AM Earworm

Pink Elephants On Parade - Dumbo Soundtrack
Yesterday it was “I Wanna Be like You” from the Jungle Book Soundtrack. No surprise as I just bought that. But the apparent ongoing Disney fest? I dunno. Much as I hate Disney (and I really, really do) they had some great songwriters.

The Sherman brothers wrote a lot of that 60’s, 70’s Disney stuff and I just love the Shermans. Robert was sort of the 60’s placeholder between Spike Jones and Weird Al. Somehow we were exposed to him (I’m not clear who amongst my parents chose to bring home the LP) and I became enamored. Enough to have picked up one of those 5 disc Rhino Records collections a few years back when there was actual money in my life. I had to admit after a couple hours of it, that unless you’re 6 there is only so much song parody, room, in one’s head.

AM Earworm

Let's face it, I just adore musicals and show tunes. Especially when the song writing is so strong it could easily crossover into mainstream music and become a standard. Like “Somewhere” or “Some Enchanted Evening” or “The Street Where You Live” or “Stranger In Paradise”. I suppose even “76 Trombones” qualifies somewhere in there, although really you’re only likely to hear that as standard for high school marching bands.

But why this (one of my all time favourites) never caught on, I don’t know. I suppose because it has the word Frankenstein in it. Whereas “The Time Warp” really does stand alone and can be taken out of context more easily. But “Timewarp” is about a third of the way down the list of my favourite songs from the show.

There’s A Light (Over at The Frankenstein Place) - Richard O’Brien

In the velvet darkness
Of the blackest night
Burning bright, there's a guiding star
No matter what or who you are

There's a light
Over at the Frankenstein place
There's a light
Burning in the fireplace
There's a light, a light
In the darkness of everybody's life

The darkness must go
Down the river of night's dreaming
Flow Morpheus slow let the sun and light
Come streaming
Into my life, Into my life

There's a light
Over at the Frankenstein place
There's a light
Burning in the fireplace,
there's a light, a light
In the darkness of everybody's life

A couple days of earworm excellence

Yesterday and today I woke up with very distinct, instantaneous earworms. It’s making me wonder if I don’t provide my own soundtracks to my dreams and the earworms are part of it. That seems like it would be weird because I am not a big part of the movie culture that goes on in the western and parts of the eastern world. So I should have taught myself that every story needs a soundtrack? More likely it’s just an extension of the radio that plays unceasingly in my head when I’m awake. Probably earworms are just what's playing when I wake up and they’re so loud because the external world is so quiet.
Yesterday: Wall of Voodoo - Mexican Radio (which then turned into a very excellent 2 album review of Dark Continent and the first one which I can’t recall the name of. Perhaps it’s just called Wall of Voodoo? Some favourite songs being Lost Weekend, Me & My Dad, Hands Of Love, Animal Day and oh so many more).
Today: Elton John (& Bernie Taupin) - Mona Lisas & Mad hatters. I don’t care what anybody says, Elton John and Bernie Taupin were incredible pop song writers.

I love me some good pop song writers - Don Kirshner, Carole King, Boyce & Hart, Leiber & Stoller, Lamont Dozier and all the millions of others that have actually made the careers of so many canaries who where constitutionally incapable of marrying a sweet riff to a catchy hook but were cute and could be beaten into learning a dance routine.

"And everythings a dollar in this box"

“besides, I never talk to strangers anyway”
Tom Waits


When I was first starting to write songs I prayed that I could be like Tom Waits. Please tell me, if Leonard Cohen has a pulitzer, why doesn’t he? Recently I was making a Tom Waits collection for my friend/lawyer/employer Lizard Breath and I realized that between David Bowie and Tom Waits, just the 2 of them alone, have written probably 40% of all my favourite songs.
If I had to pick one song each, this year it would probably be “A Soldiers Things” by Tom Waits and “Eight Line Poem” by Bowie.

I used to wish that I could ever do anything remotely as genius as Tom. I was deep in the throes of “A Foreign Affair” and the “Tom Waits Anthology” at the time and “Burma Shave” and “Somewhere” were just slaying me. To this day his version of “Somewhere” will break me down on the spot, (I’m not much of a weeper, I’m more a leaker). For some reason, which is as muddled as any of those evocatized memory triggers we all have can be, it makes me think of the relationship I both had and didn’t have with my Mom as she was dying for 13 years. Tell me that wouldn’t kick anybody's ass.
Anyway, as I was wishing, praying and cogitating on just what made him so very exceptional, I began having great difficulty singing. In retrospect I know that the most likely reason is that I was working a phone job, as well as performing and rehearsing a lot without having had any formal training. I get this, but I find it really amusing looking back, that for all that wishing, what I ended up with was - singing like him. For two years I had chronic laryngitis. Luckily Evil Pete had been on the road for the Vertical Pillows and had learned a remedy for when the show just had to go on.

Here tis:
Separate an egg
feed the yolk to the cat or something
Stir the white and add a few drops of peppermint or wintergreen oil
Sip whenever necessary to vocalize clearly, it really works.

Here’s the drawback, as can be surmised, it tastes like holy hell. Also, I can assure you that throwing a little dark beer in only makes matters worse. For two years I had to steel myself to it on a regular basis. Gahhh. It also gives you the most peculiar peppermint burps. Of course nowadays most people are sensible enough to NOT EAT RAW EGGS on the advice of some TWIT on the inter web AREN'T THEY?

So there you have it, and I think its worth a dollar, my advice is to NEVER, EVER eat raw eggs except when you’re eating raw eggs.

On laziness and creativity

Yummy, porch sitting whilst a thunderstorm carouses. Here is why I wanted this laptop, so I could hang out on the porch in the all too brief summer of Michigan and play.
One of my most favoured and all too decadent activities is to lay on the couch out here, play solitaire or psuedo-intellectual blog lurker, and just lean over to flip the burgers.

So, I was reading someone's latest entry and they were questioning the ”how to” of song writing.
I thought that rather than respond in their comments thus taking up a ton of their personal space and time, that I would discourse here, as it was something I would’ve addressed eventually anyway.

It’s been really exciting to have found someone that I can write well with. It took a long time as I never thought to define what I was actually seeking when I first started out. I was then mostly, just viewing myself as a singer. I didn't actually believe I could be a "real" songwriter. It turns out that that was stupid, because I’m not that great of a singer, and have really only vastly improved over the last 5-6 years. In spite of having been born with a decent voice, singing, for me, has become a means to an end. The end being able to put my writing to music. Which, it seems, is one of the only ways to get heard if you are not fond of, or suited to, the new word salad, poetry slam type of performance art. I am vastly unsuited to that, by writing style, temperament and probably, sadly, age.

When I first started writing with “real musicians” I was overawed and naive about what a singer/lyricist means. I thus believed what people thrust upon me, that as the two former, in addition to being a female, I was on the bottom on the pyramid. The mere canary. Throw fat girl into that mix, and I emerged with a fairly serious inferiority complex. I think this is potentially why I sometimes preen just a tiny bit too much when I’m cranking out some decent stuff.

During my years with Skinflower I put out a few good songs, I did a lot of vocal arrangement. I wrote a few songs with a few other folks, writing to their music. Sometimes sizing something I had already written to fit. It seemed OK but it really wasn’t.
I realized later that I was constantly having to try to fit preconceptions of what was cool. And not surprisingly I couldn't seem to get the juices flowing at any constant rate for any length of time. I feel I was viewed in a patronizing, owner/ master fashion and was severely critiqued constantly.

I started writing with Oliver, everything was different. He handed me about 200 hundred songs and lyric ideas, then left it primarily up to me. So over the years I’ve been able to just listen to a bunch of different music he’s written and work on whichever tune grabs me at that very moment. Sometimes he’s been taken aback at my completely changing the idea and meaning of something. Sometimes we’ve had to argue for several days about whether he’s going to write me a hook or not. We’ve had creative differences, absolutely. The real difference though, has been that if there is an issue, it’s actually about what’s best for the song itself. Not whether the words are creepy and/or sarcastic enough for the misanthropic guitar player. Or whether the wannabe hipster gets it or not.

I also feel that maturity has really redefined what I think is important enough to write about. Not that we don’t write some goofy stuff. I’d just like to think that the humour is broader and more subtle. Now, since I've had the opportunity to find my very own voice, I can write fairly easily to other peoples music as well. I had also recently worked with another composer and we had written some positively stunning pieces. Unfortunately Junk reared its ugly head and he’s no longer in my life. Very sad, I hate that shit with a passion.

Which brings us to another facet of the creative process that I’ve been debating with some of my much younger musician friends recently. Drugs and creativity. My stance is that the whole “it’s a really necessary part”, is pure bunk, hogwash and myth. Probably perpetuated by Junkies and drunks who seem to love nothing more than taking people down with them.
My view is that time spent pursuing drugs is time lost to creativity, time spent attempting to reach “just the right buzz” is time that could be spent practicing scales while you wait for the muse to show up. I feel that the Kurt Cobains, Billie Holidays and such would have been able to bless our existence at least equally and probably far better without. I don’t believe drugs illuminated them, other than for an evanescent moment or two. And those few moments are swallowed whole by the years of misery.
And I say this from the perspective of someone who is pretty sure they know of what they speak.

Wow, sure like the feel of my favourite soapboxes, I might get mighty comfortable up there, I could probably just go right ahead and take a nap.