A Day That Will Live In Famey

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: So, sometimes I like to look at these "What happened on this date" sites for ideas on topics I might write about here. (It's also very useful when you're setting fiction in the past - a quick and easy way to remind yourself of world events and entertainments trends your characters would have experienced. Let me tell you: January 30th takes it to a new level.

It turns out January 30th is some sort of Day of Destiny. Don't believe me? Check it out:

1848 - California Gold Rush 

James Marshall finds the first gold nugget at Coloma, California, leading to more than half a million people racing westward to find the precious metal (and incidentally giving the state it's nickname.)

   

1933 - The rise of Hitler

After the Nazi Party retained its position as the largest party in the November 1932 parliamentary elections, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor by German president Paul von Hindenberg. 

1948 - Mahatma Gandhi assassinated  

After the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, sectarian violence spiked across India. Mohandas Gandhi responded by traveling to troubled areas, fasting and praying for peace and meeting with local leaders of all religions. He was keeping a vigil in New Delhi when he was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist.

 

1968 - the Tet Offensive

The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army launched a series of well-coordinated surprise attacks in South Vietnam, the largest military action of the war up to that point. Although it failed to cause the collapse of the South Vietnamese government, the Tet Offensive started a major escalation of the war, which would see an additional 200,000 American soldiers deployed, and led in time to the collapse of public and political support for the war in the US.

1969 - Beatles last public performance

 The Beatles make their last public performance in an impromptu concert (meant to be the climax of the documentary Let It Be) on the roof of their Saville Row recording studio. In April 1970, Paul McCartney formally announced the group's breakup.

1972 - Bloody Sunday

In Londonderry, Northern Ireland, British soldiers shot 26 unarmed demonstrators, protesting the British policy of internment without trial. British authorities had ordered the march banned, and sent troops to confront the demonstrators when it went ahead. The soldiers fired indiscriminately into the crowd, killing 13 and wounding 17. 

 

You see what I mean? That's a lot to take on one day. (Today is also the birthday of Dick Cheney and FDR - make of that what you will.) Going from historical precedent, I'd suggest this is a good day to stay snug at home - or to take a refreshing walk with no one else around. 

What personal history are you going to be making today, dear readers?

The Stuff Daydreams Are Made Of

Rudy Vallee

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  (More on the Oscar snafu below!) Who's your heart throb? Not now, but oh so many years ago? I mean, when you were young, and crushing, and imagined anything was possible. (That's a drawing of Rudy Vallee from Photoplay in the 1930's.)  I ask because I was invited to write an essay for a book edited by the fabulous Elizabeth Searle… And it's about how our teen idols shaped our lives. 

 I had to think about that for a moment, because did my "teen idol"shape my life? I had never thought about it before. Let alone write eight pages about it.

We each had to pick one person, and after a ridiculous amount of contemplation, I finally did. When I finished writing the final draft of my essay, I have to admit to you, I burst into tears. I guess I had discovered something I didn't know I knew.

So we'll talk about the book more when the publication date comes, not till next year! But for now, did you have a teen heartthrob? I won't tell you who I chose until you all do!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Oh, yes, Hank. I fell madly in love with Paul McCartney when I was eleven, and I don't think I ever completely got over him. I saw the Beatles in 1964, can you believe it? I saw McCartney again on tour in Dallas a few years ago and was just gobsmacked. I guess this goes some way towards explaining my lifetime of Anglophilia, doesn't it?

LUCY BURDETTE: Oh, Debs, I was a Paul fan too. But since you got there first, I will admit, Micky Dolenz of the Monkees was my first luv. I was completely gaga over him, and begged my parents to let me subscribe to TIGER BEAT so I could read up on all things Micky. 

Mickey Dolenz

And then my parents bought my best pal Laura and me tickets to see the Monkees for my 14th birthday--I looked it up, the concert was actually on my birthday in Detroit. Amazing that they arranged this! Laura and I spent hours putting together a birthday box for Micky. This contained all kinds of handmade stuff for a birthday party--paper hats, artistic napkins, and who knows what else lovesick, naive teenagers might have felt necessary to include. We handed the box over to a ticket taker when we got to the concert. And then we screamed our love for the whole show:). I never did hear back from Micky, but I did get a signed poster in the mail--sigh...

HALLIE EPHRON: This takes me back to the early nineteen sixties. I was fourteen years old and obsessed with my shortcomings (tall, skinny, pimply, smelly, hairy.) And just at the time when a person couldn’t get more self conscious, along came breasts…or in my case, didn’t. In the throes of self-conscious adolescent angst I first clapped eyes on Warren Beatty. My best friend and I took the bus to the Picwood movie theatre in Westwood to see Splendor in the Grass. I left besotted with Warren Beatty’s Bud Stamper, a sweet, sensitive, sex-starved, high-school quarterback who’s madly in love with beautiful, popular, passionate, virginal good girl, Deanie Loomis (Natalie Wood). They burned up the screen, those two.

He (Bud? Warren?) nailed me with those crinkly eyes, that goofy smile, and an endearing boyish awkwardness. He had the perfect inarticulate stammer and aw-shucks manner about him, a sweetened amalgam of Marlon Brando and James Dean. By the time Bonnie and Clyde came out six years later the bloom was off the rose. The movie magazines I devoured were telling me that my sweet Bud was sleeping around. And around. Ya let me down, Bud.

HANK: Oh, Hallie, I interviewed Warren Beatty (for Rolling Stone Radio News) when he toured for Shampoo. In Washington DC, at the Watergate Hotel. I have to say, he was--not exaggerating--the handsomest person I have ever seen. EVER. We will talk about it in detail another time, but he hit on me, I mean, seriously. (I guess he was enchanted by my pink acid-washed matching jeans and jacket.) I went home and wrote it all down, word for seductive-ish word. Bottom line, I turned him down. I thought it would be hilarious to be the only woman who ever had. Plus, he was married at the time, wasn't he? To JULIE CHRISTIE? I mean--gah. 

Speaking of Warren: poor thing, though! To be handed the wrong envelope? What did you think? I felt so sad for everyone...

Anyway. Rhys?

RHYS BOWEN: I was a terrible judge of men in my early teens. I was madly in love with British pop star Cliff Richard, with British actor Dirk Bogarde and with Rock Hudson, all of whom turned out to be gay!
When the Beatles came on the scene I was actually more attracted to John than Paul because John had that raw sexiness. I was disappointed when I found out he was married.
The only real crush I've had since then was Robert Redford. I still have a photo of him on my bulletin board!

JENN MCKINLAY: At age nine, I was a hard core Shaun Cassidy girl. I mean, come on, the feathered hair, the satin pants, singing Da Doo Run Run, and shaking his money maker - seriously, what was not to love? LOL. 

Of course, it helped that he also played the adorable Joe Hardy on the Hardy Boys television show. I wanted to be Nancy Drew but I wanted to date Joe Hardy - never Frank - always Joe. Huh. And now I write mysteries with amateur sleuths...hmm.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Oh, my gosh, Jenn, my sister and I were GLUED to the tube when the Hardy Boys came on. She got Joe, and I got Frank, played by the oh-so-good-looking Parker Stevenson. They were the perfect very early girl crushes - with their smooth skin and coiffed hair, there was no chance to threatening masculinity. The first man I crushed on was Paul Michael Glaser in, yes, STARSKY AND HUTCH. He had chest hair and five o'clock shadow, and made 13-year-old me feel all confused and excited whenever he got shot (which seemed to happen frequently)  and had to be nursed back to health.




Finally, seeing Frank Langella in DRACULA (1979) pretty much completed puberty for me. When
he glided into Kate Nelligan's bedroom in his undone white linen shirt and whispered to her, "I need..." I finally understood what sex was all about.

HANK: This is so fascinating, and so indicative of how old we were and when. (I loved Spin and Marty, too. I forget which one.) And Dirk Bogarde! And Frank Langella in Dracula--and Compromising Positions? Whoo.

And it's incredibly interesting, and indicative of the times, to see who we chose. Back then. My mom told me she skipped a day in junior high to see Frank Sinatra.  It'd be SO different now, right? Anyone know anyone who's 10? Who would they choose? 

But for my hearthrob, I chose the poetic, intellectual, brilliant Paul Simon. I was so sad and unpopular, and when he sang I am a rock, I thought, I'll be a rock. too! And he's still my idol.

How about you, dear Reds?

Please Don't Stop the Music

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Because I am the past vice-president of the Midwest chapter of the National Beatles Fan Club, I am thrilled to welcome a fellow music lover today…And hey. Steve Liskow can actually sing. Which I cannot. He can play music, and write music. And he can write about music! In fact, music is pivotal in all he does. And today, he offers a terrific bit of advice:

Music Makes the Plot Go ‘Round

            By Steve Liskow

Several years ago, my wife and I returned to Michigan for my high school reunion and met a classmate I’d never known in high school. Susie Woodman was now a session keyboard player in Detroit, and her escort that weekend was Bob Seger’s former drummer. Susie and Charlie joined the band that night for a song, and if I’d had a few more drinks, I might have joined them on guitar. I didn’t, but that moment stayed with me when I retired from teaching and returned to writing a few years later.

As the story morphed from a cozy involving a high school reunion into a noir-ish mystery, the protagonist shifted from a reporter to a PI and the reunion disappeared. I decided the PI was a wannabe guitar-slinger—hey, write what you know, right?—and I planned a series, so I listed all the song titles I could think of that suggested a mystery. Good songs are very compressed short stories so they inspire plot ideas from the start. Since plotting comes hard for me, I’ll take any advantage I can find.

After over 100 rejections under at least three titles, I finally self-published the first book in the series a few years ago. The main premise of the old reunion idea—a cold case inspired by the Bobby Fuller murder (remember “I Fought the Law and the Law Won?”)—stayed constant, but everything around it changed radically, so the eventual title was Blood on the Tracks, a Bob Dylan LP in the mid-seventies. 

Even though only three of my novels involve Chris “Woody” Guthrie and his companion, former session keyboard legend Megan Traine (Inspired by Susie Woodman, see above), most of my novels and short stories still use song titles or allusions. People recognize them, so it’s sort of my brand—although younger readers think The Kids Are All Right comes from the film instead of the early single by The Who.

Song titles work for several reasons. First, if people recognize them, it gives them a hook or a way in. Second, as I said above, lots of songs suggest a story. “Ring of Fire,” for example, is about a missing wedding ring. The Kids Are All Right concerns plagiarism and drug use at an exclusive private school. Cherry Bomb is based on a true story—teen trafficking on the Berlin Turnpike, what used to be the main highway between Hartford and New Haven—and people make the connection pretty easily if they’re old enough to remember The Runaways.

Some songs suggest an emotional tone, too. I called the second Guthrie book Hot Rod Lincoln until the first draft reduced the car thief with that nickname to a minor character. I tried other car songs, but Spring Little Cobra and Little GTO sounded stupid. My cover designer suggested Hyundai Bloody Hyundai and we both loved it even though we knew it was all wrong. My wife finally came up with Oh Lord, Won’t You Steal Me a Mercedes Benz and we knew we had a winner, with apologies to Janis Joplin. The story is a comic caper, so the title gave us everything we needed.

After a long hiatus, I picked up a guitar again a few years ago and started performing at open mic nights in the area. I ran into two or three other avid blues players who play rings around me, but I decided to buckle down again and go back to the real stuff: Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Blind Willie McTell and Blind Reverend Gary Davis. 

Children of the sixties remember Eric Clapton’s version of Johnson’s “Crossroads Blues,” which he performed with Cream, but Clapton combined lyrics of that song and “Travelin’ Riverside Blues” so I never heard one original verse until I bought the re-mastered collection of Johnson’s limited output (He was murdered at age 27 after recording only 29 songs). The first time I heard the verse, I knew I’d found another title:

“Sun goin’ down, dark goin’ catch me here.”

What a great image. Visual, tactile, emotional, really creepy. I told my cover designer I had the title for the next book but had no idea what the story was. He said, “You’re going to have to go darker than usual.” A month later, before I even sent him a synopsis, never mind finished the first draft, he sent me a mock-up of his cover idea.

“Here’s where you’re going,” he said. He was right.

Dark Gonna Catch Me Here is one of the only works where the title stayed constant from the very beginning. Maybe it’s a sign.

Some titles don’t work nearly as well. I’m still having trouble with “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida.”

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Ah. Yes, that is a toughie! Who sang it? Oh, right. Iron Butterfly. Which is much, much easier. I loved what you said about a good song being a compressed short story. And not just the ones that i stantly spring to mind, like the truly unlistenable Honey, or Ode to Billie Joe. But you know Crescent City by Emmylou Harris? And Carey, by Joni Mitchell.  Eleanor Rigby. And of course, Dead End Curve. Hey—you could use that one! I could go on. But you take over, Reds and readers:

What songs could be great crime fiction novels?

Steve Liskow is a mentor and panelist for both Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime.

His short stories have earned an Edgar nomination, the Black Orchid Novella Award, and two Honorable Mentions for the Al Blanchard Story Award. Seven of his eleven novels are set in Connecticut and deal with issues such as teen sex-trafficking, a shooting in a public school and teen drug abuse. The Kids Are All Right was a finalist for the Shamus Award. The Chris “Woody” Guthrie novels, including Dark Gonna Catch Me Here, are set in Detroit.

When he’s not writing, he does freelance editing and conducts fiction writing workshops throughout Connecticut, where he lives with his wife Barbara and two rescued cats. 

www.steveliskow.com

www.facebook.com/steveliskowcrimewriter

https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004V031H

DARK GONNA CATCH ME HERE

Darkness creeps into the motor city…

Detroit homicide detective Eleanor “Shoobie” Dube pursues a killer who leaves his victims in abandoned buildings throughout the city. When builders uncover a skeleton, Shoobie tentatively identifies the remains as Megan Traine’s long vanished aunt. Meg turns to her long-time companion, Detroit PI Chris “Woody” Guthrie, for help.

To help Meg, Guthrie puts the ugly divorce he’s investigating on hold. Then the couple’s daughter Shannon flees from her parent’s warfare and meets a disturbed young man who knows every hiding place in the area. Now, Guthrie, Shoobie, and Megan race to find the girl before darkness claims yet another victim.

Hamilton, Albums, and Musical Obsessions

Alexander Hamilton

My name is Alexander Hamilton

And there’s a million things I haven’t done

But just you wait, just you wait... 

(Listen here.)

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Here in our apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, it's all Hamilton, all the time — thanks to Kiddo, who got the cast album for his birthday.  In case you haven't heard of it (and I don't know how that's possible), we're talking the hip-hopera Hamilton: An American Musical, currently crushing box-office records on Broadway. It's written and created by Lin-Manuel Miranda (who also stars) and is about, yes, that famous Federalist who was never our president, but still graces the ten-dollar bill. The cast, seen on the Grammys here, recently took the show on the road to the White House, which you can see here. 

The Hamilton soundtrack, released digitally in September, skyrocketed into numbers no one's ever heard of for a musical: It was the first Broadway cast album to ever hit No. 1 on the Billboard Rap Album chart, the first to ever receive a five-star rating on Billboard.com, the highest-debuting cast album on the Billboard 200 in over 50 years, and boasted the highest debut sales for a digital casting album ever. It was streamed 16 million times in its first three weeks. (We bought the actual CD, because I wanted Kiddo to have the liner notes.)

So this non-stop barrage of Hamilton (and I don't mind at all — love it, too) made me think of albums I adored in my youth and played obsessively. For me, it was everything by the Beatles (even though they'd broken up before I was born), everything by Stephen Sondheim, and Prince, the Police, Michael Jackson, and Madonna (yes, I was an 80s girl).

Reds, when was the last time you were so captivated with an album that you played it over and over again? Was it Broadway, classical, rock, jazz, pop? And what was it exactly that made you obsessive? 

HALLIE EPHRON: First album I ever got hooked on: Tapestry. Carole King. I can still listen to it endlessly. It was the music and the lyrics and her voice. After that Brandenburg concertos and Mozart horn concertos and anything by Vivaldi. 






LUCY BURDETTE: We were fortunate to jump on the Hamilton bandwagon early and saw it last spring. I'm so amazed at the multiple talents of Lin-Manual Miranda. Who can write music, plays, and then perform as the lead? he's an astonishing man and of course we adored the show. If you haven't seen or heard it, look for the YouTube video of him performing an early version for President Obama... [Yes, see above.]

In general, this is how I listen to music--latch on to something I love and never let go. Bonnie Raitt's TAKIN MY TIME (crazy for the song GUILTY), Cat Stevens' TEASER AND THE FIRECAT (Moonshadow, oh my!), Teddy Thompson's UP FRONT AND DOWN LOW (She Thinks I Still Care), and all the early Beatles. And Patsy Cline.


RHYS BOWEN: The first albums that I listened to obsessively in my childhood were the Rogers and Hammerstein musicals: Carousel was the first (thanks to Hallie's parents who wrote the script). South Pacific, The King and I. I played them over and over. In college, it was Ella Fitzgerald.  And then the Beatles. Most recently it's been Les Miserables that I play every time I'm on a road trip.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I saw the Hamilton number on the Grammys and was entranced!  I can see how you could be hooked, Susan.

My favorite go-to album (for almost fifteen years now, ack) is the soundtrack from Love Actually. When I'm blue, when I'm happy, when I'm stuck on a stressful flight... Love it. I've had some weird album addictions in the past. The soundtrack from Kenneth Brannagh's Henry V. (Really, you're thinking?) The soundtrack from The English Patient. I could never bring myself to watch the movie a second time, but I LOVE the soundtrack. I even have Gemma playing a piece from it on the piano in one of the books.


HANK PHILIPPI RYAN: Such fun to do our history through

music! Of course I played Abbey Road over and over and over. Then Carole King's Tapestry. Then Judy Collins' Both Sides Now. I played Ella Fitzgerald sings the Cole Porter Songbook until the record was worn out. I spent months listening to A Chorus Line. A billion times. And A Little Night Music. Over and over. Evita! And Les Miserables.

Paul Simon's Graceland. And hilariously the soundtrack to Love Actually-- agreed Debs!-- and equally My Best Friends Wedding. Oh, and The Three Tenors, their first album.Love reading all these! And I'm sure I've forgotten some...but I'd still be delighted to listen to any of these. And I completely forgot all the folk music! 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Susan, Youngest is a total Hamiltonian as well. She's memorized two long numbers and can sing the rest with music. We're talking about trying to get tickets soon for her 16th birthday in August, although I understand the wait is so long she might be halfway to seventeen before we can actually see the show!
I was lucky; my mother loved musicals, so I had access to some wonderful original Broadway cast recordings - Camelot, Hair, Sound of Music, Man of La Mancha, as well as movie soundtracks from West Side Story, Guys and Dolls, Damn Yankees, etc. etc. The first album I obsessed over was the Broadway cast recording for Jesus Christ, Superstar, which I listened to approximately 500 times. I honestly think I wore the record grooves out. There was something about the music that just captivated ten-year-old me.

 The next music I got hooked on was Simon and Garfunkel. I can remember hiding out in my bedroom at the age of thirteen, listening to the sad songs over and over and over again while scribbling out heart-breaking Starsky and Hutch fanfiction in my spiral binders. (There was always a character who was very much like me who was either Starsky's or Hutch's younger sister.) The next craze, when I was in my teens, was Grease, which I listened to SO often I can now not stand to hear a note of it.
That's been my progression as an adult - no matter how much I love a pop or country or Broadway tune, I'll get heartily sick of it if I hear it too many times. The only thing I can listen to over and over? Classical music and opera. Someday I'm going to take a long lazy vacation on a boat somewhere and listen to four different recordings of Turandot one after the other, just because I have the time. Bliss. 

 

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Reds and lovely readers, what's the first album you remember playing obsessively? Do you still listen to it — or was it part of your youth? Please tell us in the comments!

Our Debut Concerts

LUCY BURDETTE: Loni Emmert asked this question on Facebook last week (thank you Loni!) and I knew we would have fun discussing it here: What was the first concert you ever attended?

And I am chagrined to have to say: The Monkees! (Couldn't it have been something uber-cool like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones?) But I was a teenager, madly in love with Micky Dolenz. And tickets to the 1967 Monkees concert in Detroit were what I wanted for my birthday most of all.

Earlier that year, my best friend and I had slaved for hours to make Micky a "party kit" to celebrate his birthday. We'd made crepe paper party hats, and lord knows what other homemade gifts, and packed it off to his fan club address. I did get a signed photo back from the club. But I suspected he was waiting to give me a shout-out from the stage...

I don't remember much about the concert--except that we screamed and screamed. And even though it isn't listed on the set, I'm certain that Davy Jones dropped to one knee and crooned "The day we fall in love." The memory still sets my young-girl heart aquiver…

 HALLIE EPHRON: Mine was pretty amazing. It was at the Hollywood Bowl Sept. 3, 1965, Bob Dylan made his Bowl debut as the opening act for Joan Baez. I was singing folk songs and learning guitar, and I am chagrined to admit that I did not get Dylan, not one bit. (A few years later I saw Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin at the Filmore in SF and was similarly baffled.) 


JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Lucy, I have to admit, my first concert was similarly dorky: at the age of fifteen, my best friend and I went to see Barry Manilow when he came to Syracuse. The tickets must have been a present from my parents, as I had spent all my allowance money on Barry Manilow records. Oh, my, how we screamed and sighed. He was so slim and cute and he had the fluffiest, most perfectly-blown-out seventies hair ever.

Most memorable concert? Going to see the Grateful Dead in college and discovering AFTER I had gotten through security that one of my friends had hidden his stash in my purse.  

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: My very first? Well, my father was the music critic for the Chicago Daily news, and when I was pretty young, like, five, he would take me to the symphony. Was I well behaved? I guess so...since he kept taking me. But apparently there was one memorable (for Dad) occasion where I must have been fidgeting  and the man in front of us turned around and said: "Please keep that child quiet."   And it was Yul Brynner!

And I would have loved to see the Monkees! 

But my first real concert as a separate person was the Beatles at the Indianapolis Coliseum, a huge arena usually used for cows. I cried for DAYS. Before, during, and after.

One of the most memorable: some college pals and I sneaked off campus (in Ohio) and drove to Chicago to see Crosby, Still and Nash. They sang for a while, and it was great..and then they said: we'd like to introduce you to another guy who sings with us sometimes. And out came Neil Young!
And then they sang Suite Judy Blue Eyes...and out came Judy Collins!

And all the while, my parents thought I was in class.

RHYS BOWEN: My first concert on my own was when my friend and I went to see the Rolling Stones. It was in a not too impressive hall, so they can't have been that well established, and the group that opened for them--well, they were terrible. It was Tom Jones and I believe they were called The Squires. I was amazed when he became a star later, but I have to admit he did improve with time.

But other types of concerts--my aunt was a huge theater buff and took me to opera, musicals etc when I was quite young. I saw Rigoletto at twelve and cried my eyes out because it was so sad.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: My first concert WAS the Beatles--on their first US tour in 1963, at the Dallas Convention Center, with my best friend, Franny, and a bunch of other girls from our 6th grade class. I have no idea now how we got tickets, or whose parents took us (certainly not mine...) We were on the 12th row, center. Could we see anything? NO. Everyone stood on their chairs, and I was short. Hear anything? NO. Non-stop screaming from the minute they took the stage until the end of the concert. Still, it was something never to be forgotten. Now I think, poor guys, having to play city after city to a bunch of hysterical screaming girls... No wonder they got tired of it.

Most memorable concerts from the last few years? The Police reunion tour. And Paul McCartney, a couple of years ago. Dallas was the last stop on his tour, and you could tell when he walked out on the stage that he was exhausted. But then the audience started cheering and clapping, and you could just see him taking in all that love and energy, absorbing it. He played his heart out for three hours--three hours!!-- and every second was fabulous. Still gives me chills just thinking about it.

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: OMG, Debs, the Beatles? Wow. <fans self> OK, I think my first concert was Sonny and Cher. (No, I'm not joking. I was fairly young.) The most memorable is a toss-up between two. First is opera singer Leontyne Price at Artpark (outside on a perfect summer night under the stars — she finished with Gershwin's "Summertime"). And also Madonna's Blond Ambition Tour. (Anyone remember that? It was the one made infamous by the Gaultier cone bra.) It was amazing and life-changing. (Seriously. I'm being serious here, folks. I think Madonna is a fabulous performance artist. Seriously.)

Reds, do you remember your first concert? Are you willing to tell us about it?? 

And just for fun, here's Kaye Barley's Memory Quilt, made from the concert t-shirts she scored over the years!

SHE LOVES YOU, YEAH, YEAH, YEAH!

ROBERTA: The New York Times this week has been full of the Beatles--news of their freshly-released video game and the new boxed set of juiced-up albums from the fab four. My husband and I have enjoyed the press--we both grew up loving the Beatles. He was a ninth grader and remembers well their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. I was in grade school and sent off to bed before it aired. Naturally, I watched it from the top of the stairs. My man was definitely Paul--no contest. (Though I never did send him a package of homemade birthday hats and decorations, as I did Mickey Dolenz of the Monkees several years later.) I don't even play video games and yet I'm tempted to buy this one. In my mind, they were a prodigious talent--and it was fascinating to watch their evolving personal and musical styles as times changed. I believe my favorite album of all time was Rubber Soul.

But obviously not everyone feels this way. Here's a quote from Ian Bogost that could put any nostalgic Baby Boomer in her place: "So I ask: must we appreciate The Beatles? Must we reminisce with the newly aged about their privileged lives as naive youthful radicals, and then later as greedy yuppie centrists, and then finally as truculent conservative majority?"

Ouch. Now off to you, JR. Beatle mania or aging boomer madness?

RHYS: As another huge Beatles fan, my devotion to them is simple. Their music was tuneful, intelligent and made me feel good. None of the stuff written today does anything for me, and I don't think it's because I'm approaching my mature years.

JAN: I think we baby boomers are an easy target for nostalgia marketing, and let's face it that's what any of this reminiscence stuff is really about: MARKETING.

But hey, who DIDN'T love the Beatles? I had a crush on George Harrison. Believe it or not, Paul never even appealed to me. And who could argue the Beatles weren't a dynamic influence on the culture? What I loved best about them though -- and this is from learning their tunes on guitar -- is how much they evolved and grew musically as a band. And what is also little known about them is how hard working they were -- which is a fascinating anecdote in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers.

HALLIE: Confession: the Beatles never really did that much for me. Though I loved the movie Yellow Submarine so much I even bought the calendar. Note: the calendar, not the album. I still have it somewhere. Music's never been a big thing for me...nor is any kind of celebrity. Talk art or food and I can get passionate.

RO: I don't have the Beatles chip either. It's not that I don't like the music - it just doesn't have any magical, mysterious hold on me. I'm sure we own the last Beatles tome that was released a few years back and it's still in its shrinkwrap. Now..Eric Clapton, that's another story.

HANK: Oh, dear. Mania. I'm with you, Roberta. I watched the Ed Sullivan show, glued to the couch, sobbing. Sobbing! Age, what, 13? I was vice-president of the Midwest Chapter of the National Beatles Fan Club. I saw them, in concert, twice, at the Indianapolis State Fairgrounds. I mean, I kind of saw them, because I was screaming and crying too much. You name a Beatle song, I can sing it.

Plus, if Mom hadn't thrown away all my Beatles memorabilia, I'd be rich. I'm totally a Beatles fan. It was John, for me. My favorite album--oh, Abbey Road. Or maybe Sgt. Pepper. No, the White Album. You get the picture.

ROBERTA: Of course you were the prez of the Midwest Chapter of the Beatle fan club Hank! Priceless! JR readers, Paul, George, and John seem to be taken, but that leaves Ringo for some lucky fan...

And PS, come back often this week--we have three fantastic guests lined up. Tomorrow, the incomparable Kristan Higgins on writing romantic comedy, Wednesday, medieval mystery writer Jeri Westerson, and on Friday, Dr. Charles Atkins, psychiatrist and thriller writer.