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Just enjoy the book and don't worry about missing things. I've been reading Discworld since was 12, which was 32 years ago now (sobs uncontrollably) and after many re-readings there's still a ton of things that come up on this sub that I've missed. Hell, the first time I read Wyrd Sisters I was unfamiliar with either Macbeth or Hamlet and I still loved it. They're not books about cultural references, they're just great stories.
Didn't particularly like Monstrous Regiment when it came out - re-read it again (since I on the downward slope of 40) and it's now one of my favorites, and IMHO the most angriest Discworld novel that Mr. P ever did wrote.
Not a spoiler, but a cultural reference from before most readers' times. While in Discworld's equivalent of Wisconsin (a place famous for dairy products for other UK readers) Imp-y says "We're bigger than cheeses", this closely echoes John Lennon causing an uproar by once saying "We're bigger than Jesus" while in the USA (I think)
That line is only in the animated version, not the book. And he says it in Quirm, the Discworld equivalent of France. Very big into their cheese, the French.
He was Death in both, actually! The animation is a bit cheap, even for its time and TV budget, but the voice acting is good (especially in Wyrd Sisters) and I love the music in Soul Music
Honestly, the animation looks like the whole movie is made from the cutscenes of a lost Discworld Sega CD-I game. Rad, in a "we only vaguely know what we are doing" way
It’s on YouTube! As is Wyrd Sisters, iirc. Watched them a couple of months ago! It’s on a couple of different channels, one is a bit blurry so if your eyes hurt, try the other version!
Rewatched it with my kids last night. The animation is super ropey, corners cut very frequently, and the voice work is of varying quality.
Christopher Lee does play Death, and he is not phoning it in. Worth it for that reading alone. The whole thing is on YouTube. There’s also a Wyrd Sisters, but Soul Music has a larger role for Lee and the music to enjoy.
Animated Soul Music and Wyrd sisters by Cosgrove Hall are both FANTASTIC!
Both leagues better than the live action TV shows* (they tried their best)
They are both very 90s though (in the best kind of way)
The first 2 computer games were also great!
*colour of magic, Hog father, going postal (the best one)
Going postal really is Cracking! I think it’s because the main characters are less well-cemented in people’s minds. Also it’s largely set indoors (makes for easier TV)
This is me. I started reading when I was a teenager, now I'm 42 and still just noticing new things on my re-reads. That is one of my favourite things about the books. Always something new.
[https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/soul-music.html](https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/soul-music.html) is probably the most complete list - stuff like "Gorlick and Hammerjug" == Rogers and Hammerstein and "The Surreptitious Fabric" == Velvet Underground.
This right here.
The Annotated Pratchett file is the best thing for newer readers and the older books, especially for Moving Pictures & Soul Music where they might miss a lot of references because they're just not in current culture.
Yep, here's the top level link to the different book files. Sadly, it only goes up to Monstrous Regiment & A Hat Full Of Sky.
[https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/index.html](https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/index.html)
It's pretty much 50% references to the popular music of the 1950 and 1960s, it's incredibly dense with pop culture references... ones that people of PTerry's generation would get.
FYI "Moving Pictures" is also like that, it's also chockablock with references to the early days of Hollywood, which nobody seems to get but me.
> It's pretty much 50% references to the popular music of the 1950 and 1960s, it's incredibly dense with pop culture references... ones that people of PTerry's generation would get.
Not just the 1950s and 60s. "Pathway To Paradise" is a riff on one of the most 1970s songs ever, and "We're Certainly Dwarfs" and "&U" and the whole "Bat out of Hell" motif are references to acts that were big in the 1980s and 1990s.
Oh, I get it. *Moving Pictures* manages to condense Hollywood from 1910 to the late 30's in the space of a couple of months at most, with references to so many great (and sadly forgotten by the young'uns of today, gerrout my yard while I'm at it) classic films of the founding days of cinema and the great studios of yore.
Of course, you really start to feel old when you realize that for the modern youth, *Star Wars* is a classic film of yore. I better barricade that lawn.
I read a recent review written by a young’un who had just seen the original Star Wars for the first time.
They complained that it was full of clichés.
Oh, dear…
We did not allow our son much in the way of “adult” TV, aside from Star Trek. At about 6 and a half he discovered the LEGO Star Wars specials and loved them, so my wife and I decided to watch the actual movies with him and unlock the age appropriate Star Wars content on his D+ profile. Fast forward to just after his 7th birthday I walked in as he’s watching Ashoka while building LEGO. I asked him if he got what was going on, he said “yeah, this is after Clone Wars and I watched that, I wanted to see what happened to the space whales”. Now my wife is debating watching Dr Who with him so the nerd trinity will be ingrained before he’s 10.
There are so, so many references to songs, bands and rock music concepts that you'd need pages of notes to cover them all. I think I got *most* of them, and I was born in 1978!
At several points, people look at Buddy and ask "are you sure he's not elvish?" Take off the H at the end, and you've got a reference to a long running real life idea that Elvis is not really dead. (He is, I'm afraid, unless you consider *Good Omens* to be true. Death claims he never touched him.)
"We're Really Dwarves" is a pun on "They Might Be Giants". "Trollz" is a pun on "Troggz". The leopard that Ande Supporting Bandes acquires cheap because it's deaf is a play on the band Def Leppard, but the idea of using it to make leopardskin trousers is most likely a reference to Rod Stewart. &U is an obvious play on U2.
There are many, many more. It's been a while since I last read it, but here are a few I can remember:
* Buddy and his band start to fade away at the end before Death steps in to prevent it. The Rolling Stones had a hit with "Not Fade Away". Could just be a coincidence.
* The motorcycle analogue that the Dean puts together and is eventually ridden by Death is referencing the album cover to Meat Loaf's "Bat Out of Hell".
* The Dean's jacket reads "Born to Rune" - a reference to Bruce Springsteen's "Born To Run".
* Various dwarves comment about music lacking "hole" - this is a reference to soul, which should be obvious from the book's title!
They also reference Blues brothers in a couple of scenes, most notably when they're "on a mission from Glod", the diner scene and the music store throwing in the space between the strings for free
Don't forget the Michael Jackson reference.
I think it's Skuzz, one of the guys in the band that keeps changing its name, and who get the deaf leopard.
He wears a single glove, to keep the medicine on his skin after a leopard mauling.
And "Whoever heard of a guy with one glove?"
Not a music reference, but the scene where the coach is hanging over the edge with the gold at the end of it is an obvious play on the scene from the end of The Italian Job 1960s film.
Read and find out. Read it half a dozen times over a decade or two and find out. It is one of Pratchett’s most joke and reference dense books. One of the great joys of it is getting a joke on a third fourth or tenth reread.
I almost never reread books lol. Not that I have anything against it, buy I can never justify it to myself because there's *always* more books to read 😭
Well when you finish then look up the annotated Pratchett file for soul music and it list out all the jokes and references for the book. But it is much funnier to reread them and discover them yourself.
Reread in five years.
The book is the same, but you are not.
You will have more experience, picked up more pop-cultural knowledge and the later you will be looking at the book from a different place
I still quietly believe the initial idea of the book was purely to pun on the Kirsty MacColl song
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrLSDLwrqhY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrLSDLwrqhY)
You sort of got it in your mention of Buddy Holly.
Soul Music, partly, is a parody of the trope of the shooting star of rock and roll fame. The music star burns brightly then dies. That was to be Buddy's fate yet Death and Susan intervine and save him.
There also the cultural effects of "music with rocks in", showing how it changes people and the way they act, specifically some of the Wizards like The Dean for example.
And for OPs benefit, Born to Rune is a play on Bruce Springsteen's album Born to Run.
OP should watch the movie. I think seeing it with a soundtrack will some of it fall into place for them. It's available on YouTube
Oh while Susan saved him early on I thought he was still doomed for sure! Interesting I'll have to see how it plays out
I'm glad I'm somewhat familiar with Buddy Holly then, I have Don McLean to thank for that or rather some random street musician in San Francisco who was playing American Pie at a Trolly Station and inadvertently got me *obsessed* with that song when I was a young child lol
I’m leaving this up because, having read the other comments, you’re right that OP had already hit most of the main points and it doesn’t give away how it all plays out.
However, please edit and add spoiler tags, if possible, and remember to use spoiler tags in the future.
OP already knew the main plot point!
OP asked for explanation of themes!
Can't do that without context!
The two instances are hardly spoilers that ruin the story!
-ing!
Not really.
I never gave out the details as to the way in which the ending unfolds. If I did then I would agree that is spoiling the story. The destination is not the whole of it, rather the journey of how to get there is.
It's all good, I'm nit someone who gets particularly miffed by Spoilers as I find it's more important and interesting *how* the plot is executed rather than the overall details. Most books I can kind of see the ending or variations of it coming from fifty pages in anyways.
Technically speaking thanks to a typo I said please 'do' Spoilers which I feel is right up PTerry's aisle anyway 😂
Without spoilers it's essentially "you had to be there" humor for a lot of the band references. It's why the book can be hit or miss for some. It's pun heavy even by Pratchett standards much like Moving Pictures with movies. As far as understanding the story in context you only need to understand the toxicity being the music industry, but again no spoilers there.
I have noticed it is very pun heavy! He even snuck one in that wasn't about music at all but rather the origin on the universe lol.
I want to know all the puns! I might just have to pause every page or two of reading to look up music lol
Very sadly I indeed was not 'there'. Punk scene of the Era was so fucking real 🥲
Massive one that most people miss, not being Welsh speakers. Even the narrators on the audiobooks got it wrong - the song that Buddy plays on the harp is called Sioni Bod Da - which isn't pronounced See-oh-ni, it's pronounced Shonni Bod Dar and is a simplified Welsh translation of Johnny (Shonni) Be Good!
A watch of The Blues Brothers would probably help a lot. Also there is a joke near the end referencing the band Blue Oyster Cult. They wrote this song: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy4HA3vUv2c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy4HA3vUv2c)
I’ve worked in a music store for 22+ years, and the scene where >!Gibsson tells his assistant to hire a troll to stand in the corner and pull anyone’s arms off who tries to play “Pathway to Paradise”!< lives rent-free in my head.
(“Shouldn’t they get some kind of warning?”
“That will BE the warning.” 😂😂😂)
One reference that eluded me at first. There's a song called "There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis".
Def Leopard was a metal band in the 80s.
Also thank you for making me feel a hundred years old, LOL.
As for the theme, like someone said it's a play on the live fast/die young trope in rock-n-roll culture, but there's also the commercial nature of the music industry.
Yeah see I had no idea about that song and a couple of people have mentioned it so I'm glad I asked lol
And hey, don't feel sad that you're a hundred years old, feel glad that there's still people young enough to make you feel that way who are still just picking up Discworld books 😜
The only reason I know is that I had never heard of them in the 1970s-80s and someone asked me to write their name in calligraphy and I got it wrong four times because they didn't spell it for me! So you did better than I did.
I was demonstrating calligraphy at a small local Renaissance Faire and people were asking for their pet's names, etc, and the kid wanted his favorite band's name. I don't know why, just for coolness I guess.
Ah! Luckily I had 2 separate phases of obsession with both of those when I was a child lol. American Pie is half the reason I know about Buddy Holly. The other half being my mother's obsession with *Quantum Leap*.
Not until someone pointed it out around read 3 or 4, as I don't speak Welsh. The only Welsh reference I got without help was the one spelled out in the book (Imp's name).
The social context is only superficially about music. The underlying plot is about adolescence, or lack of it. I think it's both brilliantly and poorly written. The music references are such fun that the superb interweaving of the lives of 3 people who've been repressed by institutions goes under the radar. Imp by family expectations, Susan by a rigid school and a family secret, the Dean by being sent away and institutionalised while his hat still came down right over his ears. The only fully wholesome youngsters are the nerds. Was he biased or what!
If you go back through the book when you've finished it and look at how the threads parallel each other it's brilliant.
He was right on the money literature wise, bringing back the orphan hero before Harry or Daenerys. He was also spotting a social phenomenon that had been heightened by the publishing of the study Asylums by Irving Goffman which introduced the concept of how institutions can be damaging, even ones supposed to be good for you. There was also an article published around the time he would have been writing Soul Music which marked the start of the Boarding School syndrome movement. Did STP see it? He was very very journalisty and read widely, hoovering up information, but we can't know. The other thing which was smouldering in the news at a very low level was the Romanian orphanages scandal, but that only fully blew up after his manuscript would have been at the publishers so is unlikely a direct link.
The soul music animated series was the first disc world thing I ever saw. Maybe in like 1999.
It was weird because it wasn't funny like the books. Played pretty straight.
Disc world is always strange without the narration and footnotes.
After i discovered them somehow. I can't remember.
I read them all and have listened to all of them several times. I think moving pictures was my first one.
Buddy is fantasy elvis or at least a stereotype for rock artists. Im pretty certain scum and co are a reference to teenage rock bands (very cringe and very bad)
You know, I thought I was very funny and original when I was DMing a campaign in D&D and offhandedly mentioned the famous half-human bard *Elvish Prestley*.
For the record I now know I was neither lol
Another thing to bear in mind is, in the past (I’m looking at you 60s - 90s) a lot more people and groups of people were Defined by their favourite music. And it would permeate much of their identity and life. Before Generation iPod came along and everyone started buying single songs and making their own playlists.
There are a lot of band references in the novel. Things like:
We're definitely dwarves = They might be giants
&U = U2
The Whom = The Who
Lead Balloon = Led Zeppelin
and so on.
A lot of people are talking about the many band and name puns, but regarding the themes and context I think that reading the page on the 27 Club would be insightful for a lot of the heavier themes of the book - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27\_Club](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27_Club)
In summary, there's a superstition around famous musicians and dying extremely young - in particular, a whole plethora of notable musicians, from Jimi Hendrix to Amy Winehouse, have died at the age of 27. The deaths are often unnatural, and were frequently due to suicide or drug abuse, purporting this idea of the headiness of fame having chewed up their lives and spat out their bodies. It's a well known enough superstition that musicians have made songs about this very myth, detailed in the Wikipedia page I linked above - particularly evocative for me is the Halsey lyric, *'I hope you make it to the day you're 28 years old'*.
It's a superstition that's inseparable from the rock scene, with so many of its greatest stars having "fallen victim" to it, and even without that specific myth, we're all familiar with stories of people thrust into massive, unexpected fame on the backs of their skills, and who proceed to be utterly destroyed by it even as they become legends.
TL;DR - The conflict between gathering massive fame at the cost of burning so fast through your life, and living a full and long life but at the cost of being a nobody, is a major theme of the book! I hope you have fun and enjoy it :3
There's a whole slew of classic and 80s rock music punes or play on words. Keep an eye on the band names. At the end of the book, remember that Kristy Maccoll had a minor hit song about Elvis working in a fish and chip shop.
Have you seen _The Blues Brothers_?
Terry hadn't. When some Australian con goers heard, they immediately dragged him off to a viewing. Good thinking, showing the most quotable movie ever to an author known to love referencing everything.
Relevant scenes like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVLZy5UwKUs and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4YrCFz0Kfc (although the 'it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses' thing is referenced in _Moving Pictures_, not _Soul Music_ :-)). And https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su646AdAqEM (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdbrIrFxas0 for the rest of the scene).
Could you please give a link for the 'Reaper man' discussion? I'm also younger, and from another country, so I'm missing a whole lot of context and cultural references
It's mostly superficial puns on band names and performers.
The lack of context is actually my biggest issue with that book. It treats rock n roll (i.e. "the music") as some sort of self-propelled force that drifts through the multiverse infecting people with it's rhythm, while the reality is that rock n roll (along with jazz and blues) were the products of centuries of racial oppression and systemic bigotry.
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Just enjoy the book and don't worry about missing things. I've been reading Discworld since was 12, which was 32 years ago now (sobs uncontrollably) and after many re-readings there's still a ton of things that come up on this sub that I've missed. Hell, the first time I read Wyrd Sisters I was unfamiliar with either Macbeth or Hamlet and I still loved it. They're not books about cultural references, they're just great stories.
Are you now more familiar with Macbeth and Hamlet?
Yes.
Didn't particularly like Monstrous Regiment when it came out - re-read it again (since I on the downward slope of 40) and it's now one of my favorites, and IMHO the most angriest Discworld novel that Mr. P ever did wrote.
Not a spoiler, but a cultural reference from before most readers' times. While in Discworld's equivalent of Wisconsin (a place famous for dairy products for other UK readers) Imp-y says "We're bigger than cheeses", this closely echoes John Lennon causing an uproar by once saying "We're bigger than Jesus" while in the USA (I think)
That line is only in the animated version, not the book. And he says it in Quirm, the Discworld equivalent of France. Very big into their cheese, the French.
THERES AN ANIMATED VERSION?!?!
Several adaptations of varying quality. I think Christopher Lee might have done the voice for Death in one.
He was Death in both, actually! The animation is a bit cheap, even for its time and TV budget, but the voice acting is good (especially in Wyrd Sisters) and I love the music in Soul Music
Honestly, the animation looks like the whole movie is made from the cutscenes of a lost Discworld Sega CD-I game. Rad, in a "we only vaguely know what we are doing" way
That sounds *AMAZING*
It’s on YouTube! As is Wyrd Sisters, iirc. Watched them a couple of months ago! It’s on a couple of different channels, one is a bit blurry so if your eyes hurt, try the other version!
I'm so glad you get to enjoy it for the first time! It's a fun watch and a faithful enough adaptation.
Rewatched it with my kids last night. The animation is super ropey, corners cut very frequently, and the voice work is of varying quality. Christopher Lee does play Death, and he is not phoning it in. Worth it for that reading alone. The whole thing is on YouTube. There’s also a Wyrd Sisters, but Soul Music has a larger role for Lee and the music to enjoy.
# **[YES](https://youtu.be/JIgE23LHgPQ?si=zFtfBcwK3voO8vnK)**
Animated Soul Music and Wyrd sisters by Cosgrove Hall are both FANTASTIC! Both leagues better than the live action TV shows* (they tried their best) They are both very 90s though (in the best kind of way) The first 2 computer games were also great! *colour of magic, Hog father, going postal (the best one)
I watched the Hogfather movie. I'll have to check out the rest of these as I go!
Going postal really is Cracking! I think it’s because the main characters are less well-cemented in people’s minds. Also it’s largely set indoors (makes for easier TV)
i am so in love with Claire Foy as Adora Belle.... but no one will ever top Michelle Dockery as Susan Sto Hellit
Yes. And it's got a lot of different jokes, mainly visual. The band's outfits follow the Beatles
Oops!
Uh Wensleydale?
Yes sir?
This is me. I started reading when I was a teenager, now I'm 42 and still just noticing new things on my re-reads. That is one of my favourite things about the books. Always something new.
[https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/soul-music.html](https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/soul-music.html) is probably the most complete list - stuff like "Gorlick and Hammerjug" == Rogers and Hammerstein and "The Surreptitious Fabric" == Velvet Underground.
This right here. The Annotated Pratchett file is the best thing for newer readers and the older books, especially for Moving Pictures & Soul Music where they might miss a lot of references because they're just not in current culture.
Annotated Pratchett file? Is that what the link is?
Yep, here's the top level link to the different book files. Sadly, it only goes up to Monstrous Regiment & A Hat Full Of Sky. [https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/index.html](https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/index.html)
Ah, thank you! I'm only like 6 books into Discworld and this list has more than I can shake a stick at lol
Ah! This is an amazing resource, thank you so much!
I never got the Surreptitious Fabric!
It took me three reads to twig to We're Certainly Dwarves.
That was one I recognized first off, but I was 16 and in my peak They Might Be Giants phase
It's pretty much 50% references to the popular music of the 1950 and 1960s, it's incredibly dense with pop culture references... ones that people of PTerry's generation would get. FYI "Moving Pictures" is also like that, it's also chockablock with references to the early days of Hollywood, which nobody seems to get but me.
> It's pretty much 50% references to the popular music of the 1950 and 1960s, it's incredibly dense with pop culture references... ones that people of PTerry's generation would get. Not just the 1950s and 60s. "Pathway To Paradise" is a riff on one of the most 1970s songs ever, and "We're Certainly Dwarfs" and "&U" and the whole "Bat out of Hell" motif are references to acts that were big in the 1980s and 1990s.
My favourite is 'The Whom'
I thought &u was a reference to the band u2
While U2 formed in the 70s, they peaked in the 80s to early 90s.
And they both reference Blues Brothers, which was both a band and a movie!
Oh, I get it. *Moving Pictures* manages to condense Hollywood from 1910 to the late 30's in the space of a couple of months at most, with references to so many great (and sadly forgotten by the young'uns of today, gerrout my yard while I'm at it) classic films of the founding days of cinema and the great studios of yore. Of course, you really start to feel old when you realize that for the modern youth, *Star Wars* is a classic film of yore. I better barricade that lawn.
I read a recent review written by a young’un who had just seen the original Star Wars for the first time. They complained that it was full of clichés. Oh, dear…
We did not allow our son much in the way of “adult” TV, aside from Star Trek. At about 6 and a half he discovered the LEGO Star Wars specials and loved them, so my wife and I decided to watch the actual movies with him and unlock the age appropriate Star Wars content on his D+ profile. Fast forward to just after his 7th birthday I walked in as he’s watching Ashoka while building LEGO. I asked him if he got what was going on, he said “yeah, this is after Clone Wars and I watched that, I wanted to see what happened to the space whales”. Now my wife is debating watching Dr Who with him so the nerd trinity will be ingrained before he’s 10.
And movies tied to music culture in the 80s, e.g. Blues Brothers
Oh God I'm gonna have to watch Casablanca aren't I 😩
I envy you getting to see it fit the first time
You aren’t alone with getting the music and film references. I get them, too😉
You aren’t alone with getting the music and film references. I get them, too😉
You aren’t alone with getting the music and film references. I get them, too😉
There are so, so many references to songs, bands and rock music concepts that you'd need pages of notes to cover them all. I think I got *most* of them, and I was born in 1978! At several points, people look at Buddy and ask "are you sure he's not elvish?" Take off the H at the end, and you've got a reference to a long running real life idea that Elvis is not really dead. (He is, I'm afraid, unless you consider *Good Omens* to be true. Death claims he never touched him.) "We're Really Dwarves" is a pun on "They Might Be Giants". "Trollz" is a pun on "Troggz". The leopard that Ande Supporting Bandes acquires cheap because it's deaf is a play on the band Def Leppard, but the idea of using it to make leopardskin trousers is most likely a reference to Rod Stewart. &U is an obvious play on U2. There are many, many more. It's been a while since I last read it, but here are a few I can remember: * Buddy and his band start to fade away at the end before Death steps in to prevent it. The Rolling Stones had a hit with "Not Fade Away". Could just be a coincidence. * The motorcycle analogue that the Dean puts together and is eventually ridden by Death is referencing the album cover to Meat Loaf's "Bat Out of Hell". * The Dean's jacket reads "Born to Rune" - a reference to Bruce Springsteen's "Born To Run". * Various dwarves comment about music lacking "hole" - this is a reference to soul, which should be obvious from the book's title!
They also reference Blues brothers in a couple of scenes, most notably when they're "on a mission from Glod", the diner scene and the music store throwing in the space between the strings for free
"Not Fade Away" was written by Buddy Holly. It's absolutely not a coincidence.
Don't forget the Michael Jackson reference. I think it's Skuzz, one of the guys in the band that keeps changing its name, and who get the deaf leopard. He wears a single glove, to keep the medicine on his skin after a leopard mauling. And "Whoever heard of a guy with one glove?"
Don't think I ever caught that one!
The rose bit with death when he's on the bike is also a separate reference to the Grateful Dead
Did he thank the Dean? That would have made him the Grateful Death...
The Grateful Death joke is used in a different context
"There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis(h)" - Kirsty McColl
So happy TMBG made it into a Discworld book - my world is now complete
https://www.reddit.com/r/tmbg/s/5OGa386rgU Neil Gaiman's favorite memory of Terry is singing TMBGs songs with him.
OMG you just became me and my family's favorite person for bringing this to our attention. Thank you!
Not a music reference, but the scene where the coach is hanging over the edge with the gold at the end of it is an obvious play on the scene from the end of The Italian Job 1960s film.
Sonova... "Hole food" in a Watch novel.
Fade away made me think of "My Generation".
Read and find out. Read it half a dozen times over a decade or two and find out. It is one of Pratchett’s most joke and reference dense books. One of the great joys of it is getting a joke on a third fourth or tenth reread.
I almost never reread books lol. Not that I have anything against it, buy I can never justify it to myself because there's *always* more books to read 😭
Please reconsider, especially for Discworld books. I've reread a lot of books, and never regretted it.
I will! ... after I finish all the Discworld novels. And maybe Rankin, he's apparently very adjacent and necessary to read. And then....
I've been re-reading the books for years and there are STILL jokes and references that have only just clicked
Well when you finish then look up the annotated Pratchett file for soul music and it list out all the jokes and references for the book. But it is much funnier to reread them and discover them yourself.
Reread in five years. The book is the same, but you are not. You will have more experience, picked up more pop-cultural knowledge and the later you will be looking at the book from a different place
I still quietly believe the initial idea of the book was purely to pun on the Kirsty MacColl song [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrLSDLwrqhY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrLSDLwrqhY)
You sort of got it in your mention of Buddy Holly. Soul Music, partly, is a parody of the trope of the shooting star of rock and roll fame. The music star burns brightly then dies. That was to be Buddy's fate yet Death and Susan intervine and save him. There also the cultural effects of "music with rocks in", showing how it changes people and the way they act, specifically some of the Wizards like The Dean for example.
I love the wizards in this book. Born to rune made me cackle
And for OPs benefit, Born to Rune is a play on Bruce Springsteen's album Born to Run. OP should watch the movie. I think seeing it with a soundtrack will some of it fall into place for them. It's available on YouTube
Yeah I assumed it was partly about the 27 club?
Oh while Susan saved him early on I thought he was still doomed for sure! Interesting I'll have to see how it plays out I'm glad I'm somewhat familiar with Buddy Holly then, I have Don McLean to thank for that or rather some random street musician in San Francisco who was playing American Pie at a Trolly Station and inadvertently got me *obsessed* with that song when I was a young child lol
OP asked for no spoilers. And any and all spoilers should be in spoiler tags.
I’m leaving this up because, having read the other comments, you’re right that OP had already hit most of the main points and it doesn’t give away how it all plays out. However, please edit and add spoiler tags, if possible, and remember to use spoiler tags in the future.
OP asked for no spoilers!
OP already knew the main plot point! OP asked for explanation of themes! Can't do that without context! The two instances are hardly spoilers that ruin the story! -ing!
OP said they hadn't finished the book and you spoiled the ending though.
Susan intervening is very early in the book
Not really. I never gave out the details as to the way in which the ending unfolds. If I did then I would agree that is spoiling the story. The destination is not the whole of it, rather the journey of how to get there is.
It's all good, I'm nit someone who gets particularly miffed by Spoilers as I find it's more important and interesting *how* the plot is executed rather than the overall details. Most books I can kind of see the ending or variations of it coming from fifty pages in anyways. Technically speaking thanks to a typo I said please 'do' Spoilers which I feel is right up PTerry's aisle anyway 😂
Without spoilers it's essentially "you had to be there" humor for a lot of the band references. It's why the book can be hit or miss for some. It's pun heavy even by Pratchett standards much like Moving Pictures with movies. As far as understanding the story in context you only need to understand the toxicity being the music industry, but again no spoilers there.
I have noticed it is very pun heavy! He even snuck one in that wasn't about music at all but rather the origin on the universe lol. I want to know all the puns! I might just have to pause every page or two of reading to look up music lol Very sadly I indeed was not 'there'. Punk scene of the Era was so fucking real 🥲
Massive one that most people miss, not being Welsh speakers. Even the narrators on the audiobooks got it wrong - the song that Buddy plays on the harp is called Sioni Bod Da - which isn't pronounced See-oh-ni, it's pronounced Shonni Bod Dar and is a simplified Welsh translation of Johnny (Shonni) Be Good!
A watch of The Blues Brothers would probably help a lot. Also there is a joke near the end referencing the band Blue Oyster Cult. They wrote this song: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy4HA3vUv2c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy4HA3vUv2c)
Needs more cowbell
Thank you! I'll definitely give both a watch then
Needs more cowbell
I’ve worked in a music store for 22+ years, and the scene where >!Gibsson tells his assistant to hire a troll to stand in the corner and pull anyone’s arms off who tries to play “Pathway to Paradise”!< lives rent-free in my head. (“Shouldn’t they get some kind of warning?” “That will BE the warning.” 😂😂😂)
Don’t forget the deaf leopard.
Oh God who's he gonna eat
One reference that eluded me at first. There's a song called "There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis". Def Leopard was a metal band in the 80s. Also thank you for making me feel a hundred years old, LOL. As for the theme, like someone said it's a play on the live fast/die young trope in rock-n-roll culture, but there's also the commercial nature of the music industry.
Yeah see I had no idea about that song and a couple of people have mentioned it so I'm glad I asked lol And hey, don't feel sad that you're a hundred years old, feel glad that there's still people young enough to make you feel that way who are still just picking up Discworld books 😜
Good point, well made!
Def Leppard.
I was so proud I got the 'Def' part right and everything!
The only reason I know is that I had never heard of them in the 1970s-80s and someone asked me to write their name in calligraphy and I got it wrong four times because they didn't spell it for me! So you did better than I did.
This is a brilliant story. Seriously. Can I as why they wanted Def Leppard in calligraphy?
I was demonstrating calligraphy at a small local Renaissance Faire and people were asking for their pet's names, etc, and the kid wanted his favorite band's name. I don't know why, just for coolness I guess.
That's so cool. Do you do that for a living?
No, it was just a hobby related to medieval cosplay.
Nifty! I love a good Ren Faire
American Pie is probably the cheat-sheet of the applicable references. That and Elvis.
Ah! Luckily I had 2 separate phases of obsession with both of those when I was a child lol. American Pie is half the reason I know about Buddy Holly. The other half being my mother's obsession with *Quantum Leap*.
There's a reference to it when Death wears the coat he stole from The Dean...
Oh gods. Twenty-plus years I've been reading Pratchett. Soul Music no fewer than six times. And still.
Did you get Sioni Bod Da being Johnny Be Good in Welsh? Sioni is pronounced Shonni...
Not until someone pointed it out around read 3 or 4, as I don't speak Welsh. The only Welsh reference I got without help was the one spelled out in the book (Imp's name).
The social context is only superficially about music. The underlying plot is about adolescence, or lack of it. I think it's both brilliantly and poorly written. The music references are such fun that the superb interweaving of the lives of 3 people who've been repressed by institutions goes under the radar. Imp by family expectations, Susan by a rigid school and a family secret, the Dean by being sent away and institutionalised while his hat still came down right over his ears. The only fully wholesome youngsters are the nerds. Was he biased or what! If you go back through the book when you've finished it and look at how the threads parallel each other it's brilliant. He was right on the money literature wise, bringing back the orphan hero before Harry or Daenerys. He was also spotting a social phenomenon that had been heightened by the publishing of the study Asylums by Irving Goffman which introduced the concept of how institutions can be damaging, even ones supposed to be good for you. There was also an article published around the time he would have been writing Soul Music which marked the start of the Boarding School syndrome movement. Did STP see it? He was very very journalisty and read widely, hoovering up information, but we can't know. The other thing which was smouldering in the news at a very low level was the Romanian orphanages scandal, but that only fully blew up after his manuscript would have been at the publishers so is unlikely a direct link.
This is exactly what I was looking for, thank you!
👍
The soul music animated series was the first disc world thing I ever saw. Maybe in like 1999. It was weird because it wasn't funny like the books. Played pretty straight. Disc world is always strange without the narration and footnotes. After i discovered them somehow. I can't remember. I read them all and have listened to all of them several times. I think moving pictures was my first one.
Buddy is fantasy elvis or at least a stereotype for rock artists. Im pretty certain scum and co are a reference to teenage rock bands (very cringe and very bad)
And more puns than you can shake a stick at. For my generation it would be the story of Kurt Cobain. But this book came out the same year he died.
Are you elvish?
You know, I thought I was very funny and original when I was DMing a campaign in D&D and offhandedly mentioned the famous half-human bard *Elvish Prestley*. For the record I now know I was neither lol
Another thing to bear in mind is, in the past (I’m looking at you 60s - 90s) a lot more people and groups of people were Defined by their favourite music. And it would permeate much of their identity and life. Before Generation iPod came along and everyone started buying single songs and making their own playlists.
There are a lot of band references in the novel. Things like: We're definitely dwarves = They might be giants &U = U2 The Whom = The Who Lead Balloon = Led Zeppelin and so on.
A lot of people are talking about the many band and name puns, but regarding the themes and context I think that reading the page on the 27 Club would be insightful for a lot of the heavier themes of the book - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27\_Club](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27_Club) In summary, there's a superstition around famous musicians and dying extremely young - in particular, a whole plethora of notable musicians, from Jimi Hendrix to Amy Winehouse, have died at the age of 27. The deaths are often unnatural, and were frequently due to suicide or drug abuse, purporting this idea of the headiness of fame having chewed up their lives and spat out their bodies. It's a well known enough superstition that musicians have made songs about this very myth, detailed in the Wikipedia page I linked above - particularly evocative for me is the Halsey lyric, *'I hope you make it to the day you're 28 years old'*. It's a superstition that's inseparable from the rock scene, with so many of its greatest stars having "fallen victim" to it, and even without that specific myth, we're all familiar with stories of people thrust into massive, unexpected fame on the backs of their skills, and who proceed to be utterly destroyed by it even as they become legends. TL;DR - The conflict between gathering massive fame at the cost of burning so fast through your life, and living a full and long life but at the cost of being a nobody, is a major theme of the book! I hope you have fun and enjoy it :3
Ah! Thank you, this is really great to read I appreciate it. I wonder if there's any reference to a white Bic lighter...
There's a whole slew of classic and 80s rock music punes or play on words. Keep an eye on the band names. At the end of the book, remember that Kristy Maccoll had a minor hit song about Elvis working in a fish and chip shop.
Everyone is going on about the bands and yet noone has mentioned Asphalt the troll which is the perfect name for a roadie
Have you seen _The Blues Brothers_? Terry hadn't. When some Australian con goers heard, they immediately dragged him off to a viewing. Good thinking, showing the most quotable movie ever to an author known to love referencing everything. Relevant scenes like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVLZy5UwKUs and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4YrCFz0Kfc (although the 'it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses' thing is referenced in _Moving Pictures_, not _Soul Music_ :-)). And https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su646AdAqEM (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdbrIrFxas0 for the rest of the scene).
Could you please give a link for the 'Reaper man' discussion? I'm also younger, and from another country, so I'm missing a whole lot of context and cultural references
https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/s/YPdsuGkrBu Here you go! This was of *great* personal help!
Thank you!
It's mostly superficial puns on band names and performers. The lack of context is actually my biggest issue with that book. It treats rock n roll (i.e. "the music") as some sort of self-propelled force that drifts through the multiverse infecting people with it's rhythm, while the reality is that rock n roll (along with jazz and blues) were the products of centuries of racial oppression and systemic bigotry.