Noughties song

Posted on 13/01/2017 by admin

The end forecast did not occur so perhaps fate doesn’t like neat division imposed by humankind. As for rock, that swept into the twenty first century without a by your leave. It may have had a few tumbles with hip hop and electronica and the like but, basically, this thing called rock continues to swagger.

If I Could Have Your Attention Please

The loud hailer and the lead hallooo
don't have the halo the hullabaloo
Shout shit til you're in shot
strip and rip and stop the rot
Bellow for cert it's a yellow alert
Hate those darts then hit the dirt 
There's seekers on the speaker what sort sought
reader in the rider with the other rubbish bought
Wobble over Web Bing lead the other way
We giggle over Google Yahoos lead astray

Where once we'd scramble at every scream
now we shift we drift downstream
Certain they're sorting it selecting the dream

Whether megaphone or meagre phone
microphone Mike's not home 
Social Medea she sells shills 
empires still til empty tills
tell us what we need to, no
spell out details in the blow

The loud hailer leads the hellooooos
haloes dropped hullabaloo stopped
Share shit while it's still in shop
Swoop and whoop and swipe and wipe
Announce an ounce increase 
pounce and then release

Twentieth century foxing

Posted on 12/01/2017 by admin

There was a feeling in the nineties of drawing to a close and wondering what it would be like on the other side of the curtain so there is likely to be some of that doom-stalking, along with a continued desire to be cool or alternative or whatever is part of the impulse of noisy youth.

As the nineties don’t lend themselves to wordplay quite so much, I had to think a bit and was originally hovering around Pen ultimate as this was the last part of a remarkable century whatever was happening then. Then I thought that the twentieth century was so important for song that it would be acceptable to pan out and so the clear message that records from the time – paper ones – were old enough for foxing. And there’s the big movie studio and the Doors song.

That’s the title of the post. Here’s a stab at nineties rock

Recursive

I said the same thing in another way on a different day
I spoke at one stroke it was in the play
The dialogue that's been dialed from God
the need for a feed of usual expectation
Round about found out the poor relation
You repeated and then entreated 
a pitted pattern please be conceited
a jab or a swipe brings back the gripe
the scene on the screen where your memories wiped

We swore as once before relented repented as we reached shore
a mostly ghostly host who rang once more
we know the score
and what's in store

They had some headstrong hidden calling 
the dreams where it always seems 
the way you're falling
Inviting invasive invested information
on that very suggested situation
or to coin a phrase by coincidence
 join in praise of the first instance
of the well plowed field of endeavour
going back to whenever

A tease

Posted on 10/01/2017 by admin

Anyone who felt that the seventies was ‘the decade that style forgot’ had not made it to the eighties. The kind of hair bands around then left this critic cold for the most part but I appreciate it for what it was. There was a healthy underground and poppy electronica that wasn’t bad. Don’t forget the Police keeping on the beat and the rise of U2

Let’s see what we can make of eighties rock

Pheromones

A fair amount of pheromones is needed to proceed
A fair supply of X and Y of see and sigh
Switching signals hard to cum by chemical
trace from drawing lace adoring face

Sniffing out and stiffing doubt
a measure of pleasure 
is what it's about (there's a bit about)
a waste of taste if choice is chaste
arm in arm with the rest replaced

Recklessly reclined in revealing the line where the feeling is fine
from pheromones
for pheromones
Pheromones

A dose a deuce a dice with 
the devil may care that's in the air
too delicious to be suspicious
Too delighted to be afrighted
Walls and windows awash (pheromones)
suggestive and restive
freshly mown
Pheromones

Needs grown seeds sown
Pheromones
Pheromones

Savant ease

Posted on 07/01/2017 by admin

Seventies rock is much like the decade that went before it in that there were a number of genres or subgenres, sometimes at complete loggerheads. While the revolution in the air may have been blown away like smoke and fashion stacked itself to giddier heights with no regard for the original spirit that informed it – yes, just like grunge in the nineties – there is no doubt that each facet was either informed or repelled into creating something else.

So before you put on those flares and beetlecrushers, not to mention the skivvies or nylon shirts, let’s see what comes out of this happenin’ time

Some Day My Prints Will Come

This pun was spun some time ago
By someone whom I hardly know
It speaks of modest measurement of those dimensions
 the number three was never mentioned

Now though we are making as if from Adam's clay
the essence of your presence without the decay
Substance sublet to some subordinates
at the core of these coordinates

Plans and panels rendered oblique
the universe ere light so to speak
A rendering of a recent rendezvous
The model my dear for me and you

Six teas

Posted on 17/12/2016 by admin

I don’t know about the people of my parents’ generation, now in their eighties, but I can’t sympathetically go back earlier than as a child mis-singing “Hey Buffalo Bill, what did you kill”. I doubt I’d have heard of bungalows at that stage but news of Mister Cody had traveled far.

In discussion on communication of any kind, we should never forget there was a time when radio, television and newspapers were mediated and parents and their circle of friends and associates were of a mind to impart some things more than others. Yet still we had this treasure trove of lore.

This applies as much to the song lyric as any other mode of communication; whether you subscribe to the opinion that the true intent or feeling doesn’t become apparent until you hear it sung or you think that songpoetry will be apparent on the page. If the latter, there is still the more easily parodied second stringers who tried their hardest with a seemingly cosmic sweep but end saying little.

This is common to every era, just as there is fine music being created and performed. It’s useful to those interested in the craft, as another string in their bow. I remember reading this in a totally unrelated paper on writing (as opposed to writing on paper),

Now I say this as a person who has had a man crush on The Stranglers and adored The Fall and worshipped Elvis Costello. Someone who enjoys the heck out of Ray Davies without writing like him. And of course likes and appreciates the differences in all the great and successful songwriters such as Paul Simon (I know, it’s slim picking for Aryans) and so on and so on and doobie doobie doobie

My Olympus is populated by such legendary writers and performers as Willie Dixon. Both Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits. I like The Doors so much more than I should. And regardless of all this, the passing of one true master of the song lyric as art, as poetry, is monumental to me as someone working in that field (or even if I’d only ever listened while writing assignments or during my break). And twilight recognition to a writer who, at his best, was both universal and transmuted. Even if he couldn’t sing. A couple of people have come out and said that it should have been Cohen, not Dylan, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Was Dylan the sympathetic favourite because he’d had the bigger impact, or because of Blonde on Blonde and Highway 61 Revisited? For me, I saw them both live in thoroughly enjoyable concerts and my record collection is bristling, even our bookshelves have the stray work.

Despite all this, I don’t take my main cues from either, other than to give service to the power of the words to project or convey meaning once they are assembled (and this applies to knights in white satin and climbing the stairway to heaven as it does to more or less esoteric work).

Start to Rock

Posted on 03/12/2016 by admin

First: a disclaimer. I tried to figure out how to migrate From the Sound of It to my other website, Wellwrought, but can’t do it so I’m back here.

Why I ever thought it would be good to have a Belay Bob hosting a lyricist blog is anyone’s guess. Now that that’s out of the way..

The antecedents of rock are principally in the fifties: rock’n’roll, rockabilly, rhythm’n’blues but generic rock begins in the fabled 1960’s

Sure, you can point out all the pop and country and big bands with crooners but the foment of the sixties encapsulates much of what we take from the music. This is not to pretend that there is a sixties rock that can represent all the subgenres that began then: heavy metal, hard rock, acid rock

More tally

This year death has barely drawn a breath
Hardly idle with our idols 
Quakes and shakes soon am I tidal
 measured end and mass incendiary

This time of engaging in gauging crime
from somewhere subhuman to somehow sublime
The devil his due
divulge and you die

Plan it and see if it's spinning through space
the grounds may confound but you still found the place
with pursed lips and pursestrings
groundbreaking discovery

You might think this a trifling peculiar considering how much I have let go through the net in terms of ‘authenticity’ but I’m going to say the above does not meet our criterion; it’s not sixties rock, it’s a poem. There were plenty of poems being written then, some even being performed on stage to muted background music, but we are attempting to encapsulate everything from the bikers to the mods, a stray Ted. We want to keep the hippies happy, prop and prepare protester fare, drag haut cauture and drug culture into the innocent mix

So if we can’t write our song that is secretly about two thousand and sixteen and pass it off as sixties, what next? Besides actually grabbing icons and images from the era and bunging them in and then, when questioned, claim that this represents the chaos and confusion, brother.

The solution is to not indulge in caged metaphor and describe some real incident or place or person, no small irony in doing that considering how much the sixties was hellbent on breaking tradition.

You Could Have Told Me

You're the consequence of all my recompense
You're patchouli flavoured and Heaven sense
The way I had things planned
 I'd only take your hand
For one more whirl of boy meets girl
You could have told me
How I'd fall for you How I'd call to you
You could have told me
Now I see it's true I need to be with you

You're the destiny and distilled desire
Mirrored in the mire pirrhouetting to the pyre
The things I cherished then
I declared perish them
Since this better plan a woman and a man

(C)
You're the circumstance of when I circled chance
I'll never leave for love or roam for romance
I was sure of something else
Why, while I keep this to myself

Youse

Link

I am writing this only now as it takes a while to go through those different stages following the death of a friend. Andrew was not only my friend, he was a housemate, a gig buddy, a creative partner, a great musician, more learned than others in our group often. I remember the scolding I got when I carelessly mixed up Aztecs and Incas.

We wrote Paper Chase, Cut Out and Keep, and Just Like Daddy together and we co-wrote with other friends: Berko’s Blues with Steve and Face the Music with Nathan Brand.

I owe him a magical youth whereby any wild idea could be realised as we charged and barged around the inner city. Over the decades I let him down once that I know of but I also remember vividly a reasonably recent gig that we both absolutely loved. So there’ll always be that.

Rewind

Posted on 03/11/2016 by admin

Some songs are complete at first draft, some songscraps (especially, for me, in the past) and nothing more, and some go through several drafts and/or versions. Artists have been known to revisit earlier takes as the mood takes them.

There are a couple more thoughts I had on our last effort so let’s look at that False Alarm again:

False Alarm

The sirens resemble the things we love best
assayed and assiduous as we can attest
Deploy the lever on the Great Deceiver
had it up to here with fate believers

This wasn’t even the original edit which I did up top. The principle though, of letting that last line scan more, was there.

Truthfully, if audience and listener have not been introduced to another line you could make it ‘had it up to here with late believers’ and they would extract a meaning from that, or at least find it doesn’t jar their experience of listening to the song.

I’m using the They equivalent of the Royal We here as many musicians are listeners and writers are readers and I’m happy to be in that throng. I can’t speculate whether other lyricists and songwriters are more precious about retaining their first meaning or slant but, as long as I’ve kept a copy of earlier drafts, I’m quite ready to ditch an idea or switch perception.

You know, I couldn’t recall that earlier idea for line four but I do believe it was ‘had it up to here with fake believers’. I wasn’t thinking of the rhyme with Great Deceiver but the variations of ‘false’ which is why I didn’t glom when writing ‘fate‘ if not tempting it.

On another tangent, the original conception of the sirens can be realised as

False Alarm

The sirens are sorry they sought your assistance
lighting the path to least resistance

Pause

Posted on 13/06/2016 by admin

I suppose you could argue that, having had a flick at filk and fiddling with the form, I should complete the folk coverage by charging off to techno-folk and folktronica, but – again, with the kind of disclosure that may only be necessary when describing the relating of ideas or events – I think it’s important that a lyricist knows their limitations and is able to recognise when genres are blind corners. Blind corners are not useful when explored in a songwriting blog.

Besides, I think we have enough data on folk songs to be going on with.

The monster in the wings when it comes to genre is rock and that has so many roots and branches that a writer could get up in any one their whole life. Many do.

I want to take a break from genre (and, yes, being anal and completist I did once write a song about Genre Considerations)

Let’s talk a little bit about the inspirations as I believe these are key to committed lyric writing. If you are receptive to whatever comes down the pike then you aren’t held back. Recently I got ‘for those who built houses too close to the ocean/whose pools and pagodas cluster the coast[whose pools in rubble that clutters the coast]’ but that might be insensitive.

The other approach, as we’ve detailed, is to go to the title and the kernel of the idea it contains and work from that. I’d probably use this approach more than working out from lines or couplets but I couldn’t swear to that. You don’t normally stop the flow of what you’re writing to question how it’s being constructed.

The frustrating thing with writing from the potent title is when the original thought or idea is diluted, misdirected or forgotten altogether. This happens. I idly mused on False Alarm (not entirely convinced I haven’t used that one before) and this sublime line about the sirens. Now I’ve got a snippet that’s similar ‘The sirens are sorry they sought your assistance’ In fact, hallelujah, that could be it; it was something about the sirens being sorry

False Alarm

The sirens resemble the things we love best
assayed and assiduous as we can attest
Deploy the lever on the Great Deceiver
had it up to here with believers

Bells still tell their role to toll
at time defined and in control
So bray and say you'll stay alert
at minor cant and manner curt

Signals single out the code
method in mad nest the motherlode
used to live just up the road

Pious peer at us as though possessed
if we'd rather be blissed than blessed
by luck or pluck arm in arm with charm
Treat the whole thing as a false alarm
The noise knows the news so
roll forward rock to and fro

Blare and blaze and make a racket
when you find what's in the packet
The sirens sound for the final test
importing importance until they're impressed

Sung poetry

Posted on 24/04/2016 by admin

By now you may be seeing a pattern which suggests, quite unconsciously, that songs are written to a certain requirement. According to the instruments used, the versatility of the musicians, the kind of crowd. Fidelity to a subgenre that was possibly suggested by an overheated hack in the first place, is not something to which one should adhere with any rigidity. Not if you want to be prolific.

My beginnings are in word scraps and then poetry so I absolutely identify with this. The idea of some scant accompaniment to a particulary poignant piece is something I see as desirable, all the while conscious that the audience may see it differently.

I suppose this is why, as a lyricist, I alternate between modes; sometimes more song-driven, at other times, employing the pliability of verse. There’s a certain luxury with not having to be the one to figure out how the piano or guitar can be best employed.

And my heroes are all songpoets though I do admire Iggy’s physicality and Jim Morrison’s deep Dyonisian delivery

Anything can be made into poetry. Which is not the same as saying that anything is poetry. Some things – many things – are too prosaic to make the cut.

Tore Out the Last Page

Trapped in tit for tat and a tat for your tit  
You've ruled in the margin but don't get this bit
As the scene unravels and flags unfurl
and we're back at the beginning of boy meets girl
Dog-eared digressions keep us amused
when the templates for confession have all been used
If you think me foreword I'll append I seize
at the shelf by themself and down on one knee

Indexed a digital dialect
jack in to direct
where once circling the circumspect
no paper caper to correct

A clot in the plot and a a thinning theme
Deus ex machina well we can dream
Characters careening corrupting their leaning

The author affirms the studied bookworms
Ideas and how they carry germs
Fixing the foxing faxing a copy 
Forming our own conclusions