The reason i folded blues into a discussion on the music forms that followed is because I have written my blues songs and don’t feel a need to go back to the genre and spoil things. Berko’s Blues was the habit of describing one’s own blues – and thereby the rules are particular to your own woes and circumstance – and Imaginary Blues could have started out as a piece using the novel idea of a blues that isn’t real but it became a solid story much in the tradition.

I did, however, write this piece when I had moved to muse over the blues so it counts. There are so many genres devoted to decay and putrefaction, to the yawning grave, that a song using death as a motif would be less likely to settle on the blues, which is more about the misery and tribulations of the living.

I wrote this when I read about the concept in our local gazette. The death café is a place where people can gather to mourn the dead as it is not usually a topic for social gatherings. Such good songwriting material could reap rewards even for the beginning wordsmith so I wasted no time; it was a quick recovery from some of the scribblings that preceded it. But I never lose any sleep over crummier or more difficult efforts. There’s plenty of good to be focused on but it’s not even that. The focus for me is always in writing the song that the concept or notion or idea or subject object suggest.  The rest flows from that.

death café

Cut across to where they're 
  cutting up croissants
In memoriam in an ornante font
Carried the coffin, pause for a coffee
Read back the preacher's notes
The procession is passing
Time to make the toast
at the death café at the death café 

This really does take the cake
Clear the tables and chairs
and try to stay a wake
Disguised disgust
well they were quite old
Will the will be discussed
before the body's cold
at the death café at the death café 

You better believe  brave the bereaved
always lilies and lollies at hand
Proprietor a picture of piety
Weeping upon demand

Only started this business
so we'd be a witness
Condolence  sincere regret
A welcome repast to those who have passed
Others still with us yet
at the death café  at the death café