Check out my Twitter song-by song review of the album first, then read on for a completely different take on Thank The Lord… it’s the Pink Stones.

Thank The Lord…

a musical short story by JL Civi, inspired by the album

Oh, my my. I didn’t expect to find a place like this here, but I’m glad I did.

Question: What do you religious types call getting hit with sounds, visions, and complete clarity in one inspirational burst?

Epiphany?

Yeah. I had one of those, on my knees, thank the lord…

Forgive me father, for I have sinned.

Technically others sinned against me first, but I atone for my retaliation.

Never wanted to relive those days, but since this is confession and if you aren’t too busy…

Technically it wasn’t a one night stand since it lasted two nights. Though I suppose if you don’t sleep it’s still the first night, right?

Numbers aside, it was magical. From the bar to the bedroom to work the next day is all a blur. Not wanting things to end, I told my boss a relative died and proposed a spontaneous trip on a big jet plane.

This is starting to sound like a real sad movie…

I still get riled up over her friends laughing at my car when I picked her up for that mid-week getaway. Who’s laughing now? Are they still laughing? Probably, but that’s not my point.

Or maybe it is. Sometimes I feel like an outlier. A stranger in a strange land who’d be better off starting over in another country.

Going overseas was something we talked about at the airport bar, but couldn’t quite figure out how the seasons worked below the equator and whether it’d be warm or cold when leaving…

You never intend to commit adultery, but sometimes you spot someone from afar while already in a relationship. A nod, a wink, averted eyes that aren’t looking until they are. It sorta snowballs from there. Will the snow melt, or solidify into rock hard ice?

Whether something or nothing happened is and isn’t important. What’s wrong with remembering both versions? It’s like the universe split in two, and either way is lose/lose if I can’t win…

It became an addiction. White cushions splattered with red stains. Black/red sharp/blunt objects moving between my hands and the coffee table, numbers counting down the sins I’ve committed.

Is a broken heart a sin? For the breaker, it might be lust or wrath. For the broken, pride or greed or envy. Both people may fall into gluttony and sloth as they work their way out of the bottomless pit of pain.

It was the first time I’d been alone in my life, so I knew it was best to be movin’ on. Fresh start in another place. Maybe take that international trip on my own.

We never did figure out when the seasons down under were summer love or winter pain…

Traveling abroad is like being in another dimension or traveling in time. Simultaneously two opposite seasons. A chilly wind after sunset transforms a lovely day into something more sinister. The same, but different. The whole thing gave me a sense of uneasiness that’s hard to kill…

I wasn’t the only one to take this overseas trip on my own. Funny how something we were supposed to do together became something we still did separately but at the same time. Or it’d be funny if it weren’t such a drag.

D-R-A-G. Those letters describe my life. I might win a spelling bee, but what good does that do me if the acronym is a loser?

Devious. Resentful. Apathetic. Gluttonous. Four out of seven ain’t bad, eh? Was I supposed to acknowledge her? Ignore her? Use nicotine and alcohol and other substances to counteract the pain? I think the right answer is to let it go, but her presence across the room across the sea was such a sight…

I really thought we’d get married. Yes, we only had that one night stand that lasted a few continuous day/nights, but a feeling is a feeling. Should she be another in the parade of ones or twos that got away, or could one or both of us have the sense to stay? No need to revisit the your place or mine game. Pick a neutral site to try again where it’s safe and warm like a hometown hotel…

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Bar was closing. Take our time? Too busy for that. We had a third and or fourth night to stand up to. Maybe I fudged the counting, but I remembered your number—all seven digits.

Once I mustered up the guts to dial is where it got interesting. It wasn’t my first time, but most folks know when you answer the phone you start with your name…

She said she’d call me back, but the phone never rang. I could’ve called again, but that’s not how this works. Anyways, it doesn’t matter since my phone doesn’t work on the sailboat. At least not for telephonics. Her eyes look so much clearer in the photo on my phone, buried in a pile of memories…

And that, Father, concludes my confession. Seven sins and psalm 127 led me to take penance here in your island chapel as a way of introducing my new life on the great blue sea, courtesy of you know who.

I’ve gotta get back to my boat. Thank the lord for sitting down with me.

Oh, and tell Jesus that Jimmy said hi.

They played Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots in its entirety, followed by a full second set with all of the usual delightful hjinx throughout. If memory serves this was my 5th Flaming Lips show but the first in over a decade. The fact that they exist at all (let alone are still doing their thing all these years later) makes me incredibly happy.

Anyways, the show inspired me to dig up a deleted scene from the “I Went With Some Friends to See the Flaming Lips” chapter in L Extreme, but when I re-read the commentary blog post I realized I already posted it then.

So check out some words on what makes the Lips so great up there, and some photos (Flaming GIFs?) to back it up below.

Keeping score at home? Excluding framing devices, re-arranging the chapters into chronological story would be along the lines of:

21, 3, 8, 9, 10, 23/11, 12, 13, 1, 2, 4, 5, 16/6, 7, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 26

(You could also argue 1/19/25 happen simultaneously & 8 is contemporaneous with 9-13. Plus it wouldn’t be too hard to convince me the unlisted epilogue actually belongs first…)

Got all that? Numbering schemes aside, it’s a wild trip. Many readers have told me Side B (8-13 chronologically) would make a good standalone novella. Some even say reading Side B before Side A is a better intro to the story. It’s a valid take.

Sticking (mostly) to the album sequence, I viewed the genre-shift of the extended B-Side flashback as a bit of a twisty rug pull that pushes the story in a different direction for the second half. Using it as the hook instead of the twist hadn’t crossed my mind, but the more I thought about it the more intrigued I got.

Better still, why not have it both ways? Asking anyone to read the same book twice to fully appreciate it is too much. But what if the free sample came from Side B instead of Side A? If you dig it, you can take it from the top. When you reach the part you already read you have the option of re-reading or skipping over it without penalty or confusion. Now I really loved this idea.

Re-introducing The Ballad of Heartman & Songstress — a lightly remixed version of L Extreme‘s second act that removes the frame story, mixes in the Jessica flashback chapters, adds more Benji Hughes inspired section titles plus one brand new scene.

Completely standalone & completely free, featuring a killer cover illustration via Stuff By Mark.

Enjoy!

Recently I remembered this old I Write Like text analysis website and wondered how well I did at mixing things up. Let’s see…

The 15 Chapters: You Stood Me Up, Waiting For An Invitation, Cornfields, Why Do These Parties Always End The Same Way?, Girl In The Tower, Vibe So Hot, The Mummy, Love Is A Razor, Coyotes, Ladies On Parade, Jubalee, So Much Better, Lyegue, Baby, It’s Your Life!

This surprised me at first, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. There’s an air of mystery around many of these chapters (Who is L? Does the waitress have a name? What happened at the party? Who killed the DJ? WTF is going on in the trippy dream-like sequences?), which could lead an AI to lean towards one of the masters. I later found an article about Christie’s style that sounds about right:

Her language was always simple, using a writing style that every reader could understand and enjoy….She relied heavily on dialogue, a technique to vary the pacing of the story as well as to heighten suspense. The beginnings of her works are strong on description, which gradually drop off as dialogue and interaction between characters take over.

The 5 Chapters: Where Do Old Lovers Go?, Do You Think They Would Tell You?, All You’ve Got To Do Is Fall In Love, Even If, Mmmmmmm

Confession: I haven’t read any Anne Rice (as anyone who heard me botch an easy trivia question about her on Coverville Musically Challenged knows), so I don’t have direct experience with this comp. These chapters are all from Side B, all come consecutively, and are lighter on dialogue—including the first 4 parts of the silent Heartman & Songstress fairytale flashback which could be considered gothic by the AI system. (Also: C may or may not be a vampire and/or a muppet…)

This quote resonated with me:

Treasure your own voice, your own characters, your own vision. Never think you’re too weird, never think that you’re too crazy.

Also check out Anne’s own advice for writers.

The 3 Chapters: Neighbor Down The Hall, So Well, Love On A Budget

Obviously this is because the character of C was named after Sir Arthur’s middle initial

More seriously, these are 3 Frank-centric chapters which could be what the AI latched onto. I thought I might get Mary Shelley since Frank is partly inspired by Frankenstein—but he’s also partly inspired by someone else which leans more into Clarke’s sci-fi & outer space roots.

I especially love that Love On A Budget landed here since half of that chapter contains hidden messages solved via acronyms. The bio on the official Arthur C. Clarke website says:

He believed in short sentences and short paragraphs. He used metaphors but not archaic ones. He loved to coin a phrase or make up new acronyms. He enjoyed busting popular myths without the arrogance of a know-it-all.

The 2 Chapters: Tight Tee Shirt, Kenny

I’m flattered here, but can’t quite figure it out. If Girl In The Tower was here for Dark Tower inspirations maybe, but not sure on these two choices. Kenny does sound like the title of a King work. Both have a little bit of fourth wall breaking he’s known to do, but they also lack supernatural elements (even more of his calling card) that appear elsewhere in L Extreme.

Since the opening song (not counting the first instrumental) is included here, this King quote could be relevant:

I think that every novelist has a single ideal reader; that at various points during the composition of a story, the writer is thinking ‘I wonder what he/she will think when he/she reads this part?

LX certainly had one ideal reader…

The 1 Chapter: I Am You, You Are Me, We Are One

A great comp to get right out of the gate. Again I was a little surprised to get it on a far-out trip of a chapter, but this Cory Doctorow quote fits very well for someone who might not be picking up on nods to Love Devotion Surrender or Lovers and Other Strangers or Bill & Ted or Challenging Impossibility or the entire parade of other white-suited celebrities.

Science fiction has always been written as kind of a riddle for the reader to figure out. The whole point is to stop the reader and force their imagination to conjure up something that would otherwise take thousands of words to describe. But even more so today we live in the age of Google. So writers should feel free to add in references that provide richness and depth to readers who take the time to look them up.

The 1 Chapter: I Went With Some Friends To See The Flaming Lips

If you asked me for a stylistic comparison, David Foster Wallace might be on my short list. I’m not saying I actually write like DFW, but attempting a song by song novelization of an album requiring non-sequential storytelling to keep the tracks in proper order feels like a Wallace-worthy feat if that makes any sense. If nothing else you could call it “a supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again” — which is also a fair assessment of how the Flaming Lips experience goes in this chapter and perhaps what the AI picked up on.

Or maybe “Memory deficiency magical alchemy” as MDMA invoked this analysis:

Wallace’s writing often contains multiple voices and (sometimes made up) jargon and vocabulary drawn from a variety of fields. He uses his own abbreviations, long sentences with multiple clauses…

The 1 Chapter: EpiLILILILogue

The epilogue is a short and goofy little coda paying tribute to LILILIL — a different Benji Hughes record adjacent to the L Extreme universe. (Prequel or sequel? That’s complicated when the future is behind you and the past is all you can see.)

Weird and concise may have earned the Vonnegut comparable in the eyes of the AI. I like this bit from Kurt, echoing the thoughts of Stephen King & Anne Rice quoted above:

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

Turning my two favorite albums by my favorite musician into a novel definitely qualifies here.

As a bonus, I decided to run the acknowledgments through the I Write Like tool to see what happened. Interesting how when I’m just being myself in a non-fictional set of thank yous the comparable is Palahniuk.

What does that mean? You tell me. Or as the first chapter observes:

There’s a song with that lyric in it, but I won’t acknowledge what it is. Or will I?

Check out L Extreme

(Note that the shorter official L Extreme version has a very specific plot reason for the narrator’s disappearance, but in this earlier draft it was just a dumb little stunt without much of a point. Kill your darlings—or at least repurpose them…)

(Bonus fun fact: A note attached to this scene says: “The narrator should sound like the Dude narrating LILILIL.” That concept I kept when rewriting the full novel, but odd that the inspiration struck in a stretch where the narrator is largely absent.)

Here they come. Walking down the street. Actually, down the block. And on the sidewalk, not the street. But that’s somewhat inferred by the walking part. Or it can be. Down the block could mean walking or driving, biking or bussing. Busses drive, just with someone else doing it for you. Sort of like taxis. Or pedicabs. Horseback, anyone? Perhaps a boat. Merrily down the stream. Stream, street. It’s all the same. Three gentlemen on parade, mimicking the ladies who inspired this jubilee/jubalee/potato/tomato.

There’s a shop that’s down the block. With sweet iced tea—

“Hey narrator. We’ve got it from here. Back to stage directions only, ok?”

“I thought that guy would never stop.”

“Three iced teas, please.”

“You’re rhyming again.”

“No, I’m—ok. That rhymed. I was being polite.”

“Sweet. On all three. Right boys?”

“Thanks.”

“What’s that? Yeah. I can’t believe how hot it’s getting either.”

“Ahhhh. This iced tea really hits the spot.”

“I think we need to apologize to the narrator.”

“Because nobody knows which of us are talking or what we’re doing without his help.”

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“See, they don’t know who is talking or who is being talked about.”

“Alright. Are you there, narrator? I’m sorry I snapped at you. Your non-sequiturs were better than our dialogue. Can you please come back now?”

“I don’t think he’s coming back.”

“Without him the audience can’t tell how much time is passing. We waited for something like a full minute of silence between those lines.”

“It was forty-three seconds.”

“Thanks, Mark.”

“I have an idea. We can be the narrator.”

“How can we be the narrator?”

“Like this. Just end your sentences with words like ’said Benji.’”

“I’m not following.”

“Here’s how we’re going to do it said Benji.”

“That will let people know who’s talking, but the quotation marks make it difficult to read.”

“Ahem…”

“Ahem what?”

“You didn’t narrate. Say it again.”

“But the quotation marks make it difficult to read said Frank.”

“That’s a good point said Mark. Maybe add a pause?”

“But the quotation marks make it difficult to read. Said Frank. No, now the pacing feels wrong.”

“At least there’s context. It’s all about context. Said Benji.”

“This is a proofreader’s worst nightmare. Said Frank.”

“Bad grammar is making it hard to count, said Mark.”

“Right said Fred.”

“There’s no Fred here. Said Frank.”

“I know. I just wanted to say that.”

“Said Benji. Follow your own rules.”

“You can’t said Benji for me said Benji. Only I can. Said Benji to Mark who was being annoying.”

“At least you’re getting the hang of this narration thing. You got eight words of description in there. Said Mark.”

“They knew it was you when you counted the words, Count. Said Benji.”

“Stop calling me Count, said Mark.”

“Maybe the way you answer the phone is more appropriate. Frank speaking.”

“Ah. I like that. Benji speaking, how may I help you?”

“Frank speaking. Isn’t it time we continued onwards to the circus?”

“Mark speaking. First we need to pay for these three iced teas. You can help by paying the tab.”

“But it’s my jubilee!”

“Frank speaking. It’s our jubilee. It started to cheer you up but we’re all in this together. And I’ve noticed when you get agitated you forget to identify yourself.”

“At least it makes him spell jubilee right.”

“Narration is hard work, man. We need that other guy back. And maybe it was the other guy who was spelling it wrong”

“He’ll catch up with us after we leave. Though he’s not going to be in any rush if you keep talking about him like that.”

“Frank speaking. You forgot to—”

“Yeah, I’m done pretending to narrate. I feel like we’re playing Clue again. Mr. Hughes, in the flower shop, with the fly trap.”

“But we’re at the cafe getting iced tea now. And we didn’t buy the fly traps.”

“Fine. In the tea shop. With the telephone. Since we were talking like you do when you answer the phone.”

“I answer the phone by saying ‘Hello.’”

“It’s polite to identify who you are.”

“At work maybe. I don’t have an office job. Phone rings. I answer. Or mostly I don’t. If it’s important they’ll text me.”

“Let’s go to the circus. We’ll take the check.”

“Fifty-six dollars! These iced teas cost more than the Venus fly traps!”

“You need to start a budget to keep track of these things.”

“That’s what L wants me to do.”

“Jubilees are expensive.”

“Stuff the jubilee.”

“That’s the wrong song.”

“And the wrong band.”

“See—that’s why they need different spellings. Makes it less confusing.”

“It’s all confusing without a narrator. Let’s go find him.”

“Where do we start looking? He could be anywhere.”

“C’mon. He has to be somewhere.”

“No. He’s omniscient. That means he’s everywhere.”

“Everywhere? Like all over the universe? Even in space?”

“Anywhere and everywhere. Space. Time. Dimensions. That’s what omniscient means.”

“If he was truly omniscient he’d still be here now. So you’re wrong.”

“Unless…”

“Unless?”

“Unless.”

“Unless what?”

“What if he died?”

“We need to call the cops somebody killed the narrator!”

“Here we go again. We already did that song. That’s why we were at the florist.”

“Is the DJ dead or not? What happened at that party?”

“It’s complicated. The DJ died, but then we saved her.”

“Maybe we need to go back to the florist to get a bouquet for the narrator.”

“Guys. The narrator isn’t dead. He’s just missing. Or mad at us. Or on strike.”

“Or lost. Maybe he’s just on a different page than we are.”

“That narrator dude was definitely on a different page than us.”

“Not a metaphorical different page. A literal one. We’ll catch up to him on a future page…or a past one.”

“A past one? How would that work?”

“Just flip back a few pages and see if the narrator is there.”

“Of course he’s there. He was narrating then.”

“True. So go back a few pages and see if he says anything differently. Did anything change?”

“How will we know if something changed?”

“Is the narrator there? Are there continuity errors? Do character names change? Jubalee or jubilee? Stuff like that.”

“We already did the time travel chapter.”

“When did we have a time travel chapter? I don’t remember that.”

“We actually had two time travel chapters. Maybe that’s why you can’t remember.”

“We can’t do a real time travel chapter because time travel isn’t real.”

“The DJ isn’t dead anymore. How’d that happen if it wasn’t time travel?”

“The dreams have to mean something more than just the fact that I watch too much stuff on TV.”

“It’s called foreshadowing.”

“If I had a time machine, I could take you anywhere…”

“The narrator didn’t go back to the beginning of the book. You can skip ahead to find him if you really want to. But my vote is to let things play out in their natural order page by page until we catch up to him.”

“So what’s our plan?”

“Let’s go to the circus. He’s bound to turn up.”

“Jubalee, phase three.”

“Rhyming again…”

“Shut it.”

“For 4 fours!”

“What did you just say?”

“I didn’t say it.”

“I didn’t say it either.”

“It has numbers in it. Two numbers. Fess up, Mark.”

“It wasn’t me. I wish it was, but it wasn’t.”

“What does it even mean?”

“Maybe the narrator wrote it.”

“If the narrator wrote it he wouldn’t quote it.”

“Rhyming…”

“Shut it. But that’s right. Things the narrator says aren’t in quotation marks. Just dialogue.”

“The narrator doesn’t write. He narrates. Don’t confuse the narrator with the author.”

“Sometimes the narrator is also a character.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Maybe one of us is actually the narrator.”

“If one of us were also the narrator, we’d still be narrating and not going through this strange interlude without any description.”

“True. Unless we wanted to disguise the fact that we were actually narrating.”

“Hmmm. It is a little coincidental that the narrator stopped narrating shortly after Frank started talking.”

“I wasn’t the narrator.”

“Maybe you can’t be a character and a narrator at the same time.”

“Why can’t you be anything that you want to be?”

“No real reason. I’m just explaining the rules.”

“There are no rules.”

“There are more rules than you realize.”

“This is our story. Vibe it. With or without narration. Let’s go to the circus.”

“It’s the most logical place for us to find the narrator.”

“Why? What’s logical about the circus?”

“Everyone runs away to join the circus.”

“That’s such a cliche.”

“Just because it’s a cliche doesn’t mean it’s not the most obvious possibility. Ever heard of Occam’s razor?”

“Love is a razor.”

“We did that one already too. Don’t you know the track order?”

Just then, the narrator returned. He spoke of himself in the third person since that’s what he was. Though here he should be speaking of himself in the fourth person. He feels bad about his absence, but sometimes these things happen. It’s just the way it is.

“Welcome back! I’m sorry if we upset you.”

Benji sounded remorseful enough, so the narrator accepted his apology. There was one catch though. Benji had to promise to never acknowledge his presence again. At least not for the duration of this story. And as for the tale to where the narrator had been all this time? That’s a concept from another album for another book.

“I bet he was in the bathroom for five pages,” whispered Mark. “Or having a cigarette.” He raised his voice towards the roofless sky. “You shouldn’t smoke, narrator. It’s bad for your passive voice.”

Even though he hears everything, the narrator pretends not to hear that. But he extends the acknowledgment rule to apply to Mark also. Frank too.

And with that, it’s time to run away and join as the old adage goes. There’s a circus in the town somewhere…

Check out L Extreme

Or for something on a similar meta wavelength, try “Debaser” from Duty Calls

Each side/part included a dream, a flashback, a list, a pop-culture influenced set piece, and a relatively self-contained plotline ending with a stake-raising segue. Reveals from later parts made re-reading earlier parts more fulfilling. Seemingly minor characters took on major roles as the story progressed. The addition of a non-album bonus track to Side D gave it a symmetrical 7-6-6-7 cadence. And the whole book rode the line between goofy and sincere—sometimes shakily, sometimes stumbling—but somehow managed to keep a limb on each side of the line.

Was the album the reason it flowed together so well, or was it my interpretation? And more importantly: was it really any good, or was I fooling myself? I knew I was too close as both the author and a fan, and those were two potentially dangerous things to be. It was time for some outside opinions.

I turned to my two trusted first readers Jon & Nate, and interestingly got a split opinion on the first half:

• “The dream logic, pop-culture buddy comedy plus the mystery of L was great, but you lost me with that Heartman & Songstress nonsense…”

vs.

• “It started slow, but once I hit that Heartman & Songstress section it got really good for 70 pages. The rest worked when it called back to the fairytale, so-so when it didn’t.”

Around the same time, I posted two chapters to Scribophile as self-contained short stories with no reference to the source material. The opening dream sequence (retitled “Love, Devotion, Surrender & Other Strangers”) and the Jessica & Kenny vacation flashback (renamed “Just Say Dr. No to Jamaican Timeshares”).

Reactions to the dreamy opener were positive—especially the “And then I fall asleep” ending line. Over in Jamaica, Jessica and the James Bond references got high marks, Kenny served his purpose, and the intrusiveness of the narrator was a little polarizing.

My next round of edits focused on getting to Side B faster and calling back to it more frequently on the second disc. I also unified the dreams with similar openings for continuity. I posted the whole thing to Scribophile with no mention of the connection to A Love Extreme or Benji Hughes, curious if anyone would figure it out on their own and eager for more critical feedback.

Somewhat surprisingly, it was more of the same. People found Benji & C’s witty banter shtick enjoyable to a point as long as it kept plot movement in sight. But Heartman & Songstress stole the show.

“I am hooked–fascinated by the idea of a tiny, intuitive man inside someone’s heart. I love this concept”

“This is the goofiest, funniest, most ridiculous story idea. I love it!!!!”

“Other than encourage you to go much deeper into this body (he, he) I can say nothing about your writing art. Excellent sentences. Your style is easy to read, has a hint of sophistication and falls far short of giving me a headache.”

“Wow. Great story. I see the parallel to Cupid and Psyche, but it’s not slavishly following it.”

“This is weird and amusing. I like it.”

“Your writing style is unique. I enjoyed your ethereal descriptions. And your narrator is quite clever and entertaining!”

“At its heart, this story has legs.”

“This has to be one of the weirdest things I have ever read. Wonderful!”

“Pratchett-esque.”

“This has me smiling, and giggling, and turning the proverbial page.”

“Fun read, awesome concept. What the hell did you take to conjure this one up?”

Humble bragging aside, there was also helpful constructive criticism (and some less constructive dislikes—can’t please everyone!), but the overwhelming message was “yeah, this thing might work.”

But what was “this thing” exactly? It was a novel based on an album ostensibly starring the musician who created it. But ultimately it was the story of how Heartman & Songstress navigated life both inside and outside the body, soundtracked by A Love Extreme.

The next rewrite kept that idea front and center, imagining the album came after the book and making sure Heartman & Songstress were always on my mind. The love story, the dreams, the banter and the songs all served the same greater purpose—even early on when the reader didn’t know about them yet.

Out here in the real world, someone else also didn’t know about this yet. I’ll get to him in Part III…

Check out L Extreme: A Novel Based on the Songs of Benji Hughes

Let’s start at the beginning…

July 2009: I purchased the special music issue of The Believer magazine at Skylight Books in LA. It was a total impulse purchase based on the theme, the cover, knowledge of Dave Eggers’s involvement and the fact that it came with a CD ala the old British music mags I was obsessed with as a teenager. It would be a couple months before I got around to reading it, but I find it fascinating that I can trace this book back to this exact moment.

When I finally dug into the magazine was a red-letter date. On 9/7/09 I purchased A Love Extreme and added it to my iTunes library. Followed under a week later by The Ballad of Hope Nicholls by Benji’s 90s band Muscadine, a clear signal that an obsession was brewing.

My Last.fm profile shows how much airplay that album got at home—quickly topping my personal charts and assuming the “favorite record of all time” title in a post on this blog dated 8/22/10.

Flash-forward some unknown period of time, once again at Skylight Books. I had forgotten this, but my wife vividly remembers watching me browse the spinning metal rack of 33 1/3 music criticism books and saying: “Somebody should write one of these about A Love Extreme. No—I should write one of these about A Love Extreme.”

That explains my archive of 37 articles / interviews with Benji found online spanning 2006-2018. But when did I switch the concept from non-fiction to fiction(ish) magic realism? I honestly don’t remember, but I have some vague flashes of forces pushing me in this direction from both the research and the music:

“Oh definitely. There is a theme there. I don’t want to say anything about it. Maybe it’s love. There is something that the whole thing’s all about.” — Artist Direct Interview, 2008

“There’s not gonna be a 2019 A Love Extreme re-release with bonus tracks we didn’t put on there.” — Seeds Entertainment, 2010

“I want to be in your book—the front page of your life.” — lyric from A Love Extreme track “So Well”

“Don’t forget to write me when you’re famous.” — lyric from unreleased song played during Largo residency, 2010

Something I do remember is sitting on the couch listening to A Love Extreme for the umpteenth time and telling my wife “I bet I could write a novel based on this whole album.” She definitely rolled her eyes, and probably went to bed.

I found a file on my hard drive dated 2/18/13 (President’s Day! And possibly the same day as the above memory) titled “A Love Extreme Notes” that contains very brief bulleted sketches of the first thirteen songs plus “I Went With Some Friends to See the Flaming Lips.” Aside from noting the instrumentals should be dreams it doesn’t really mirror the plot of the novel at all, but shows some spark of inspiration. The text file was never edited after its creation. (I didn’t even open it during the later writing stages since I forgot it existed.) Maybe I got distracted, or didn’t think anyone cared. More likely I didn’t feel capable of pulling off a storyline based on one album’s worth of songs.

Next is another text file, this one dated 9/21/14, 11:20pm Pacific time. A short story based on “The Mummy.” For years I’d written little fiction pieces about songs to amuse myself or my wife or my friends. Usually they go unfinished. A script for a made-for-TV movie based on “Taxi” by Harry Chapin. A short about a car breaking down on the side of the road inspired by “My Name is Jonas” by Weezer. A Twilight Zone style anthology series with the pilot episode adapting the Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch version of “Wildside” (with apologies to Lou Reed).

This Mummy story wasn’t very good, but it still amuses me to no end. Most importantly, it sets up a framework for what followed. As best I can recall, my brainstorm went something like this:

Dracula, Frankenstein and the Mummy are roommates in a band with a Monkees type living situation. They’re watching the Slow Century documentary about Pavement in their small apartment on an okay side of town and arguing about who gets to perform at the prom.

But monsters are too obvious. I’ll call Dracula “Count” and make him speak in numbers, sort of like an adult version of the Sesame Street character. Frankenstein is just a big guy named Frank who may or may not be a monster. Who’s the mummy? A reincarnated Egyptian pharaoh? Somebody’s mom?

That was enough to get me off the couch and over to the computer. During the very short jaunt down the hallway I scrapped the mummy character in favor of a fictionalized version of the actual Benji Hughes for reasons completely lost on me. I wrote:

Benji and Count were watching “Slow Century” for the fiftieth time while they waited for Frank to show up. They knew it was the fiftieth time because that’s what Count did — he counted.

989 words later I had a dumb little ditty that started with those three characters living the lyrics of “The Mummy” and ended with a riff on the lyrics from “Everybody Falls In Love“—a different Benji song recently released on XXOXOXX (later re-issued as Another Extreme)—part of a 4 (!!!) CD set of new albums we got pre-release copies of when my wife mentioned her plan to surprise me with a trip to NC to see a Benji Hughes show to a co-worker who responded: “I didn’t realize you liked him—I kinda know him…” That album was added to our library on 8/26/14, less than a month before I wrote the Mummy short. It was the missing piece of creative connective tissue I needed. Don’t only write about A Love Extreme; write about ALL THE SONGS!

Inspired, I ran with the idea as my 2014 NaNoWriMo project, writing just shy of 17K words about Benji, Count, Frank and Benji’s mysterious ex-girlfriend L that November. And the next November. And the one after that. 2014-2018, every November spent chipping away with another 10-18K words song by song, chapter by chapter. A lot of it got scrapped—there’s 30K words of outtakes in what became an 87K word book—but a lot of it worked far better than it had any business doing under the circumstances.

Of course, there was this looming moral/copyright/intellectual property gray area issue to resolve. I figured I’d toss the hail mary of a pitch to Benji down the road if/when it was ready, and most likely rework the whole thing to scrape off the serial numbers and remove the references when I got either a no or a no response. But I was having so much fun it was the least of my worries at the time…

Stay tuned for Part II of how this zany project got off the ground—probably after a few chapter commentary posts…

Check out L Extreme: A Novel Based on the Songs of Benji Hughes

Announcing the new novel by JL Civi: L Extreme!

Readers of this blog know I’ve been a huge fan of Benji Hughes for years. Somewhere along the line I decided to write a novel based on his album A Love Extreme. For a reason I can’t fully recall or explain I decided to make a fictionalized version of Benji the protagonist. And somewhere much later down the line he gave me permission to release it, did the cover art, and wrote an afterword!

I call the book a cross between Yellow Submarine and Being John Malkovich with a sprinkling of 33 1/3 style fun facts scattered throughout. It’s a zany, cross-genre story grounded in the song by song world of the album but ultimately its own separate thing. If you dig it, the credit goes to Benji as the muse. If you hate it, blame me and I apologize for tainting the album. Personally I think they go well together regardless of whether you view it as a novelization of a record or a soundtrack to a book. But of course I’m biased :).

I’ll kick off a similar chapter by chapter commentary series of blog posts like I did for Timely Persuasion in the near future. For now, check out the ebook at your favorite store.

More soon…

Prophet 15

“Revelations of her revolution” is still a great line—and still a Googlewhack. (Or it used to be before Google stopped crawling the online version because I didn’t have time to make it mobile friendly.)

“Won One” is a real song my friend Chris Evjy wrote in college. I haven’t heard it in over twenty years, but in my memory it’s still one of my favorite songs of all time. (Yes, I know that’s a little extreme.) A handful of old mixtapes exist somewhere with a live version recorded on my radio show, but after countless hours trying to track one down in the attic of my childhood home I gave up. Mainly at this point I want to hear it again to see if it’s really as great as I remember.

Why is the Local Boy open mike debut on Halloween? My past self could have at least had a throwaway joke about a costume.

The list of Local Boy songs contain an easter egg very few people have discovered. The first letter of each song points you to a website. (In hindsight, putting Dash 7 by Wilco in the middle of the list might have helped.)

I wish there was a little more agonizing over the song stealing implications between the 2 set lists. I mean, 1 paragraph? Really?

“Debonair” & “Start Choppin'” are awesome, but not exactly “a barrage of hits…”

“One more chord to play” is a reference to a different Chris Evjy song.

“Use the gifts you gave yourself” is my favorite nugget of writing advice. Re-reading the original commentary for this chapter reminded me the whole Local Boy subplot is a classic example of that.

Christine Sixteen

The narrator could have shown more concern around the fact that his grandparents house that he knew in the future was gone before its time. (And by “more concern” I mean “any concern at all.”)

Another batch of still, still, still.

I wish the Local Boy name was foreshadowed at the coffee house open mike show or elsewhere before popping up out of nowhere here.

“Author of the hit singles” makes no sense. “See Local Boy perform his hit singles…”

On the other hand, a musician performing “in his own backyard!” might have been my current COVID-era self sending a message to my past self.

Quite a lot of smoke in the trailer after being inside for “less than a minute.”

The “Let me clear my throat” reference is pretty bad.

I had to double check the popularity of double albums in 1970 when writing this commentary, which means I probably should have done so directly in the text too.

The last paragraph of this chapter reminds me of the song Bill & Annie by Chuck Brodsky, but I didn’t discover that song until several years later. (It would even tie back to the tomato on the plane!)

Check out the original 2008 commentary for these chapters:

Prophet 15  |  Christine Sixteen

Gimme Three Steps

Future me would retcon the opening line here to “I am from the future…I am from the future…I am from the future…” like the Benji Hughes chant throughout LILILIL.

“…any thought sunk before I could get my mind afloat enough to theorize…” would have been a better line.

“Pass right through me” is a little overused. (It’s both an accurate descriptor of what’s happening and a reference to a song by Julie Smiley that nobody knows.)

Leap year day had to be intentional, but I’m pretty sure it was unrelated to the release date. The calendar origin of the word “blink” still makes me smile as much as when I inserted it into a late draft.

The full Tori Amos lyric is a little forced. The original slight misquote flows better.

CDs and mixtapes date things a little.

He falls asleep listening to Won One, teasing that it may all be a dream when he wakes up near the end. (It’s not a dream, but the door was intentionally left open.)

The earthquake bit is a little dumb, though you really do shrug them off like that after you’ve lived in LA for awhile.

The watch probably should have been 97 minutes out of sync, but that’s getting super specific and picky…

“Is this real?” should have been in italics to justify the tense change in the story world since it’s a message from his future self.

Four Hours in Washington

Accidentally perfect numbered title…except that the chapter is mostly set in Oregon.

Printed internet driving directions! (Remember, it is set in 2002.)

Six consecutive paragraphs that start with “I…” Ugh…

Two “set forths” also. Ugh, ugh.

Syndicated college newspaper articles. Did those even exist?

Kinda cool the way the “Th” in “The” overlaps in the font BD chose for the remastered layout.

An early incarnation of my real life college radio show was called “All The Brits and More!” before later settling on “The Lack of Evidence Show”

I’m still the only person to use cacophony of controlled chaos to describe Nirvana according to Google. (If that MetalInsider article it still there, it has the phrase in the text but Nirvana in an unrelated cached sidebar article.)

Chauvinism is probably a better word to describe the father. The plot device of the young father being this way but his older version having grown out of it still works for me, though in today’s era I’m not sure if I would’ve gone there as readily as my past self did.

He can’t get to the future because he has no memory of it, and time travel is powered by the memories of the collective consciousness. What if a time traveler was able to paint a vivid picture of the future into the ears of other time travelers? Would those embedded memories be traversable? Sounds like decent fodder for a sequel…

Turning the throwaway “you need to have balls” line into the scene segue still amuses me to no end even though it shouldn’t.

The ball and newspaper went back in time with him after visualizing the show, but are still there when he returns. This is a mistake. (Technically the carpet and maybe even the bed should have come with him too depending on how far the “electricity” rule of time travel extends.)

Was my future self telling me about the hyperloop when I wrote about a high-speed tunnel from New York to London? Or did Timely Persuasion inspire Elon Musk?

I had an annoying habit of not putting paragraph breaks in obvious places–which is fascinating as I also recall agonizing over where to break up certain longer paragraphs and/or merge short ones during one of the final cleanup drafts. Always trust your first instinct; it’s the one your future self is asking for.

Check out the original commentary for these chapters:

Gimme Three Steps | Four Hours in Washington