Love, Music, and the Rise and Fall of One Rock Band in Brett Marie’s “The Upsetter Blog”
Podcast: Download (Duration: 38:34 — 35.4MB)
In this episode 256, we visit with Brett Marie, author of “The Upsetter Blog,” the story of an unknown rock band on their journey to fame, documented by an aging writer on their months-long tour.
Henry Barclay, along with his adult son Patrick, join The Flak Jackets as they go on tour across the US, documenting the increasingly erratic and volatile behavior of the band’s enigmatic lead singer, Jack Hackett, while fighting his feelings for Jack’s girlfriend, Wendy.
Orlando Ortega-Medina, author of Jerusalem Ablaze, had this to say about the book, “Brett Marie’s exhilarating debut is at once a loving homage to music told in the most lyrical of prose and a cautionary tale that reminds us that before a phoenix can rise, it must first crash and burn. I couldn’t put it down.”
Connect With the Author
About the Author:
| The literary alter ego of American rock ‘n’ roll musician Mat Treiber, Brett Marie is a contributing editor for the online literary journal Bookanista, and a staff writer for the website PopMatters. His short fiction has appeared in various magazines, including New Plains Review, Words + Images Press, and The Impressment Gang. His story ‘If It Had Happened to You’ was shortlisted for LoveReading UK’s first Very Short Story Award in 2019. He currently lives in England with his wife and daughter. |
Additional Endorsements
| The Upsetter Blog is an ancient love-story wearing the buoyant guise of the contemporary music scene, a meditation on what happens when truth is drained from a “shattered heart.” It plays with ideas of fate and chance in a story that puts truth and the heart back together again. ─Kim Echlin, author of Speak, Silence“A book about a band, with music in the writing.” ─Rachel Genn, author of What You Could Have Won“Brett Marie’s The Upsetter Blog takes us back to the turn of the century, when the Internet was still a wilderness and “new media” had not yet upended cultural coverage. His finely drawn characters look to rock and roll for redemption, fame, love, and intimacy, caught between old ideas of stardom and new possibilities of communication. A roaring road-novel debut.” ─John Lingan, author of Homeplace “An accomplished, polished, surprisingly moving piece of writing. Brett Marie has a strong sense of the messiness of life, of how things rarely pan out as hoped or planned, and how that can be good, bad or anything in-between. There’s tons to admire here.” “This is a book about rock and roll, but it’s about so much more: guilt, love, dreams, troubled artists, a struggling writer and the complicated relationship between a father and son. It’s refreshing to read a book that includes a character with Down syndrome with such ease. ” “The Upsetter Blog” is an insightful journey into the cycle of life through the eyes of an aging writer, a struggling rock band, and a loyal son born with Down Syndrome. Brett Marie explores the crippling disappointments, confusion in relationships, dreams imagined, unfulfilled, lost to self destruction or fate as people try to find their place in the world. Life — it seems — belongs to those who adapt, move on, and endure. “Brett Marie masterfully guides the reader on a journey into rock ‘n’ roll, fatherhood, the heady days of blogging and online magazines when they were the “it” thing in the aughts, and more. It’s a road trip you’ll think about long after finishing the novel.” “Un-put-downable! Brilliantly captures the rollercoaster life of a rock band while unearthing some deep & universal truths about the human condition. I loved it. Enjoy the ride!” “Who would have thought when rock ‘n roll first started that decades later it would be novelized? Good rock novels are more difficult to write than a decent indie-rock album, but Brett Marie delivers the goods here. As I read it, I wanted to debate the character’s opinions as if they were real people – you don’t like The Doors?!? what’s wrong with you! Like any solid rock story, there’s also romance and high jinks. Dig in.” |
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