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Summer makes bad songs sound good. There’s no better time of the year to blare Top 40 music as loud as possible and sing about how awesome life is. There are some songs that re-surface every year throughout the summer months and, for some reason, they are universally loved.

With Canada Day coming up on July 1st, I’d like to say a few words of thanks to important Canadian icons. These Canadians make me proud to be a Canadian myself – in the quirkiest of ways.

Authors have a way with words, but these authors have a way with music, too, whether acting as the opener for a band or playing in one themselves. Here are six authors that have a musical side as well.

Since its inception, rock and roll has always had a unique relationship with fiction and pop culture.

From Elvis’s famed white fringe jumpsuit, aping the Captain Marvel comic book, to the great rock operas and concept albums such as The Who’s Tommy, or David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spider from Mars, and to the modern-day “jukebox musicals” that line the streets of Broadway and beyond, the link between rock and roll music and both literary and genre fictions are undeniable. Even heavy metal, and its various subgenres, has often been obsessed with the imagery of horror stories and fantasy.

As such, it’s only fair that fiction started taking its cues from rock and roll. Below, you’ll find some of my personal favorite fictional bands (some of whom may or may have broken their way through page/screen and found a way into our own reality).

The Archies: This one is way too many levels of meta. The Archies were a garage band formed by the cast members of the cartoon The Archie Show, which in turn was an adaptation of the long-running comic book series Archie. The songs, which featured heavily into many episodes of the cartoon series (but also the comic book, don’t forget), where actually written and performed by Ron Dante and Andy Kim, who themselves were neither cartoon nor comic book characters but rather real live flesh-and-blood human beings (weird, right?). Are you still with me? Good.

The Archies — under the guise of Archie Andrews, Reggie Mantle, and Jughead Jones — scored a number of Top 40 hits, including “Sugar, Sugar,” which was named the Billboard #1 song of the year in 1969, and still remains a popular icon of 60s bubblegum pop. How many other fictional bands can make a claim like that? Also check out this fantastic cover of “Sugar, Sugar” by Mary Lou Lord and Semisonic.

Photo by Pierre Tourigny

It’s the time of year when people are going to Halloween parties. The Jack-O-Lanterns are carved and lit, the punch is full of dried ice and the candy bowl packed. There is something missing though. No Halloween festivities are complete without a kick-ass playlist full of creepy songs. I know that there are some tried and true songs of the season i.e. Monster Mash, Thriller, I Put A Spell on You and anything from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Here at Quirk HQ, we recently received 8 one-of-a-kind gig posters straight from the pages of Gig Posters: Volume 2. They are unique, high-quality proofs from Germany. We were tempted to take them home ourselves, but we’ve decided to give them away instead! They measure 24” by 28.5” by awesome, and feature some amazing bands. We’ve got posters for:

Vampire Weekend
Green Day
The Cranberries
Queens of the Stone Age & The Eagles of Death Metal
Deftones
Mogwai
Franz Ferdinand
Slayer

To win your own rock art, just comment (or tweet @quirkbooks) with either your coolest, or your most embarrassing concert story. But you’ll have to beat my story involving 11-year-old me, my Dad, and a Boyz II Men concert. Good luck!