the best songwriting you've never heard
number 23. a mystical number for fans of psychic tv and throbbing gristle. and the chicago bulls.
i realized after i posted last week’s song that that the memory parade of our protagonist had begun in the late 30s with a 30s style song. figured the next milestone should happen in the early 50s, and so i went with a ‘kansas city’ style boogie-woogie early 50s song. a high school memory of his first foray into the world of comingling.
here’s the second installment of ‘connect the dots.’ after framing the protagonist’s delirium, we fly back through the years to a time of relative happiness. but unbeknownst to the narrator, all is not as well as he had hoped in his past. it is an escape for him into his childlike mind, but there is more going on than meets the eye.
number 21. as promised, the first in a song cycle of unspecified length.
in the first installment we meet the central character in the last hours of his life. it’s something of a prologue to the stories that will follow: memories and reflections of a life now past. the door is wide open. though he’s on the border of delirium, and his mind is less than whole, he will swim through images of his younger days.
song twenty. it took me ten years to release 24 songs on two albums, and it has taken five months to release 20 songs. i am really enjoying this process.
so i had the general idea “shy is just another word for unfriendly” for at least three years now. i just couldn’t turn it into anything. so i decided that this week i would tackle it. it proved to be a formidable opponent. the fact i hadn’t recorded anything by 5pm on sunday says a lot. but there was a late drive that decided the game.
number 19. not much to say about the number. but the song is a sad one.
last week my mother asked why the last set of songs were so sad. i hadn’t noticed. they are monday songs after all. but I listened and thought, there isn’t the little pithy number to break up the flow. or a straight funny song. so i set out this week to write an unflinchingly happy song.
i failed miserably.
eighteen. voting age. no longer a minor, but not yet a drinker.
this would fit nicely in the real life high school musical world begun in number 16, “lowe valley high.” hell, the subject of this crush could even be meghan. it’s a small world after all.
on this one, there might be a warrant out for my arrest for musical thievery. though i think i satisfactorily made the song “my own,” there is a substantial influence from joe jackson’s “look sharp,” which my wife has been blasting in the kitchen for the last couple of weeks.
number 17. dave balon’s number. he scored four goals against the north stars in the first ranger game i ever saw way back in 1971. he became my favorite. my brothers laughed, cause he was not a star. he had a monstrous comb-over.
i meant this as a random reference, until i looked him up and recalled that he was later diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. and i just now found out that he died two years back, at age 68. in his final years he had lost the power to speak.
this is one of the darker songs i’ve done. as with “bells” last week, the song parts came pretty spontaneously. i named the sound file “ollivander high” for no particular reason (i did not have the choruses fleshed out yet). the high school focus of the random title sent me deep into the heart of darkness.
fifteen songs. four plus months. and I’m just getting warmed up…
this week’s song was a case of automatic writing as far as the music goes. i played the opening churchbell pentatonic run on the piano and was struck by the first melodic phrase. Continue reading “monday song #15: the bells of st. sparrow”
number 14. and no, it’s not the pink floyd song.
this little ditty was conceived as a number for a post-modern musical. the hero kicks the ground, looks up to heaven, and in an optimistic and wholesome tenor (or baritone in my case) sings about how things will change for the better, one of these days… of course in the monday songs world, this means a blend of resentment, revenge, madness, and ecstacy. it’s a musical i’d love to see: “the imminent conversion of sid.”