Live By Request [Paperback]

Live by Request, Rob Payne's debut novel, is a brisk and unabashedly silly look at the trials and tribulations of Archangel, a typical bar band from an ordinary southern Ontario town. Archangel is an ill-sorted quartet of twentysomethings, united only by their desire for fame and their fondness for petty arguments. Payne's narrator is Jay Thompson, a champion moper who frets about his go-nowhere job, his unspoken love for his bass player (an English lit. graduate student named Janice), his sad-sack divorced parents, and his even more melancholic 15-year-old brother, Sheldon. Noel, a corporate drone, and Tyler, a temperamental would-be musical genius, round out the band and ensure that Archangel's rehearsals will never be peaceful and productive. Things get really grim when they lose their only steady gig, a mostly-covers Sunday night at a local pub. In desperation, Jay and Tyler begin recasting their songs in an attempt to compete in an American Christian-rock talent search--never mind that no one in the band is even vaguely religious.

Live by Request works best when its humour is deadpan; Payne is often able to invoke the farce of This Is Spinal Tap and leaven it with a bit of genuine humanity. Sometimes, however, Live by Request feels too much like a Canadian imitation of High Fidelity, and it does not stand the comparison well, for Payne's talent for evoking character through the name-dropping of a true music geek is decidedly shaky. Live by Request is a high-spirited and entertaining read but too contrived to be a real delight. --Jack Illingworth

Live by Request is an innocuous little novel about a hapless band called Archangel, playing a Sunday night gig at a listless pub. One member, Jay, a slacker college dropout, is a bartender at the club, and much of the story is about his developing relationship with the bassist, a girl named Jan. With names like that it takes 50 pages to figure who is who. It is very difficult to write a novel about musicians for no matter how many band names they drop it is impossible to remember who they like or don't like, and it is impossible to translate their style, whatever it might be to the page. There is a little bit of humor when they try to pass themselves off as a Christian rock group, and creepy fundamentalist Christians take a few well placed hits. One of the tenets of novel writing is that the author picks up characters at a moment when everything they do is vitally important. Here are some of Jay's observations that turn the novel into an advertisement for blandness: "...I've spent most of my life trying not to be engaged in anything remotely controversial, and I don't plan to end that streak now." "You'll come to realize that I'm basically a boring guy who loves music and movies and spends most of his time doing very little." "Life proceeds at its mundane pace. As usual, I've made no significant changes." The last quote is from the final page and sums up the story better than any reviewer could. W.P. Kinsella (Books in Canada) -- Books in Canada

On paper, Jay Thompson is a 26-year-old bartender going nowhere. But his burning desire is to be a working musician, or failing that, a working songwriter. Together in pursuit of the dream is his band, Archangel: Tyler, headstrong composer of the experimental rock opera “Space Oddity #2”; Jan, the sassy bass player and object of Jay’s affection; and Noel, the Gap-wearing, scissor-kicking guitar player, who spends his days labouring in the corporate world.

But things aren’t going too well. First of all, no one can agree on a name for the band. “Archangel” just doesn’t cut it and “Pure Energy” is likely to attract herbalists and ravers. “Trailer”? Now there’s a name for a real band. Secondly, they're getting fed up with their only gig—a Sunday night show in an empty pub, where they’ve just blown their only chance at fame. To make matters worse, Jay’s family is falling apart and he’s left to look after his horny but lonely 15-year-old brother while his self-absorbed parents pursue their own lives. But rather than despair, Jay, Tyler, Noel and Jan hatch a plan to sell themselves as a Christian rock band—and readers are taken for a highly entertaining ride.

Set on the Canada–US border, Live By Request follows the exploits of a band on the run—from obscurity, boredom, and sometimes, even themselves. At the same time, it reveals a new hero for the millennium—Jay is today’s twentysomething everyman who teeters between hope and sarcasm, trying to make his own mark on the stage of life. Funny, honest and irreverent, Live By Request is an impressive fiction debut.

ROB PAYNE is the author of Live by Request and Working Class Zero. The former editor of Quarry magazine, he has edited two anthologies of Canadian short fiction, Carrying the Fire and Pop Goes the Story. His writing has appeared in such publications as Canadian Fiction magazine, Zygote and Front & Centre. He has also written for the sketch comedy troupe What's On Tap?  Rob Payne has lived in Ottawa, Yokohama and Perth, and recently returned to Toronto.