History Literature / SoulMusic

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In the second, young Llamedosian musician [[MeaningfulName Imp y Celyn]] comes to Ankh-Morpork to make his fortune and winds up becoming a musical sensation when he inadvertently invents the Discworld's equivalent of Rock & Roll.

* EarWorm: The Music With Rock In isn't just addictive, it's ''contagious''.

In the second, young Llamedosian musician [[MeaningfulName Imp y Celyn]] comes to Ankh-Morpork to make his fortune. Barred from the Musicians' Guild by the high entry charge, he teams up with dwarf and troll fellow musicians Glod Glodsson and Lias "Cliff" Bluestone to form the Band With Rocks In. Cliff accidentally sits on Imp's harp and crushes it, so they go to TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday and buy him a guitar.

At their first performance, Imp (now known under the stage name Buddy) is fated to die in an accident; Susan has just decided to defy that fate when matters are taken out of her hands - ThePowerOfRock saves him instead, and his life ends but the music continues. ALittleSomethingWeCallRockAndRoll proceeds to invade the Disc's MedievalStasis, notably infecting half the faculty of Unseen University and leading to Ridcully summoning Death (or, in the event, Susan) to find out what's going on. Susan time travels to consult Death, arriving at the exact point when he chose to spare Mort (and it's implied that their meeting is what retroactively caused this thanks to StableTimeLoop, or Death's memory being nonlinear).

Death in the past tells Susan that Buddy is still going to die in a few weeks when the Music has finished with him. The Band plays a grand tour with help from manager CMOTDibbler, but Buddy finds that his life has become grey and purposeless whenever he's not on stage. A suspicious Glod and Cliff hatch a plot: when the Band returns to Ankh-Morpork to play at the great Free Festival amid all their copycats, they produce Buddy's repaired harp. He plays a moving lament on the harp, turns it into a rocked up version on the guitar, and then the Band flees the city with Dibbler's money as the crowd goes wild, and not in a good way.

History repeats itself as they seem about to die on the same corner as Mort and Ysabell did - it's the Day the Music Died. But Death comes back just in time, brought to his senses by Albert seeking him out in the world, and deals with the Music in a CrowningMomentOfAwesome: he plays the empty chord, the chord that is to music what zero is to mathematics, "[[AC:The only one I know]]", and the very rhythm of the universe will come to an end unless the Music lets Buddy live. This leads to history being altered so Buddy never came to Ankh-Morpork and now lives in the same city as Susan, setting up a potential romance (that was never followed up in later books).

great Omnian MWRI band [[{{Newsboys}} the Lads Who Deliver the Times]]?

* AdaptationDecay: The AnimatedAdaptation was largely good (and Terry Pratchett himself praised it) but did fail to get across just how Death beats the Music at the end - which admittedly is much harder without textual explanation. On the plus side, it did come up with funny CanisLatinicus words for the Rite of Ashkente. (and the "we're [[BiggerThanJesus bigger than cheeses]]!" joke)
** Also, Susan looks and sounds as if she was around 12 (she was 16 in the book).
*** Erm, I think she's got a [[IfYouKnowWhatIMean few noticeable bulges]] that twelve-year-olds don't have..

* CallBack: One of the assassins sent to kill Imp and co. says that a troll can be killed by a strike to 'a little spot at the back of the neck'. Remind me, how did Rincewind (accidentally) kill a troll in TheColourOfMagic ?
* CreativeSterility: In a very clever use of the trope, this is how Death beats the Music at the end - it's previously been established that he has no grasp of music despite trying to play the banjo and organ, and now it's explained why: [[spoiler:since he's Death, the only chord he can play is the one that is the musical equivalent of mathematical zero, the 'empty chord' that will bring the whole rhythm of the universe to an end unless the Music revives Buddy to play on]]. CrowningMomentOfAwesome indeed.
* CrowningMomentOfAwesome: See {{Awesome.Discworld}}
* CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming: See {{Heartwarming.Discworld}}
* CrowningMusicOfAwesome: Okay, it's a book, so there isn't ''actual'' music, but are you going to tell me that TheGrimReaper shredding on a guitar is going to produce anything that ''isn't'' awesome?
** The animated version came up with tunes for "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfusJWrE0hg Sioni Bod Da]]" and its remix "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOjQkIb162g The Messenger]]."
** There is, actually, a full soundtrack of the songs that the Band With Rocks In did.
*** Is it this troper's imagination, or does "The Messenger" have stylistic similarities to that great Omnian MWRI band [[{{Newsboys}} the Lads Who Deliver the Times]]?

---> ''You will live forever. They will say you never died.''

*** Also, because the troll in question was [[IncrediblyLamePun somewhat attached to them]].

* HilariousInHindsight: When the book was released, Trollz was just a simple descriptive band name. Fast-forward to recently where we have a band named Gorillaz and the book looks downright predictive.
** Also, the actions The Musicians' Guild take in trying to stop music from being given away for free seems to be predictive of the current antics of the RIAA. Well, except the RIAA haven't tried to have anyone killed.
*** Yet.
*** So we're all Dibbler, then? Not sure how to feel about that...

* MoodWhiplash: The same page with a CrowningMomentOfFunny involving Glod and the band's '''[++FIVE THOUSAND D++]'''-''mmfmmf'' leads into [[spoiler: the spirit of Music making the final parallel between Buddy and real rockstars: Live Fast, Die Young.]]

* PerkyGoth: Or at least that's how fandom and artists interpret Susan, despite her having a remarkably unperky personality.
** She may not be perky, but she's proactive and businesslike, in contrast to the stereotype of goths as poetic depressives.
** True, but if anything her 'sensible' personality is even further away from the cheerful and amiable PerkyGoth than the standard goth stereotype.

* ShoutOut / HurricaneOfPuns: As with ''Discworld/MovingPictures'', an enormous number, particularly band names "We're Certainly Dwarfs" for TheyMightBeGiants, "Insanity" for Madness, "Surreptitious Fabric" for the VelvetUnderground, "The Whom" for TheWho, and so on. One band in particular goes through about a half dozen of these, and on one occasion a member buys for the group a [[DefLeppard leopard with hearing problems]]...
** Suck for {{KISS}}, Lead Balloon for LedZeppelin, pretty much any name chosen by Crash's band goes this way. It's the Music, they can't help themselves.

** Speaking of the Dean's clothing, there's an incredibly subtle but allegedly deliberate ShoutOut when Death asks to borrow his coat. Or, to put it another way, it's "[[DonMcLean A coat he borrowed from [the] Dean]]"
*** And he 'borrows' it by striding in and informing him [[AC: "[[TheTerminator I need your clothes.]]"]]
*** And the coat itself reads [[BruceSpringsteen Born to Rune]].
** Pterry even managed to ShoutOut to TheFarSide! One of the wizards reads books of cartoons of cows and dogs....
** What about the [[TheGratefulDead grateful Death]]?

** There was a bad called "And You" who spelled their name as [[{{U2}} &U]].

* StealthPun: Scum, one of the members with Crash's band is assigned to get leopardskin trousers. He manages to buy a live leopard, which was cheap, because it has hearing problems.

* AdaptationDecay: The AnimatedAdaptation was largely good (and Terry Pratchett himself praised it) but did fail to get across just how Death beats the Music at the end - which admittedly is much harder without textual explanation. On the plus side, it did come up with funny CanisLatinicus words for the Rite of Ashkente. (and the "we're bigger than cheeses!" joke)

** Born to Rune!

* CrowningMomentOfAwesome: See {{Crowning.Discworld}}

* CrowningMomentOfAwesome: See {{CrowningMoment.Discworld}}
* CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming: See {{HeartwarmingMoment.Discworld}}

** The BilingualBonus points out that Imp y Celyn, AKA Buddy Celyn [[spoiler: = Buddy Holly.]]

* FridgeLogic: If troll teeth are valuable enough to pay for instruments and lodging, why couldn't the Band pay their Guild fee with them...?
** Because the Guild were being a bunch of nasty prigs about it. So it was the principle of the thing.

* ShoutOut / HurricaneOfPuns: As with ''Discworld/MovingPictures'', an enormous number, particularly band names "We're Certainly Dwarfs" for TheyMightBeGiants, "Insanity" for Madness, "Surreptitious Fabric" for the VelvetUnderground, "The Whom" for TheWho, and so on. One band in particular goes through about a half dozen of these, and on one occasion a member buys for the group a [[StealthPun leopard with hearing problems]]...

* ShoutOut / HurricaneOfPuns: As with ''Discworld/MovingPictures'', an enormous number, particularly band names "We're Certainly Dwarfs" for TheyMightBeGiants, "Insanity" for Madness, "Surreptitious Fabric" for the Velvet Underground, "The Whom" for The Who, and so on. One band in particular goes through about a half dozen of these, and on one occasion a member buys for the group a [[StealthPun leopard with hearing problems]]...

** Suck for KISS, Lead Balloon for Led Zeppelin, pretty much any name chosen by Crash's band goes this way. It's the Music, they can't help themselves.

** [[TheBluesBrothers "We're on a mission from Glod."]]

** What about the grateful Death?

** - or indeed "Rebel without a pause" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm7dZe0b8Rk

* PickedLast: Susan is always picked last despite her very patiently telling everyone what a great player she is and how much sense it would make for them to pick her (and actually being ''right''). She can't quite figure out why they don't catch on.