Stations of the Cross by Robert Dunn

Author:Robert Dunn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Coral Press
Published: 2013-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Five

Avalon

DYSON WOKE THE NEXT MORNING thinking about Spears Munson. The critic—the Number 1 person making a living off of writing about Dyson Burnette—how would he take the news that Palladian Records had dumped its venerable singer-songwriter?

Munson had written one of the earliest truly celebratory pieces on Dyson, first dropping the word genius, and his idiosyncratic yet compelling reading of the songwriter’s work swayed the self-serious rock critic world—and everyone else. The odd thing? Dyson had never met Munson, though he wrote up performance after performance. (Sometimes Dyson imagined seeing the critic, a speck in the upper balcony, pen and note pad in hand, his head exploding with either hyper-praise or toxic invective.) The weird thing was, when Dyson came upon Munson’s scribblings, he found he enjoyed Munson’s prose and oddball take on his work; he became as eager for Spears’s latest piece on Dyson Burnette as the next fan.

Another odd thing: All those profiles in Rolling Stone, Creem, and back then even Life were written by actual reporters covering the scene. Evidently Munson was too serious, too literary to go out and actually meet the artist he was devoting his life to. From pictures Dyson saw, the guy looked toadlike, short, wide-browed, heavy-eye-lidded. And those were the photos on the back of his book jackets. So maybe Dyson wasn’t missing too much. Still, it was a very odd thing, having another man make his living off writing about you, though Dyson guessed it wasn’t that much different from all the other people making part of their living off his work: record company secretaries, warehouse forklift drivers, booking agents in St. Louis, stadium janitors, magazine editors, and on and on. Just that all of them only made Burnette money when Dyson worked. Spears Munson seemed to churn out pieces no matter what the master was up to.

Which is why Dyson started writing Munson’s new piece in his head.

“It’s simply sad,” Spears would start. Munson liked the emphatic statement, a foundation under his quickly baroque and inscrutable pronouncements. “The end of an era. Dyson Burnette has lost his record label.”

Munson would surely sit there, look over his three short sentences, and say, Yes, that sticks it to the old guy. Sad. Simply sad. That’ll make everyone who reads it hang their head. Dyson’s old fans, feeling a little rickety themselves, going, Sad? It’s come to this, my hero simply… sad? Then what about me? That’s when the critic would have them hooked.

But of course Munson would go on, pounding his nail. “Of course no one but old fogies are buying CDs anyway, and even they’re slowing down, but the worrisome thing is that Burnette seems to be going the way of old fogies.” Not that you’re not, Spears, Dyson thought. He knew the critic was a year and a half older than he was. But critics like Munson are ageless, right? And if print dries up, there’s always the Internet. “The question now is: Will Dyson Burnette’s work last?”

And of course the

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