Genre jeopardy

The next question is “Can we work back from the song to determine genre or subgenre?” for you may want this ability if you’ve been contracted to perform Western Swing. I don’t recommend this approach for beginners but when one is writing complete songs without paying much heed to where they fit, it’s a handy skill to have.

Where would one place P.O.V? If you have an insight into its construction, as the writer has, one can see the impetus being the cinematic reference; perhaps some Media Studies coming in handy. Otherwise as a critic or theorist you could note that the song, as with much of this lyricist’s work, circles back around continually on the subject matter:  point of view.

You could then try to separate out the component pieces, the different POVs if you will. If its just to understand the tenor then this could be useful but, since I’ve usually bound up different meanings at each juncture so there are parallel readings, this reduces the options.

Style is less problematic. It’s enigmatic, impressionistic, revels in play on meaning. It is thus unlikely to be blues, jazz, folk, country, rock’n’roll. When it comes to mutant forms, definition is less clear. Assuming Captain Beefheart was working his sound from jazz rather than blues (it’s a distant cousin to rock and distant cousins, there’s a limited supply) Nonetheless, I’m going to make a captain’s call (brr) and say that P.O.V is either one of the many seventies on rock songs – probably eighties – or its electronic, experimental, New Wave, any of the genres that liked to wander off. Except that P.O.V doesn’t wander off. By balancing plates metaphorically speaking it stays more on point than songs with a conventional narrative structure.

There are plenty of individual artists who write in this fashion. Not possessing the same style so much but using the subject matter to drive the plurality rather than reigning in a title to our own purpose.

To do a really scientific analysis of the song you’d want data on the character of songs that end with a title chorus or with a title chorus that plays with the repetition by slightly varying it. You could go impossibly broad and look at the subset of songs with this rhyming structure or the internal rhythm; perhaps you’ll feel the need to consider both.

As to pinpointing what style, form or genre typically uses this pattern, it sits at the less whimsical end of punk-era pop perhaps. This is what I was listening to in my formative years. It sits at the Costello end of verbiage not the Iggy end. I don’t twist my puns to romantic purpose as much as El though. There’s often a cataclysmic clamour and that could come from Echo and the Bunnymen or any number of sources.

Hey, I wouldn’t presume to dictate where a song I’ve written ends up as there are all the musicians and singers and audience putting their energies into it. The Blue Velvets do a great version of Just Like Daddy and they’re a jazz trio

Further drafts

If you did get wind of that last turbine driven rockabilly number you probably found the syllable count to be the most contentious part.

You could argue about whether a commissioner of any energy system needs to act as a metaphor for the kind of interests displayed by the billies, if I can call them that (just recently I noticed that a new rock festival coming to Katoomba will feature, among other acts, one doing horrorbilly), and I don’t think a po-faced folk rendition would have worked in the context of leather jackets and quiffs. Can anything political invade rockabilly turf? The apocalyptic end of shockabilly variations is usually cast in terms such as This is the Day the Sun Burned Down – where they are definitely not discussing solar funding.

II

I have been writing in the exercise book again and finding that ideas tend to come out in a more scattered order. This elaborates on some of the experiences I was recounting in earlier posts but there is a tangent at play when the handwritten lyrics move from nine, say, drafts of whole songs to lyrics delivered out of order and not immediately working despite an expectation that, by fitting and being in context, it should.

The first two pieces came about from the news that a work experience kid had discovered an exoplanet. Considering how recently we were ooh-ing and aah-ing about the first ones to be visible in the new telescopes, this trajectory reminds me of climbing Everest or breaking the four minute mile. It starts as this amazing thing and then is absorbed; at least enough for the bright and talented to pick up and pass on.

None of this ends up in the draft as I am in too much of a reverie about the space in general that the exoplanet planned for the chorus.

[Shockabilly draft]

EXOPLANET
Now that our vision extends beyond the reach
A yearning for learning but what will it teach
Worlds inconceivable light years away
A vaccuum to a void disperse and display
Exoplanet

The telescope tells of hope
Think outside the envelope
Stars adrift in a cosmic shift
The odds of gods being Man’s greatest gift
Exoplanet

One’s elusive now exclusive
The astronomical pay purview
A dearth on the earth we are but few
No offer up to this effusive
Exoplanet

In the past till the last we looked up to the sky
Wondered where what was there we asked why
As all our fronteirs are receding
Process the progress still proceeding
Exoplanet

I wrote this on 25th of June so my thoughts about it have changed but, at the time, I decided the following day to try again. This time not looking at the first version but using one particularly strong line ‘The odds of gods being Man’s greatest gift’

The vastness of the cosmos impresses me no end
As we all turn in circles in these eternal circles
Fade into the shade where life begins again

The burnt out stars that we still see
Their dead state serves as company
Switching on each witching hour
Wishing on a meteor shower

Light years away we like to stray
Where time determines night meets day
Space in place across divides
The odds that gods alone decide

Beyond every notion that we ever had
A guide to the good, a bid for the bad
Averaging out each moment of doubt

The vastness of the cosmos impresses me no end
As we turn in circles in these eternal circles
Ignite in the light life begins again

I wrote it but realised that it, too, had not stayed on exoplanets or, indeed, had much to say about them at all. It would require its own title. This doesn’t commonly happen as I tend to write from titles but, yes, I settled on IN THE SPACE PROVIDED

I let it rest there and went off and wrote a piece called REINVENTION as that was something foremost in my life, about to be offered a package.

Anyway, that was fine

I then returned to the space theme although I didn’t planet and really the two snatches there are more pissing around than anything.

And still I don’t have an exoplanet song.

 

 

 

Getting wind of Rockabilly

Quote

I’ve had a bit of time to think about rockabilly. I’ve listened to plenty of punkabilly and shared in shockabilly. I remain partial to a double bass if it’s weilded well. I had kind of gone off handwriting poetry and songs, which is strange since it was the other way round for many years. Then this burst which was written on the train.

The Windfarm Commissioner
I’m the windfarm commissioner
I blow hot and cold
I’m the windfarm commissioner
and I do what I’m told
I don’t dig mines I’m not that kind
Won’t drill for oil Turn up on foreign soil
I’m the pointless product  of a compromised position
Something of an ether/ORE proposition
But I knew when they drew up my comission
(CHORUS)
I’m not your hydro hero have no geothermal cooling
Sent to rescind the wind ah who am I fooling?
Tilting at windmills like one Don Quixote
Freezing out free air you don’t say
All the turbines combined aligned against me

(CHORUS)

Where the four winds blow it’s my business to know
While Grandpa’s gone fission, his rod starts to glow
There’s a Middle East crisis
a self-corrupting Isis
Meanwhile my timing’s priceless
I’m the windfarm commissioner
I blow hot and cold
I’m the windfarm commissioner
and I’m worth my waiting gold