As a longstanding professional musician, Greg Anton knows full well the archetypes of that universe as well as their attendant cliches, which, like most truisms, actually contain kernels of truth. Accordingly, he has no qualms about turning the platitudes inside out and on their head during the course of unreeling his fictional story of disputed song royalties in It’s About Time.
In keeping with that perspective, this Rare Bird Books’ title carries multiple meanings, including one as a near-epithet and one as an observation about life in general as much as music in specific. And, as a further extension of that approach, Anton utilizes his musicianly pedigree–as co-founder (with guitarist Steve Kimock) of the undeservedly unsung San Francisco band Zero–to construct his narrative in such a way that chapters resemble songs and the book evinces the pace of a fine long-player.
There’s a tangible balance within the author’s story, too. Main character Woody’s nightmarish twenty-four-hour imprisonment correlates to his nemesis Ray’s drunken sojourn. And the latter passage results in the apparent death of the character, placement of which near the midpoint of It’s About Time conjures the impact of a dramatic final song on a side of vinyl (“Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite” on Sgt. Pepper?).
Up to that point, Anton appears to roughly follow the verse-chorus-verse outline of a musical composition, often with refrains and bridges inserted through appearances of secondary characters like Woody’s lawyer, Jeff Pearlman. The progression thus recalls the tension-release technique rendered in such a superlative manner by the Rolling Stones in their arrangement and performance of “Street Fighting Man.”
Indeed, there is some real poetry within these three hundred forty-seven pages, such as the interval of intimacy between Woody and his wife Stephanie, not to mention in Ray’s prolonged rationalization for drinking. Following that aforementioned juncture, however, transitions within and between chapters proceed as smoothly and (almost as) indiscernibly as the seconds of silence between cuts on an LP.
Or, as the book imperceptibly hurtles toward its ultimate crescendo more and more quickly, much like the suite of songs on side two of Abbey Road. While a confrontation of some sort seems a foregone conclusion by Chapter 16, the suspense grows incrementally from the point Ray goes to hear one of Woody’s live performances, this after the legalities are set aside by the pair’s mothers outside the courtroom. Yet that artfully understated moment only occurs after a protracted sequence depicting mushroom visions of Woody’s.
The internal soliloquy reads like nothing so much as the enervating interval that occurs when a defective piece of vinyl refuses to allow the needle to play correctly: the narrative is stuck in a loop of repetition. And, that turgid section becomes even more redundant when taking into account this main character’s propensity for quasi-philosophical epigrams over the course of the whole book (see p. 136, among many others).
Readers deeply conversant with the Bay Area music scene of the Sixties may be tempted to define certain characters here. For instance, is the ‘Betty’ soundperson modeled after ‘The’ Betty Cantor-Jackson? Ultimately, though, over-attention to such minutiae does a disservice to the storyline Greg Anton constructs: he’s too successful in drawing composites of real people to illustrate their faults and foibles, the most likable of whom is Woody’s wife Stephanie (and of course their darling offspring Lily).
Shorn of the aforementioned, overly-long digression, a more streamlined version of It’s About Time would benefit tremendously, not only by saying just as much or more, with less, but in elevating the overall drama quotient. Still, the muted conclusion of It’s About Time leaves open the very real possibility of sequels (or even spinoffs), positing this often-absurd tale as a credible chronicle that may well compel its author to switch his vocation for his avocation.
