Tag Archives: song narrative

Americana flagged

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What is it that bounds Alabama Shakes with the Grateful Dead? I’m not going to pretend I understand the distinction between Americana and alt country but it’s big right now. And it has been the ground for some great artists and songs.

There are some bands like The Knitters that I’m happy to be reminded of. And seeing them here is going to make me want to get at least a sample of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

While the name suggests that it, by definition, represents gathered cultural facts and observations about life in America, there is its further description of incorporating a mix of roots styles, which can – and inevitably do – leave the shores of the continental United States.

With all this hoeing going down, I’m ready to write another rural piece. What’s another piece of my childhood I can coopt? Well, while it’s not the experience of every farm kid, we had a bren gun carrier we used to play on.

We converted it to a cubby; the coolest cubby yet

This isn’t a story or experience that I’ve wanted to put into song as it is awesome all within itself. In fact most of the memorable tales from living on the farm were meant to be in that form; a simple retelling.

If we’re going to focus less on significant occurences and more on impressions then we stray from Americana I’d venture.

Roots music, even a combination thereof, suggests – as with the previous genres we’ve canvassed – detailing a narrative, perhaps even one based on real events. I don’t think this narrative needs to be based on a ranch or in some forest for it to ring true as the music will convey the sense of the genre.

It’s debatable, in any case, if cubbies make the list of topics covered by Bruce Springsteen or Bruce Hornsby. Even if they once played in one.

I’m not familiar with Hornsby’s ouevre but the Boss is very strong on storytelling; that’s his base. He also ‘gives us permission’ to use urban themes.

The Band, too, write about their experiences on the road. At first I wondered about Beck’s inclusion then it made me realise his imagery may be colourful but its captured from life

II

It seems I’ve strayed from both current affairs and personal reflection in looking at what reasonably constitutes Americana. I don’t know if Dylan is Americana in some phases, folk in others and rock in still more. Certainly, pondering these distinctions for too long gets in the way of the writing.

Since I mentioned it last week, I’ll pitch Pitch

Pitch

Black marks across the page
Acute curls at some stage
Editing edicts becomes addictive
The selling point is this predictive

Players plural and all Plus One
Business baseness comes undone
Pour out upon the track
Looks like alack

Consumer condition connect
Prude pride protect
Tamp down stamp down in the clampdown
  and tinny tunes in a tame town

Wretches reach for riches
But they're too big for their britches
Carried out in stretches
Leaving us in stitches 
 with their pitch

 

Sure it’s story

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I think you can see that, while there are songs that simply don’t translate, there are others where at least the broad narrative is intact. You can see the short story possibility in the events detailed in Ode to Billie Joe and imagine rendering An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge into song. They would lose the advantage the first has of repeated mention of the bridge in the chorus or of the shock denouement of the second if a mistimed turn of tune were to occur.

If writing a song called ‘Co-payment‘ you might want a different focus than a short story on the same subject. The song can cover more ground by doubling up on its meaning; a short story attempting this risks confusion. While short stories don’t need a big cast – I saw one consisting of a desperate text scribbled on a torn strip of wallpaper by a kidnap victim, so one first person narrative – there needs to be a protagonist and an account of what happens to them (or an allusion to same). Whereas a song on co-payments or the co-payment may expand on what it is, what effect it has, a short story will want an agent effecting co-payments or being affected by them.

I pay twice for good advice/For every prick is worth the price/Though sickened by this circumstance/It seems I have another chance

It appears there is enough here to start drawing character but, while that may be so, the sly double entendre of the second line is going to be hard to spell out in prose.

Novel impression

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So what’s your next move? Take the piece straight to your band or songwriting partner. No messing about.

What not to do? Attempt to turn it into a novel. Or novella. Or prose fragment of any kind.

In Carbon Dating the language moves the story along and any analysis can only come afterwards. There are layers of meaning produced by this format that are impossible to replicate or equivocate and they’re all on show here.

You don’t have a protagonist. You might think you have but the cycle through first, second and third person narrative isn’t enough to assign names; singing in the shower, I got as far as Roslyn the paleontologist, Lyn the archaelogist and Max the biologist.

Tools are used matter-of-factly rather than in any way that could see them used outside scientific endeavour. Artistic licence precludes any need to know whether a chisel or ‘pickaxe’ is used on digs. What is here in the narrative is nothing like Maxwell’s Silver Hammer or the ax (or is it a croquet mallet?) in The Shining.

When I was writing it, I was staying focused on the tools and activities used in carbon dating and let the rest develop from that. I get a buzz when the song turns out to have these other things going on. Regardless of authorial intent, they’re an intrinsic part of the song.

There’s a literal reading and there’s a listener’s ability to see the great song metaphor of love running a parallel narrative. Whatever your experience, it stays firmly in the song construct.

It’s a very descriptive song when outlaying the sediment and the remnants found thereon. It does a fine job of expanding on carbon dating processes; at least as understood by the layman. Description is used only for place setting and immersion in a novel; it needs movement – character development, action –  that is absent from the song.

The verses are all doing different things – perhaps describing different scenes – but not in a way that translates to a prose depiction.

The song in its place

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Having canvassed the narrative so that we have a full understanding of its importance and place in the song, it’s probably safe to peer out at how the approach to narrative differs from that employed in other media.

Let’s consider the ‘horror budget’ in general. If we were writing a mini-series and wanted it to be current and up-to-date then a good approach would be to take some of the things particular to things as they are in 2014. My pitch would include a father, Geoff, who is an assembly line worker at Holden; his wife, Sheryn, is a pragmatic climate change sceptic. She doesn’t pretend to know the science or have a reason to refute it on an empirical level but she is concerned about the rising energy costs and believed the promise that scrapping the “carbon tax” would bring down power bills and costs passed on by affected companies in a range of fields. They have a son, Marcus, who hates his boss but is worried about the six months waiting period if he quits and is aghast at the prospect of writing forty job applications a month and being thrown onto a ‘work for the dole’ scheme. There is interaction with a neighbour, Phat Lam, who was given a temporary humanitarian visa due to his involvement with the Tianemen Square protests and was allowed to stay.

Now, as you can see, apart from delineating characters who will exemplify certain key dramatic aspects of contemporary Australian life, the approach is built on the use of characters. This is because we want the audience to identify with them and be interested in following them. It means that actors will sign on, knowing that there is substance to their roles where their appearance in a more plot-driven vehicle may be more fleeting.

In a movie you would probably want more of a blend in of some story situation or development. The focus may shift to a smaller cast engaged in greater activity and less exposition.

A short story would typically want to centre on one activity or sharp burst; there could be a dramatic event at the car manufacturers, a sudden a-ha moment in the realisation that prices weren’t really going to go down, or an altercation involving Marcus. The aspects of other characters might be touched on lightly if at all.

II

Can a song not take the same approach as other media in developing a narrative? It can actually. Just as plays are made into films and novels are made into musicals, it is possible to tell a story in a different medium, acknowledging and accepting the changes. The styles that spring from Springsteen prove songs can tell dramatic stories about a small cast of characters and place us in a setting. Whether you’d use this for Geoff, Sheryn and Marcus (toying with adding a daughter, Nola, who is a swotty year 12 with an enthusiasm for microbiology but concerned about what it would cost with no caps on fees) is another matter. I’d maintain that even when we’re speaking of Lightning’s Child, Farmer John, the Son of a Preacher Man, Son of Hickory Holler’s Tramp, the Eyes of Lucy Jordan… there’s a narrowing of focus in much the same way as there can be in poetry and vignettes. There are songwriters who can work a crowded room but there’s some skill involved and it does dictate the structure and possibly the genre. So songs in the same cast as a mini-series are going to be less our focus.

III

How would songs based on the horror budget more naturally evolve?

Auto manufacture

We used to make it up as we go along
Revelling in the rivetting although the hours were long
Automanufacture

We plumped the seats
Engaged in feats that the world would watch
Designing the body weilding the welding torch
Automanufacture

It was our roads that drove us on
Where we could get to and how we belong
Take the we'll always remember
Automanufacture
factoring in

Great Big New Attacks

Threats and debts of our design
The fears this year cannot confine
The hiving off of heave and ho
The skiving and the to and fro

There’s great big new attacks
great big new attacks

The lies disguise what we despise
A reckoning we can recognise
A tut tut for reverse tracks
What it was we ever lacked

What’s yours we’ll mine
You’ll get your share sure
philistine

Not while there’s great big new
Attacks

Narrative drive

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Gospel and soul demonstrate devotion to the Lord and a loved one respectively. South Park satirised this to some extent when Cartman replaces sweetheart references in popular songs with that of Jesus and then sells to Christian radio listeners.

A narrative that serves both at once is the sublime ‘I Say a Little Prayer‘. A simple song that recounts little moments grabbed throughout the day shows such love for the paramour but still manages to include God.

To see the role of narrative, let’s start a song from a narrative: ‘Leading conservatives forecast a short war in Iraq, now, without irony are considering returning to a battlefield they’ve withdrawn from’. Forget the wording here and focus on the intent. It’s not so much about living in a Red Zone as talking about the former Kingdom and how it’s fallen.

What’s happened here? You have the narrative as described and two further narrative elaborations. You don’t need to think any of these out loud when you’re writing songs. Retain a brief sideways glance at what’s arising but don’t let it stop you from getting down that draft.

So our song’s called Iraq the place and now immediately, if your creative juices are flowing, you’ve got lines for your song as well ‘Don’t drive too fast towards a checkpoint/Don’t fire your guns in the air’. The lines carry the same rhythm and emphasis. The only thing is, that these lyrics are “instructions” to locals. Occupying troops aren’t the ones doing this, they’re the ones shooting Iraqis who do.
But the title suggests both a travelogue or mapping and the mimetic ‘I rock the place’. My cultural studies training kicks in and I can recall the lecturer recounting how it was interlopers who sat up on sacred mounds that locals merely walk past pursuing their trades. Clearly you could make a meal of mashing these two narrative constructs together but not by failing to mark when a different character is talking.

The lines carry more meaning than the title or theme. If they contradict either then they will compel the recipient to choose sides. Are we talking about rocking the place or being in the place like a rock? The threat imposed from outside is what these lines convey and any theme or title has to fit that.