Month: March 2005

Dozens of volunteers constantly restock shelves to keep the place bustling and worthy of repeated looks during the sale’s 10-day run, which could raise more than $100,000 for local libraries.

As Bill Davis leans against the table next to the basement entrance of the Gordon Avenue Library, a middle-aged woman walks up, smiles and deposits a paper bag full of books; a copy of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot balances at the top. While we chat during the next half hour, several more deposits come in. The table quickly fills with paperbacks, hardbacks and any other kind of backs you can imagine. Davis is unfazed by the near-constant stream of book-dropping biddies.

“Yeah, well. That’s what they do,” Davis says with a shrug and a smile.

   Davis should know. He’s been with the Gordon Avenue Library Book Sale for 20 years. Now serving as the director, he’s seen countless tomes come into the library’s basement. All year long, nearly every day, books come in by the bag- and boxful. And every March he sees most of them go right back out; he estimates that the 2004 sale offered more than 100,000 books of which 82,000 sold during the two-week event. The sales totaled an impressive $155,000. Roughly $100,000 of that went directly to the library system itself. That’s a lot of card catalogues.

   And since nearly every year’s Gordon Avenue sale has been bigger than the last, 2005 is expected to be the biggest year yet. Now celebrating its 40th birthday, the Gordon Avenue Library Book Sale has become one of the most successful events of its kind nationwide, and the place for local and not-so-local book fans to go for great deals on everything from dog-eared copies of Treasure Island to honest-to-gosh hidden treasures.

Not all the treasures are hidden, however. Over the years the Friends of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, who oversee the sale, have found themselves in possession of tons of legitimate literary collectibles. Davis goes to a glass case to display some of the more sought-after books available at this year’s sale. He pulls out a first edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse V, which he figures could sell anywhere from $250 to $2,500 on the Internet. The Friends of the Library price books below what dealers would ask, though, so “we’ll put a good price on it,” he says. He goes on to take out a first edition of a Harry Potter book (the British version), a biography of
the Von Trapp family signed by the singing sibs themselves and something called The Ugly-Girl Papers: Of Hints for
the Toilet, published by Harper’s Bazaar in the 1870s. After showing off dozens of other prizes, he finally holds out what could be the most sought-after item this year: A bound portfolio of stunning Mother Goose lithographs by Feodor Rojankovsky. It’s currently priced at $400, much less than what it would probably fetch on the fair market.

   Of course, the Friends of the Library probably got it for free from a kindly donor. “They know that it benefits the library, for one thing, or they may not know that it’s special,” Davis explains. But if a book seems like it could be worth some serious scratch, sale volunteers do a little research. If it’s an authentic collectible in decent shape, it’s set aside and listed (without price) on the sale’s website, www.avenue.org/friends. Not surprisingly, few of the big-ticket items are left by sale’s end as many local book collectors and even some out-of-state dealers make the trip (Davis knows of people who have made the trek from Florida and even Minnesota), along with the hundreds of avid readers who check out the sale each year.

   The Friends don’t catch every prize find, however. Chris Oakley has owned Oakley’s Gently Used Books in York Place for nine and a half years. She could be the Gordon Avenue Library Book Sale’s biggest fan. Every year she arrives before dawn on opening day, sitting for hours in the cold for the doors to open at 9am. She says she does the majority of the buying for her 9,500-book store at the sale each year; last year alone she estimates that she took home about 1,500 items. And while most of them fit the interests of the general reader her store caters to, she’s unearthed a few diamonds in the rough during her marathon sale expeditions.

   “There are some books I’ve purchased there for less than $10 and I’ve resold them on the Internet for more than $200,” she says.

  There are plenty of treasures to be found in the non-collectible section, too. While most of the collection’s hundreds of thousands of books are priced at just a few bucks, many have priceless entertainment value. We’re talking about a People magazine retrospective of its first 20 years of covers, or Dolly Parton’s autobiography, My Life and Other Unfinished Business. No matter if you’re interested in children’s books, cookbooks, military books, comic books, textbooks, fiction or nonfiction, there’s bound to be something of interest on the shelves.

   The trick is to find what you want amidst the basement catacombs (some Friends call the main section “Middle Earth”). Orcs and Hobbits are nowhere to be found, but the dozens of volunteers constantly restocking shelves keep the place bustling and worthy of repeated looks during the sale’s run.

   Oakley says she’s been to tons of book sales, some bigger, some smaller. She says she’s impressed with the operation the Friends run. “The purpose of the sale is to make money for Friends of the Library, and it’s well-priced—less than someone would pay in my store and yet more than I could afford to buy without checking each store. It’s a good balance for fundraising,” she says.

The current sale bears little resemblance to the original one that took place in 1966. That modest endeavor netted only about $700. According to Davis, the sale really hit its stride under the direction of Jane Hess, who ran the event for 14 years starting in the early 1980s.

   Hess recalls, “the biggest problem we had in the beginning [of the sale] was finding cartons to store the books in,” she says. “My husband would fish with his cane in dumpsters for cartons…that [shortage] has been taken care of, I hope.”

   Davis credits Hess with coming up with the sale’s sorting system and other innovations. “We’re kind of riding on her coattails,” he says.

   Hess, however, puts the sale’s success squarely on the local book fans. “This is really a literary community and there are lots of books around,” she says. “Of course the Festival of the Book certainly hasn’t hurt us. … But it is just, just wonderful and wonderful to see those books that come in.”

   Maybe too many have come in. Davis says that sometimes it seems that the sale has gotten too big, and that the Friends of the Library have bandied about the idea of a second sale, one every six months, but have yet to completely decide.

   “It’s a commitment for the volunteers,” he says. “And it ties up the library, and we have to consider their needs. But there’s a good chance we may do some sort of a limited thing, perhaps just a weekend.”

   That would no doubt be welcome news to customers like Oakley. “We’re so fortunate to have someone like Bill Davis and his staff of volunteers doing this,” she says. “It’s a wonderful resource and gets better every year.”

The Gordon Avenue Library Book Sale runs daily March 19 to 28, from 9am to 8pm, in the basement of the Gordon Avenue Library, 1500 Gordon Ave. (On Sunday, March 27, it runs noon to 8pm; on Monday, March 28, it runs 9am to 6pm.) For more information call 977-8467 or visit www.avenue.org/friends.

 

A novel idea
Locals tackle National Novel Writing Month’s 50,000-word challenge

By Molly Katherine Ness
feature@c-ville.com

While some writers agonize over their novels for years, Colin Steele penned his first book in a mere 30 days. That’s because what distinguishes this Ivy resident and stay-at-home-dad from, say, Christopher Tilghman or Ann Beattie, is not only publishing gold and critical acclaim, but speed. Steele is one of the proud winners of the National Novel Writing Month (a.k.a. NaNoWriMo) contest, an annual event that challenges writers worldwide to produce a monumental 50,000 words of fiction between November 1 and November 30.

   Granted, not all the winners are Hemingways: This contest isn’t for the painstaking perfectionist, but rather for the literary gonzo with a sense of humor who’s not banking on the Great American Novel. He just simply wants to see if there’s a book lurking somewhere inside him. The guiding philosophy here is quantity, not quality—and that quantity of writing reduces anxiety about its quality. One Pantops-based participant put it bluntly, referring to the writing he produced during the month as “word vomit.”

NaNoWriMo was started in 1999 when 26-year-old San Francisco-based writer Chris Baty decided to encourage a handful of friends to write novels “because we didn’t have anything better to do, and because we thought that, as novelists, we would have an easier time getting dates.” Today, Baty’s baby is a bona fide nonprofit organization, complete with a website (www.nanowrimo.org) that encourages writers to make small donations toward organizational upkeep.

   “Ninety-nine percent of us, if left to our own devices, would never make the time to write a novel,” the website asserts. “The structure of NaNoWriMo forces you to put away those self-defeating worries and start. Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives.”

   Adhering, at least temporarily, to this sentiment, at midnight on November 1, 2004, the 37,000 writers participating in last year’s contest flocked to their computers, hoping that by midnight, November 30, they would have cranked out the 50,000 words needed to land them a coveted spot on the Honor Roll of Winners.

   The contest trusts its writers to tell the truth about sticking to the time constraints and has each winner submit his novel electronically for word counting. These are the sole criteria for “winning.” This year, when “Time!” was called, only 5,892 made the cut.

   After the deadline, winners are encouraged to post excerpts from their work on the contest’s website and celebrate their diligence at locally based “Thank God It’s Over” parties in bars and coffeehouses across the world. They’re forewarned, however, that NaNoWriMo’s connection to “the fiction publishing world ends at Kinko’s.”

   True enough, only four book contracts have resulted from the contest, including Jon Merz’s 2001 The Destructor (Pinnacle Books, 2003) and Lani Rich’s Time Off For Good Behavior (Warner Books, 2004).

   A writer of instructional manuals and mother of two, Crozet-resident Roberta Collyer came to last year’s contest with a portfolio limited to “lots of angst-filled poetry in my high school years, many 500- to 2,000-word projects that never got finished, and a failed attempt at NaNoWriMo [in 2003].”

   Accordingly, Collyer began the contest fully prepared for bad writing, yet hopeful. “I know from experience…that even though there will be a lot of drivel, there will also be some good stuff in it too, stuff that I wouldn’t have written otherwise,” she said last fall.

   The weekend before the contest kick-off brought last-minute errands, including the yard work and the laundry Collyer knew she’d ignore for the next month. Only three days before November 1, she hadn’t even narrowed down the genre of her book.

   “It could be chick-lit or fantasy at this point,” she said with a shrug.

   Colin Steele, on the other hand, made more literary preparations. He mused on plot and setting options and did some last-minute fiction reading for inspiration. But when the clock struck midnight on the first day of November, neither Collyer nor Steele had any more time for planning. At the end of day one, Steele had logged 2,200 words; Collyer, 1,792.

 

 While some participants consider writing to be a solitary activity, as the month progressed, a handful of Charlottesville’s NaNoWriMo writers reached out to each other for support. Twenty locally based writers made use of NaNoWriMo’s Web-based chat rooms. Others gathered for encouragement and inspiration at weekly writing sessions at the Barnes & Noble café in Barracks Road Shopping Center. They hovered there with open laptops and clean notebook pages, discussing storylines, chatting about books and excusing themselves to write when inspiration arrived.

   Collyer, a regular at the write-ins, attended out of fear of procrastination and her results were fruitful.

   “The best writing I’ve done happened at Barnes & Noble,” she claims.

   Early into the contest Steele, too, attended the write-ins. However, as the days passed, he found more success writing alone.

   Sixteen calendar days in and 33,000 words to his name, Steele had surpassed his midway mark. With this prolific output, ironically, came shaky confidence. With each new chapter, Steele hit a mini-writer’s block that, he bemoaned, “sometimes feels insurmountable.”

   A daily goal helped him through. “I start every day with the plan of 2,000 words. Then I chew slowly through the plot, scene by scene.”

   In addition, while slogging though both writing and writer’s blocks, a little healthy competition in the guise of the daily word count gave him inspiration.

   Steele checked the Web religiously, searching for other Charlottesville-based NaNoWriMo writers and monitoring their word-count rankings.

   “I live to be No.1 on this list [locally]. It totally drives me. I’m reluctant to admit it. Am I so shallow? So driven by competition?”

   Whatever the secret to his success, Steele’s diligence paid off: At midnight on the contest’s final night, he had written 57,613 words of Stormclouds, a science fiction novel. Three months after the official end to the contest, Steele was still going strong at 85,188 words. His current plan is to step away from the novel for a month or two, then pick it back up in May, edit it and start looking for an agent.

   Collyer, on the other hand, was not nearly as prolific. Her initial plan to write 2,000 words daily didn’t pan out. Twenty-two days into the contest, Collyer’s word count was lacking: 13,474 words of a novel about “a woman’s self-discovery after rehashing her past.” Her calculations revealed she’d have to pump out about 4,700 words a day if she was going to meet the 50,000-word objective.

   However, despite frustration with low word count and the time crunch, she discovered the project to be “more cathartic than I thought it would be,” both because of the empowering knowledge that she can write when she puts her mind to it, and simply because it’s “healing to bury myself in something besides real life.”

   In the closing moments of the contest, Collyer’s word count totaled 16,422. Even though she didn’t make it to NaNoWriMo’s Honor Roll of Winners, she is determined to “devote time every day, no matter what” to writing in next November’s contest. She jokes that she will definitely rectify this year’s mistakes next year, even “if I have to move to a foreign country for a month!”

   Whether or not NaNoWriMo taps into everyone’s inner author, it’s gotten the creative juices flowing for those who give it a shot. Worldwide, the collective current word count for NaNoWriMo writers is 428,134,750 and counting…

 

Moment’s notice
Best-selling author of Blink opens the Book Festival with a bang

Every which way you look it seems Malcolm Gladwell is staring out at you, his face nearly lost underneath his distinctive combed-out ‘fro. The New Yorker staff writer and best-selling author of The Tipping Point and Blink is ubiquitous these days, appearing in publications like Business Week and New Scientist, and he recently graced the cover of Fast Company. This week you can see him in person as he headlines the 2005 Festival of the Book.

   It may be his current trademark look, but Gladwell’s hair hasn’t always been so flamboyant. According to his website, gladwell.com, he decided to grow out his curly locks just a few years ago. Once his Afro began developing, his life began to change. He got more speeding tickets, started getting checked by airport security and even got stopped by police because he resembled a sketch of a rape suspect. These experiences prompted the 41-year-old Gladwell to start thinking about the nature of the snap decisions the people harassing him were making. Thus, the premise for his most recent book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking was born.

   Blink explores the conclusions one comes to in the first two seconds after meeting a stranger, seeing a house for the first time, or starting a book. People might confuse those instantaneous reactions with intuition, Gladwell says, but they don’t arise from lack of thought. Rather, he says, it’s rational thinking—thinking that moves a little faster and operates a little more mysteriously than deliberate decision-making.

   A native Canadian, Gladwell first tried a career in advertising before landing a job at The American Spectator magazine. After getting fired from that gig, he worked his way to The Washington Post, where he stayed for nine years writing about everything from medicine to business before becoming New York bureau chief. Then, in 1996, The New Yorker came calling. As a staff writer at that magazine Gladwell developed what has become known as a “Malcolm Gladwell Story,” i.e. an idea-driven narrative that is interested in dissecting the common occurrences of everyday life as opposed to examining major issues or events.

   Book Festival-goers can make their own snap judgments about Gladwell at the two events he’s participating in this year. His breakfast at the UVA Business School has long been sold out, so instead head to “An Evening with Malcolm Gladwell” Wednesday, March 16, at 6pm in UVA’s Darden Auditorium to see the author in action, big hair and all.—Jocelyn Guest

 

Ladies man
Mystery writer Alexander McCall Smith rolls into town this week

Mma Ramotswe is one talented woman. She can break hearts, dispense precious words of wisdom, solve mysteries and put her nose where it don’t belong all at once, leaving fans musing, “Whatta woman, whatta woman.”

   As the star of Alexander McCall Smith’s best-selling series, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, which broke out in 1998, Ramotswe has charmed her way past hungry crocodiles, out of witchcraft and into the hearts of millions of readers worldwide. Five books into his heroine’s trials and tribulations, and currently plugging away at a sixth, McCall Smith rolls back into Charlottesville this week for his second consecutive appearance at the Virginia Festival of the Book.

   McCall Smith attributes the wide appeal of his “traditionally built,” motherly Botswanian heroine to Ramotswe’s sense of decency, kindness, equality and good ol’ family values. Even her mechanic can’t resist her charms—he proposed to her at the end of the first book. Romantics continue to hold out hope for their future.

   With one mega-successful series to his name, Zimbabwe-born/Edinburgh-transplant McCall Smith has recently tried his hand at another. The Sunday Philosophy Club is a mystery series along the lines of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, except that it takes place in Scotland and stars the half-American, half-Scot amateur philosopher Isabel Dalhousie. While only one book in the series has been released in the United States, McCall Smith says he’s
got plenty of adventures for Dalhousie filed away in his head just waiting to
get written.

   The 56-year-old author offers young writers familiar wisdom: “write what you feel.”

   “Persist,” he says. “Carry on in the face of all difficulties.” That’s right: Poverty, writer’s block and repeated denials just build character and material. So stay strong, kids.

   Hear more of McCall Smith’s advice for yourself at either the Virginia Festival of the Book’s luncheon on Thursday, March 17, at which he’s a featured guest, or during teatime later that day. (Just be prepared to crack the mystery of how to get into a couple of sold-out events!) Otherwise, catch up with him during later on Thursday at “An Evening with Alexander McCall Smith” in the Newcomb Hall Ballroom. The event starts at 6pm and tickets are not required.—Sarah Cox

 

New sensation
The “intense and immediate” poet Robert Creeley, father to the avant-garde, reads on Saturday

“Poetry is like water. It finds its own level,” says poet Robert Creeley. That’s why, contrary to what cynics may suggest, the “end” of poetry is a moot point: It’ll always be around.

   The author of more than 60 volumes of acclaimed poetry, Creeley is speaking over the telephone from Marfa, Texas. There he sits surveying the landscape (“it’s like being on the moon,” he says). He recently began a writer’s retreat in the Lone Star State, but he’ll be visiting Charlottesville this week as part of the Virginia Festival of the Book.

   Having started out as a prose writer, Creeley came to poetry in college. The relationship he now has with the English language, is, he says, “the closest association of my life.”

   “What words provoke, what they say, literally is to me absolutely fascinating,” he says. “[Words] are not fixed in a grid of determined meaning,” which makes them both “intense and immediate.”

   His turn to poetry worked out well. At 79, Creeley has won the Bollingen Prize and a Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, among other honors, and served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In the mid-1950s he edited the now-famous experimental literary journal, Black Mountain Review that, under his guidance, published the likes of Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, making Creeley a key figure in developing and defining avant-garde poetry. Along the way, he also racked up a pile of correspondence with William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound and Charles Olson that verges on the legendary.

   As a poet, Creeley’s obsession is the individual’s unique experience of being human. He describes himself as “extraordinarily alert to how I feel. It’s where it all begins for me: The activity of one’s physical body in the outside world.”

   Creeley will read from his two latest books, If I Were Writing This and Life & Death, at the UVA Bookstore on Saturday, March 19, at 8pm.—Nell Boeschenstein

 

Bright young thing
Everything is Illuminated author Jonathan Safran Foer speaks on Saturday

Aspiring writers, don’t hate Jonathan Safran Foer too much. Yes, the 20something’s first full-length novel, Everything is Illuminated, is a critically acclaimed best seller. It will soon be a major motion picture, starring Elijah “Frodo” Woods as the author himself. But Foer’s paid his dues, working as a farm-sitter, jewelry salesman and morgue assistant at a veteran’s hospital in Washington, D.C.

   “Ay yi yi,” he says of that experience during a phone interview from his current home in Brooklyn. He recounts watching autopsies, and trafficking eyeballs and kneecaps to the pathology lab: “Those were some of the most scary and exciting months of my life.”

   Even scarier than creative smackdown. While everyone from Time to Esquire has dubbed him a “wunderkind,” Illuminated was initially rejected by five different agents and then by five different publishers.

   To be fair, the unconventional premise might have scared some off. What started as a nonfiction piece about Foer traveling to Europe to find the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis turned into a fictional piece starring a young writer named Jonathan Safran Foer traveling to Europe to find the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis, but instead finding himself on a journey of self-discovery with Alex, a Ukrainian translator who speaks hilariously cock-eyed English.

   And yet the book was a smash, thanks largely to Foer’s prodigious skill with the English language, as best evidenced through Alex’s complete mishandling of it. (Sample quote: “Many girls want to be carnal with me in many good arrangements, notwithstanding the Inebriated Kangaroo, the Gorky Tickle, and the Unyielding Zookeeper. If you want to know why so many girls want to be with me, it is because I am a very premium person to be with.”) Local Gogol Bordello fans, who enjoyed the gypsy-punk band’s show in Charlottesville last month, will be interested to know that in the film, Alex is played by Gogol lead singer Eugene Hütz.

   Foer’s follow-up, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, comes out April 4. It’s another identity quest, this time featuring Oskar, a 9-year-old tambourine-playing, French-loving aspiring inventor who traverses New York City’s five boroughs to find the lock that fits the key left to him by his father, who died on 9/11.

   Foer says that his initial success doesn’t influence how he approaches his subsequent projects. “I just work as hard as I can,” he says.

   He acknowledges that he’s been “incredibly lucky” in his literary career, but advises other young writers not to focus on making “the big break.” “The odds are too much against it, and it’s not a convincing reason to work,” he says. “Be convinced that writing is the right thing for you to do, or convinced that it’s worth finding out if it’s the right thing.”

   Foer will speak on Saturday, March 19, as part of the “Odysseys, Illumination and Forbidden Tales: Three Jewish Novelists” panel at Barnes & Noble (2pm) and “The Self and the Story: A Headline Event” at UVA’s Culbreth Theatre (8pm).—Eric Rezsnyak

Checking out the Bookmobile

Back to archived page

Q: Darling Ace: I keep seeing this big ol’ bus motoring around the city and the county called the “Bookmobile.” Obviously it’s connected to the local library system, but I’m wondering—what does it do? Who uses it?—Bussed a Move

A: Book learnin’ always makes Ace’s head spin. But for you, Dear Bussed, Ace did his research. Waaaay back in 1946, before even Ace can remember (…much), the City and the County realized that even people who don’t live in urban areas are literate. Enter la Bookmobile. Once a precursor to branch libraries, the Bookmobile still serves the same purpose it did almost 60 years ago: Getting books to people unable, too far away, or too lazy to get to a library.

   As to who’s using it, the answer is plenty of people. According to the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library’s circulation numbers, the Bookmobile’s January 2005 usage increased by a total of 32.7 percent from January 2004. All told, between July 2004 and January 2005 more than 10,000 books were borrowed from the bus-bound bibliotheque, which carries anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 titles at a time. The books on the bus range from Ace’s favorite genre—mysteries—to picture books for the kiddies, biographies and even large-print materials for the sizable portion of the Bookmobile’s patrons who are senior citizens.

   JMRL’s Director John Halliday tells Ace that the up-tick in Bookmobile usage is due to synching up with the city’s after-school programs, hitting places like Crow Center and the Boys & Girls Club. Drivers Willow Gale (who handles the county) and Adam Rogers (who takes the city routes) also putter around to more than a dozen other sites, including several senior citizen communities. A full schedule of all the stops can be found at www.jmrl.org/br-bookmobile.htm.

   While the 10,000 circulation number is impressive, it’s still just a fraction of the JMRL’s total borrowing (more than 860,000 books were borrowed in the five-county system in the same period last year). And although Halliday says that the idea of cutting the program pops up during lean times, the Powers That Be remain generous with the Bookmobile. The program costs JMRL $54,000 a year, spending $2,700 on diesel gas alone.

   Come fall that money will be going toward a spankin’ new Bookmobile. Halliday says the library just ordered a custom-made rig to replace the current 1991 model. The new model, which should be up and running by year’s end, will sport a satellite Internet hook-up and all sorts of bells and whistles.

   It’s all well and good, but will it come with something to remind Ace to return his overdue library books?

In 1975 there were reportedly 3 million record albums manufactured for sale in the United States. By 2004, that number hit 745 million. More than 10,000 CDs were released by hundreds of artists last year—that’s about 27 CDs per day. The recording industry has been in a boom cycle for the last 30 years, and now, every musician remotely related to the biz is expected to have a recording. As one engineer put it, “It is part of the dream. All musicians want that experience.”

   Paul and Lyn Brier know all about that experience. And when they sell their studio, Virginia Arts Recording, they will close a chapter of Charlottesville’s music history. Where they once were the only game in town, now there are at least six recording studios offering their services.

   Back in the 1970s the Briers were based in Washington, D.C., where Paul composed music for a PBS kids’ show, “Mulligan Stew.” Paul had been working on a reel-to-reel deck and had to watch the show while recording. All editing was done by hand. But with the advent of video tape, he realized that he could live and work wherever he wanted. Lyn’s family owned land in Louisa County, and on a visit there in 1975, they spotted a farmhouse that they liked. That year they took the plunge, and Paul built a recording studio out back. He was working on various television projects, and because he recorded all his work in-house, he started to hire local musicians to play his compositions, like Charlottesville Music owner Billy Brockman. When musicians realized what they had in their back yard, they began hiring Paul to make their own demos and albums. Virginia Arts was born, and in October 1986 they opened a new studio in Charlottesville, off of High Street.

   The list of acts that have recorded at Virginia Arts is impressive and varied: Johnny Sportcoat and the Casuals, Charlie Pastorfield, who made two records there, and Terri Allard, who first recorded with the Briers at the tender age of 14. Before Dave Matthews Band, Carter Beauford was the house drummer.

   A good musician himself, Paul was able to help out with writing and arrangements and play some of the parts himself. He made sure the guitars were in tune and the drummer was awake.

   Recording rock bands was the tip of the iceberg for the Briers’ business. They also worked in duplication (if someone had a 78 rpm of their grandmother singing and didn’t have any way to listen to it, Paul would clean up the fidelity and transfer it to tape or CD) and live remote recording, including gigs for groups like The Oratorio Society and The Virginia Consort. And a big slice of their business came from a cappella groups.

   Lyn calls Paul the East Coast’s a cappella engineer. Three years ago they scored a No. 1 collegiate a cappella best seller with a disc by UVA’s The Hullabahoos. (As Lyn explains, the eager harmonizing students “sell the stew out of them.”)

   They also recorded nine LPs and CDs for Cathy Bollinger, a well-received children’s music writer, who, according to the Briers, has sold more copies of records than anyone locally besides Dave Matthews and John McCutcheon. Paul has also recorded books on tape, like John Grisham’s reading of his novel The Bleachers, which became a No. 1 best seller.

Since the Briers’ pioneering studio started 30 years ago, a range of recording businesses have set up shop in and around Charlottesville. Bobby Read has great ears, a nice room in his Batesville home, and he is an incredible musician. Rod Coles has the biggest recording room of all at his new Purvis Store studio, and he has worked with a number of Charlottesville’s hippest bands. Terry Martin has a certain rock sensibility that some bands seek to capture. Kevin McNoldy’s Crystalphonic Studio offers state-of-the-art gear, and his room really creates the experience of recording that many bands like. Whatever you want, whether it is price, atmosphere or chemistry with the engineer, it is here in town. [For a more complete list of local recording studios, see sidebar.]

   The upswing in local recording studios likely ties into a realization made by musicians over the past 30 years that engineering and production are viable ways to make a living. Some of the engineers on the scene now, like Crystalphonic’s McNoldy and Espresso Studio’s Greg Howard, worked at the Briers’ studio.

   Others went their own way. Nickeltown’s Jeff Romano says that his college rock band, the High Llamas, never made any money because they poured everything back into studio gear. He lined his studio walls with egg crates that he got from his job at the Rising Sun Bakery, and recorded on a Fostex 8-track reel-to-reel machine. Bobby Read began his Charlottesville studio in 1991, but he was recording long before that in D.C.

   As recording technology became more sophisticated, and cheaper, it became the goal of rock bands and musical groups to make a document of their music. And it just keeps getting easier. The ever-improving technology of the digital age allows pretty much anyone with a good ear and technical skills to set up a studio in their basement. If you have a computer and the right software, all you need are some good microphones to start recording (and mics have gotten cheaper, too).

   All of the above have led to the democratization of recording. Now it’s fairly easy and cheap to make demos and vanity projects with fidelity that rivals commercial recordings. Artists have much greater access to the recording process, unlike in the past where they needed a big, acoustically manipulated room and tremendous amounts of outboard gear to get the sounds they were looking for.

   Because of the switch, Lyn Brier says that the decision to retire was not a difficult one. But finding someone to step in and take care of their clients is a different matter. One of the leading contenders to take over the studio is Kevin Murphy, drummer for Earth To Andy and Tonic. Paul is enthusiastic about Murphy’s musical knowledge (he’s a graduate of East Tennessee State) and thinks that Murphy, who has logged extensive studio time, will bring in more up-to-date house technology. (Murphy wants to convert to ProTools.) If the three of them work out a deal, Murphy will begin engineering while Paul stays in town for a year to make the transition a smooth one, keeping the tracks unbroken.

 

Hear and now
Big retailers like Starbucks and Pottery Barn sell instantcool with their compilation CDs

By Jack Mingo
feature@c-ville.com

Remember back to the horrors of Christmas shopping. Imagine that you’ve been shanghaied and dragooned into the overcrowded aisle of an Old Navy store for a last-minute holiday gift. Happy holidays, Happy holidays sings Bing Crosby cheerily on the PA system, adding to your sense of Santa Claustrophobia.   

But suddenly Bing’s voice goes all weird, overtaken with ’60s psychedelia and distorted by what sounds like a shortwave radio going out of tune. The song starts stuttering and echoing, before a thumping dance beat booms full-volume over old Bing.

   “What the…hey, someone’s done a remix on der Bingle!” you say aloud, transfixed under a store speaker, where you quickly discover that it isn’t just Crosby, but Mel Torme and Mahalia Jackson, too. But instead of immediately fleeing the premises, you wander around the store absentmindedly, listening and shopping. A Louis Armstrong version of “Baby It’s Cold Outside” accompanied by a little heavy-metal drummer boy? The Berlin Symphony molded into a rave-ready version of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy”?

   Suddenly it all makes sense.

   Eventually you head to the checkout, your basket now mysteriously filled with impulse buys, only to discover another one lurking at the register: a CD packed with all the songs you’ve just absorbed.

   How can you resist?

 

Spreading like a fungus

The in-store CD biz has spread and mutated like last year’s fruitcake, but it’s not just Christmas music. Retailers of all stripes hope you’ll like their ambient music so much that you’ll want to buy it for your own abode. For example, in addition to being a purveyor of tasteful household furnishings, Pottery Barn has essentially become a major record company, releasing 74 CDs under its Pottery Barn and Pottery Barn for Kids label, stuffed with such
big-shot artists as Norah Jones, Clem Snide, Joan Osborn, Los Straitjackets,
the Pretenders, Sixpence None the
Richer, Zero 7, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Patty LaBelle.

   However, it’s not like Williams-Sonoma, Chevy’s, Cracker Barrel, or Banana Republic are signing new bands. Instead, they depend on Rock River Communications. For corporate clients wanting to add a little cool to their cache, Rock River has created more than 300 such compilations, with individual tracks discovered in the public domain or leased from traditional record labels. Pottery Barn may be the company’s marquee customer, but who else is in their Rolodex? We’re talking companies like Crabtree & Evelyn, Bank One, J. Crew, the Gap, Levi’s, Volkswagen, Cost Plus, Neiman Marcus, Millers Outpost, Restoration Hardware, Saks, and Jamba Juice. Not bad for a company with only a dozen employees in two small offices, split between the coasts.

   The business and billing stuff is done mostly in the Vermont office; the creative, mostly confined to a small office on 19th Street in San Francisco. Holding court in an office overflowing with CDs, album artwork, musical posters, and other radio
stationesque ephemera, it’s thus not surprising that Jeff Daniel, Rock River’s boyish president, sees his work partly as an extension of what radio used to do.

   “We want to turn people on to music,” Daniel says. “If you think about the customers of Pottery Barn or Banana Republic, they’re probably not hanging around record stores as much as they did when they were in college. With jobs and families, they can’t possibly keep up with the 30-35,000 new albums that come out every year. We want people to actually listen to our music as they shop, and maybe hear something new that they like. Are we doing this out of a pure aesthetic need to expose people to new music? No, not totally, but we don’t want to give them crap. There’s plenty of that around already.”

 

Anti-Muzak

This is a notable reversal of past theories about music in retail stores. In the 1940s, Muzak pioneered what it called “ambient” or “environmental” music (most people prefer “elevator music”). Its researchers developed a theory that background music should be heard almost subliminally, not actually listened to. Thus, Muzak depends on arrangements that shun anything attention-seeking. Vocals? Out. Ditto anything the least bit shrill: violas are preferred over violins, French horns over trumpets, brush-played drums over crashing cymbals.

   This ain’t that. “We don’t do ambient music,” Daniel says. “It’s a whole different art form. We don’t have focus groups, we do it by gut. Our ‘test marketing’ often involves talking to some of our friends’ kids. We do keep on top of all the trade magazines about what’s coming out, and we get these boxes of CDs from record companies that want us to use their stuff.”

   Not that Rock River doesn’t do research. New clients are asked to send media packs and demographic studies. Additionally, Daniel and his co-workers have been known to loiter in clients’ stores to get a sense of the atmosphere and clientele.

   That means trying to match the music to the store’s image and its clients’ tastes. For the Gap, that can mean Missy and Madonna; for Old Navy, En Vogue, Moby and the Bucketheads; for Banana Republic, the Jazzfatnastees, Greyboy, and Marvin Gaye.

   “We have a challenge, since a CD has to convince the consumer to pick it up and look at it,” Daniel explains. “That means having artwork and an album name that will signal that this is a cohesive entity. You can’t have a mix that’s too eclectic, because they’ll wonder, ‘What is this? Is this a world CD, a Latin CD, an electronic CD, or what?’ On the other hand, you don’t want it completely predictable either. You want them to recognize enough of the titles or artists on the album that they’re willing to take a leap of faith on the ones they don’t know. Eventually, they learn that they can trust us to know the sorts of things they’ll want to hear.”

   Rock River’s biggest success story: the 74-CD Pottery Barn empire. “Consumers come back and say, “I’ve got five or 10 of these, and they’re all great—I’m willing to take a chance on another one,’” Daniel says. That’s given us the chance to branch out into slightly different genres and hopefully push people’s boundaries a bit.”

   Of course, Rock River doesn’t monopolize this industry: Starbucks, for example, creates its own mixes, often “Artist’s Choice” discs featuring 14 tunes handpicked by, say, Norah Jones. In 1999, the coffee giant bought Hear Music, a catalog store in Cambridge, Massachusetts with only two retail stores, including one in Berkeley, California. Once it became a wholly owned subsidiary, Hear largely became an in-house conduit for this coffee-bar music, providing soothing tunes to enjoy over a grande half-caf soy latte.

   But even with a coffee juggernaut in the biz, Rock River has carved out a comfort-
able niche. The sound of vintage jazz seeps down the hallway from the office of David
Hargis, director of account management and moonlighting radio DJ. Although Rock River has put out compilations like Pottery Barn’s Dirty Martini (featuring original jazz recordings unsullied by modern hands), Hargis today is reviewing candidates for Bing-bothering remix artists aspiring to scratch, loop, beat, and mash the old into something new. It’s a challenge. “Generally, I’m looking for a hook,” David says. “Good sound, too, because a lot of this stuff is poorly recorded. And recognizability of the song, I’ve been struggling with that, too.”

   Rock River’s clients like remix compilations because they bridge a gap between retro and current sounds. The company has generated 153 remixes of Christmas songs, and has since branched out to experimenting with doing the same with Latin and jazz. “We give the source track to remixers we like,” David explains. “And they come back with kind of a scratchpad of ideas, and we say, ‘This idea is really great, this idea isn’t, throw it out and go here.’ They’re so talented, and so many are dying to work for companies like us, because their records aren’t selling so well and, since it’s not really live music, they can’t make money from going on a tour and selling t-shirts. So they’re psyched to make money sitting at home and say, ‘I did a remix on Bing Crosby, Dean Martin and Nat King Cole.’”

   Of course, clients sometimes balk at the final results. A printed-out e-mail from an anonymous client hangs on Daniel’s door, fussing about “inappropriate” lyrics in seemingly-harmless classic rock songs that Rock River compiled, like All you did was wreck my bed/In the morning kick me in the head from “Maggie May,” I never understood a single word he said but I helped him drink his wine from “Joy to the World,” and the good ol’ boys drinking whiskey and rye of “American Pie.”

   “Some of the clients just love our choices from the start,” shrugs Daniel, “and some want to play DJ and put their imprint on it, so they can say to their friends, ‘I produced this CD.’ There are times when we’ll strongly recommend against some sequence, and tell them why, but ultimately, the client always has the final say. The hardest thing sometimes is to step back and let that baby go.”

 

Rights stuff

But there’s still one more step, and it’s a big one: obtaining rights to the songs. “It can be a long process,” Daniel admits. “David has to do a lot of research to make sure we’re dealing with the one true legitimate owner, because there are a lot of old jazz and Christmas songs claimed by two
or three different companies. We don’t want to get in the middle of that battle, so in that case, we don’t touch the song.”

   There is a loophole for older recordings, though. “In the old days, bands would do live broadcasts on radio,” David says. “Under the copyright laws back then,
recordings of those broadcasts didn’t legally belong to a record company. Since many of those recordings are nearly identical to the versions on record, we can get around some of the ownership difficulties.”

   Living artists can be troublesome as well. For example, Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews and R.E.M. refuse any requests to appear on any noncharity compilations. “James Taylor has long had a ‘do not license’ order, but then he went and recorded an entire Christmas album for Hallmark,” Daniel notes. “Go figure.” On the other hand, some artists are eager to please, especially if exposure and cash is involved. “Madonna, it comes down to quantity for her,” Daniel says. “Moby really likes to get his stuff out there. He’s a good businessman—he’s made much more income from compilations and ads than he has selling albums.”

   And for that he has disoriented but intrigued Pottery Barn shoppers to thank.

Spend some time in Tom Henzey’s dojo, and you’ll quickly realize that the message he imparts to women in his self-defense classes at 7 Tigers Tae Kwon Do is a simple one: Protecting yourself should be instinctive, reflexive and as natural as breathing. “Your instincts will keep you alive,” says the straight-talking black belt. “Unfortunately, people in this city are often lulled into thinking it’s Mayberry, and they let their guard down. You can’t stick your head in the sand and pretend predators are only in the big cities.”

   Henzey says it is important to have a plan of action in mind before you’re attacked. “You need to resolve that you’re going to do something, and it has to be effective,” he says. The following photographs feature 7 Tigers students Chris Morris, Barbara Maxwell and Megan Grimes simulating threatening situations that women may encounter, and some of the moves they can use to stop their attacker so they can escape.

   While the photos are a good place to start, the most effective way to protect yourself from an attacker is to learn the moves from a trained professional. See the sidebar on page 21 for local self-defense resources.

 

Break the hold

A favored move of many attackers is a choke hold, which Chris puts on Barbara in photo 1. Choking is an act of dominance, and an attacker often will shake his victim’s head from side to side so she will resist, which makes him more agitated. “You have to get him off your head before your oxygen is cut off and your vision gets fuzzy. You need to keep your wits about you and act immediately,” Henzey says.

   Although women have been told to go for the groin, this can be a mistake, because “these guys know what they’re doing and may have a groin cup on.” If he’s got his hands around your neck and is within arm’s reach, jam your fingers into his voicebox, as Barbara does in photo 2. A poke to the eye (photo 3) is also effective.

 

Go for the soft spots

If you are attacked, Henzey advises zeroing in on areas of a man’s body that you can damage. Kick him in the shin or knee, as Barbara does in this photo, or stomp on his foot. “You may just get one shot, so it’s got to be effective. And once you break free, run. You do not want to go toe-to-toe with the guy,” Henzey says. If you’re going to yell for help, don’t scream “help”; yell “fire” instead. Draw attention to yourself. If people hear “help,” they may not want to get involved or they might assume somebody else will come to your aid.

 

Make a rear exit

If someone grabs you from behind, as Chris does to Barbara in photo 1, you shouldn’t have to think. “Thought slows everything down; self-defense needs to become a habit,” Henzey says. Instead, immediately thrust your butt backwards (photo 2), into the attacker’s intestines, which is very painful. Aim well, though, because “if the guy has a big gut, it won’t do you any good to hit it,” Henzey cautions. “It’ll be like smashing a pillow.”

 

Bring him to his knees

Chris is about to backhand Megan in photo 1, but Megan, in photo 2, quickly moves into a hold that both stops him and prevents him from getting away. In photo 3, Megan brings Chris down and knees him in the intestines, which allows her to run. No matter what you’ve heard or read, it is important to do something, emphasizes Henzey. “The person who forced himself on you will be there forever,” he says. “Even if you only slap him, you’ve at least fought back; you’ll know you’ve hit him and hurt him. By inaction on our part we empower these guys and we’re intimidated by them.”

 

Stop, drop and stun

Another good move is to drop, break the hold and throw your elbows back into your attacker’s ribs. Or throw your head back and smash him in the face, as Barbara does in this picture. With either move, you’ll stun him, he’ll release you and you can take off. You can also grab an attacker’s crotch and shake it as hard as possible.

 

Do some leg work

As a rule, men have more upper body strength than women. But from the waist down a woman is equal to a man in strength, Henzey explains. “Not only do legs have twice the reach and five times the power of a fist, but with training, legs will move 60 to 90 miles an hour.” When Chris comes at Megan with a knife (photo 1), she throws a crescent (or circle) kick to his forearm (photo 2), which opens his hand and forces him to drop the weapon.

 

 

LEARN THE MOVES

Where you can learn more about self-defense7 Tigers Tae Kwan Do’s self-defense class offers women the chance to try out moves on a man. Offered Mondays 7:30-9pm. $30 for six classes (and t-shirt). 2335 Seminole Ln. Call 296-9933 or visit 7tigers-jidokwan.com for more information.

Athletes in Motion (AIM) specializes in after-school programs for students but also offers an adult self-defense class, usually held at Jack Jouett Middle School. Next class tentatively slated for summer. Call 800-323-3755 or visit www.aimusainc.com/ SelfDefense/SelfDefenseHome.html.

PVCC’s Center for Training and Workforce Development will begin a self-defense class on March 22 at the International Black Belt Center of Virginia off 29N near Pier 1. Class meets Tuesdays and Thursdays, 7:30-9pm. For more information call 962-5354 or visit www.pvcc.edu/cftwd/ and look for the Spring Schedule.

The Sexual Assault Resource Agency usually offers a Rape Aggression Defense (RAD) class. No upcoming classes are scheduled, but to stay current on scheduling call 295-7273 or visit www.sexualassaultresources.org/rad.html.

The UVA Police offer a RAD class with 12 hours of training in personal safety, including the opportunity to test your moves on an “attacker” in protective gear. Cost is $25 for four weekly three-hour classes. To schedule, get a group of 10 together and call Becky Campbell at 924-8845, or call to get on a waiting list for the next grouping. For more information visit www.virginia.edu/uvapolice.

Q: Hey Ace, longtime WVIR 29 news director Dave Cupp may have hightailed it out of town, but there are those of us who still miss him. I know he’s up in the Northeast and that he’s planning a new career in academia, but I want specifics! How’s he doing? Does he miss us? Is he ever coming back to town?—N. Ost-Algia

 

A: Oh, how could any of us forget, N., those rosy-hued days back when Cupp made his home at the anchor’s desk of our illustrious local NBC affiliate. Those facial hair makeovers—tears well up in Ace’s baby browns. Such is the power of nostalgia that Ace was truly shocked when the realization dawned that those good ole days aren’t even that far in the hallowed past. Cupp up and left this ‘burb, after 26 years on the job at WVIR, just two short months ago!

   Longing for that smooth baritone, Ace gave the 55-year-old Cupp a buzz to talk shop and see when the hell the old man is rolling back through town. Turn’s out, he’s pretty happy where he is: Siberia. Make that Cambridge, Massachusetts (a.k.a. Nerd Central).

   That’s right, Cupp’s aimlessly wandering the grounds of Emerson, Thoreau and Co., while his wife teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. For the last two and half years that Cupp was at WVIR, the couple enjoyed a commuter marriage, which—er—sounds like a piece of cake!

   Luckily, aimless wandering keeps him busy. Aside from honing his goatee for academia, Cupp’s passing the time at Celtics games, “looking to get tickets to a Red Sox game, seeing the sights and visiting museums.” He also just accepted a role in a production of Wit. The great theatrical career continues… (In Charlottesville he played a newscaster in Return to the Forbidden Planet with the Heritage Repertory Theater, among other roles.)

   However, the Cupps aren’t up in Cambridge for long. As soon as the weather gets good in Boston, the geniuses are headed back this-a-way for the oppressive humidity of a good Southern summer.

   Yes, N., you read right. After Harvard graduation in June, the couple is moving to Durham, North Carolina. That’s where they’re building a house and where, in September, Cupp will begin that tenure-track gig as an assistant professor at
the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

   While Cupp declined to elaborate on what his wife plans to do after Harvard, he said he’ll be teaching three courses: “Voice and Diction for Broadcast Journalists” and two sections of “Writing for the Electronic Media.”

   But there’s no forgetting Charlottesville. Cupp’s hoping to be back here to host the Children’s Miracle Network Telethon at the beginning of June.

   “I sure think about Charlottesville often,” Cupp says. “I sure do miss 29 and the wonderful people who work there.” Awww, shucks, Dave, that’s all we wanted to hear!