Clunkers? What do you do with them?

We all write them...clunkers. Songs that are songs, but you know they are medeocre at best. I record them with just acosutic and vocals and then file them. What do you guys do with them?

I bury them in the middle of the second set.

Sometimes I feel like they're all clunkers

Me, too. I mean mine.

Use them for parts. If the idea is good, but I can't pull it off, I'll bring them to collaborations.

Sit on them for a while until I get around to either improving them or discarding them.

Or I use bits of them I like and get rid of the rest.

Or I turn them into joke songs, so bad they

I just move on.

Sometimes I'll rediscover one later on and decide it's not as bad or boring as I used to think, but I have a lot of songs which were (deservedly) disregarded and discarded over the years.

Sell 'em to Nashville.

Some clunkers can be salvaged, no? One or two great ideas from an overall lame song can help make another overall good song great or a great song that much greater.

Sometimes I honestly don't think I know the difference.

I've played so many shows where the song I thought was the absolute worst piece of {censored}e in my set was the biggest crowd pleaser. I clearly know nothing about human beings.

I try to take the mediocre songs as close to what I'd call completion as possible and then play them for at least one random bar crowd. If it tanks again, it gets the same treatment as the OP. Just acoustic and vocals and filed.

At my weekly open stage a veteran local writer/player took the stage and said, "Here are a couple of not-very-good songs. I've worked on them, and they're not getting any better, but they won't go away. So I'm gonna play them here. Maybe it'll be an exorcism of sorts."

I vehemently deny all responsibility. ("How'd my voice get on that? What's that file doing on my hard drive?" "I swear I don't even know how to finger that chord.")

Sell 'em to Nashville.

Don't start the compulsive fantasizers...

You took me seriously?

Don't start the compulsive fantasizers...

It's a been a couple of days since we've had a "How Do I Shop My Songs" thread. Fame and fortune are just a hook away. Man, that'd be a great title for a songwriting course offering a certificate or something.

Still....they haunt me.

I'll be finishing up a tune about love or some such high minded subject and getting ready for another when that tune I wrote in 1975 about my Volkswagen crashes the queue.

and this

Don't start the compulsive fantasizers...

_ _ _ _ _

I write songs as I record them, so they live forever in saved audio no matter how much they suck. I don't throw much away. I'm a song hoarder.

Collaboration's not a bad idea.

Compulsive Fantasizers..

Anything I don't like gets trashed. I wouldn't want anyone to find it after I croak. Makes me think of Beethoven's Gertrude Waltz. I bet he wished that one would have been trashed.

John:blah:

Sometimes you find something cool to do with them.

I keep them all in the toolbox, you never know what parts of it might have value later on.