I used to have this problem where I would want to find new books to read but had absolutely no idea what I should read that would interest me. Many of the books I read outside of class I borrow from my friends, or my teachers mention them in class but don’t have time to teach them, but they pique my interest anyway. However, where do you turn from there once you’ve read all the books that have been recommended to you, or it’s summer vacation and your friends are all away and you have no one whom will let you over their house and raid their book collection? This has happened to me before, but then I realized I was overlooking my best source to find good reads: music.

One of the major things that draws me into liking a band is the lyrics; if a band has great music but lyrics that are too simple or straight-forward, I won’t be inclined to like them as much as bands with great music and intelligent lyrics. And one of my favorite things about some of my favorite bands is the amount of literary references that pop up in their work. For example, several bands name themselves after books, such as a folk-punk and from Texas called O Pioneers!!!, which took their name from a Willa Cather novel, and then added two more exclamation points. Another well-known punk band that has done this is Gainesville, Florida’s Hot Water Music, which shares the name of a collection of poetry by Charles Bukowski.

But some bands like to get even more subtle and in-depth with their literary references. The Lawrence Arms, who also happen to be my favorite band, are masters at weaving references to literature and pop-culture into their songs in a way that goes almost unnoticed, if it weren’t for the fact that a couple of their albums include footnotes detailing what all of their songs are alluding to. Their fourth album The Greatest Story Ever Told which was released in 2003 is a concept album based around the idea that “we are clowns only here to entertain,” and thus has a prevalent circus theme throughout and the lyrics to many of the songs have an existentialist feel to them. In the fourth track on this album, called “Drunk Mouth Kitchen Smile,” the band closes out the song by singing, “I should be on trial for everything I haven’t done,” which is referring to Franz Kafka’s novel, The Trial, in which a man is arrested and put on trial without being told what he was arrested for in the first place. Another reference to a foreign writer also comes up on the eighth track, titled “Chapter 13: The Hero Appears.” This song title refers to the novel The Master and the Margarita by Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov – the thirteenth chapter of the book translates into English as “The Hero Enters.” These two songs, along with the rest of The Lawrence Arms’ music, has provided me with a whole new list of “books that I should really get around to reading soon” that I now keep in mind whenever going to the bookstore or library. And, chances are, if you take a look through your musical collection, you’ll find a whole bunch of bands that do this as well, and hopefully you will be able to find out about some great books to read while listening to awesome music.