The Rock Bottom Remainders have written The End.  After exactly 23 years of performing together, the lit musical group Bruce Springsteen once cautioned not to get any better or else they’d be just another lousy band, played their farewell concert Friday night at the El-Ray Theatre in Los Angeles. (They were also scheduled to perform the following day at the American Library Association convention.)

The band was the brainchild of publishing consultant Kathi Kamen Goldmark who passed away earlier this year.  She gathered some of the nation’s most popular authors on stage along with musical instruments that they could play with varying degrees of competence.  Stephen King, Dave Barry, Amy Tan, Mitch Albom, Scott Turow, Matt Groening, James McBride, Greg Iles, Ridley Pearson, and Decatur native Roy Blount, Jr., among others, would get together — typically once each year — to rock badly for charity.  Besides Springsteen, they would be joined on occasion by the likes of Warren Zevon and Judy Collins.  Friday’s performance featured the great Roger McGuinn, formerly of The Byrds.

Their set list consisted of covers (The Beatles’ “Paperback Writer” and Dylan’s “My Back Pages”) as well as some originals (“I’m A Big Best Seller” by Greg Iles and Dave Barry’s “Proof Reading Woman”).

When author Ridley Pearson (that’s him on bass towards the right of the picture next to Dave Barry) came to Little Shop in April last year, I put a band together in his honor.  The Georgia Slushpile consisted of a few of us at the shop, a pair of significant others, and, as we had to have one ringer, Pete the Cat author Eric Litwin.  We opened for Ridley, which was a little intimidating as he was a multi-instrumentalist for many years with a group called Big Lost Rainbow.  Not surprisingly, he was also their main songwriter.  Ridley didn’t walk out on us, which I took as a good sign.

We tried (and tried and tried) to get the Rock Bottom Remainders to come to the Decatur Book Festival the past couple of years, but it was not to be.  How much fun would that have been!

Photo courtesy of America Library Association via Flickr

This Week

Alexandra Fuller, author of Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, Wednesday, June 27th, 7 pm, Margaret Mitchell House, sponsored by the Atlanta History Center, $5 for members, $10 for nonmembers.

Future Weeks

Atlanta’s own Karin Slaughter, author of Criminal, Saturday, July 7th, 3 pm, Barnes & Noble (Peachtree Parkway), free.

Atlanta’s own Mary Kay Andrews, author of Spring Fever, Monday, July 9th, FoxTale Book Shoppe, $30 (includes signed book).

Note: Wednesday is going out of town for a couple of weeks.  If he can locate Internet access and something to write about, he’ll try to blog.