Another

And another song! I'm churning them out!

We were set a brief in songwriting class to write a song with a refrain at the end of the verse using the theme and word 'corner'. I changed it a little. As I'd written a song last week I really didn't think I'd be able to come up with anything this week. But I had a bit of time off work and I used a chord sequence and melody that I already had and I came up with something that I'm really pleased with.

It's based on the fictional library in Richard Brautigan's The Abortion: An Historical Romance where people can bring books that they've written themselves and place them anywhere on the shelves.

The Public Library

"Imagine a room" he said
A library in his head
"Shelves full of stories that people will bring
With pages bound up there in paper and string"

His wishes came true that May
In bricks and plaster and clay
Paid for with charity, friendship and thrift
Built on the corner of Mission and Fifth

Some people came just to look
Or to bring their hopes in a book
Dreamers and authors were welcomed by him
Catalogued, stamped and their books held within

A novel called Victory
A six-year-old's poetry
Love Always Beautiful by Charlie Green
Placed on the corner of shelf forty-three

People and times grew hard
His library fell apart
Coffee shops sprang where the building once stood
Shelved and forgotten its doors closed for good

Now all of his books are boxed
Their words all tied-up and lost
Dust on their jackets and leaves turning brown
Scuffed on the corners and left facing down

Interference

For a while now I've wanted to write a song about some experiences that happened to me when I was having a really bad time a few years ago. When I was at my worst I seemed to affect electrical equipment. I completely wiped my hard drive. God-knows how. And another time a street light went off when I walked up to it. It turned on again when I'd walked past.

A couple of weeks ago I read that this is a phenomenon that has been recorded. It's called Street Lamp Interference (SLI) and a project has been set up to study it called the Street Lamp Interference Data Exchange. Reading a few stories of 'SLIders' helped me write my song. I know it's probably circumstantial nonsense but I still think it's a great subject for a song:

Dark Receiver

Street lamps see her coming
Fade away to nothing
Sets her compass spinning
With no other witnesses

She walks streets at midnight
Bathed in pools of black light
And when her thoughts surround her
Volts flow from her fingers

Dark receiver
Static showers
Down on her

She attracts repulsion
With her cold transmissions
Weak electrons scatter
Car horns whimper back to her

She rides faulty train lines
Switches off their stop signs
And when her thoughts surround her
Volts flow from her fingers

Dark receiver
Static showers
Down on her

City lights no longer
No lamps here to bother
She calls out for thunder
Fuses skin with undergrowth

She scares crows at midnight
Sparks from flower-flashlight
And when her thoughts surround her
Volts flow from her fauna

Dark receiver
Static showers
Down on her
On her
On her

Worthy

By my reckoning I've now got seven or eight album-worthy songs. That's quite impressive! Here's what I've got so far:

The Lepidopterist
Junior Architect
Grace is Just Her Middle Name
Indian Summer
Houses Don't Know Poetry
Poor Frederick Isaac Gold
Dark Receiver (more about this new song soon)
Down the Line (not sure about including this one yet)

Just a couple more and I've got an album!

Cock-ups

I did the Brunswick open mic night last night. I was a bit less nervous this time, probably because I was on first and there was hardly anyone there.

The first song I played I had the microphone angled too high and my lyrics were on the floor so I had to look up, sing, look down at the lyrics, look at what chord I was playing and then look up again to sing.

So for the next song I arranged my lyrics on a chair next to me and angled the microphone so I could look down at them. Half way through the song the microphone started to sag. I tried to lower my head closer to it but it carried on sagging. When that didn't work I tried singing louder. When that failed I stopped, apologised, adjusted the microphone, only for it to happen again ten seconds later. A girl in the audience jumped up and had a go with the microphone while I tried to carry on singing. She couldn't do it either. I joked to her "You'll have to stay there now". She did. She kindly held up the microphone until I'd finished. Why the sound man couldn't have helped I don't know! He eventually came and sorted the mic out and I did my last song without any major cock-ups.

Although it was all a bit shambolic, I did it quite calmly and I was able to pick the guitar without my hands turning to jelly. I'm starting to realise that performing live is a whole other ball game though and I need a lot more practice.

Listening to the other acts last night made me think about what I appreciate in music. There was a singer – very beautiful and with a fantastic voice – but I just thought: who cares? I'd much rather listen to someone interesting with something to say in their songs.

Hate

I've written another song. We were set a short project in our songwriting class to write a song about someone who is in the public eye who we either hate or admire. I had a few ideas as there are a number of people on the telly who I hate... usually without particular reason, I just don't like the way they talk. Miquita Oliver, for instance, has a half-stoned drawl and a jumped-up arrogance that makes me want to punch her face in.

A couple of days later I was watching Grand Designs and shouting at the telly as usual. It featured the most boring couple I've ever witnessed. They had bought a castle, added a lego brick house on the side and filled it with plastic chairs so that they could sit at home and watch DVDs. Jesus... is that really what we're all meant to be aspiring to?

But that wasn't what wound me up the most. In his summing up of the finished Ikea meets Lancelot building, Kevin McCloud said "This building has a poetry to it."

What the hell has some yuppy's house got to do with poetry?!

And so I had found the subject of my hate song. It's about poetry getting its own back on Kevin McCloud

Houses Don't Know Poetry

Poetry will kick down your door tonight
Mask you up and leave you stripped outside
Poetry will crash your 4x4
Wipe your face in mud and metaphor

And walls won't help you now
Your facias let you down
And foundations will flee
From the scene
Cause houses don't know poetry

Poetry is not at fashion's call
It's not an ornament shown off in halls
It's not a book of rules, but a ransome note
It picks you up and grabs you by the throat

And mauve won't help you now
Your palettes let you down
And colour swatches flee
From the scene
Cause houses don't know poetry

And houses
Don't know a thing about poetry
And real estate
Isn't as real as you think it to be
And houses
Don't know a thing about poetry
Oh no...