Jump to content

Dingoist

Members
  • Posts

    552
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Dingoist's Achievements

Newbie

Newbie (1/14)

3

Reputation

  1. I actually think that track of the Hand Jive is actually a better song than that Them Crooked Vultures tune.
  2. I think there's a big gap between self-indulgent word salad as lyrics and something like "Loser." And the Lorca take-off from Cohen? My gosh, I wish my tech writing teacher in college had been half that coherent and on point. I came into this thread approaching the OP's question "having to make sense" from a narrative perspective, which is not necessarily the case -- bringing of Beck, Cohen and Cobain was more of an example of lyrics not making sense from a narrative perspective seen in more popular or "hit" songs. There are so many ways for lyrics to make sense, even if it is in the evocation of mood via creative imagery (even if it just fun music without a deeper context). But often enough, just as in those that write in a more traditional narrative style there is the distinction of those that do it, and those that do it well. Now in Vienna, there's ten pretty women...
  3. Stuff doesn't have to make sense to be a hit. Loser by Beck was intentionally nonsensical. Some mentioned Cobain earlier... his lyric writing didn't make sense in any normal fashion. Leonard Cohen's "Take This Waltz" was actually a translation of a poem by Federico Garc
  4. When I was 5 my parents started putting me in piano lessons. Never really liked them but stuck with until I was 15, though the first song I ever wrote I would say I was able 7-8 years old, and it was a little ditty about me and my best friend called "Two of a kind" ... though it was never truly finished. A curse of sorts that haunts most of my writing to this day -- the inability to finish a tune to my satisfaction. When I was 15, I got a guitar, ditched piano lessons and had a few lessons and started playing self-taught for the most part. My first foray was into 12 bar blues, and making up blues songs on the fly about anything in the room -- it was a bit of a party gag. At the same time I was heavily into poetry and theatre -- and the guitar was always fun to bring to the after parties I continued poetry writing, became an assistant editor at a local poetry magazine, started free lancing entertainment, interview and satire pieces. Dropped out of school, starting doing layout/design and writing professionally -- and became an ad writer (it paid the bills, and I had one campaign I devised go national shortly after I left that gig). All the same time, I was playing guitar. I joined up in an acoustic duo called "The Smokey Robinson Sex Quintet", but we never ever played a gig. I started writing silly songs with titles like "Playing with ourselves", and "Meatballs and Gravy". But serious songs really eluded me at this point. I managed to finish one, that was months in the works, the night a good friend died. It was called "broken". I also wrote a tribute poem about the fellow, that got published in a newspaper (600,000 circulation), and was recently cited in someone's folklore thesis (that's how you know you are getting old ) I moved to playing/singing traditional folkie stuff, and eventually while nearly having a very nationally successful writing career (must say, I did sabotage myself when nearing the peak), I pretty much dropped it all and went back to school and finished off a degree in computers. Now, a few years later, house, marriage, 2 kids, corporate job, I'm back at it, though much more seriously now. Before I was young, stupid and had no grasp on how much potential I really had. Now, I'm not looking for the limelight, I'm not willing to sacrifice time with my family -- I want to write, play, sing and perhaps get the occasional gig at a local pub.
×
×
  • Create New...