hank Williams, Bruce Springsteen, The Drive-By Truckers, Deer Tick, Jay Calhoun, Press Black, David Rovics, Cartright, Beatles
All I ever wanted was to be Bob Dylan. Only one problem: I don't have a musical bone in my body. Writing about music is the closest I have come and it's worked for me.
My novel, Dystopia Boy: The Unauthorized Files, follows a folk-punk protest singer through a collapsing American economy in the not-too-distant future. Joe Blake and his best friend, Lee Green, front man for their band The Johnny High-Fives, travel the country, playing to tent cities and hobo encampments and earn a fair living. The songs from The Johnny High-Fives included in the book were a combination of original lyrics that I wrote and the songs of various friends I have made during my own travels.
On my own, I wrote lyrics for three songs, Corporate Hun, Protest Nation, inspired by the spoken word riffs of Tom Waits, and Puking Blue that came from absorbing a lot of the post-Yellow Submarine era Beatles songs and ballads from newer bands like Deer Tick and The Drive-By Truckers.
Connective tissue
My search for The Johnny-High Fives' style led to me listening to four songs at once while drinking a fair amount of coffee. On my record player was Springsteen's Born in the USA, my PS3 was playing the Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home, and my laptop had two windows open that blasted Tom Waits's Rain Dogs and Deer Tick's War Elephant. I was looking for a connective tissue between these different sounds. The noise finally peaked, like that rare moment when you are sitting at a traffic light and your blinker momentarily syncs with the blinker of the car ahead of you. That was when I wrote it.
Gather round, you Corporate Huns, I'll show you the death of your future sons.
The words just flowed from there and I had found how I wanted The Johnny High-Fives to sound: a hybridisation of folk and punk. I first encountered this sound while living in Denton, Texas, with an old friend who had a band called Cartright. Cartright had this dirty, gritty vibe like The Ramones, Bob Dylan, and Thelonious Monk poured their collective DNA into a whiskey bottle and shook.
Interestingly enough, the band's name, The Johnny High-Fives, actually came from a night with the Cartright boys. Ben, the band's leader, and some other guys were trying to determine the name of their new band. At the time, Ben was going by the pseudonym Ben Cartright, and they had been using that same moniker as their band name as a kind of placeholder, but Ben thought they needed something flashier.
As we sat around tossing out random combinations of words and phrases, this guy named John started adding 'high fives' to everything that was said.
It was pretty funny and, when it came time to name my band, the only voice I heard was John and his 'high fives'. There it was, The Johnny High-Fives. Incidentally, Cartright wound up remaining Cartright, and they're still performing to this day.
Then there was this trip to New York I took with my brother, Kevin, and my friend Jay Calhoun. We had only known each other a couple of months at the time, but Jay needed to get to Omaha from Texas for a gig and Kevin and I needed some extra cash for the road. We agreed to drive Jay to Omaha if he could help pay for gas.
Jay and I were both smokers but Kevin was not. It was Kevin's car and he didn't want it to stink of smoke, so we wound up smoking outside while he waited in the car.
A peak moment in my friendship with Jay came when Kevin shouted from inside the car, 'Will you guys hurry up? If it weren't for you I could be in New York by now.'
Realizing that if either of us had been the only smoker on this trip, things might have been very different, Jay said, 'I'm glad you smoke…'
I started to say something generic like, 'Yeah,' but Jay shouts, 'Cause I wanna see you die!'
That became the joke of the trip, eventually even bringing Kevin into it. Some years later, Jay sent me a new song of his which he had called Smoke or I Wanna See You Die. This, of course, had to be added to the repertoire of The Johnny High-Fives and Jay wholeheartedly agreed.
Through my wife, Erin, who was my girlfriend at the time, I met a young Maryland guitar player named Cody Finkner. His old band, Press Black, had a tune inspired by the movie They Live. I went and watched the movie, referenced Roddy Piper's famous improv line 'I am here to chew bubblegum and kick ass…and I'm all out of bubblegum' in Dystopia Boy, and asked Cody if I could include They Live as a Johnny High-Fives song and he happily accepted.
After I got published by Montag Press, my editor asked me if I was familiar with the music of David Rovics, a Portland folk singer. David and I exchanged a few emails and I included Rovics' song Strike a Blow Against the Empire in the novel.
Music also helps me get ideas.
When I listen to Tom Waits I can feel my own brain chemistry changing. I see reality through the purple smoke of a post-Apocalyptic carnival. I feel the vibrations of my surroundings coming together like a vivid dream, both exciting and uncomfortable, and suddenly I just have to write.
Listening to Bob Dylan is like talking to a mentor. When I put on a Dylan track, I almost always wind up with a piece of writing. While listening to Blood on the Tracks, I became obsessed with the song Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts. I knew there was something in there to be sussed out, but I couldn't quite find it. Then I noticed a little moment where Lily takes her dress off and hides it away. It wasn't much, but there was something about the gentleness in it that led to Joe and his childhood crush, Audrey, having a pretend wedding that gets broken up by Audrey's overprotective father. Afterward, Audrey takes the night shirt she wore as her wedding dress, folds it neatly and tucks it in the bottom of her toy chest where it would remain for years.
Another song, Tangled Up in Blue, has a verse where a guy meets a girl in a topless place which inspired me to write Joe's encounter with Audrey at a Portland strip club later in the story.
The Hank Williams song Lost Highway also became a refrain through one of Joe's recurring dreams. The biblical imagery of the song meshed so perfectly that the dream became the Lost Highway itself.
Adding it all together makes me realize I can't be Bob Dylan, but somewhere between the darkness of old country, the poetry of folk, and the spirit of rock and roll I found an intersection. That is where I find my stories.
Trevor D. Richardson is the founder of The Subtopian, a regular writer and editor for the magazine, and the author of American Bastards, Honeysuckle & Irony, and Dystopia Boy. A west coast man by birth, Trevor was brought up in Texas and has since ventured back west and put down roots in Portland, Oregon. He has devoted his writing career to helping others find success by forming friendships and working relationships with other writers and artists. Trevor looks for ways to reach across media to other types of creative people to find that place where music, visual art, and literature intersect and is dedicated to creating a new market where new voices can thrive without sacrificing quality or principles. Find him on Facebook, on Twitter @theSubtopian and on his website.
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'When I listen to Tom Waits I can feel my brain chemistry changing' – Trevor Richardson
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on September 23, 2014
My guest this week describes his novel's main character as a folk-punk protest singer in a collapsing American economy in the near future. We all know how books can transform us into the characters we are creating, and my guest temporarily became a songwriter as this book was forming, despite being (as he says) completely unmusical in real life. Alongside the prose, he built a portfolio of the main character's songs that marked the story's adventures and friendships. Some were inspired by musically accomplished friends; others by playing Tom Waits, Deer Tick and Bob Dylan to keep the vibe. When his publisher, Montag Press, came on board, the editor suggested more musicians for the creative mix – thus proving his views of the novel were in harmony with those of the writer. Trevor Richardson will be here on Wednesday with his Undercover Soundtrack.
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The Undercover Soundtrack – David Gaughran
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on June 4, 2014
'Break your heart in just three minutes'
Once a week I host a writer who uses music as part of their creative environment – perhaps to connect with a character, populate a mysterious place, or hold a moment still to explore its depths. This week my guest is publishing blogger and novelist David Gaughran @DavidGaughran
Soundtrack by The Supremes, Freda Payne, Bill Withers, Bessie Smith, Nina Simone, Bobby Gentry, Dave Van Ronk, Ernie Ford, The Pogues, Special AKA, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash
Music has always played an integral part of my writing process. I wrote my first book in restaurants, bars and cafes while traveling the world. These days, I can't work without something playing in the background. Silence can be deafening sometimes.
I write historical fiction, science fiction, and non-fiction, so specific songs and artists don't often directly inspire the story. But music is essential for setting the appropriate mood.
My latest book Mercenary is an adventure story on the surface – the story of a guy called Lee Christmas, a colour-blind railroad engineer who became the most famous soldier of fortune in the world. What I wasn't expecting was to find such tragedy in his life. I must somehow gravitate towards bittersweet stories. My endings don't tend to wrap everything up neatly and can often leave the reader with more questions than answers, or with mixed feelings about the outcome for the protagonist. I guess that's because I see the world like that too. Even a life filled with highs doesn't always get a happy ending.
Pleasure and pain
That tension between emotional pleasure and pain is difficult to capture, but it's a rich seam for novelists to mine and the best songs do it very well. In fact, you could argue a core philosophy of Motown was to do just that. In many of their signature hits the tune was invariably upbeat but the lyrical content was the opposite. For example, in You Keep Me Hanging On some awful character is stringing Diana Ross along – but she's so much in love with him that she can't do anything about it; in fact, she's begging him to end it because she doesn't have the requisite strength (and all to a stomping beat).
You can see the same powerful dissonance in many other Motown tracks, like Band of Gold by Freda Payne. It wasn't something that Motown invented, but it was particularly good at it. I think the idea was to reach people on two different levels. Your toes tap the happy beat, but in a more cerebral or subconscious sense you're processing the pain being described, adding a heady level of emotional resonance to the whole ensemble.
Strength is weakness
I think that kind of contrast can be very powerful and I tried to tap into it with Mercenary. One of the best pieces of creative writing advice I received was that a character's greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. So if you have a naturally charismatic and impulsive figure like Lee Christmas, you can really flesh them out by exploring the dark side of those traits. Why are they so impulsive? Are they naturally restless? Is there something unresolved in their past?
Bill Withers considered himself a writer first and a performer second, which you can hear him speak about that in this BBC Archive footage from 1973 before an amazing live version of Grandma's Hands. I think that the emotional power that Withers conveys comes from the conflict between the pleasure of his memory and the pain that he can never sing this for her.
The song is also authentic. I hate bland bilge-fests like American Idol for innumerable reasons, but primarily because I don't feel anything when these people perform. When Bessie Smith sings Gimme A Pigfoot (And A Bottle of Beer), or Nina Simone despairs in Mississippi Goddam, or Bobby Gentry pours out her Ode To Billy Joe it makes my arms tingle because they mean it. They've lived it.
Dave Van Ronk never sold that many records but we will still be listening to Cocaine in 50 years time, instead of all those vapid ballads from reality show winners that sell millions in a few months before being forgotten forever. And that's what we're all doing this for, right? We're all raging against the dying of the light. We're all trying to leave our mark on the world, to reach people, to affect them, to tell stories that will be remembered long after we're gone.
One of my favorite parts of Game of Thrones is when characters are heading into battle – or waiting to be executed – and express hope they will be immortalised in song. There's no doubt this was an important function of music in a world before photographs and obituaries. And we can see remnants of that urge to immortalise in classic folk like Sixteen Tons, ballads like The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, and even more modern songs like Free Nelson Mandela.
Music can help us achieve this authenticity and emotional resonance in our own work. I listened to Dylan's Romance in Durango a lot when writing Mercenary. It was perfect for setting the mood for the many scenes where Lee Christmas drank and brawled and flirted in Honduran cantinas. When trying to describe how Lee looked back on his life and was overcome with regret, I had Johnny Cash's cover of I Hung My Head in the background.
Novelists have so much space to play with that they often try and squeeze in too much. But the more visceral power of music shows us that, sometimes, what you leave out is even more important.
We have this huge canvas – 400 pages where we try and make the reader feel something by the end. But the economy that great songwriters practice is astounding – they can break someone's heart in three minutes flat, all while trying to shape their narrative around a tune!
Sometimes I feel like I'm trying to balance a spoon on my nose while they're juggling chainsaws.
David Gaughran is an Irish author, living in Prague, who spends most of his time traveling the world, collecting stories. You can see his books on Amazon here, his blog is here, and you can follow him on Twitter here. Mercenary is out now, and you can sign up to his mailing list here to get an email when it's out.
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The Undercover Soundtrack – Philippa Rees
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on July 31, 2013
'The impossible bridge between words and music'
Once a week I host a writer who uses music as part of their creative environment – perhaps to connect with a character, populate a mysterious place, or hold a moment still to explore its depths. This week's post is by novella-ist and poetic explorer Philippa Rees
Soundtrack by Don McLean, Beethoven, Juliet Hughes-Rees
Unlike the many writers I have followed on Undercover Soundtrack, whose love affair with music seems mostly benign, a supportive friend, for me music has been an unforgiving taskmaster. My writing relationship with music is the tantalising one of trying to emulate its evocative power, through the rhythm of speech and the musical cadences of words. Vain hope!
To illustrate: I have to bridge the music with the words so here are the entrails of two books and they probably only reveal the failure of that aspiration.
A poetic novella
I now realise that the first, A Shadow in Yucatán, was a trial run for the second. Just after the birth of my youngest daughter I recalled with piercing poignancy a story I had been told years earlier by a young woman on a beach in Yucatan. She had run away from all she knew after having to give her baby away for adoption. Now with my own, I fully realised the depth of her grief and loss. Her tragedy had mythical overtones too universal for an anecdotal short story. It was mythical for other reasons too, the loss of the period, and all it had promised. The story and era fused. (Bob Dylan on acoustic in the local coffee bar and Woodstock and Joan Baez evaporated…Yes, I am that old!)
I set the story in Florida which I knew, not California where it had happened. Some lines from Don McLean's American Pie accompanied Stephanie as a hitchhiker to New York (where abortions were legal) from Florida (where they were not). The power of this song conveyed the nostalgia yet to come; itself a ballad picking up speed as the pregnancy inexorably will. In the event, she cannot bring herself to go through with abortion and returns still pregnant.
Later, now heavy, Stephanie, having consigned her baby to an adoption agency, is awaiting the birth in a refuge amongst orange groves in Georgia, where the child will be removed as soon as it is born.
I wanted to give her one great gift of love, but of mythical dimensions. She is caught in a sudden tropical storm, and, lightly clothed, too heavy to run, she surrenders to the Sky God's power. To write this passage I listened non stop for perhaps a month to Beethoven's storm in the Pastoral Symphony, until the playfulness, and building tension lets rip, as she lets rip all inhibition, an orgasm of complete joy. The final clarinet solo that brings back the fluting sun endows her with the capacity to sacrifice her child, and the strength to bear it.
Soft he lifts up every weeping leaf; licks each saturated bud.
Bathes pain and past together in mercury and salt
Rests his quivering nostril in her aromatic ear
Whispers unbelieving joy and strokes her rivulet hair…
An odyssey
The second and very different work just published is Involution- An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God. In the mouths of Reason and Soul, the poetic narrative traces the history of Western culture to suggest that science is the incremental recovery of evolutionary memory (Involution). This work has in every sense written my life and what it cost (first marriage, country, children) was restored by music, not recorded but very much 'in house and every waking minute'. Life offered another chance and the daughter who rode to my rescue turned out to be an obsessive violinist from age six and music took over all existence. As I was re-writing this work she was assaulting her equivalent aspiration, to play the Beethoven Violin Concerto.
Each day when the strains of the simple Larghetto replaced the frenzy of the cadenzas I knew practice was over; she was simply enjoying herself. We climbed our respective Everests in tandem and opposite ends of the house. Her live recording is here.
My equivalent liberty was to leave off Reason's scientific 'cadenzas' and enter Soul's serene celebration of painting and music which gave me greater poetic freedom to illustrate; from unity through diversity and then dissolution back towards unity.
The 'hinge' was written after soaking in the Rasumovsky quartets, Opus 59 No 3 particularly. Not yet in chaos but in structural jeopardy, the composition is, at every moment, threatening to come apart, through the violence of the tempestuous pace and the intricate interconnections in the sunniest of keys, C major. It seemed to echo the seeming clarity of the enlightenment, in which something darker is growing, man's rationality burying his vulnerability and innocence. (If you are minded to see the text squeezed from this music, it is the latter part here). So, there it is; the impossible bridge between words and music.
Philippa Rees was born in South Africa on both sides of the Boer War divide (half fighting the other half). Her grandmother was related to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and her great great aunt corresponded with George Eliot, She has taught courses on Saints and Scientists at Bristol University. Her writing has never slotted into a Dewey Index easily. Her poetic novella A Shadow in Yucatan is an evocation of the atmosphere of the 60s, set in Florida. Involution is a poetic history of Western thought. She next hopes to publish her short stories revealing the gulf between New and Old World attitudes and a novel based upon her personal experiences. She has four daughters and lives in Somerset. Connect with her on Facebook and on her blog.
GIVEAWAY Philippa is excited to give away a print copy of Involution – an Odyssey to a commenter here. Usual rules apply – extra entries for sharing the post around the ever widening interweb, but don't forget to mention how many places you've shared it when you comment here.
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The Undercover Soundtrack – Barry Walsh
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on July 10, 2013
Once a week I host a writer who uses music as part of their creative process – perhaps to tap into a character, populate a mysterious place, or explore the depths in a pivotal moment. This week's post is by debut author Barry Walsh @BJWalsh
Soundtrack by Neil Young, Handel, Beniamino Gigli, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Marvellettes, Rod Stewart, Adele, Flanagan & Allen, Mozart, JS Bach, Hildegard von Bingen, Beethoven, Dexy's Midnight Runners
The Pimlico Kid is about first-love, which can quarry a hollow in one's life that is hard to fill. It's also about kids scrabbling past puberty and slamming into emotional or physical barriers set by adults.
… the most we might have expected to deal with was a first kiss or a dying grandparent, we were undone by love itself, and violence – and that adults betrayed us.
The lyrics of Neil Young's songs were ever-present in my head while writing the book. For years I had piled up notes from which to make The Pimlico Kid a novel but it was the beautiful reference to childhood friendship and secrets being revealed in Philadelphia that turned intention into action.
Happy families
The narrator, Billy, unlike some of his friends stands on the solid ground of happy family life. His easy-going father is a hard man and his volatile brother, John, will become one. However, Billy's father is comfortable revealing his softer side and expresses it in his fine singing. And, when his sons were small, he kidded them he knew Italian and sang his favourite Beniamino Gigli songs, such as Handel's Ombra mai fu, in beautiful gibberish.
This contrasts with Bob Dylan's less mellifluous The times they are a changin' (played loudly enough to shake the house) that defines the rebellious younger brother John, who is yet to discover his softer side:
When he's asked or told to do something, he has this stiff, chinny look that makes it clear he doesn't have to comply, but that he will, only on this occasion.
The exhilaration of first attraction is almost always about a face. And it is nailed by the Beatles's I've Just Seen a Face. When Billy falls for Sarah, he worries that his more mature friends will disapprove because she is still flat chested. However, he's prepared to wait for breasts:
I know that whatever Rooksy says about fabulous flesh, love starts with a face.
A host of songs evoke the summer of 1963 but none more vividly than the Beatles's She Loves You. Billy and his friends stand transfixed outside a pub from which it is blasting out, again and again. This is the song that vanquishes the old pop music order – along with Brylcreem. When an Elvis song starts up, they leave.
Never-ending summer
During one of those never-ending summer days of childhood, the loves of four friends – Billy, his best mate, Rooksy, Sarah and Josie collide and magic is conjured up by declarations of love and secrets revealed. The Marvelettes' When You're Young and in Love kept popping into my head as I tried to pin down the excitement of new love. The lyrics may be simple but if you are young and in love, they couldn't be more true.
At a critical moment Billy's behaves like an idiot in front of Sarah. Burning with shame, he's surprised to find that it doesn't affect how she feels for him. This reflects my experience of how often weak and flawed people, usually men, are lucky enough to find someone who loves them anyway. Neil Young 'gets' it in Hangin' on a Limb, in which a man wobbles at the edge of an emotional precipice and a girl teaches him how to dance.
As their relationship grows, the four friends come to learn that love breeds compassion and diminishes judgement of those it's easy to ridicule, whether it's because of a birthmark or sexual orientation. In the early sixties there were few openly gay teenagers and a great deal of unthinking homophobia. A decade later, Rod Stewart's The killing of Georgie helped to change things a little and it came to mind constantly while I struggled to get this issue onto the page.
Adele's Someone Like You wasn't a creative influence but, on a more exalted level, it provided creative confirmation of the universal theme that I was trying to make personal. During my fourth re-write, the song was playing every day and everywhere and its reference to glory days of summer goes to the heart of The Pimlico Kid, in which …
love can endure but … promises are hard to keep.
Finally, the streets of London are the main stage for The Pimlico Kid. Maybe it's Because I'm a Londoner anchors Billy – and me – to the greatest of cities.
The writing
I write to classical music, which provides welcome harmony to counter the dissonance in my head. I start most days with Mozart's String Quintet No 1 because it lifts my default mood of pessimism about finding the right words. Each day features Bach, lots of Gregorian chant and the liturgical songs of Hildegard von Bingen. I regularly work my way through Beethoven's quartets but stop when I reach No 15, which triggers Wordsworthian 'thoughts that lie too deep for tears'.
When the writing has gone really well, I celebrate with the Kyrie from Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, which isn't at all 'solemn'. And, when there's no one else in the house, I turn to Dexy's Midnight Runners' Come on Eileen and jig around like mad Ben Gunn on the beach.
Barry Walsh grew up in the heart of London during the 60s and thought belatedly that there might be a story in it. The result is The Pimlico Kid, published by Harper, a story of first love. He is now writing his second novel. When not at the keyboard, Barry enjoys cycling (he once rode non-stop to the top of Mont Ventoux), holidays in France, watching Arsenal, listening to Neil Young and gazing at Audrey Hepburn's face. He is a proud trustee of the world's oldest youth club – St Andrew's, Westminster – and believes that London might just be the centre of the universe. He is married with two daughters. Find him on his website and Twitter @bjwalsh
GIVEAWAY Barry is offering a signed print copy of The Pimlico Kid. For a chance to win, leave a comment here or share this post on Twitter, Facebook, G+ or anywhere else (and don't forget to leave a note here saying where you shared it).
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The Undercover Soundtrack – Joni Rodgers
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on May 22, 2012
'I listened, eyes closed, hands on the keyboard, remembering the *why* of this book'
Once a week I host a writer who uses music as part of their creative process – perhaps to tap into a character, populate a mysterious place, or explore the depths in a pivotal moment. This week's post is by New York Times bestselling author and ghostwriter Joni Rodgers @jonirodgers
Soundtrack by Doug Kershaw, Rockin' Sidney, Hadley Castille and L'Angelus, Michael Doucet, Patti LaBelle and Moby, Stevie Ray Vaughan, ZZ Top, Bob Dylan c/o Frenchy Burrito, Seal,
Volunteering with relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina, I heard a New Orleans police officer comment that this was perfect weather for con artists and media people. The story hammer hit me. I saw a scientist obsessed with storms, a con artist using chaos as cover for murder and identity theft, a hungry reporter hot on her trail.
The bones of a novel always come that quickly for me, but it takes years to lay on muscle. I do a variety of other things between (sometimes during) each draft – researching, editing, ghostwriting, living my life – but the novel is always present in my head, and on a daily basis, something resonates with it, revealing something the story needs. Quite often, that's a song, which I store in a playlist that instantly returns me to those insights and keeps my original vision for the book intact.
The main character in The Hurricane Lover, Dr. Corbin Thibodeaux, is a hard-drinking New Orleans climatologist and hurricane specialist. An old video of Doug Kershaw doing Louisiana Man on the Tonight show gave me Corbin's nerdy brilliance. He's awkward and lanky with a large nose, huge passion and bounding, houndish energy.
Cajun music like Rockin' Sidney's Don't Mess With My Toot Toot and Hadley Castille and L'Angelus Le Swing Cajun defined Corbin's raucous family and the raw southern charm of New Orleans. The traditional Cajun lullaby La Petite Poule Blanche brought tears to my eyes, because I realized that for Corbin, the destruction of New Orleans was no less than the death of his mother.
Underlying sorrow
Climatologists and engineers had been saying for decades that a hurricane would eventually wipe out New Orleans. No one would listen. One of These Mornings by Patti LaBelle and Moby told me I had to build in the emotional component of that. Beyond the science was the sorrow Corbin felt as he tried (and failed) for years to make people understand what was at stake.
Corbin's longtime on-off lover, Shay Hoovestahl, is an ambitious journalist, struggling to overcome her beauty pageant past. Stevie Ray Vaughan's Pride and Joy clarified her classy bad-girl vibe. She's a Texas rich girl who knows how to use her assets, a character who'd be easy to hate. ZZ Top's Legs told me how to give her the likeable feistiness and joie de vivre Corbin finds irresistible.
The recitation of small casualties in Bob Dylan's Everything is Broken (I like the Frenchy Burrito cover version) made me rewrite everything about the flood. Instead of the typical big drama, I wrote about the seemingly insignificant chairs, dishes, baby shoes and water bottles that add up to a lost civilisation and good intentions that crumble into broken hearts.
Through many revisions, Seal's Love's Divine provided a solid conceptual anchor for this novel. When the plot was a tangle, subplots in shreds, I listened, eyes closed, hands on the keyboard, remembering the *why* of this book, mindful that the goal was a place of redemption, a moment when these characters could move beyond how deeply they'd screwed up and disappointed each other.
Shay and Corbin's relationship is a microcosm of what happened that summer in New Orleans and Houston. The Hurricane Lover is a tale of two cities, one ruled by denial, the other by fear. The rolling thunder at the beginning and the end of Love's Divine brought the story home and reminded me to invest it with a sense of future.
New York Times bestselling author/ghostwriter Joni Rodgers lives in Houston, Texas. After a dozen books with corporate publishers, she opted to go indie for The Hurricane Lover with her own digital imprint, Stella Link Books. Rodgers continues to work on ghost projects with NY publishers and is the founder of The League of Extraordinary Authors, an international coalition of authors blurring the boundaries between old school and new world publishing. Find her on Twitter @JoniRodgers
The Undercover Soundtrack is taking a short break but will be back on 6 June. If you can't wait that long for your next fix, you can now search through the archives by musician, composer or artiste – and find out who writes to what. See you soon
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The Undercover Soundtrack – Andrew Blackman
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on April 17, 2012
'George Winston's dreamy piano had to go'
Once a week I host a writer who uses music as part of their creative process – perhaps to tap into a character, populate a mysterious place, or explore the depths in a pivotal moment. This week's post is by award-winning literary fiction writer Andrew Blackman @BlackmanAndrew
Soundtrack by The Velvet Underground, Reef, Jimi Hendrix, burningpilot, Supergrass, Alien Ant Farm, Bob Dylan, Stereophonics, Pink Floyd
It was 1st November 2007, and I'd set myself a ridiculous challenge. By the end of the month, I would have written a novel, from start to finish. It would be a road novel for 21st-century Britain, a forlorn but determined attempt to live authentically and spontaneously in a highly controlled society. As I stared at the blank screen, planning things out and calculating just how many thousands of words I would need to write each day, I came to an important realisation.
Before I could begin typing, I would need new music.
Before then, you see, I'd been a devotee of calm, soothing, contemplative music. I'd always started my writing day by lighting an incense stick and playing George Winston. Beautiful, aren't they, those dreamy piano notes? A perfect soundtrack for a morning spent gazing at swirling incense smoke and waiting for inspiration. Unfortunately, not a good way to get a novel written in a month, certainly not a novel of frustrated youth raging against the stunted future mapped out for them. Poor George would have to go.
Enter The Velvet Underground and Heroin. Yes, I know, it starts out slow, but just listen to it ramp up around 1:20, and again at 2:22, and a few more times until, 6 minutes in, you can almost feel the spike in your vein. Suddenly some words appeared on the page:
I first met Neil not long after my father died.
Not much, but it was a start, and soon I was describing Neil, and the words started to flow, and I followed it up with Reef and Jimi Hendrix and burningpilot and Supergrass and I saw my characters, Jack and Neil, rampaging up and down the Holloway Road on a cold November night. I kept writing as they ran the life of drinking and parties swiftly to its conclusion, and after a week or so I was already five chapters in, and Jack and Neil had ditched London and made it to John O'Groats and were paddling in the freezing North Sea at three in the morning to the accompaniment of the suitably weird Alien Ant Farm.
By this time a change was called for, both for me and my characters. The frenetic pace couldn't last. I took to walking a few miles every morning, and completed the bulk of the book sitting in a now-defunct north London cafe all afternoon for a couple of weeks with the likes of Bob Dylan and Stereophonics on my iPod. The quieter mood suited my characters, who were getting worn down by their quest but kept going anyway, taking one more step, visiting one more town, drinking, like me and Dylan, just one more cup of coffee. They went forward not with the hopeful enthusiasm of earlier; they went forward simply because they couldn't go back.
For the ending I wanted something quiet and poignant, almost an anti-ending after all the noise and fury of earlier on. It was 30th November and I was tired, and so were Jack and Neil, and the three of us gritted our teeth and limped to the finish line with the dying chords of Wish You Were Here reverberating in our ears.
I took a week or two off from writing, printed off my manuscript and was amazed to discover it was ten times better than the novel I'd spent years working on before that. It would go on to win an award for unpublished writers, netting me £2,500 and a publishing deal, and my life would change.
Of course, that was still in the future. Before all that happened, I still had to edit the novel. That's where George Winston and the trusty old incense stick came in handy again.
Andrew Blackman is the author of the novel On the Holloway Road (Legend Press, 2009), which won the Luke Bitmead Writer's Bursary and was shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize. His next novel, A Virtual Love, deals with identity in the age of social networking, and is out in spring 2013. He's a former Wall Street Journal staff writer, now converted to fiction. More information available at his website, or you can connect with him via Twitter.
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- 'Constant murmur of pouring rain, piano chords and a stormy sea'
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- Carol is a concert pianist until an injury threatens her career. Desperate for a cure she discovers her future incarnation - or is he a psychological figment? And can he help her recover?
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What is The Undercover Soundtrack?Sleeve notes here
For the soundtrack of My Memories of a Future Life, you'll need Chopin's Sonata in B Minor, Rachmaninov preludes, lashings of Grieg's piano concerto in A minor and The Clash's Rock the Kasbah (they go together well).
You'll also need Samuel Barber's Dover Beach on piano, although that doesn't actually exist so do the best you can.
And the novel's undercover pieces. You can find them here
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text:
-Re: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: unable to create new native thread
Sounds like the nproc ulimit...
On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 8:50 PM, Jeff Lord <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Can you provide the logfile and config?
> On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 12:20 PM, Cochran, David <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>> I've got a pretty good sized box collecting logs for a number of sources
>> (about a dozen or so).
>> Actually two instances were running on this box (one production and the
>> other a testing environment)
>> After adding a dozen more log files i'm running into this error (87 logs
>> for PROD and 70 or so for Testing)
>> Nov 26, 2013 10:25:27 AM
>> org.jboss.netty.channel.socket.nio.NioServerSocketPipelineSink
>> WARNING: Failed to accept a connection.
>> java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: unable to create new native thread
>> at java.lang.Thread.start0(Native Method)
>> at java.lang.Thread.start(Thread.java:640)
>> at
>> java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.addIfUnderMaximumPoolSize(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:727)
>> at
>> java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.execute(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:657)
>> at
>> org.jboss.netty.channel.socket.nio.AbstractNioWorker.start(AbstractNioWorker.java:160)
>> at
>> org.jboss.netty.channel.socket.nio.AbstractNioWorker.register(AbstractNioWorker.java:131)
>> at
>> org.jboss.netty.channel.socket.nio.NioServerSocketPipelineSink$Boss.registerAcceptedChannel(NioServerSocketPipelineSink.java:269)
>> at
>> org.jboss.netty.channel.socket.nio.NioServerSocketPipelineSink$Boss.run(NioServerSocketPipelineSink.java:231)
>> at
>> java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886)
>> at
>> java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908)
>> at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:662)
>> I have been able to confirm that they are not bumping into the OS ulimit,
>> and increasing the sizes of the JVM does not make this go away
>> (JAVA_OPTS="-Xms1g -Xmx6g -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremot"). I ended up
>> having to shut down the testing environment instance so as not to lose any
>> more production logs.
>> The box is 16 CPU with 16G RAM using local disks, running RHEL5.x
>> Anytime process threads exceed ~930 (the results of ps -eLF -u flume | wc
>> -l )the above error appears...if allowed to continue ultimately crashes the
>> box.
>> Any ideas on resolving this issue or have I run into a thread limit that
>> cannot be gotten around without adding another server?
>> Thanks,
>> Dave
Apache MRUnit - Unit testing MapReduce - http://mrunit.apache.org

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Armenian American Wellness Center expands to men's health with Lincy donation
by Maria Princi
Published: Wednesday January 19, 2011
Washington - The Armenian American Cultural Association (AACA) announces the most recent donation of $250,000 by the Beverly Hills-based Lincy Foundation to the Armenian American Wellness Center (Wellness Center), in Armenia.
Lincy Foundation, a long time sustainer of health and wellness programs in Armenia, continues this commitment with their recent donation to AACA, the fourth award made by Lincy Foundation to AACA since 2001.
The Wellness Center has been active in Armenia saving the lives of countless women/mothers since its establishment in 1997. AACA established the Wellness Center to address the country's need for the early and accurate detection of breast cancer - which was and still is, the leading cause of cancer deaths among women in Armenia, according to its Ministry of Health.
In addition to promoting its core mission to save lives by educating the public on the importance of the early detection of breast cancer through annual mammograms, monthly breast self-exams, and annual clinical check-ups, AACA also introduced Basic Gynecology and Pathology Laboratory Services at the Wellness Center, in 2001. This was crucial for the early and accurate detection of cervical cancer, which was and still is, the second cause of cancer deaths among women in Armenia.
In 2003, AACA also introduced Family Medicine at the Wellness Center and Preventive Health Care by educating the public on healthy lifestyles and the importance of annual medical check-ups. In 2006, AACA was the first to introduce Bone Density Screening and education in Armenia by installing a state-of-the-art digital screening DEXA unit at the Wellness Center.
The Wellness Center has screened a record 165,000 patients since its beginning in April 1997, providing over 215,000 individual medical services to these patients and diagnosing 4,800 cases of breast cancer from stages 1 to 4. The Wellness Center's US trained medical staff, has also brought happiness to 78 couples struggling with infertility, by making them parents to 78 "Miracle Babies".
The Wellness Center has also provided breast screenings to 404 men resulting in the diagnosis of 17 malignant cancers and 222 benign masses.
AACA will utilize the $250,000 gift from Lincy Foundation to introduce a Men's Health Program/Department at the newly renovated and expanded Wellness Center. This program will include public education about early detection of men's urinary diseases, especially prostate cancer by providing annual prostate screenings, diagnostic testing and follow-up treatment. The Men's Health Program/Department will also conduct minor and minimally invasive urological procedures.
The Wellness Center, which has continued operation throughout construction, is nearing completion of a 4-year, $5.5 million renovation and expansion of the 6 story building. When complete, the Wellness Center, as a state-of-the-art Primary Health Care facility, built in accordance with Western architectural and engineering designs and standards as well as seismic reinforcement requirements, will continue to provide high quality medical services not only to women but also to men.
AACA relies on the donations of individuals, foundations and corporations to continue its life saving work in Armenia. AACA is also a proud partner of USAID through its American Schools and Hospitals Abroad (ASHA) and Global Development Alliance (GDA) Programs.
For more information on the Wellness Center and its US sponsor, visit www.aacainc.org, or e-mail firstname.lastname@example.com. Please make donations payable to AACA, 1300 Crystal Drive, Suite 1504, Arlington, VA 22202 or to donate by credit card, please call (703) 416-2555.


text:
|5 Star Reviews
|4 Star Reviews
|3 Star Reviews
|2 Star Reviews
|1 Star Reviews
|All Reviews
Olivia Ryan-Hill | 14/05/14
"Very funny, great game! Have used it for hen dos before and it was very popular."
Celine | 06/05/14
"Good description on website of the product and it was delivered very quickly. The games was very fun and thought for what is was it was very good value for money as I had seen the same product for different prices on other internet sites."
Joseph Rudd | 22/02/14
"Amazing! Quick to blow up. So much fun, played with them non stop. Funny to see others open it. Perfect gift for a guy or gal. Matched the description perfectly!"
Fiona Barnes | 28/12/13
"Great item, very funny, good novelty Christmas present. Good value for money, I got this as a joke Christmas present and the receiver loved it. Good quality item. All items I have bought off here have been good prices and are delivered quickly."
Laura Bell | 21/09/13
"I bought these inflatable willies for a hen party, excellent fun, everyone enjoyed them. Arrived quickly and service was good. "


text:
Based on 41 reviews
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Rick Leo is a life-saver. Post-arrest for my DUI, I was scared nearly sick - this was the first time I had broken the law. Rick promptly got in touch with me and thoroughly walked me through the possible outcomes. Of the several lawyers I contacted, Rick was easily the most personally engaged in my case, and the best at reassuring me without offering false promises. Rick does not BS. He tells you clearly what you need to do, and what he can do for you.
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text:
Zimbabwe conjoined twins separatedComment on this story
Harare - Zimbabwe surgeons have successfully separated conjoined twin babies, a first for the country's down-at-heel health service and an achievement that has been hailed by President Robert Mugabe.
"The surgery went very well," surgeon Bothwell Mbuwayesango who lead the team of 50 medical personnel told AFP. "The babies are fine and are doing very well."
The twin two month-old babies who were joined from the chest to the upper abdomen and shared a liver.
They were separated in an eight-hour operation at a state hospital in the capital Harare last week.
Surgical separations have been carried out for decades elsewhere, but with Zimbabwe's state hospitals widely criticised for lacking vital equipment and drugs, politicians have jumped on this achievement.
President Robert Mugabe visited the twins and congratulated the all-local medical team who operated the babies.
"I am overwhelmed," he said after visiting the babies. "I say to you congratulations. Congratulations to the entire team. You have done the nation proud. You have raised our name higher."
Mugabe who blames western sanctions for the country's woes including the poor state of health facilities, said despite the embargo Zimbabwe has managed to perform such an operation.
"The suffering we have because of sanctions, but you can still perform wonders. The world will be talking about us, some will not believe because they do not want to believe," he said.
The European Unions and United States maintain that Mugabe and his wife remain on the sanctions list for rights abuses and electoral fraud.
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Britney Spears' Little Sister Goes Country, to Perform at CMA Fest
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) Expect to see a lot more of Jamie Lynn Spears this summer, but not in her former role as an actress. She's putting out new music, getting radio play and introducing herself to country music fans all over the country.
Britney Spears' Little Sister Goes Country, to Perform at CMA Fest
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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) Expect to see a lot more of Jamie Lynn Spears this summer, but not in her former role as an actress. She's putting out new music, getting radio play and introducing herself to country music fans all over the country.
Spears, making an appearance at this week's CMA Music Fest in Nashville, understands why some people might be a little puzzled the little sister of one of the world's biggest pop star's singing country? But Spears says once people get a chance to listen to her, they understand it.
"It gives me more of a reason to prove that I love what I am doing and make them believe in me," Spears said.
The former teen star of "Zoey 101" has been working behind the scenes in Nashville learning the craft of songwriting. She's already got a music video and put out an EP called "The Journey" on iTunes with five new songs.
Even without a record label, her EP debuted at No. 193 on the Billboard 200 albums chart this week and came in at No. 24 on the Country Albums chart. She's increasingly doing more live performances, including this week's festival and the Taste of Country festival later in June in New York State. Festivals like the CMA Fest are critical starting points for new artists trying to break out on the smaller stages and grab the attention of both music industry folks and fans alike.
Spears left acting after announcing that she was pregnant at the age of 16, but now 23, a mom and recently married, she says she knows singing is her passion.
"It felt good to be able to tell these stories and be able to sing them, make them universal," Spears said. "... I feel like I have really been able to find who I was as an artist."
The two sisters sang together on a song for Britney's album, "Britney Jean," and the younger Spears isn't ruling out another duet in the future. Jamie Lynn says she gets advice and inspiration from her older sister, but she's also gotten a good compliment from Britney.
"She thinks it's brave that I am out there really laying it on the line with some of my lyrics," Spears said. "So I think that we do influence each other just as far as the craft goes even though it is two completely different sounds."
Dhruv Prasad, one of the festival organizers for the Taste of Country festival, said the name may get her through the door in country music, but it's her music that will determine her success.
"Jamie Lynn Spears has 4 million hits on her YouTube," Prasad noted. "That to me is a more relevant metric of her popularity, versus whose sister she is."
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"I prepared prepared these in advanced and cooked straight from the freezer. They were delicious! "
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"Sautéing the mushrooms with truffle salt gives the quesadilla a rich, earthy flavor, making this the ultimate comfort food."


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Officer gives boots to homeless man; kindness sparks online sensation
A tourist's snapshot of a New York City police officer giving new boots to a barefoot homeless man in Times Square has created an online sensation.
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NEW YORK— A tourist's snapshot of a New York City police officer giving new boots to a barefoot homeless man in Times Square has created an online sensation.
Jennifer Foster, of Florence, Ariz., was visiting New York with her husband on Nov. 14, when she came across the shoeless man asking for change in Times Square.
As she was about to approach him, she said the officer — identified as Larry DePrimo — came up to the man with a pair of all-weather boots and thermal socks on the frigid night. She recorded his generosity on her cellphone.
It was posted Tuesday night to the NYPD's official Facebook page and became an instant hit. More than 325,000 users "liked" it as of Thursday morning, and over 79,000 shared it.
Thousands of people commented, including one person who praised him as "An officer AND a Gentleman."
The photo shows the officer kneeling beside the man with the boots at his feet. A shoe store is seen in the background.
The NYPD Facebook page on Thursday posted a comment from DePrimo saying "I didn't think anything of it" and updated it with a photo of DePrimo taken in 2011.
"'I have these size 12 boots for you, they are all-weather. Let's put them on and take care of you,'" Foster quoted DePrimo as saying to the homeless man. "The officer squatted down on the ground and proceeded to put socks and the new boots on this man. The officer expected NOTHING in return and did not know I was watching."
Foster said she's worked in law enforcement for 17 years and has never been more impressed.
"His presentation of human kindness has not been lost on myself or any of the Arizona law enforcement officials with whom this story has been shared," Foster wrote on Facebook. She said she never got the officer's name.
DePrimo, who is assigned to the Sixth Precinct and lives on Long Island, told Newsday that the homeless man "smiled from ear to ear" after getting the boots.
"It was like you gave him a million dollars," he added.
He told The New York Times that he keeps the receipt for the boots in his vest to remind him "that sometimes people have it worse."
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Villa Del Mar Resort is situated in the centre of Puerto Vallarta hotel zone, four and a half kilometres away from Puerto Vallarta International irport. After teeing off at Vista Vallarta Golf Club, visitors can frolic at Playa Las Palmas and Playa Las Muertos.
Each of the 562 cosy and stylish suites is furnished with hints of Spanish colonial designs and equipped with air conditioning, cable TV, telephone and en suite bathroom. Some units have kitchen and balcony.
At Villa Del Mar Resort, guests sample international and Mediterranean cuisines at La Cucina, Jalisco, Equipales Cantina & Restaurant and Palmita Market, Deli & Internet Cafe.
Villa Del Mar Resort & Spa By The Villagroup has three tennis courts, spa tub, freeform swimming pool with water slide, fitness centre and Bay Breeze Spa. The all-suite resort also offers banquet facilities for up to 400 guests. Babysitting (fees apply), laundry/dry cleaning and parking are available.


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Sonoma Coast
2013 Chardonnay
Our Sonoma Coast Chardonnay embodies the diversity of world-class vineyards in the acclaimed Sonoma Coast appellation, and the talents of the gifted winegrowers who farm these sites. In addition to combining fruit from a who's who of the appellation's most renowned vineyards, this wine reflects the exceptional quality of the 2013 vintage, which provided ideal weather for growing perfectly ripe Chardonnay that possesses beautiful brightness, acidity and sophisticated mineral notes. In both the aromas and on the palate, this is a vivid and energetic wine, with lovely layers of pear, apple, green summer melon, Muscat, lavender and toasted hazelnut. Seamlessly integrated French oak adds a hint of maple syrup that finds an intriguing counterpoint in the wine's minerality, and in a salty sea spray note that lingers on the long, fresh finish.
Retail Price: $38.00


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2011 Five Star Real Estate Agent Texas Monthly Magazine
A recent survey on Houston region consumers shined the light of excellence on Anja Drewes RE/MAX agent. Shw was honored as Five-Star Real Estate Professionals in Texas Monthly magazine. The survey was conducted by Five Star Professional, which provides independent research to identify professionals who score highest in overall customer satisfaction.What does it mean to be selected as a FIVE STAR Real Estate Agent?
FIVE STAR Real Estate Agents are selected as a result of a rigorous research process. The resulting list represents no more than 7% of the real estate agents within their market area.


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Tag Archives: indie rock
Vekora & Poor Old Lu Release Christmas Song
That's right friends, the legendary Poor Old Lu have come together with Jesse Sprinkle's new band, Vekora, to record a very special original Christmas song titled "The Brightest Star". Listen to the song below via Bandcamp and purchase it here for only $1.00.
Review : Hearts Like Lions – These Hands
A review of the major label debut release from indie rock band Hearts Like Lion
Future of Forestry Weekly December Video Release + Christmas Music
Future of Forestry will be posting a special video every Monday until Christmas. Watch the first one, below. Buy Advent 1, 2, and 3 over at the FOF store right here.
Oceans and Vessels Release New Album
Indie Rock/Worship band, Oceans and Vessels, have released their brand new album titled "Preeminent" which is available on all digital networks including iTunes / Amazon. Listen on Spotify too. Thoughts?
Least of These – Temple Bodies
Least of These have released their brand new song titled "Temple Bodies" which you can listen to below. The group's brand new album, "Mere Image", is out on January 6th 2015 via Pando Records.
The Frozen Ocean – The Skeleton Key
The Frozen Ocean have just posted a brand new song "The Skeleton Key", which you can listen to below. The incredible new album from The Frozen Ocean (which is Dave Swanson of the band Life In Your Way), will be available early next year.
Gdansk Releases EP 2
Hamilton,Ontario's Gdansk released their 2nd EP of 2014 today, aptly named EP 2. You can stream it below or download it Bandcamp or iTunes.
Matter Releases Limited Edition 7″ Vinyl
Tomorrow Matter are releasing a limited quantity of an already limited edition 7″ record exclusively through the band's bandcamp page. There are only 55 currently available online out of 100 total. The band's latest album "Teraphim" is available now through bandcamp and can be heard below. [Website] [Facebook] [Twitter]
Great Awakening Releases Studio Trailer
Great Awakening have released a trailer for their recent time in the studio. Check it out below.
New Song From Come Wind
Check out Come Wind's new song "Not This" through the exclusive video premiere at Substream Magazine.
Seabird 'Troubled Days' Documentary
Ashley Dugger released a documentary film about Seabird called Troubled Days. You can watch the 30 minute film below. The description reads ""Troubled Days" takes an in-depth look at individuals chasing their dreams by profiling the local band Seabird. Seabird has seen national success with songs featured on ABC's Grey's Anatomy and Pushing Daisies. In 2010, their song "Don't You Know You're Beautiful" was a #1 hit on Christian radio, yet they are still struggling to make a name for themselves. In this documentary, Seabird serves as an example of artists across the country trying to make a career doing what they love."
Stay the Shores to Release "Water and Bones" This Tuesday September 9th
Stay the Shores will release their brand new ep "Water and Bones" this coming Tuesday September 9th through all digital retailers including their own Bandcamp page. Check out the album via bandcamp, below. You can pre-order the album via bandcamp below for $5 (Digital) or $10 (physical + 4 bonus tracks). This album is our "Featured Release" of the week and we encourage you to check it out.
Falling Up Comes to an End
Falling Up has announced that this new album will unfortunately be their last one. They are about 55% funded on their kickstarter campaign with 9 days to go. Consider contributing and pre-order this final album from a beloved band that have had a truly great career in the music scene. Read their letter to fans, below. [Thanks Phil Metalhed]
Attalus launches IndieGoGo campaign for new concept album
Please support Attalus and check out their IndieGoGo Campaign! After 2 years of writing, Attalus is set to release a concept album called "Into the Sea". Help them finish the album and get a download of 4 new songs! They are also giving away their new song "Albatross" free just for checking out the campaign.
Check it out here: Attalus Indiegogo campaign
Golden Youth Release "The Cabin Ep"
Indie rock/pop darlings, Golden Youth, release a 5 song Ep titled "The Cabin" via digital networks. Check it out online now and make sure you support this great band.
Young Fox – The Answer
Spartan Records has signed the band Young Fox and will release the band's new ep "Predecessors" on July 22nd. Listen to the song "The Answer" below in both Soundcloud and Lyric Video format.
Bradley Hathaway "How Long" Tape Pre-Orders
Flesh and Bone Records is releasing the latest full length "How Long" from Bradley Hathaway. Released independently on CD late in 2013, Flesh and Bone is revisiting this full length with a limited edition custom cassette release. Details are as follows:
– /50 Transparent w/ white swirl cassettes
– U-Card packaging with front/back insert
– Digital download card inclided
– Flesh and Bone Records sticker included
– Album art 1″ button included
Track Listing:
1. Daddy's Name
2. How Long
3. Courthouse
4. Georgia
5. He Drives
Bigfoot Wallace Release 'Cup And Crown EP'
Big Foot Wallace released the 'Cup And Crown EP'. Check it out via Noisetrade or Bandcamp below.
Music Video : Great Awakening – Restitution (Live)
Great Awakening has released their brand new video of them performing the new song "Restitution" LIVE without over-dubs and it's RAW the way it should be! Check out this great band, below.
Great Awakening, Returns!
Great Awakening have returned after a 3 year hiatus, with new music. You can find out more on the band right here and watch the teaser clip below.
Review : Sleep For Sleepers – Discovery
"Discovery" is a delight of nostalgic and energetic indie rock that remains in the realm of familiarity that the band has produced.
Check Out: Loyals
Loyals is a new project featuring Jon Hubbell of Bigfoot Wallace. They're from Chandler, Arizona and play an ambient experimental indie rock sound. Check them out below or right here. [Facebook]
Ex-Curbsquirrels Member Releases New Hymns/Worship Album
Ex-Curbsquirrels singer/guitarist and producer extraordinaire Eric Tuffendsam and his wife Suzy have released a special 7 track hymns/worship ep on bandcamp. You can check it out below and buy it for just $5.00. "This album was recorded from about 2012 – 2014. It was released in order to support our family as I (Eric) take part in a pastoral training program at Christ the King Church in Cincinnati, OH! Please consider donating money in order to further the gospel of Jesus Christ, or if you would just like to buy the cd, the price is $5."
Review : Paul Demer – Canvas of Sky
Check out this review of Paul Demer's first solo full-length album, "Canvas of Sky."
Artifex Pereo
Artifex Pereo have released their Tooth & Nail Records debut titled "Time in Place". Read our review right here. The album is available on all digital networks and on physical media here.
Young and Heartless – Desk Rot
Young and Heartless have released their new song "Desk Rot" off the upcoming album "The Pull of Gravity" due out June 24th. Pre-order the album here in a few different packages.
My Epic "Yet" Vinyl, On the Way
Facedown Records posted a pic on Facebook showing a test press for the My Epic album "Yet" and said that the vinyl is coming soon. Check out the pic below and sound off in the comments about your favorite "Yet" song.
Relient K Drummer Releases Solo EP
Tom Breyfogle, current drummer for Relient K, has released a Orchestral Indie Rock solo EP under the name, Birds in the Airport. The new EP, how's it going to end?, is out now on iTunes, Spotify and Amazon.
Colours Releases 2 New Songs
Colours has released 2 new songs on their bandcamp. "The Man Unknown" and "The Illusionist 2". They are also working on a full length. They have also released a music video for "The Man Unknown", which you can view below. This band features former members of Burden of a Day. Fantastic music. [Thanks Derek O.]
Kings Kaleidoscope's Live In Color Available for Free!
Bad Christian's latest signing, Kings Kaleidoscope, has released their first album Live In Color, and it's available for free for the week. Don't miss out!
Seeker & Servant
Seeker & Servant and Indie Vision Music team up to offer the band's latest album "Into Your Love, I Go" for free beginning March 17th. Download will only be available for one week. Get it here.
IVM Presents: Seeker & Servant Album Download
DOWNLOAD HAS ENDED, thanks everyone for the support! Indie Vision Music is partnering with Mississippi based indie worship band, Seeker & Servant, to offer their brand new album "Into Your Love, I Go" for free download right here. The download will only be available for one week beginning March 17th. Check out the download below.
Free Future of Forestry Instrumental Album
You can also download the entire album's instrumentals for free on Noisetrade.
Music Video : Kings Kaleidoscope – Felix Culpa
Check out the new music video from Kings Kaleidoscope for "Felix Culpa", below. The group's new album "Live in Color" will be available for FREE on March 18th at KingsKLive.com
Download : Future of Forestry – Travelers Song (Piano and Strings Session)
I am excited to bring you a free song download from Future of Forestry from their new Piano and Strings Session recording. The song is "Travelers Song" done stripped down and with just Piano and Strings. Check it out below. Future of Forestry's new release "Piano and Strings Session" due out March 18th!
Review : B Is Bridgie – 500 Words EP
This debut is already solid, in my opinion.
Music Video : Kye Kye – People
Check out the brand new music video for "People" by indie rock band Kye Kye. The song sounds excellent and I think many of you are going to enjoy it as well. Yes, I'm late to the Kye Kye party.
Cool Hand Luke Give Away "Of Man" For Free
Cool Hand Luke are giving away their 2011 12 track full length "Of Man" for free download via NoiseTrade here. Check it out below and please encourage everyone you know to download this fantastic release. You can read a little message from Mark Nicks below.
Kings Kaleidoscope Sign With Bad Christian
Kings Kaleidoscope has signed with BadChristian Music (Emery's newly created label). They're making a new EP that will be out March 18th and available for free for the first week, and have made 6 new live videos that will be released in the time leading up to the album release date. [Website] [Thanks Sam M]


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I had been using Chanel Pro Lumiere for a year and it was just way too drying for me even though it is a satin finish foundation. I was on the lookout for a new foundation which did not contain any Parabens or Silicones and I found Sheer Glow.
I was apprehensive at first because a lot of people had said it clings onto dry patches or broke them out.
It literally looks like you have naturally beautiful skin. I was sick of having really moisturising foundations for my dry skin that were too oily...and finding Nars Sheer Glow was the best thing i ever did. It does not feel sticky on your face. It looks like your own skin!
As for any glowing properties...I don't see any. But that's fine by me personally.
The coverage is medium, you can build it up to full.
For reference, I am a MAC NC20 (sometimes NC15) and I purchased the shade Mont Blanc. It looks pale as it's going on my face but somehow blends into my own colour.
EDIT: This foundation is way too pale and way too drying for me... I started to notice it more and more as I tried it.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No
Aside from the fact that this doesn't last as long as Estee Lauder Double Wear, this is my everyday HG go-to foundation. Set with a light dusting of powder, this seems to last a good 8 hours - but for long work days I'd like it to last a little longer.
I like that the consistency of this foundation is thin. In my opinion, less is more. So I use about half of a pump to cover my whole face (and I've got a fat face!) with either my MAC 130, Sigma F80, or a Beauty Blender sponge. I've got pretty uneven skintone, some redness in the cheeks, and a few acne scars - and this foundation covers them all quite well. The finish of this is not dewy like Chanel's Vitalumiere or MAC's F&B, but is more of satin-like. It can get a little oily after 4-5 hours of wear, but that seems fairly normal for any foundation.
Nars foundations tend to work really well with people who have a lot of yellow in their skin, so if you're more cool-toned, I would definitely try and get some samples and color-matched before buying. I'm an NC37 and wear Barcelona or Syracuse. Aside from the fact that you have to buy the pump separately for this, I think the packaging is pretty nice.
This is a more medium coverage foundation, not as full as say, Laura Mercier Silk Creme Foundation, but is definitely not as sheer as a tinted moisturizer. I like the way it goes on my skin. It's very smooth and easy to blend. It does not dry too quickly, giving me plenty of time to smooth it all over and blend it. It does not cover my blemishes but I use a concealer for that. I just apply this with my fingers and it works great for me. I use the color Santa Fe, although I also had Punjab at the same time and could tell absolutely NO DIFFERENCE in them when they were on my face.(I literally put them both on my face at the same time, one color on left half, one color on the right) I don't love the packaging...no pump which is lame for the price. I know you can purchase one. Also, although I like the sleek look of the packaging, the lid bothers me b/c it gets dirty easily. Also, my lid seems to fit crooked which bothers me, but does not affect the actual product. I really have enjoyed this foundation, and most likely will repurchase.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No
GREATEST FOUNDATION EVER. It just melts right into your skin. Having somewhat oily skin I usually tend to stay away from anything with the word "glow" in it. However, I bought a bottle after going to a special NARS MA event at the Mpls DT Macy's and when I wore it a few days later my fiance commented that my skin looked really great. I told him it was the new foundation and he got REAL close for inspection and was like, "Wow, I would never guess you had anything on". Now THAT is a winner! I set this with a very light dusting of the NARS pressed powder foundation and it looks like perfection. I don't mind that this does not come with a pump. A little on the cheeks, forehead, nose and chin and some blendy action with either fingers or stippling brush... 2 min later I am done! Doesn't break me out and maintains a natural glowing look all day without making me look greasy. $49 is a bit pricey, but oh so worth it.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No
I was sucked in to all the hype on this foundation and it was on my list of MUST try. I got matched to Barcelona (nc 35-37). which was perfect for me, a lot of people say its good if you are nc 40. but nc 35 could probably get away with it too. Coverage if amazing its kind of runny and glides on your face. you wont need a lot of the product, which is good. If i put it on at 7am, i would need to blot my face around mid day and by 4pm it will start to oxordise. But if i powdered it would probably look okay.
I wasnt a fan of the packaging at all. i do not like poor out bottles. these are just product wasters. Ive heard that you can buy a pump, but in australia i dont think that is an option as yet...ive also noticed that Mecca doesnt stock all the shades (mecca is the only place where you can buy nars in australia). The only reason why i would not repurchase this foundation is the price. $99 AUD for this is disgusting! especially when in america you can get it for $49. and with our dollar being strong atm, why would i pay almost a hundred dollars for it, when in america you can get it for HALF the price?? makes you wonder whatelse is incredibly marked up in australia!
Also thought i might add, i have combination skin and had no trouble with this foundation :)
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No
this foundation has a lovely coverage, and is great if you use something that will control your oil. However it isn't non-comedogenic which means it will block your pores. Thus making them larger. This isn't great for long-term use. However it is light, lovely coverage.... just wish it was non-comedogenic!
I love this foundation. The color is perfect for me. it lasts all day and is easy to put on. Love it.
So I heard and read about a lot of combo/oily girls using this and loving it; they all were skeptical at first because it said "glow" but ended up loving it. Well I went for it and ended up being highly disappointed with the product. When I would start to get oily the foundation changed and looked aweful...worse than anything I've used. The color match was fine and it looked great when first applied but after an hour it was a huge mess.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No
I love this foundation,as I deem myself as an ultimate
product junkie I have tried almost everything under the
sun(Smashbox,MAC,Mufe,Giorgio Armani,lorac etc.However I have been most successful with this one.I have pretty even combination skin so I don't need to conceal too much, combo skin And this doesn't dry me out nor make me shiny. I've seen a negative a few negative reviews but if u have crazy oily skin then common sense is that a product that has a word glow might add to your problems. That's just my personal opinion. The only thing that I dislike is that you have to
purchase the pump separately which is a hassle. Btw the color matches me perfectly!
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The best foundation yet! Like many of you, I have been through my fair share of foundations searching for that HG. Well, I don't know if any foundation is perfect but this is the closest to perfect that I've found. I am in the shade Macao that I have to order online since there's not NARS counter near me and Sephora doesn't carry many of the darker shades. I don't mind cause that's how good this foundation is. It's yellow based which is great for me. I can't tell you how many pink based foundations oxidize to orange/red which is not a good look. If you subscribe to Bobbie Brown's makeup philosophy, most skin tones look better and more natural with a yellow tone foundation and I agree. For reference I am in between NC 45-50 in MAC I am pretty oily in my T-Zone and have acne scars that need covering. I use sheer glow as my everyday foundation and normally don't have to go over blemishes with concealer unless I'm going for a really flawless look. The down side to the foundation is not that it doesn't have a pump...what a stupid complaint btw. As long as the product is good who cares how it's packaged geesh!! Anyway, my complaint is the staying power. It starts off FLAWLESS but by the end of my 12 hour shift, it's almost non existent but that is the case with most foundations, with the exception of Estee Lauder DW (also great). On a good note, it doesn't aggravate my acne prone skin. I definitely recommend Sheer Glow and just received my third bottle in the mail :-)
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