 12 january 2000 songwriting school ----- ------- ----- Twenty-seven new emails in my personal inbox tonight, and not one of them addressed personally to me ...
Where's the love?
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Some random mosquito's been feeding on me the past couple of nights. As a result, I'm itching everywhere from my knuckles to my knees, and the poor little mosquito is probably dying from liver disease.
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I was supposed to write a song tonight. Well, actually, I was supposed to write the song sometime in December. At our last gig, the band's Corporate Backing requested that I write more songs. They did so upon hearing me sing the one song I've written to date. And when I say "the one song I've written to date," I don't mean it's the one song I've written for this particular band. In truth, it's the only song I've _ever_ written. But the Corporate Backing seemed to like it, and the audience seemed to like it, and people think it might be a hit, so now they want more ... I wrote that tune in 1993. So now they want more ....
And I have no idea what to do. I've been stalling. A melody came to me a few weeks ago, and I played it for the band, and they liked it, but it's only a melody --- no words, no verse, no chorus, not even the beginning of a song. They've been bugging me to turn it into a song. My excuses for not doing so: the band was sick, I couldn't get into the studio, I need a midi set-up to write it, I can't compose on my stupid little 30-dollar casio piece-of-shit which is the only instrument in my apartment, I'm too busy with work ...
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Last night at rehearsal our next gig was announced. Satuday, February 5th at Luna Park in West Hollywood. They want my song ready. I repeated my excuses. In reply, Ice Dog gave me a plastic bag filled with marijuana and told me to get to work. I replied in the affirmative. I figured it was about time ...
So I have a melody. How do I turn it into a song? I feel like I wanna do something akin to those catchy 80s pop songs that got me into music in the first place ... a postmodern tribute to my youth, so to speak, something that gets people singing along like J Geils "Centerfold" or Hall+Oates "Kiss On My List," but at the same time I don't wanna cross the line into no-soul pop ... it's a difficult thing, and I'm thinking way too much about it, as opposed to just picking up the little casio piece-of-shit and doing it.
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I made the mistake of mentioning to Brutus that I had a bag of pot on me today, and he swiftly snagged me up to his canyon house for "dinner" and drinks after work. I kidded myself into thinking I'd get some songwriting done on his baby-grand piano, and instead we shot about twenty games of nine-ball on his pool table, getting progressively more stoned as the evening wore on. He fired up his new G4, and I started going through his MP3 collection, playing every 80s tune I could find for "songwriting inspiration" -- Duran Duran (Rio), A-Ha (Take on Me), Squeeze (Tempted), The Cure (In Between Days), Herbie Hancock (Rock-It), and of course, Culture Club (Karma Chameleon).
I never did make it to the piano, but I shot an ok game of pool.
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And now I'm home, slightly stoned, staring at my battery-operated casio piece-of-shit, model number sa-39, wondering if I'm capable of writing a song these days. Guess it's time to find out. At least I have a melody, right? And it goes something like this ...
Bah,ba,ba-ba,bah,ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, And that's in the key of A. Or something like that. Shit, I'd better get to work. |