Research is fun!

One of the pure pleasures of writing is research.  No, I'm serious.  When I started GFRC, I wrote the story and dialogue first, and had maybe ten or twelve albums sprinkled throughout the text, with lots of placeholders.  Once I had narrowed down the timeline of when certain events would have had to have taken place, I was able to generate a list of bands, albums, singles, and concerts that would have happened around those times.  Then I had to listen to all that music.  Some of it was familiar, for sure, but it was good to listen to it in the context of all the other music.  I was also able to flesh out the content of the 'record collection' in the title.  Out of the 400 albums Gilly inherited, I feel like I have a list of about 120 right now.  So that leaves 280 to be explored in the sequels, I guess.

It's given me a great excuse to listen to a ton of music that I hadn't really given a lot of time to before, and really listen to it and find pleasure in it from the perspective of my characters.  What would they get out of Giorgio Moroder?  Where would that take their music exploration?  After hearing Tubeway Army's "Listen To The Sirens" where would they go next?  Would they like Iggy and the Stooges, or would they backpedal and look somewhere else for something they like better?  Would any of their listening experiences being them into contact with the Sugarhill Gang?  It's a ton of fun, because the more I got to know my characters, the easier it was to find their adventure through music.

Hearing this in 1979 where do you go next?

Or this, also from 1979:

Incidentally, I love this version of Rappers Delight: