Song writing & drugs?

[rockinrobby]

do they go together like love and marriage? p.s., alcohol is a drug, nicotine is a drug... I think they're like peas and carrots personally.

[samtrips]

I can eat a roast chicken without peas and carrots.

 

I can write a song without drugs.

 

But I like my caffeine, nicotine and a little bit of weed, and each can be useful.

 

Drugs may make you feel like you are capable of expanding your horizons, but they also tend to make me mainly incapable of concentrating.

 

I did write one of my favourite songs on a particularly strong acid and ecstasy kick at Glastonbury Festival about four or five years ago. Well, I wrote the music at least - I was too gone to sing. I finished the lyrics somewhere between that field and home and it was a keeper. Often all I end up with is a mantra type thing on one or two chords - but this one had weird chords I don't even know the name of, and quite a few of them too.

[Cliftonb]

Songwriting and drugs go together like ancient Sumerian dentistry and Kung-fu.

[SomeoneYouKnew]

do they go together like love and marriage?

They go together better than drugs and operating heavy machinery. But if you feel the need to get to altered states to enhance your creativity, you might want to re-evaluate your process.

[rockinrobby]

Really? :-) Check out my stuff? It's pretty damn good!

[rockinrobby]

There was a vicious "rumor" going around that I was addicted to coke? But it's not true? I just like the way it smells...

[blue2blue]

Stay in school. Stay away from dangerous drugs. Treat others as you would have them treat you. Keep your tires properly inflated.

[SomeoneYouKnew]

Really? :-) Check out my stuff? It's pretty damn good!

Really.

 

Are you high right now, or did you just not bother to read and understand what I said. Nothing in my post said it isn't possible to write something good in an altered state. There was a much more important message there.

 

Try reading it again. See if you can find it.

[blue2blue]

Robby's just a perennial jokester. Who knows how he got that way.

 

Don't take his board persiflage too seriously, 'cause I'm pretty sure he doesn't.

 

Robby is, to my way of thinking, that kid in the back of the room who is either gonna make you laugh or groan, usually one after the other, and often interchangeable, but for sure, he's probably not going to be quiet for long...

 

You need those guys.

 

[blue2blue]

I'll say this... drugs (including alcohol, of course) have certainly given me (and a lot of my friends) plenty to write about over the years. My guess is about 7% to 8% of my finished songs are about substance use/abuse or its aftermath. In fact, once you include aftermath... it's kind of a slippery slope... that probably ends up about 90%. (Can an alcoholic, recovering or otherwise, write about throwing away love without talking about alcohol?)

[LeonardScaper]

 

Stay in school. Stay away from dangerous drugs. Treat others as you would have them treat you. Keep your tires properly inflated.

 

 

.....and wear sunscreen.

 

I like to crack open a cold beer to really enjoy that post-creative afterglow myself.

[Lee Knight]

Well...

 

I'm no stranger to altering my consciousness. I still carry my old 90's MDA experiences in the back of my mind to pull out at will it seems. In the 80's I stood on stage in front of thousands of people out of my mind on coke and booze and played great. I learned to dig Iggy while on speed and the Ramones and the DKs while drinking 18 packs of Keystone and Schaeffer's. My best buddy wrote his best tune tripping on mushrooms. I wrote the coolest bass riff while stoned.

 

But my best stuff has been the result of sobriety. I don't say it cause it's convenient now to say it, I say it cause it's true. I functioned well in spite of the intoxicants.

 

Go and live your life. Build your arsenal of experience. Grab all the life you feel the need to grab. But be careful too.

 

I have many friends who are now dead because of drugs or booze. Others think they're writing good stuff and... they are not. They're just stoned or trashed or hung or gacked whatever.

 

Play... but play carefully.

[Marshal]

I thought songwriting WAS a drug ! ? ! ? Somehow being wrapped up in a new song project, and working through the birthing process is amazingly exciting and satisfying. Some highs and lows, not always happy. But very singular and absorbing in it's effect on me.

[Lee Knight]

I want to say more...

 

Booze and drugs just let me get past my walls. My fears. But I was too much of a {censored} to do that on my own. Not any more. My balls are large and I fear not.

 

Booze and drugs just made me think that... now it's true.

 

I've posted some pretty good stuff here if I do say so myself. But has anyone noticed how much bad stuff I post too? Cause I'm not afraid anymore. And not having fear of looking silly or hack has allowed me to get better faster.

 

What's the point of only showing your good stuff on a board like this? Or with a songwriting partner? Balls are important for getting better at your craft. Put you balls on the chopping block, get them chopped off, grow a bigger, better pair. And it hurts less and less each time

 

But on drugs you can't see that. You just think you're bitchen... then you never get any better. Just worse...

 

slip slip slip...

[SomeoneYouKnew]

 

persiflage

*runs for dictionary*

 

oic

 

 

 

 

 

Leonard, icwutudidthar.

[Lee Knight]

I think the word in Robbie's case is persnifflage

[blue2blue]

I had earlier written a serious post about the toll of drugs and alcohol on my friends and loved ones. Let's just put it this way: some of them are dead, way before their time.

 

They're not writing any songs.

 

 

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm no prohibitionist, much the contrary, I take a more pragmatic, quasi-libertarian approach -- since prohibition is probably the main thing propping up the illegal drug industry. And, of course, the drug police are typically the ones first corrupted in many places, a 'best of both worlds' for crooked officials who can take money to target the enemies of the drug lords who buy them off, ginning up arrests.

 

And I take a bigger view.

 

Most people seem to be able to do pretty well in an integration of moderate alcohol consumption -- but there are a sizable enough percentage of folks, like me, who will, given the right turn of events, slide into alcoholism sooner or later. Ditto, I think it's clear that most folks seem to suffer few if any ill effects of moderate marijuana use. Yet there are others who come to use that drug as a big, pillowy hiding place from the world. Other drugs are trickier. Psychedelics (LSD and psilocybin mushrooms) have been shown to have therapeutic and personal-insight-related benefits for some subjects, while others have had violently troubling experiences, endangered themselves or others, and sometimes injured themselves or others. Palliatives like the various opiate-derived drugs and analogs can help relieve real pain -- but they are also typically highly addictive. Amphetamines... well... I've yet to see the up-side; no pun intended. They seem particularly insidious. Ditto cocaine, powdered or crack. At first, the negative effects can seem relatively mild. (Or in the case of crack, the descent has often been so quick that the victim just didn't care.) But the go-fast drugs -- and I'll include street ecstasy in there for obvious reasons -- eat you out from the inside, particularly suppressing the victim's endorphin production, often causing a slow but steady downward spiral as the victim self-medicates, trying to mitigate the damage with more short term juicing of brain chemicals, but instead simply assuring more misery in the future.

 

Like I said, stay in school, stay away from dangerous drugs.

 

And the sunscreen thing's not a bad idea, either. The UV component of sunlight has greatly elevated as the atmosphere has been further damaged by hydrocarbon pollution.

[blue2blue]

I think the word in Robbie's case is per sniff lage

I know you're kidding... but it highlights the notion that it's possible -- even in the 3DW -- to misinterpret behaviors.

 

My favorite coffee house hired a gal a few years back who immediately impressed me as a huge speedfreak. She looked healthy enough, pretty skinny, but her skin was clear, her eyes looked healthy, she had all her teeth. But she acted like a whippet on... well... meth. I sounded out some of the other employees and they knew what I meant, but mostly said, I don't know, I think she's just like that. But I remained unconvinced for weeks or maybe months. But, as I got to know her, found out she was about to go into nursing school, talked with her about life, I got a much better picture. She freely admitted to occasionally drinking and having tried pot, but was adamant that she'd never taken speed: People always think that about me. I'm just hyper, really. Years later, watching her now as a young professional, I see that, yep, she is 'just like that.'

[LeonardScaper]

Leonard, icwutudidthar.

 

yupididdoit.

 

Great stuff, Lee. Well said.

[Speedoman]

Personally I can't function in any songwriting capacity while imbibing alcohol or other substances. But that doesn't preclude the notion that others don't perfrom better on drugs. My shining example is Aerosmith. Toys in the Attic - copious amounts of drugs. Permanent Vacation - squeaky clean sobriety. In that case, are drugs really a bad thing?

[blue2blue]

Well, don't forget, a lot of times when you see that arc (a putatively great album created while drugging followed down the long road by a possibly-less-than-brilliant album created while clean and sober or thereabouts) it is actually more a result of cumulative damage.

 

People have made some great albums under some heavy loads -- but day after day, month after month, year after year, the abuse can really wear the artist down or cut into his productivity or just mess up his life so good that he no longer has time or energy to do his best work, even after he stops using...

[Lee Knight]

 

Go read Clapton's bio...then Hendrix bio....then come back here something intelligent to add to the conversation...

 

 

 

Why? Does Clapton play OLP guitars or something? Hendrix too? Cool! Hey wait... isn't Hendrix dead?

 

 

Purple haze on my OLP!

Sling it low, hide my little weeny

I'm kinda dumb, and I don't know why

S'cuse me... while I go-read-those-biographies-so-I-can-sound-as-intelligent-as this guy

[rockinrobby]

Really. Are you high right now, or did you just not bother to read and understand what I said. Nothing in my post said it isn't possible to write something good in an altered state. There was a much more important message there. Try reading it again. See if you can find it.

 

Sorry, I was stoned

[YOUTUBE]uWiYphJUS7Q[/YOUTUBE]

[rockinrobby]

 

I'll say this... drugs (including alcohol, of course) have certainly given me (and a lot of my friends) plenty to write about over the years. My guess is about 7% to 8% of my finished songs are about substance use/abuse or its aftermath. In fact, once you include aftermath... it's kind of a slippery slope... that probably ends up about 90%. (Can an alcoholic, recovering or otherwise, write about throwing away love without talking about alcohol?)

 

 

I'm not an alcoholic? Alcoholics go to meetings...

[rockinrobby]

 

Go read Clapton's bio...then Hendrix bio....then come back here something intelligent to add to the conversation...

 

 

 

 

I read his bio, and this is all I have to say about that... [YOUTUBE]-ZQwnJTPh-M[/YOUTUBE]