After the Sudbury show, while I was standing beside the merchandise table trying to remember whether I had just sold someone a book or merely signed one they already owned, three women approached me with the purposeful expression of people who had held a meeting during the encore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have a book club,\u201d one said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I congratulated her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe’d like you to come.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They said they enjoyed the stories I told between songs, particularly the ones about the music business, which amused me because I’ve spent most of my life regarding the music business as the unfortunate paperwork surrounding music. It seems if you remain in it long enough, the disasters become anecdotes and the anecdotes eventually qualify as literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the women had read Music Lessons<\/em>. \u201cDoes your book have suggestions for book-club questions at the back?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLike what?\u201d I asked. \u201cWhat is my favourite colour?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She laughed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I began imagining the possibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why does the author repeatedly make decisions that appear financially inadvisable?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Discuss the symbolism of playing clusters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At what point does the protagonist realize there is no adult supervision in the Canadian music business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is Bob’s favourite colour? Support your answer with examples from the text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They explained that what interested them were all the strange people and situations I’d encountered: musicians, producers, managers, promoters, improbable recording sessions, people who promise you the world and then disappear owing you seventy-five dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of my career involved trying to persuade people to leave their houses and come hear me. Now three women were proposing the opposite arrangement: I would go directly to the house, the audience would already be there, and the soundcheck would consist mainly of asking whether everyone could hear me from the couch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I said yes immediately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After the Sudbury show, while I was standing beside the merchandise table trying to remember whether I had just sold someone a book or merely signed one they already owned, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"Layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-rockbob","post-9728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}