Book: The Last Record Album



A novel by James Porteous is currently available via Amazon Worldwide.

The Last Record Album: a fictional biography

Logline Bo Carter was a novice songwriter when a hurricane named Bob Dylan crashed into New York’s folk music scene. Bo survived the flood, but after a career spanning three decades, he fears he will be remembered as a ‘one-hit-wonder.’

Blurb

Bo Carter began his career as a singer-songwriter in the tumultuous 1960s, playing folk and rock in Greenwich Village.

During this time, he toured with some of the most renowned names in the music industry, such as The Touts, The Kinks, and even Bob Dylan.

Carter has always been passionate about music and songwriting, and this fictional biography provides a wealth of firsthand knowledge and information about songwriting and life on the road.

The reader also joins Carter while he records his 'comeback' album at New York's renowned Record Plant and consumes a bottle of single malt while trying to write a new song for the latest Robert Altman film.

Links to original songs written by the author of the book are included.

Five Page synopsis

BO CARTER’S musical career was meant to begin in earnest during the tumultuous 1960s when folk and rock ruled New York’s Greenwich Village. His song ‘Coal Miner’s Blues’ had been a moderate regional hit, and although he earned next-to-nothing in royalties, it did help him secure a position as a songwriter-for-hire in New York City. That honeymoon was short-lived. Writing anything on-demand was worse than not writing anything at all. And love songs? From someone who had never known love!

''If I wrote you a love song I could sing it under the stairs stars If I wrote you a love song I would not even care Who heard me sing it Or if my voice was out of tune If I wrote you a love song I would'' Bo might have retained at least some hope of keeping his dreams alive had he not encountered the scraggly misfit kid who stumbled onto the stage of Gerde's Folk City. He was as thin as an exposed wire, his eyes darting to and fro, dressed in dirty jeans and a frail t-shirt and a cheap guitar and harmonica holder (?) and that self-righteous son-of-a-bitch troubadour dust bowl screw-you-look.

It was Bob Dylan. In that split-second Bo Carter, like countless other aspiring singer/songwriters, knew that from that point on, every blank page would have to be filled with Dylan-words. And as he would learn, Dylan was right when he said the answers were blowing in the wind. And it was going to be very windy, indeed.

And yet Bo formed a folk rock band called The Touts and they, too, seemed destined for obscurity until a demo of ‘Coal Miner’s Blues’ recorded in Baltimore becomes a hit in Scotland.

A tour ensued and they even opened for The Kinks, no less, and the young girls lingering at the stage door were nearly as sweet as the Smarties in the green room.

Bo was now firmly entrenched in that notorious ebb and flow of ‘life on the road.’	It was a stupid mission, but the tours, both in the band and solo, were fed by the joy of performing and the equally constant desire to beat the one-hit-wonder curse.

Oh, he often recalled seeing the husband and wife combo playing covers every Friday night at the local bar. They had not given up, either, but what on earth were their dreams? Were they any different from Bo and his futile dreams of becoming a two-hit-wonder?

And he was pretty certain his Lady Muse would never again bless his absurd notebook, now filled with odes to drink, drugs, whoring, diseases better left unmentioned, a perpetual cough that mimicked black lung, a left eye that twitched, an unreliable pecker- and were not generally considered suitable for radio. Or the back of a pickup.

Still, over the years his would-be nemesis, Bob Dylan, continued to intercede on his behalf. One time he announced to the press that Bo ‘ain’t no Donovan’ and another time that he suggested he might record a version of ‘Coal Miner’s Blues’ on ‘Self Portrait,’ his next album of covers. And then he declined to contribute a new song for Robert Altman’s next film, Nashville, and suggested they ask Bo to fill in.

But it was all for naught. Each time he came within reach of glory he ended up just shy of the finish line.

But he enjoyed touring on his own, travelling from town-to-town in hopes of scraping together enough money to survive and perhaps even record a new album. He was in charge of everything, from getting to the next gig to setting up the march table and talking up the sweet young things who, for some inexplicable reason, were happy to buy him drinks and bed him the night.

And then, in the hotel room, once the local gal had split for home or gone to sleep, he would take out his fountain pen and notebook and write down whatever phrase or complaint or sexual encounter might come into his head.

It was not always easy, but nor was it the horrific nightmare it had been with The Touts. Maybe he was just growing up. As a person and a musician?

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Sometimes it worked, because everything he had seen or done was possible fodder for the next song. Good, bad, and ugly.

''Blue is the color of the stars When we are so far apart pain is the word in our hearts When we are so needy and blue''

Sometimes Bo felt like a sailor who had a bed in every port. He met The Artist during a show in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her studio was small and her style was vastly different from Georgia O’Keeffe. He wrote Amore Italiano for the Italian who he met when she was visiting America. They spent a few wonderful months together in NYC.

And there were others. And not a single one ever bugged him to hunker down and write his next hit single. Perhaps he had come to terms with being a failure? Or being a three-hit wonder? Still, all those hits just happened to be the same song. Anyone who has ever been involved in the creative process has walked down the same rocky road, from the actor who fears this role might be his last or the wordsmith who can no longer find the words to soothe his soul. Like Bo, they might take some comfort from knowing they are part of a secret club, even as they struggle to pay the bills or were forced to painfully admit that almost everyone had given up believing they would ever stand out from the crowd.

And yet he carried on, notebook, pen, guitar in hand. It was not a sense of desperation the guided him. Or even faith. It is… life.

And besides, he still had the two lines he has been carrying around in his wallet for how long? Could today be the day all his dreams came true?

''I have seen the northern lights Reflected in your eyes, my love''

Now all he needs is the third line. And the fourth.

Live and dream.

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