Friday Influences Thread 12.04.09

[Stackabones]

What has influenced you as a songwriter in the past ... or since the last FIT?

 

*

 

I've been thinking about Song Titles That Don't Appear In The Song, and in the past I've wondered about songs that don't have a repeating chorus. Dylan's Positively 4th Street fits the bill nicely. The rhyme scheme is rather spread out: xxxa xxxa. I love the poppy, happy organ behind the invective, venom-laced lyrics. Never scorn a songwriter who writes songs with many verses.

 

[YOUTUBE]oSaxuKTN8xc[/YOUTUBE]

 

Apropos of invective, Tygers of Wrath: Poems of Hate, Anger, and Invective, edited by X.J. Kennedy, is an interesting poetry anthology. Anyone know of something similar but with songs?

[MDR]

I'm always intrigued by songs whose verses end on the V:)

[Chicken Monkey]

 

Never scorn a songwriter who writes songs with many verses.

 

 

I beg to differ. Just because Dylan does it doesn't mean everyone should do it. If you feel otherwise, perhaps you should head down to a local original music open mic in the next couple days.

 

I've been brushing up my campfire singalongs this week, and learned, among other tunes, "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac and "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart. "Landslide" has an unusual structure: Verse-Chorus-instrumental-Chorus-Verse, if you want to call it that. The "verses" are the same, just switching from first to third person. I'm addicted to traditional song structures, and this song has planted the seed for me to break from that when needed.

Similarly, I'd never really thought about "Maggie May" from a structural standpoint, but I guess I always thought the section that started, "All I needed was a friend to lend a guiding hand" was a bridge. It's just another verse, with a slight modification to the melody. So maybe I should take back what I said about writing too many verses--you should just be really good a maintaining interest in your verses if you're going to go that route.

[Stackabones]

I beg to differ. Just because Dylan does it doesn't mean everyone should do it.

 

Then WTF am I gonna do with my What Would Dylan Do rubber bracelet?!

 

 

 

 

[Lee Knight]

 

Apropos of invective, Tygers of Wrath: Poems of Hate, Anger, and Invective , edited by X.J. Kennedy, is an interesting poetry anthology. Anyone know of something similar but with songs?

 

 

This is one of the best things ever. It's punk. I love it even more that the Tortilla Soup over at Raul's. I love it more that the cop teliing McLovin "That's badASS!!!!"

 

I love it.

[Chicken Monkey]

For the record, I think it's a ABAB rhyme scheme:

 

You've got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend

You just want to be on the side that's winning

You've got a lot of nerve, to say you've got a helping hand to lend

When I was down, you just stood their grinning

 

Not that it matters. It's my favorite tune from the rock-era Dylan.

[rsadasiv]

My guitar lesson this week is on Autumn Leaves.

 

PPHtQn1t1n4

[Lee Knight]

My inspiration this week is a book I bought. Who recommended Micro Fiction? I forget who it was here. So I go looking for Micro Fiction and can't find it... out-of-stock-want-to-order-it?

 

No I don't! I'm jonesing. You don't order your fix.

 

Can you please direct me to the short stories section...

 

More Sudden Fiction! Who knew there were sub genres of the short story. Flash Fiction, Micro Fiction, Sudden Fiction and More Sudden Fiction. This isn't quite as good as the Tortilla Soup at Raul's but... it is badASS!

 

More Sudden Fiction are stories limited to 3 pages give or take. Just enough to get some characterization and a plot of sorts in place.

 

Like a mousy bank clerk who covets the "Red Fox Fur Coat" at the shop near work. She pays on installments as she waits for it to become her property she begins to transform into an animal. Not externally, but her senses? Her appetite for red, dripping meat. Without any PETA pretensions the story is what it is. Spoiler, she finally pays it off and take possession only to drive to the edge of town, jump out out her car, get on all fours and run into the woods.

 

3 pages. I'm hooked. Who wouldn't have wanted to write a song called Red Fox Fur Coat? Hey! That's Dylan-esque...

[Chicken Monkey]

Who recommended Micro Fiction? I forget who it was here.

 

3 pages. I'm hooked. Who wouldn't have wanted to write a song called Red Fox Fur Coat? Hey! That's Dylan-esque...

 

This is as close as I can think of:

 

[Stackabones]

For the record, I think it's a ABAB rhyme scheme: You've got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend You just want to be on the side that's winning You've got a lot of nerve, to say you've got a helping hand to lend When I was down, you just stood their grinning Not that it matters. It's my favorite tune from the rock-era Dylan.

 

I think you've got it right. I should've been using my ears and not my eyes. Check out how Dylan's website orders the stanzas.

 

You got a lotta nerve

To say you are my friend

When I was down

You just stood there grinning

 

You got a lotta nerve

To say you got a helping hand to lend

You just want to be on

The side that's winning

 

xaxb xaxb

 

Whatever it is, it's definitely a species of ballad measure. Most of those earlier Dylan songs retain a bit of the Guthrie and the folk ballad tradition -- any idea if P4thSt is based on anything?

[Stackabones]

 

 

 

I'd forgotten all about this -- heard a while ago and liked it. Is the rest of the CD any good?

[blue2blue]

Jazz meets avant-garde: Laws plays Stravinsky...

ZRm3CYq55OE

 

I loved this track when I was in my early 20s.

[Chicken Monkey]

 

I'd forgotten all about this -- heard a while ago and liked it. Is the rest of the CD any good?

 

 

I got it from the library a year or two ago, so it's been a while since I heard it. I remember hearing the most about the track I posted, and liking that one the least off the album. The backup singers (The Watson Twins, I presume) are freaky robotic harmony machines.

[Stackabones]

 

I got it from the library a year or two ago, so it's been a while since I heard it. I remember hearing the most about the track I posted, and liking that one the least off the album. The backup singers (The Watson Twins, I presume) are freaky robotic harmony machines.

 

 

I just put it in my library queue along with her new one, Acid Tongue.

[Chicken Monkey]

 

I just put it in my library queue along with her new one, Acid Tongue .

 

 

I just checked out Acid Tongue based on the title--I didn't realize it was the same person. Different sound, but very cool.

[eeglug]

 

I loved this track when I was in my early 20s.

 

 

This is the first time I've heard this. Very cool. Interesting how there is a clear dividing line where the composed section ends (roughly 2:44) and the improv begins. Were you familiar with the original Stravinsky when you first heard this?

[Lee Knight]

 

 

 

 

Well thank you Mr. Monkey for the recommendation of short-short stories. It is paying off handsomely in food for thought.

 

I forgot about that song. Rabbit Fur Coat. And then there's always...

 

Well, I see you got a new boyfriend

You know, I never seen him before

Well, I saw him makin' love to you

You forgot to close the garage door

You might think he loves you for your money

But I know what he really loves you for

It's your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat

[blue2blue]

 

This is the first time I've heard this. Very cool. Interesting how there is a clear dividing line where the composed section ends (roughly 2:44) and the improv begins. Were you familiar with the original Stravinsky when you first heard this?

Was there ever a kid who didn't love dinosaurs?

 

I fell in love with The Rite of Spring the second time I saw Disney's Fantasia.

 

The first time I was like 3-1/2 and basically liked the hippos in tutus and such. They had to peel me off the back of the theatre seat after the dinosaurs fought it out and then the ghosts started rising out of Bald Mountain. Disney almost killed me in my preschool years... Bambi's mom, dinosaur battles to the death, weird ghosts, and decidedly mushroomy psychedlic drunkery in Dumbo... I was barely recovered enough by the time I was 7 to man up and get to the end of Old Yeller -- a movie I will never watch again, I don't imagine. I can barely watch Lassie Come Home -- and it has a happy ending. I don't deal well with lonely, lost despairing animals. It kills me. I still haven't gotten over going to the animal shelter with my XGF back around '77 to look for her lost dog.

 

[she got him back, but later, through a classified ad seen by a lady who said it sounded like the dog two young enlisted Marine neighbors brought home a few weeks before. Since my XGF had seen these guys lurking around the then-remote park where she had let her dog off the leash, she figured it was probably them. She confronted them and the assholes had the gall to tell her they'd had her dog for years. But when the dog saw her, he went nuts. Still, she had to call the cops. The cops saw it was obviously her dog and ultimately threatened to arrest the Marines -- and they finally gave the dog up. Still makes me furious to think about it more than 30 years later. Uh... where was I? Oh yeah. Lost, scared, lonely animals. Can't go there.]

 

Anyhow, when I was a kid, I kept thinking the whole business was Night on Bald Mountain -- which my old man had on 78s. I must have listened to that multi-disk album 5 times straight through before I figured the Stravinsky music just wasn't in there.

 

Finally, in high school, I checked a dual piano ballet recital arrangement of Rite out of the library and almost immediately recognized it. Later I got the Von Karajan Berlin Phil recording which I felt rocked pretty damn hard. It may well have been seeing Rite in the liners that made me pick up my first Hubert Laws record... it's a little hazy and, sadly, both the latter two recordings got ripped off (along with my guitar and reel deck) one weekend while I was having a hell of a great time in Mexico (actually with the same XGF, only before she was my GF... long story). Kind of a comedown getting home and finding my kitchen door literally hanging from one hinge and my place looking like the classic mystery film tossed apartment.

[eeglug]

Anyhow, when I was a kid, I kept thinking the whole business was Night on Bald Mountain -- which my old man had on 78s. I must have listened to that multi-disk album 5 times straight through before I figured the Stravinsky music just wasn't in there. Finally, in high school, I checked a dual piano ballet recital arrangement of Rite out of the library and almost immediately recognized it. Later I got the Von Karajan Berlin Phil recording which I felt rocked pretty damn hard. It may well have been seeing Rite in the liners that made me pick up my first Hubert Laws record... it's a little hazy and, sadly, both the latter two recordings got ripped off (along with my guitar and reel deck) one weekend while I was having a hell of a great time in Mexico (actually with the same XGF, only before she was my GF... long story). Kind of a comedown getting home and finding my kitchen door literally hanging from one hinge and my place looking like the classic mystery film tossed apartment.

 

My day is never complete with out a b2b post with multiple digressions. You are the master!

 

I totally forgot about Fantasia. Growing up in Asia and then later in Canada some major western cultural mainstays escaped me in my childhood. I didn't actually see Fantasia until sometime in the late 80s. I imagine it had a tremendous impact back in its day but the dinosaur sequence didn't do much for me at the time. Other parts of the movie were terrific though. And that music is great. Nowadays as a former animation student and worker I appreciate all of that hand-drawn work.

 

I've read that the real paint-peeling version to get is conducted by Riccardo Muti. (I do need to find me more Mussorgsky to listen to as well.)

 

My intro to Le Sacre was through Star Wars, which I was a total nut for. Johnny Williams score was so full of Sacre-like gestures and was good prep for the real thing.

 

There was a riot at the Sacre du Printemps premiere and I've read different opinions on whether it was the music or the ballet that caused it.

[blue2blue]

 

Was there ever a kid who didn't love dinosaurs?

I mean... besides Og, Jr, who had to watch a Tyrannosaurus chase Og, Sr, up a tree and almost bite off a foot.

 

Context is everything.

[blue2blue]

My day is never complete with out a b2b post with multiple digressions. You are the master! I totally forgot about Fantasia. Growing up in Asia and then later in Canada some major western cultural mainstays escaped me in my childhood. I didn't actually see Fantasia until sometime in the late 80s. I imagine it had a tremendous impact back in its day but the dinosaur sequence didn't do much for me at the time. Other parts of the movie were terrific though. And that music is great. Nowadays as a former animation student and worker I appreciate all of that hand-drawn work. I've read that the real paint-peeling version to get is conducted by Riccardo Muti. (I do need to find me more Mussorgsky to listen to as well.) My intro to Le Sacre was through Star Wars, which I was a total nut for. Johnny Williams score was so full of Sacre-like gestures and was good prep for the real thing. There was a riot at the Sacre du Printemps premiere and I've read different opinions on whether it was the music or the ballet that caused it.

 

This is from Wikipedia:

The complex music and violent dance steps depicting fertility rites first drew catcalls and whistles from the crowd. At the start with the opening bassoon solo, the audience began to boo loudly due to the slight discord in the background notes behind the bassoon's opening melody. There were loud arguments in the audience between supporters and opponents of the work. These were soon followed by shouts and fistfights in the aisles. The unrest in the audience eventually degenerated into a riot. The Paris police arrived by intermission, but they restored only limited order. Chaos reigned for the remainder of the performance, and Stravinsky himself was so upset on account of its reception that he fled the theater in mid-scene, reportedly crying.[5] Fellow composer Camille Saint-Sa

[eeglug]

That's a great account. I guess it was both the music and the ballet. Love the Saint-Saens thing. Improper use of the bassoon - what's more rock'n'roll than that? I need to get that four hands piano version.

 

It's difficult to find specific classical performances on Rhapsody.