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October 26, 2022
Christopher Locke's Playlist for His Essay Collection "Without Saints"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.
The essays in Christopher Locke's Without Saints are as poignant as they are intimate.
Jen Michalski, wrote of the book:
"This slim volume of essays packs a dense punch, propelled, like a carnival ride, through Locke's Pentecostal upbringing to his years as a drug-experimenting teen punk, to his teaching career, family, and intermittent struggles with substance abuse. Every scene is taut, like a highwire, the only steady presence Locke's lyrical, quiet prose. Locke knows how to make the ordinary feel fantastical and the fantastical ordinary."
In his own words, here is Christopher Locke's Book Notes music playlist for his essay collection Without Saints:
I’ve always loved movies. As a kid, watching Goldfinger on ABC with my parents way past bedtime was a thrill. And the “Oo-Ee-Oo” of the guards parading before the witch’s castle in The Wizard of Oz terrified me to bursting. When I write essays, I simultaneous imagine how my piece would materialize if also a film; I simply can’t help thinking of them cinematically. In fact, I created this playlist on Spotify long before writing about it for Largehearted Boy; every film needs a soundtrack, I thought. My book’s no different. An interesting side note: I cannot write and listen to music at the same time. I enjoy each individually too much.
“Exit Music (For A Film)” Radiohead
Yes, enough has been written about OK Computer and its revelatory genius—I won’t add to it here; this song does it better than I could anyway. Swirling, haunting, and emotionally destabilizing, all I can imagine is this song playing for the essay that’s the centerpiece of Without Saints: “The Night Faerie”. The essay details two colliding events: the day my youngest daughter was attacked and nearly killed by a dog, and my decision to start using opioids again. We were all in a late summer field, enjoying a picnic with new colleagues (my wife and I were hired as teachers at a boarding school) when the attack happened. The song translates the ensuing chaos, panic, and fear.
“Grounded” Pavement
Thankfully, Pavement wasn’t invented yet when I was in high school (I went to school before the unfortunate hipster phenomena blighted America) and the band’s smarm would probably have been insufferable, even for me. Though, I gotta say, “Cut Your Hair” still remains pretty damn catchy. I really chose this song because the title—being grounded was my specialty as a teenager. It became a running joke between me and my friends: “Wanna go to TT The Bears and see D.R.I this weekend?” “Can’t. Grounded.” “Wanna eat some mushrooms and freak out in the woods this Saturday?” “Nope. Grounded” “Wanna go to Hampton and get some dude to buy us tallboys so we can lurch around in the graveyard after?” “Would love to. But I’m grounded.”
“The Cutter” Echo & the Bunnymen
I swooned over “Bring on the Dancing Horses” in high school—all that shimmering guitar. But Echo & The Bunnymen’s “The Cutter” is one I loved too, and find it more appropriate for my essay “Friction”. During my junior year, my punk friends and I took a deep dive into a kind of meathead self-harm—cutting ourselves at parties for sport. It was more for shock value than anything else. Remember, this was when punk rocker/performance artist G.G. Allin (who was also from New Hampshire) was still alive and terrorizing stages across the country with his shit and blood antics; that outlaw attitude was both inspiring and scary to us. How far could you really push things? But the truth is, I quickly graduated from razor-curious exhibitionist to part-time practitioner—both my legs and arms received strategic nips and cuts I levied in private, small places a shirt or pair of pants could easily cover up. But not all: to this day, a smeary tic-tac-toe pattern is carved prominently into my left forearm. As an adult, it’s easy to connect the dots between alienation, self-loathing, and bad decisions, but the scar also serves as a difficult reminder (which I’m grateful for) of how I don’t want to live my life: arrogant and incapable of healthy expression.
“How Soon Is Now?” The Smiths
In 10th grade, I had already fallen in love with Morrissey and his detached, shy pansexualism; Meat Is Murder sang me to sleep each night in my off-brand Walkman. But it wasn’t until I smoked some really good weed and went over to a friend’s girlfriend’s house one Friday (I was unexpectedly on furlough: see, “Grounded”) as she blared “How Soon Is Now” through her parents’ expensive stereo system in a half-darkened house that I was mesmerized: Johnny Marr’s guitar was like a seizure-inducing kaleidoscope of sound. I think I experienced God that night. Maybe it was just the Thai stick.
“Pablo Picasso” The Modern Lovers
Alex Cox’s brilliant Repo Man was the first ‘big’ film my friends and I watched that celebrated punk rock on a national level—though Penelope Spheeris’ little-seen Suburbia was better, less jokey and much more realistic; blink and you’ll miss Flea in a minor role. And though this song is not the same version as on the soundtrack, it was one of two (the other being the Circle Jerk’s lounge version of “When the Shit Hits the Fan”) that seemed so out of place when cozied up to the likes of Black Flag, Fear, and Suicidal Tendencies. But the song grew on me, its take-no-shit-and-go-fuck-yourself attitude seemed more authentic than some of my favorite hardcore vocalists presiding over mosh pits churning like a Maytag. The band that originally recorded this song for the Repo Man soundtrack? Burning Sensations. But they are nowhere to be found on Spotify—damn you, corporate playlist!
“Lights Out” Angry Samoans
Sean, my oldest friend in the world, was that kid in high school whose bedroom was a refuge to so many of us fucked up misfits; we’d all gather there after school and listen to the latest albums, 7 inches, and colored vinyls that we scored from Rock Bottom Records in nearby Portsmouth. Sean’s bedroom was where I first heard Angry Samoans and was floored by their obnoxious attitude wrapped up in one memorable chorus after another. We’d all stare at each other slack jawed by the audacity of some of their songs, like “My Old Man’s A Fatso” and “Steak Knife”. But “Lights Out” captures the best of their absurdity, I think.
“The Hardest Walk” The Jesus and Mary Chain
I knew The Jesus and Mary Chain way before Velvet Underground; my buddy Scott brought Psychocandy on the school bus so I could borrow it. Rushing home to listen to it in my room, I never knew nihilism could sound so good! The deep, echoey vocals, the tom-tom drums and incessant feedback; I was in heaven. I wrote the lyrics to “The Hardest Walk” all over the paper bag cover I had on my Algebra II textbook. A girl I wasn’t particularly fond of saw it and picked it up in class. She sat in her Benetton sweater and smirked; “This is a cry for help,” she laughed. I said nothing, considering for the first time if maybe she was right.
“Janie Jones” The Clash
This song best epitomizes the viscerality of going to a show, that build up of energy right before entering that crappy VFW in Kittery to see homegrown bands like 5 Balls of Power (who, incidentally, modeled themselves after The Clash, among others). As a teenager, nothing made me feel freer that punk rock. I would be literally hopping up and down as I got closer to the venue and the music became louder—it’s as if my sense of flight became more and more defined. I’d be nearly levitating out of my Doc Martins.
“Values Here” Dag Nasty
On the flipside, DC’s Dag Nasty were full throttle but positive. Ian MacKaye’s Dischord Records was something of a mystery to me up to that point, but “Values Here” exploded my sense of what punk could be: you mean I don’t have to only rage about fucking things up and tearing shit down? Dag put the E in emo and didn’t give a shit what you thought. I loved the virtue almost as much as the tight harmonies and killer riffs. My buddy Owen and I once blasted this song out of the window of his house at all the academy kids (his parents both worked/taught at Philips Exeter Academy), while eating all of his dad’s New York Super Fudge Chunk and reveling in how good being good truly felt.
"Life On Mars?" David Bowie
In 11th grade, my friend Dan was my true David Bowie cohort; we loved everything he did, I think, because Bowie was punk before punk was. And this song captures all his grandeur, his brilliant writing, and that cloud-parting chorus that shook you to your core. In Bowie, we found our fellow freak. We’d be late afternoon in Dan’s bedroom, drumming on the Bowie poster hanging above his bed as he wailed from the speakers. We were excited most of all for his appearance at Live Aid (though Queen clearly won the day), later storming a darkened golf course with two girls we thought we loved drinking beer and throwing the empties into the bunkers. One of the great days of my life.
“Driver 8” R.E.M.
I so wanted to be a poet. R.E.M.s “Driver 8” held me with its gorgeous lyrics, (the ones I could understand anyway—Stipe’s patented mumbling notwithstanding), and I copied the song down on lined paper as best I could and dropped it in front of my mother’s bedroom door hoping she’d find it, finally understand me, and forgive me for everything I’d done. When she did almost step on it, she asked if it was mine and I was like “Oh, so that’s where my poem went. Sorry.” Then, more sheepishly, “Did you happen to read it?” My mom considered my question. “Yes,” she said. “It’s really weird.”
“Sacred Love” Bad Brains
The rumor was that Bad Brains’ lead singer, H.R., sang and recorded this song from jail. Turns out the rumor was true. My friends and I could think of no better example of pure bad-assism. Bad Brains played one of the first shows I saw at Boston’s fabled (and now gone) music venue The Channel. And though this song was featured on their third, and most metal-influenced album they had recorded up to that point, (I Against I), this song still kicks so much ass. Play while driving.
“Can’t Hardly Wait” The Replacements
And this is the song I picture as a pure ‘closing credits’ tune for the movie version of Without Saints. It hits all the right notes and sends everybody out of the theater with a feel-good vibe. Dorky? You betcha. I always loved The Replacements, first getting turned on to them via Boston’s WFNX with “Kiss Me On The Bus”. They were that “other” punk band from Minneapolis (along with Husker Du) that seemed destined to evolve into a mainstream success story. I knew some of my more militant friends were not okay with this looming sell out behavior, but I was totally a convert. Even though I’d nod in agreement in the back of Dan’s Gran Torino as someone said The Replacements now sucked and we drove around looking for normal people to terrorize in our boots and our jackets, I secretly cranked this song in the safety of my bedroom. I even taped a penny to the needle so the album wouldn’t skip. I’d then lay on my bed and imagine a life that could fit into all this music I loved.
Christopher Locke was born in New Hampshire and received his MFA from Goddard College. His essays and short fiction have appeared in The North American Review, The Sun, The Rumpus, Slice, JMWW, SmokeLong Quarterly, Barrelhouse, and Atticus Review, among others. He won the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Award, as well as grants in poetry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. 25 TRUMBULLS ROAD, his first collection of fiction, won the Black River Chapbook Award. His latest collection of poetry MUSIC FOR GHOSTS (NYQ Books) was released in 2022. Chris lives in the Adirondacks and teaches English at SUNY Plattsburgh and North Country Community College.
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