Trading Fours
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by:
ISBN:
0-7414-2587-4
©2005
Price:
$13.95
Book Size:
5.5'' x 8.5''
, 172 pages
Category/Subject:
FICTION / Literary
One day in the life of four musicians, whose lives intersect in profound ways, much like the very intersection of a musical trading fours that builds to a great dramatic cadence.
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Abstract:
TRADING FOURS sets itself on one day in the life of four Los Angeles musicians, who each make their living by doing what are called casuals. And who are, on this particular day, faced with a plight to which each must seek a resolve. By the end of the business day, their lives will have intersected in profound ways, much like the very intersection of a musical trading fours that builds to a great dramatic cadence.
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Customer Reviews
Great Book
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06/27/2005
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Reviewer:
Richard Martinez
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Angela,
I just finished Trading Fours... your book really touched me.
My feeling is that musicians will have a love/hate relationship with your book, because it holds up a mirror that for some will deliver a reflection that they hoped they would not have to see. For others, I believe your book will give them a shove "to become."
Recently I was playing a show with a well-known reed player here in L.A. I mentioned to her that I was reading your book. She asked me what is it about. I told her that it asks the question, "why do we do this?" Is it only about doing gigs, casuals, etc, or is there a greater reason? It sparked a long response from her about what she wishes to accomplish with her career, recording projects, concerts, etc. I believe that your book Trading Fours will move many musicians to similar responses.
Richard Martinez
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"This One's For Hayes"
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11/18/2005
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Reviewer:
Chris Haller
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They live among us, but in many ways they live in a parallel and opposite universe, like Bizarro World in Superman. They work all weekend while the rest of us play, but they get to sleep as late as they want in the morning. Except on Sunday of course, when they have to get up early to go play their Church gig.
I’m talking about Casual musicians. No, not the musicians you see playing in the Symphony Orchestra down at the Music Center. Not the kids making a racket in your neighbor’s garage trying to play Linkin Park covers. Not even the Top 40 band playing down at the local nightclub. I mean the tuxedoed mercenaries who show up 20 minutes before downbeat to play the live music for your Wedding, Bar Mitzvah or Corporate Party.
This is what is known as a Casual. No rehearsal. You may never have met the other Casual musicians you’re about to play with. You have all been sent to this hotel or Country Club ballroom by a Casual Agency, which books the gigs and takes most of the money. It will sound just fine however, because everybody knows all three or four hundred tunes they’re expected to, and can fake or sight-read the rest.
Maybe it has something to do with the tuxedo (or black evening dress that female Casual musicians wear), or maybe it’s the income bracket, but Casual musicians hover in the social food chain somewhere between the waiter at your table and the guy that parks your car when you pull up to the hotel. This in spite of the years of diligent practice and yes, talent that it takes to master their craft and yes, their art.
Art and Commerce make strange bedfellows, and most Casual musicians would scoff if you asked them if they considered a Casual an artistic event. Nevertheless, all but the most jaded and bitter among them bring as much musicality as they can to these proceedings and under the best circumstances, they can be very enjoyable events. They can also be endless, hellish tribulations, hence the raising of one’s wrist to look at one’s watch being known as the ‘musician’s salute’.
There is a certain camaraderie among Casual musicians. Perhaps borne of a shared feeling of being outside the mainstream of society. Artists forced to prostitute their gift in return for a wage far below their qualifications. This is one of the favorite topics of conversation between musicians on Casuals. They will always chuckle when you tell them the old joke: “How do you make a musician complain?” “Give him a gig”.
Almost all Casual musicians have something else that they’re working on besides Casuals. Something with a future, and something more fulfilling than playing slavish imitations of the same old songs, night after night. In this era of the home recording studio, everyone now has a studio quality CD of their own original material and performances. And there’s always that possibility in the back of everyone’s mind that they themselves could rise above this workaday existence with the stroke of a record company executive’s pen.
The fact that it is a statistically tiny possibility does not banish the tinge of dreams that it brings to this lifestyle, like being permanently enrolled in the lottery. Not since the gold rush have there been so many dreamers happy to plug away at such a long shot. Actors don’t qualify, because they make their living waiting tables. Indeed, simply earning your livelihood playing music is the fulfillment of a dream. As they say, it beats working.
This fraternity of dreamers lives right in the midst of the rest of us, and yet they have their own world, which is mostly invisible to everyone else. This is the world that Angela Carol Brown brings to life in Trading Fours. She is a natural born storyteller, and she has lived this life, so it exudes an air of autobiography. Indeed, you would swear these characters are real people. Maybe that’s because they are.
I am aware of very few works of fiction that deal with this interesting world where art meets commerce and dreams encounter reality. The Adam Sandler movie ‘The Wedding Singer’ dealt with the subject in a somewhat slapstick vein, and did nail some of the truly hilarious aspects of this business, but the characters were cardboard cutouts.
In Trading Fours we get glimpses into the lives of four central characters, all in the course of one 24-hour period. Each chapter deals with each of them in turn, emulating the Jazz musical device of ‘trading fours’, where each musician will improvise for four measures and then on to the next musician and the next in turn. Each four measure ‘solo’ by each musician should reflect and complement those of his band mates, and this is exactly how the chapters work together in Trading Fours, eventually coalescing into a whole at the denouement.
But this is much more than a book about a lifestyle. It is a rumination on life itself, and what’s important. It’s about four people finding their way to their own answer to that question. It is all leading up to a tribute to a dying musical icon named Hayes DeWitt, who symbolizes the spirit of fierce loyalty to ones own dream, even in the face of worldly failure. This is a masterfully woven tale by a master storyteller. The spirit of the book itself is summed in one of the last lines of the book: “This one’s for Hayes”.
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"Trading Fours" - a MUST read
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12/03/2005
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Reviewer:
Tim Wendt
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To anyone who has ever said "Oh, you're a musician. What's your day job?" - READ THIS BOOK!
Angela Carole Brown captures, in a "take no prisoners and pull no punches" style, the true realities of what it is to be a free-lance musician working the casual gig scene on LA. The roller-coaster lifestyle, the compliments, the insults, the loves and heartaches, the sacrifices and rewards, the way musicians are looked at by other people and the way musicians look at other musicians - it's all in "Trading Fours." This book should be required reading in every college and university music school under the heading of "Gig Reality 101."
I have had the privilege of working with Angela in a variety of situations in LA over the past 8 years, and rest assured - she's no "chick singer." She is a true musician, in every positive sense of the word. It's a shame her CD's are not included with the book. They would, without a doubt, establish her credibility to anyone who might have any doubt as to what she is talking about.
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Insight
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04/21/2006
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Reviewer:
Linda Taylor
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Angela Carole Brown offers the working musician a valentine in “Trading Fours”, an unabashed glimpse into a little known (and little valued) world. As Ms. Brown once explained, most ‘civilians’ characterize musicians as Madonna and Sting, or simply the kids in the garage. “Trading Fours” is about those in between.
Ms. Brown’s characters are richly drawn and should be immediately recognizable even to the non-musician. They crackle with angst, jealousy, bitterness, and, occasionally, hope and enthusiasm. Her dialog is crisp and her imagery so vivid, you’ll be able to taste the stale dinner rolls at the gig.
For the musician, “Trading Fours” will cut to the bone. Ms. Brown, herself a musician and artist of rare, uncompromising quality, knows this world well. This is an accurate mirror, an honest reflection of a group who despite popular opinion really has no other choice but to do what they do. The empathy Ms. Brown has for her colleagues is obvious.
On a personal note, as one who has had the joy and honor of making music with Angela, I must say that “Trading Fours” reminds me of the real reason we do this, the reason that gets pushed aside far too often: Music.
Thank you, Angela.
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A wonderful read!
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09/09/2006
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Reviewer:
Matthew St. Amand
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Trading Fours by Ms. Angela Carole Brown is a novel set in Los Angeles, centering on a handful of musicians most of whom earn their living playing casuals -- weddings, bar mitzvahs, parties; shows where theyre always playing cover tunes and theres always someone timing their breaks.
There is Tristan, a gifted guitarist in his fifties whose son has just signed a record deal; Chloe, a talented singer who has grown increasingly disillusioned with her long-time relationship with Julian, a revered and arrogant guitarist. There is Nick Brandt, an exceptional pianist and near-hopeless alcoholic. And there is Seth, musician and care-taker of the aging legend Hayes DeWitt who received a heart transplant months before, which his body is busily rejecting. When not working on his own musical projects, Seth has organized a benefit for Hayes to help pay his medical bill.
Ms. Brown is an extraordinarily talented writer who has an almost preternatural ability to bring music alive on the printed page, writing from the perspective of musician and audience with equal skill and realism. She is clearly well versed and educated in the underpinnings of music theory, but never for a moment does she lose her sure grip on the soul of what drives people to make music.
The world of casuals that she paints is both interesting and depressing, with a sense of independence among these musicians battling with an undercurrent of the encroaching rot of the ordinary. For any fan of music, Ms. Browns insights from the inside of the music scene are riveting and enlightening. Having played guitar, myself, for about twenty-five years and having been a rabid music fan for even longer, I thought I knew a few things about music. Whatever I thought I knew, Ms. Browns book has added to it considerably. She goes inside the mind and talents of gifted guitarists and prodigious pianists and bears like Masonic secrets the amorphous currents of inspiration and devotion that keep musicians going back to their axes and audiences.
The storyline involving Hayes DeWitt and his protégé, Seth, is particularly moving. At aged sixty-four -- that magical age made famous in the Beatles song -- he is an L.A. legend who has not only played with most of the jazz greats, but has been covered by some of the greatest musicians ever to play jazz. He is gruff and unwell, his right leg nearly rotting off due to the battery of drugs he is on to prevent his body from rejecting his new heart. The reverence with which the other characters refer to Hayes are the ultimate props one musician could pay another.
For all of Ms. Browns expertise in conveying the mystery and intangibility of music, she is equally adept at evoking her characters emotional lives. The people populating the pages of Trading Fours are fully fleshed-out three dimensional human beings, who had lives before the opening of the novel, and whose lives continue after the final page. This is no mystery novel or thrill-ride suspense, but the lives of each character are so vivid and well rendered, and enormously engrossing.
Trading Fours is an expertly written story about passion, ambition, envy, and each persons struggle and need to make some sort of impact in this world, in this life. Ms. Angela Carole Brown is an amazing writer with a gift for dialogue and engaging the reader on a deep, visceral level. I hope that in between gigs she is working on her second novel.
Very highly recommended.
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A Gig With the Casuals
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04/24/2009
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Reviewer:
Mark Busch
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Whenever you have gone to an event where there is a hired band playing; it could be a wedding, a bar mitzvah, or a corporate celebration, there's a pretty good chance that you are being serenaded by casual musicians. "Casual" here refers in no way to an approach to mucsic. It simply indicates that these folks are hired piece-by-piece to form a group to play the standard repetoire that we all expect at these events.
"Trading Fours" by Angela Carole Brown takes us into their world as four casual musicians deal with a benefit performance for an ailing friend. The story alternates between the four of them, which is only right, since "trading fours" is a musician's term for the middle section of a number where each musician has a solo moment.
These are not perfect people. They have their hubris and their vanities, their pains, fears, and pettiness. They are haunted by failed loves, failing relationships and addictions.
The story is an engrossing exploration into a special world that many of us do not know exists after the champagne is popped, the cake is cut, and the bouquet is thrown.
All in all, a very good read.
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