A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons by Ben Folds

Ben Folds is an internationally celebrated musician, singer-songwriter and former front man of the alternative rock band, Ben Folds Five, beloved for songs such as 'Brick', 'You Don't Know Me', 'Rockin' the Suburbs' and 'The Luckiest'. In A Dream About Lightning Bugs Folds looks back at his life so far in a charming, funny and wise chronicle of his artistic coming of age, infused with the wry observations of a natural storyteller. He opens up about finding his voice as a musician, becoming a rock anti-hero, and hauling a baby grand piano on and off stage for every performance. From growing up in working class North Carolina childhood amid the race and class tensions that shaped his early songwriting to painful life lessons he learned the hard way, he also ruminates on music in the digital age, the absurdity of life on the road, and the challenges of sustaining a multi-decade, multi-faceted career in the music business. A Dream About Lightning Bugs embodies what Folds has been singing about for years: Smile like you've got nothing to prove, because it hurts to grow up, and life flies by in seconds. 'As a fan and a musician, this is truly a gift.' Jamie Cullum

★ ★ ★ 1/2 (rounded up)
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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So what about the middle-aged making pop music? Sure, it's allowed. But let's be honest about what pop, or popular, music is. It's music for the mating age. It's a soundtrack for that yearning, that youthful anger, those ideals and inside jokes of the teenagers and young adults as they experience the rough ride together. It fills an an important need. It help us get through to adulthood. Pop music can be a life jacket, a sexy security blanket, a hipster Hallmark card. And it communicates very real things. It also requires serious craft and is a competitive business, worthy of great respect. Pop music saved my ass as a kid, paid the bills in my earlier career. And I love to make fun of it.

A DREAM ABOUT LIGHTNING BUGS

Rockin' the Suburbs

A DREAM ABOUT LIGHTNING BUGS

flew

I've always loved Folds's music so this is a memoir I've been meaning to check out for a minute. The audio was a truly enjoyable listen, mostly because Folds was the reader and many parts of it had piano accompaniant.

More enjoyable when Folds tells stories about his life and talks about his approach to music, less so when he tries to impart life lessons that come across as cliched and somewhat patronizing. I've loved Ben Folds' music since the first note I heard of “Jackson Cannery” back in the early 90s (at a Blockbuster Music listening bar for those of you old enough to remember), so I ate up all of the juicy details about his rocky road to fame. True to his Southern roots, he's a good storyteller and I'm not likely to soon forget the picture of young Ben Folds wearing Bavarian lederhosen while playing polkas all night long. I also realized that his goal to create a “Piano Band that Rocks” (as opposed to a rock band that just happens to include a piano) is the reason his music resonated so strongly with someone who had taken piano lessons for her entire childhood. So I appreciated the insights.It wasn't too much of a surprise to me to learn that he is also kind of an asshole, especially in his relationships with women, but he freely admits to that behavior and doesn't make any excuses. The book peters out a bit towards the end as the details become more vague and the life lessons take center stage again, but I still finished it glad to have learned more about an amazingly talented artist and hopeful that he has many more musical adventures ahead of him.P.S. I found out about this book because Elton John mentioned he was reading it in a NY Times interview about his own autobiography, [b:Me 44303730 Me Elton John https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1553526563l/44303730.SY75.jpg 68837791]. How cool is that?

This book was well written. I loved the audio format narrated by the author and the small snippets of music he adds in just the right places. I have read several autobiographies recently, and this is one of the best. The book took me on an emotional journey through the authors life. My eldest son was a huge fan of Ben Folds. I listened, and mostly enjoyed. But now I want to find and listen to all the music by Ben Folds. This is one I will recommend to others.