A WRITING PLAYLIST

Hello Everybody,

Like a lot of people, I like music! And, like those same people, I especially enjoy listening to it on YouTube, thus depriving those hardworking artists of their royalties!

No, most times those videos are posted by the bands or singers themselves, or by their "people" at least, so I don't feel so bad.

So! I figured it'd be a real gas to post a songlist—the songs I listened to while writing The Troop. Now some of you, perhaps having read the book by now, might figure that I listened to death metal stuff, Cannibal Corpse and the like, or else maybe haunted house music, rattling chains and growling chainsaws and ghosts going "BoooOOOOOoooooOOOOOooo!" in that ululating way that ghosts tend to have.

Wrong!

Now okay, I wasn't listening to super sunny stuff, either. I wasn't putting on KC and the Sunshine Band. I wasn't grooving to Walking on Sunshine, Christopher Cross's Sailing, or the soundtrack to Happy Feet. I'd say my tastes run somewhere between those two poles, Death Metal and overbright/saccharine tune-age ... which is where 99% of us probably wind up.

Without any further ado, here are some of the tunes that I, a horror novelist, listened to while writing my horror novel.

1. City and Color, Sleeping Sickness. This band (not really a band, just one dude) is fronted by Dallas Green, who is awesome and hails from my hometown of Saint Catharines, Ontario. Here he shares vocal duties with Gord Downey of The Tragically Hip, who was the band I loved most growing up. Could it be any better? No.

2. Sigar Ros, Saeglopur. This band is wonderful, trippy, the best. I have no clue what's being sung but it matters not a whit. Just put this tune on, trip out, and write about Boy Scouts hiking in the great wide open (and about the terrible things that eventually happen to them ...)

3. Bon Ivor, Holocene. I first heard of this band because of Rust and Bone (the film; the book sucks); one of their songs plays over that movie's trailer. My fave of theirs is Holocene. Lookit that boy out having fun on the cliffs of Norway or wherever! He looks just like a Scout. 

4. The National, About Today. Really loved this when it played over the final scene of Warrior, a kickass movie that came out a few years ago.

5. Peter Murphy, I'll Fall With Your Knife. Played over the final scene of The Trojan War, that brilliant film about a horny highschooler chasing a condom all over the city for 90 minutes ... I think that was what it was about, anyway. It's been awhile. I don't know. This song works for me. Screw off if you don't agree!

So now you know. I'm sure you can sleep better knowing, too.

Yrs,

Nick.