First Gasp!

An Asking Tree Grows...In Your Own Backyard

Hi, I’m Rian - and welcome to The Asking Tree. Beneath these branches, I will attempt to regularly leave writing that considers music and culture and time, etc.

“The Asking Tree” is the name of a Soft Boys song I first heard in 1985. It reminded me of the title of Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, which I read as a child. Like all the best fables, the story left me with more questions than answers.

The book, I’ve found, can function as a litmus test for identifying ‘glass half full/glass half empty’ character types. I find the tale sad, watching the kid gut the tree, which implies that I’m on Team Half Empty.

The song’s lyric can be seen to explore personal parenting horror; in that context, I imagine it references the book, inverting the tree’s function for dark comic effect.

I like the song and have for decades without thinking this much about it. I like how it reminds me of this book I read a long time ago. I like how both the song and the book ask their audience to make up their own mind, and I like making a comparison between two things that may or may not be related and then pointing it out.

Also, since I see myself as more of a taker than a giver (in the tradition of Team Half Empty), what appears here in this space is a way of considering some of musical and etcetera things I’ve taken in (and happily continue to), while giving a little back: the words here, and whatever lies beyond them and me and you.

I have written about music for over thirty years, providing delineation, context and hype for new releases on Drag City Records - dozens of new releases every year, hundreds over the course of time. This experience has redefined my perspective on records and music and everything. It’s an education one would be happy to buy, and one that I am grateful for as it continues to evolve.

Prior to all that, in my late adolescence, I wrote about Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys, whose music I’d fallen for in the summer of 1985. Some of that stuff saw the light of day in those fanzine days - but as this is a new publication model, I intend to reprint absolutely NONE of that dross. Instead, I’ll kick it off by genuflecting anew on the late songwriter’s great achievements - a further excavation of his 15 BIG ONES - before moving on to consider events before, and yes, even AFTER that distant time.

Stay tuned!

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