Friday, February 01, 2008 ... 2:04 PM
Making Notes
Yeah, I talk a lot of trash about Charlotte. About how it's culturally bombed-out. How the region overflows with banker tools choking up the roads and the sky with their corny SUV's. About how the city is sprawling crime-ridden ugly and all the history is paved over to make room for more more more overpriced faux-industrial loft condos for the overpaid banker tools. About how Inland Empire didn't play here, though it played in Columbia, SC (WTF?). And most of all about how most of the bands I want to see only stop here to fuel up the van between Asheville and Carrboro -- and who can blame them, as when they do schedule a date with the Queen City, the Queen City stands them up?
Well all that is true, yes. But now I feel compelled to say -- and not only because they're publishing my essay in one of their books -- I feel compelled to say that the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County is pretty cool. I check their books out frequently, and so does my wife, and so does my kid. Right now I'm reading Drop City by T.C. Boyle, which I checked out yesterday. I just got an e-mail that an Alec Wilkinson book I've reserved is ready to be picked up. There's a whole big library uptown just for kids. The main grown-up library uptown, its exterior decorated with subversive and inspirational quotes about literature and free speech, impressed Cowboy Junkies when they stopped here last year. The library presents free film series and holds an impressive Festival of Reading (though it's lamentably and, for po' folks like me, prohibitively expensive, unlike the Decatur's superior festival, all of whose readings are free free free, but hey, whatever). Oh and they also publish some handsome books under the imprint Novello Festival Press. It's clear that, though the rest of Charlotte may have all the culture of a Wal-Mart parking lot, the people who work at the Library care about what they do and where they live.
One handsome book that Novello Festival Press will publish in April is titled Making Notes: Music of the Carolinas. Which you can pre-order from the distributor's web site. And if I were you, I'd take that very action.
Brendan
Making Notes: Music of the Carolinas
(Novello Festival Press, April 2008)
includes my essay, "Link Wray"
MUSIC
Flop Eared Mule
The Celestial Monochord
HickoryWind.org
Dig and Be Dug in Return
Modern Acoustic Magazine / Blog
The Old, Weird America
Honey, Where You Been So Long?
LITERATURE
The Greensboro Review
Mixed Animal
Night Train
Fried Chicken and Coffee
Mungo (This was the blog of my friend, the late Cami Park. Miss you, Cami.)
Staccato Fiction
Wigleaf
PANK Magazine
OTHER
Cat and Girl
Film Freak Central
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