I Can See Clearly Now : A Novel

by HALPIN, BRENDAN

• ISBN13: 9780812977035
• ISBN10: 0812977033
• Edition: Original
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2009-03-24
• Publisher: Villard

Summary

It's a revolutionary idea: use cartoons to actually teach something to the kids of America. In the summer of 1972, the suits at a major television network bring together a motley crew of songwriters and musicians to work on Pop Goes the Classroom, a series of short, catchy, educational songs that will air during Saturday-morning cartoons. And so four young, talented songwriters find themselves in the basement studios of ATN, at the height of the Age of Aquarius, tasked with writing the songs that will come to define an entire generation's childhood. Led by free-loving folk legend Pamela Sanchez, the self-styled prefab four naive, sweet, sheltered Sarah; Peter, a struggling Bob Dylan wannabe; Julie, who cut her professional teeth on commercial jingles; and Levon, a bassist most recently known by the stage name Apollo Von Funkenburgstruggle to stifle their uncertainty and tap into their creativity. With the help of an enormous amount of pot and a little sexual innuendo, they eat, sleep, drink, smoke, couple and uncoupleas they work to change the world, one song at a time.

Author Biography

Brendan Halpin is the author of the novels Dear Catastrophe Waitress, Long Way Back, and Donorboy, and the memoirs It Takes a Worried Man and Losing My Faculties. He lives in Boston with his wife, Suzanne, and their children.

Excerpts

Chapter One


Dingo

He didn’t even want to do the encore. The idea of staring at a half-empty theater for even five more minutes was just depressing. But the pathetic little crowd had shown up had to hear “Shadows in the Twilight,” and Dingo was enough of a professional to know that they owed it to them.

So he stared at his crash cymbal while Pamela sang her heart out. In her way, she was a professional too. The song ended soon enough, and the applause was enthusiastic; it only sounded pathetic when compared with the sound of a full house applauding.

They walked offstage, and Pamela seemed to be as elated as she always was after a show. She floated backstage, held aloft by the adoration of the crowd.

Dingo looked at Alec and Keith. They all just shook their heads. They’d been in the business long enough to know that this was the end of the line of the Pamela Sanchez gravy train. First she’d been dropped from her label due to what she insisted was the “crypto-fascism” of the head of the label. The label stiffed her on distribution of her latest album and made no effort to get it onto the radio, so without the sales and the airplay, the crowds just weren’t big enough anymore for her to justify paying them. Especially not when she could tour around college campuses with no more expenses than gas and guitar strings and play little coffeehouses surrounded by worshipful ?eighteen-?year-?olds. She’d tell Rolling Stone, if they asked, if they cared anymore, that she had decided that the full electrified band experiment wasn’t really working, and that she’d decided to go back to her roots and really connect with her fans.

They got backstage, and Dingo went to change clothes. When he emerged, Pamela was holding court with the usual crowd of girls dressed in peasant blouses like the one Pamela was spilling out of on the Shadows in the Twilight album cover and boys with big beards. After an hour or so of hearing about how far out the show was, how it really blew their minds, man, Pamela would leave with one of the boys, and, since this was a special night, last night of the tour and all, probably one of the girls as well. Alec and Keith would take whichever of the unshaven, disappointed girls ?didn’t get to go worship more intimately at the altar of Pamela.

Alec, who was English, was particularly bitter about this end of the arrangement. He claimed to have gone to high school with members of Foghat, and he would periodically complain about how he could be shagging groupies far more attractive and less hairy if he’d only gone along when those blokes begged him to join their band.

Dingo found Alec tiresome. Actually, this being the end of the tour, he found everyone tiresome. He just wanted to be home. The hotel was only two blocks away, so he decided to walk while everybody else was deciding who’d get to ride the limo back to the hotel. Well, no more limos, Dingo thought. He’d better get used to walking.

As he walked, he tried not to worry, but he didn’t succeed. When he got home tomorrow, he’d have to think about exactly how they were going to pay the mortgage once the money from this tour ran out. Would Cass’s job at the doctor’s office be enough? Why had he listened to her If they’d stayed in the city, paying next to nothing in their rent-controlled building, they would have plenty of extra money to get through times like this. But no, Davey and Jenny deserved a yard, and Cass wanted a real house to take care of while he was on the road, she wanted to be a Jersey mom like all her friends, so she was a Jersey mom, which meant she needed a car, because you ?couldn’t walk to anything, so that was more money, and all of this was fine as long as Pamela was still selling records and selling out concerts, but what about now? What the hell were they

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Excerpted from I Can See Clearly Now: A Novel by Brendan Halpin
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