For no particular reason except to see if I could while still respectin’ the greats, all of the chapter/song titles in Part IV contain words endin’ in apostrophes. Due to either a fun coincidence or my future self havin’ fun with me, the first two were Dinosaur Jr. and Weezer doin’ the singin’. If “Start Choppin'” was a Local Boy song in the original timeline it made sense “Keep Fishin'” would be reclaimed in this one. Even though the chapters retain the original tune titlin’, in the book the jams are rechristened “Telling You Goodbye” (no apostrophe) and “Waste My Daze.” The latter is half a nod to 70s counterculture and half to a screenplay I was scriptin’ shortly after college titled Wasted Days in a Wasted Daze.
Keep Tidbittin’
- Even after the wedding tirade against acronyms, Local Boy coins another one when he jokingly calls their piano, guitar and bass trio PGBT. Part of me is wishin’ I reordered it to PBGT and made a PB&J joke, though I’m sure everyone reading this is glad I didn’t. (This idea sent me down a rabbit hole to learn when the acronym PB&J came into vogue. Seems to be in the early 1960s, so at least it would be fittin’…)
- “It wasn’t better or worse, just different” paraphrases my wife’s stock answer when it comes to comparing any two things.
- Namin’ the band Local Three evolved from starin’ at the old LBDG logo and imaginin’ different variations. L3DG looks the same at first glance, in a manner that might fool your future son if he happens to go stumblin’ across the album in another sequel…
- He sat down with a drink at his piano sneaks in a Benji Hughes reference. (Old habits be dyin’ hard, but respectin’ greats never goes out of style the way a dumb apostrophin’ bit does.) It’s also an important clue that he has a drink while this happens, particularly when paired with his personality change ten minutes later.
- The main goal of this scene is to explain how the Nelson’s write songs. It sort of does and sort of doesn’t, but the groundwork is there to be further explored in Nelsonification. The inadvertent to Local Boy but important to the author chapter engage was to lure the redhead back into the fold, which worked like a charm even if Local Boy didn’t realize the cause and effect pairing. (Pairin’? Ok, I’m really done now…)
Check out Local Boy Done Gone