tales from the city: Rob Sheffield on music and girls

If you're anything like me, music is an essential factor in your life. You don't travel anywhere without a set of headphones, you freak out if you can't find said headphones, and whether you're walking down Sixth Avenue or aimlessly gazing out the window of any moving vehicle, forget the people staring at you, you are lip-syncing to that song like nobody's business and pretending you are in your own music video. Lastly, if you're anything like me, you are completely consumed with the beauty of love.

Cue Rob Sheffield, a music writer for Rolling Stone and the author of the memoir and New York Time's Bestseller Love is a Mixtape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time, a true story about the relationship between him and first wife Reneé during the 90's, their passion for music, and the memories of her that surround all of the lingering mix-tapes they made for each other before her sudden death. I'm almost positive it will be made into a movie someday, it's an inspiring, real-life love story. In his second book Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, Sheffield writes of his teen years and how certain songs of the 80s helped him enter adolescence and to better understand girls and their John Hughes-like teenage fantasies.
His most recent book Turn Around Bright Eyes picks up where Love is a Mixtape left off. Rob, now a widower who has just moved to Greenpoint Brooklyn, learns how to move on with another facet of music in his discovery of two things: karaoke, and his current wife and love, Ally. He writes:

 "Why do I get so obsessive about karaoke? Two reasons, which I'm pretty sure are the only reasons to get obsessed with anything. 

1. Music

2. Girls

What else in life is there to obsess about? There be music, and there be girls. Everything else is paste."

Rob Sheffield is truly a romantic, and is considered a 'music writer' rather than a 'music critic' since he praises more than he frowns upon. I found this out when I went to go see him speak about Turn Around Bright Eyes at the Strand Bookstore by Union Square last night! 

I had to buy the book to get in, but I was planning on buying it anyway!

Good crowd!

The man of the hour: Rob Sheffield! 

It's always scary going into these things, meeting a person whose voice and personality have only been made by your imagination until this point, and you wonder if they'll live up to those expectations. Well, he definitely did, and I shouldn't have had any doubt. Afterwards I waited for him to sign my copies of Turn Around and Talking to Girls About Duran Duran. I wish I'd had my copy of Love is a Mixtape with me too, but it's home in Florida. I was more nervous than I thought I'd be, because he wasn't one of those people who just signs the book really fast and calls the next person. He was having long conversations with everyone! Everyone was either a writer, or a musician, and while I may be both of these things I had no idea what to say. Thankfully when I stepped up to the table, he looked at the constellation shirt I was wearing and said "Oh my God, what constellation is that?" 

I said, "Oh, it's a bunch of them! Look, there's Orion!" 

"My wife would love that, she's an astrophysicist!" 

He then asked me if I like karaoke, and I said yes because I like to sing, and that my usual go-to karaoke jam was Tony Basil's 'Mickey'. 

"Ooh, that's a GOOD one!" he said.

 I felt so much more at ease. He signed both of my books! One saying "Thanks Erin!" and the other saying "You're the best!" What a nice guy!

Happy Tuesday!