A Dream About Lightning Bugs
A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons
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4.8 • 5 Ratings
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
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
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In these delightful reflections, singer-songwriter Folds explores the ways in which music shaped his life and offers glimpses into the process of making music. At age three, he dreamed of a jar of fireflies; looking back, he realizes that the glowing jar is an image of his view of artistry and art: "making art is about following what's luminous to you and putting it in a jar, to share with others." Folds weaves in autobiography, from growing up in 1970s Greensboro, N.C., and his years at the University of Miami (he dropped out just credits shy of graduation), to his early days of making music in Nashville in the 1990s, and his world tours with the Ben Fold Five and on his own. Along the way, Folds ruminates on songwriting: "often the music fools me into something I'd rather not have revealed lyrically." With self-deprecating humor, he characterizes himself as a singer who was forced to sing: "I had to grow a pair, or lose a pair, whatever it's all so confusing." Folds's fans will take great pleasure in this charming and insightful memoir.
Customer Reviews
Mesmerising, inspiring and hilarious.
Worth every second.
I’ve listened over 3 times now and the book still gives the same emotional responses as the first time.
Brilliant.