Music Monday: Good Enough Playlist

Good Enough paperback release this June 7, 2011!

Welcome to Music Monday! This week marks the debut of the paperback release of my novel GOOD ENOUGH (HarperCollins hardcover 2008, paperback 2011). The paperback is out this Tuesday June 7, 2011! So all week, I’ll be celebrating the paperback release with Good Enough-related blogs.

For Music Monday, I’ve put together a playlist along with some youtube clips of the music mentioned in my novel. I’m also going to explain the real life story behind why I chose these musical pieces and songs for my book. So you get a little behind-the-scenes peek at Good Enough! 🙂

For more info on my book, go here: https://paulayoo.com/books-good.html

(To see the Good Enough playlist, keep reading after the jump!)

Me at age 7. Look at that perfect technique! LOL!

So you can understand why GOOD ENOUGH focuses so much on music, here’s a summary of the novel’s plot from KIRKUS REVIEWS: “Patti knows that the only thing harder than calculus, or maybe mastering the cadenza from the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E Minor, is being a PKD, a Perfect Korean Daughter. The PKD achieves great grades, shines at extracurriculars and is devoted to her church but never complains or brags. Most important, the PKD never questions her parents’ pushing her to get into Harvard, Yale and Princeton and become a doctor or a lawyer. Though witty, linguistically gifted Patti has a number of academic talents, her greatest joy is playing the violin. She knows she’s not supposed to rock the Harvard/Yale/Princeton boat but, encouraged by her violin teacher, she applies to Juilliard. Now her dilemma is not her SAT scores or her grades, but how to hide her desire to attend music school from her academically oriented parents. The Clash, a jam session and a new boy at school encourage Patti to break from her PKD shell and see her social life and violin studies in new ways. Teens living through the pressure of college applications and questioning their futures will sympathize with Patti in this enjoyable, funny but not superficial read.”

Music played such a big role in my life. I started taking violin lessons at age 5. My big “break” was when I played a Bach piece from a Suzuki book (I think it was Book 3) for the Captain Kangaroo show when I was in the first grade. I was interviewed by our famous Connecticut weatherman Hilton Kaderli (WFSB/CBS, Channel 3). He was a very famous news broadcaster with a silly sense of humor, so I was in awe when I met him!

I eventually finished all the Suzuki books and did your typical violin geek things, like becoming co-concertmaster of my youth orchestra and concertmaster of my All-State orchestra. I even got to play with the National High School Honors Orchestra in 1987 in Anaheim, CA. We played Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2, which I also remembered as the music that played at the end of the first ALIEN movie. Here’s the youtube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWTzQzSbZT8

I then went to the Tanglewood summer program for high school musicians (I think it was called the Summer Young Artists’ Institute back in the day) and met lots of incredible musicians. Then I continued to study violin at Yale and ended up as principal second of the Yale Symphony Orchestra and played a ton of student chamber music recitals.

At the same time, however, I was also listening to a lot of college radio. Back in the ’80s and early 90s, “alternative rock” was hard to find on the radio. Classic rock like Led Zep and Aerosmith were all you could find on Connecticut radio. (And although I LOVE me some Led Zep and Aerosmith, I also was into The Smiths and the gloomy Brit rock scene, REM and all the Southern alt rock bands from Georgia and North Carolina, and the hardcore scene of LA.) So I listened to WESU, which was the college station at Wesleyan University, and the college station at Trinity in Hartford.

I also was a huge fan of Duran Duran, but I already blogged about them here: https://paulayoo.com/blog/?p=182

Below is a list of the some of the other music mentioned in my book, GOOD ENOUGH, with a behind-the-scenes story on why I chose the piece plus a youtube clip if you’re curious to hear a sample of the music. Enjoy!

— YOOtube Sample Clip: You can listen to me give a little demonstration of some of the music in GOOD ENOUGH with ReaderGirlz TV here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqQ6jQ_SrCY

— Capriccio Espagnol, Op. 34 by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: This was one of the pieces we played at the 1984 Connecticut All-State Orchestra. I was in the 9th grade and horrified that I failed to get concertmaster. (I was in the middle of the first violin section. I would later be Concertmaster in 1985. LOL!) Our concertmaster was a senior who studied with my violin teacher and destined for Harvard, and I worshipped her. She was my hero. She got to do all the solos from the Capriccio Espagnol. She sounded amazing. So I had to choose this for Patti Yoon, the main character, and her All-State audition. LOL! 🙂 Here’s a youtube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvLVNVim0QM

— Violin Concert in e minor by Felix Mendelssohn: I blogged about this earlier here: https://paulayoo.com/blog/?p=141 To summarize, I played this piece with my youth orchestra, so the piece obviously means a lot to me! Here’s Sarah Chang playing some of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCLxso5XDN4

— String Quartet No. 1, Op. 7 by Bela Bartok (performed by the Emerson String Quartet): I played this piece with a string quartet at the wonderful Apple Hill Chamber Music Festival during the summer before my junior year of college. I absolutely fell in love with this piece. I had been assigned second violin for this piece and I think the second violin part is one of the most exciting chamber music parts I have ever played in my life. I prefer it over the first violin actually! 🙂 Here’s a sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIk6B1SE7Fc

— String Quartet No. 8 in c minor by Dmitri Shostakovich (performed by the Emerson String Quartet): I played this with a string quartet in college and then later performed it again with another string quartet in Los Angeles. It’s famous because Shostakovich wrote it in honor of the “victims of fascism and war.” Coincidentally, my LA string quartet performance had been scheduled just few days after 9-11. So we had a moment of silence before we played the piece and its theme was extremely fitting for our concert. Here’s a sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk-Qh3bAOeY

— Caprice No. 2o by Nicolo Paganini: This piece was chosen because I had learned it at Yale. It is one of two Paganini caprices that I can actually play. LOL. Paganini is considered one of the most difficult composers for the violin. You can separate the wheat from the chaff amongst violinists depending on whether or not they can play Paganini. I had trouble with his pieces because a) they are REALLY hard and b) I have really small fingers, so I physically cannot even play some of his pieces because I can’t stretch my fingers far enough to do a 10th! So No. 20 was one of the few I could actually physically handle with my short, stubby little fingers. LOL! Here’s a fantastic favorite performance of the 20 with Shlomo Mintz, one of my favorite violinists! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afRw8y4IWxU

— Partita in E Major for solo violin by J.S. Bach: I learned this in college. One of my favorite pieces! So I had to include it for Good Enough. A sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II-foI4E6Bo

— Symphony No. 1 in c minor by Johannes Brahms: My youth orchestra played this my junior year of high school. I then had the honor of playing it with the Tanglewood summer young artists’ symphony with LEONARD BERNSTEIN as our conductor. OMG!!!! Another musical highlight in my life! As a treat: here’s a youtube clip of Leonard Bernstein rehearsing the Brahms with his orchestra! How cool! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIAXhq1IWt0 And here’s the first movement with Bernstein conducting the Israel Philharmonic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSPXe37vdJs

— Symphony No. 9 in e minor, “The New World,” by Antonin Dvorak: This was another piece I played with my All-State Orchestra in the 9th grade. I HEART the first movement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWrFVjKKo-U

And now… for the rock! I also grew up listening to college radio, so below are some of the songs included in my novel that had a big effect on me growing up in suburban Connecticut. These are all from my gigantic cassette tape collection. (I would buy these albums in cassette tape form so I could smuggle them into the house in my violin case. LOL!)

— The Velvet Underground, “Rock and Roll” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkbpmFOuKrc): I loved White Light/White Heat. I also loved that this band had a violist!

— The Violent Femmes, “Prove My Love” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHswOhYeThA): I saw The Violent Femmes at the West Hartford Agoura Ballroom in the 11th grade. Moshed my little heart out in the pit and had a blast. This is one of my favorite songs by them.

— The Sex Pistols, “Anarchy in the UK” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQkActP-isE): I first heard this album when I was in the 8th grade. I was BLOWN AWAY by how angry these guys sounded, and I loved the rawness of the music, especially given that I was such a classical music violin geek. I became obsessed with The Sex Pistols and read every single book and Rolling Stone, Spin, and Creem magazine article I could about them! I would love to go into a Time Machine and visit London back in 1977!

— The MC5, “Kick Out the Jams” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM6nasmkg7A): I loved CREEM magazine growing up, so I was really curious about the whole Detroit scene back in the ’60s and ’70s. Again, I want to find my rock ‘n roll time machine to visit Detroit back in the day! I lived in Detroit from 1993-95 when I wrote for the Detroit News, so it was really cool to be in the city that created some of the greatest rock ‘n roll and invented Motown!

— The Buzzcocks, “Ever Fall In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve?)” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRE79bxfMtY): Another favorite British punk/New Wave band from the ’80s. I saw them perform at the Ritz in New York back in 1992 and ran into an old friend by accident there. (I had gone to the show alone because none of my friends knew the band!) I also loved this song – one of the great anthems of unrequited love. 🙂

— Iggy Pop & the Stooges, “Search and Destroy” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDNzQ3CXspU): Again, I was fascinated by the Detroit scene and knew Iggy Pop was the grandpa of punk rock. I had the honor of interviewing him before his show at The State Theatre in Detroit back in 1993.

— Black Flag, “Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we7naFq5ZZE): I loved Black Flag back in the day. I loved how raw and well, I hate to say it, sloppy, they played. Henry Rollins also cracked me up. I saw him on his speaking poetry/talk tour in college. He blew me away with his insights and humor and satirical and surprisingly poignant outlook on life. And yes, I saw REPO MAN just one too many times. LOL!

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Well, that’s it for Music Monday. Come back tomorrow for more blogs and our week-long celebration of the paperback release of GOOD ENOUGH! Until the next blog, Happy Writing! WRITE LIKE YOU MEAN IT! 🙂