The Soundtrack of my Life and my Books

By Robin "Red Hot" Kaye



I’ve always been a total music junkie. Music and books have made more of an impact on my life, than just about anything else. Maybe it’s because I moved around so much as a kid, but those two things were the only constants. As long as I had my books and my albums with me, I was home. Yeah, I know I’m showing my age.

Music has given me a time line—I can tell you in which of the 30+ houses I lived when a particular song was popular. I know I lived on Ross Hall Boulevard in Piscataway NJ when the neighbor girls babysitting me sang Windy while swinging me really high on the swing set behind their house. I lived on Cleveland Avenue in New Port Richey, Florida when my sister sang Billy Don’t Be a Hero, off key on our way home from the bus stop. I lived in Reston, Virginia when in the songs Shannon and Afternoon Delight were all the rage. And on Morris Avenue in Mountain Lakes, NJ when the Bee Gees sang How Deep Is Your Love?. Get the picture?

My obsession with music continued through high school. I learned to play guitar (badly), wrote depressing songs, and started dating musicians. Eventually, I began working in the music industry—managing a singer/songwriter and his band. He’s since written songs for some heavy hitting country singers and has a few platinum records to his name, which I gotta say is pretty cool.

Is it any surprise then, that each of my books has it’s own soundtrack? I’m still listening to the soundtrack of my first book, which will probably never see the light of day. I turn it on and I’m in my book, or my characters minds, or skiing down Christmas Bowl in Sun Valley. The music takes me there.

Romeo, Romeo, Too Hot To Handle, Breakfast in Bed, and Yours for the Taking share a soundtrack that is eclectic to say the least—Death Cab For Cutie’s Coney Island, then rolls into Lou Monte’s Please Mr. Columbus (turn the ship around). The Pussycat Dolls’ Sway, Kristy MacColl’s Fairytale of New York, tons of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, Avi Vinocur’s L-Train, The Cranberries, James Taylor, Norah Jones, Landon Pigg…the list goes on. They all have one thing in common, I put it on shuffle and I’m home in Brooklyn.

When I got my first iPod, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I swore I would never have to listen to a commercial again and I haven’t. I bring my almost 15,000 songs with me wherever I go. Right now I’m listening to Jamie Cullum sing God Only Knows with a smile on my face how about you?