Fifty Shades of Black Read Online Free Page B

absolutely every day (I took Sundays off and there was the odd morning compromised by flu or travel or a hangover that made it too painful). But almost every day—and I got more writing done in those precious one or two hours than I did in the rest of the week.
    Productive? Well, fifteen books, five seasons’ worth of TV scripts, uncountable TV and radio commentaries and a raft of speeches—all written in the early hours of the day. Oh, yes—and thirty-five years’ worth of weekly newspaper columns. I’m not boasting about this, because it’s no big deal. I didn’t erect a cathedral or compose a symphony—all I did was get up early most mornings and sit down in front of a keyboard. It’s like building a home or walking a hundred miles: it doesn’t get done overnight, it gets done a brick or a step at a time.
    Ah, but what about the hard part? What about rolling out of the sack at an hour when most folks are in deep sleep (and some are just rolling in from a night on the town)?
    Yeah, there are compromises involved. An early riser doesn’t get to close the bars or watch the Late Late Show . People who get up at dawn tend to go to bed earlier than most, which means your social life takes a bit of a hit. But there’s nothing on television that you can’t tape and watch at your convenience. And having one or two fewer beers with the gang won’t do you any harm. Au contraire.
    Best of all, you get to have some time to yourself to Get Something Done. Read your favourite author, complete a correspondence course, paint a watercolour, write those letters you’ve been putting off. Move your life along so that you’re not merely putting in time.
    There are other rewards, often unexpected. Some years after I gave my talk at the private school I got a phone call from someone whose name I didn’t recognize. She was a film producer, working in Edmonton. She had also been a member of the student body in the school where I gave my talk.
    â€œI just want to tell you,” she said, “that I took your advice—about getting up early. It made all the difference in my career.”
    Yes!

 
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    Sung Any Good Songs Lately?
    When you’re thirty-five, something always happens to the music.
    â€”Gene Lees
    I first read that quote back when I was a teenager—which is way more tree rings than I care to count up. I remember thinking at the time: yeah, the man is right.
    It explained why my old man couldn’t get Elvis or Buddy Holly. When the strains of “Heartbreak Hotel” or “That’ll Be the Day” would crackle out of our old Philco stand-up radio, my old man would throw down his newspaper and grouse, “What the hell is that? You call that singing? Can’t even understand the words!”
    Now, all these decades later whenever I hear a current top ten tune I find myself channelling my old man.
    Are mushrooms growing in my ears or did the music change—as in, get stupider? At the risk of offending thousands I have to say that I find most modern popular music stupendously boring and appallingly mediocre. The vocalists sound like they’re singing through keyholes; the instrumentalists sound like they’re playing with boxing gloves on. Haven’t these nimrods ever heard Ella or Aretha? A guitar solo by Chet Atkins or a trumpet riff by Wynton Marsalis?
    Jimi Hendrix playing “The Star-Spangled Banner”—recorded live at Woodstock?
    Aren’t they embarrassed to pretend they’re even in the same business?
    How did popular music tumble from the dizzying glory of the Everly Brothers and the Temptations to the atonal squeaks and flatulent squawks that dominate the charts today?
    Beats me. Beats Beck too.
    That would be Bek David Campbell, a forty-something American singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who prefers to be known as Beck. He’s been around and on the charts for a good twenty