12-3-09 North South East West

This is another West inspired piece. It's a wordplay song - four word phrases all beginning with the letters 'N', 'S', 'E', and 'W' (as if you couldn't figure it out from listening to it once). Although it's very simple and repetitive, there's something really alluring about this particular stream of consciousness. Some of the phrases would make great lyrical subjects.

11-2-09 Halve It Your Way

Half of nothing is still nothing. Link.

10-2-09 Don't You Go Spreadin' Yer Pizen

Hey, there, o tens of readers. Sorry, I fell off the wagon for a bit. This whole getting-ready-to-be-a-dad thing takes up a fair amount of psychic energy. And the countdown continues...

Last year, I was part of a production at Intiman Theatre called Abe Lincoln In Illinois. I was onstage for most of the show, in my musician corner, and got to hear (and almost memorize) large sections of dialogue. One bit of dialogue that tickled me considerably was that of a country ruffian threatening a newcomer to their town for defaming President Andrew Jackson. This song goes out to Matt Shimkus (who's just become a dad himself). Link.

9-9-09 Let It All Begin

Some fun wordplay in this one. Setting up internal rhyming in a song is always fun and challenging, although the result (for me, at least) tends to sound somewhat awkward. link.

9-6-09 Mi Corazon Es En Fuego

For the record - I don't really speak Spanish. I know that's shocking to you all, but there it is. Link.

8-28-09 Malefic

I decided to try an experiment for the lyrics on this one. In order to utilize a more colorful lexical palette, every line of the song contains one word obtained by a random word generator. The results were interesting, if a little awkward at times.

8-22-09 It's Hard Being Perfect

This song sets the bar for perfection shockingly low.

8-13-09 Plum

This song was inspired by my honeymoon in Hawaii. One of my favorites.

8-12-09 Vituperation And Vitriol

Playing some catch-up tonight thanks to a couple crazy days and a summer cold...

The title came first with this song. I came across the word 'vituperation' in the Michael Chabon book I'd been reading. With his novels, I tend to look up a lot of words. It had occurred to me that my retention of these new words was next to nil unless I started using them. This was my attempt to retain that word. (I still needed to look it up just now to remember that it means 'bitter and abusive language'.)

Musically, it's a great little piece with weird chord changes and time hiccups, and it almost feels like it could be an interstitial track from The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. You know, if I sounded anything like Peter Gabriel.

8-8-09 Fruit Trees

A happy little piece of nonsense.

7-10-09 Ice Cream

Who doesn't love ice cream? Sarah and I just got some on the way home tonight. And although it's the right time of year for it, I can remember frigid and bleak January nights in Madison, trudging to the convenience store for Ben and Jerry's. Good times.

link.

5-2-09 Bblorted? Blorted B!

Okay, this one is so intentionally annoying it's almost funny. Almost. This was another Bananagrams-inspired song. When we get sick of playing it the regular way, we like to take a bunch of letters and make up new words. The fun is in defining the word. On this particular night, the word was Bblorted. The song quickly turned into a jingle for a product called Blorted B. "If you're feeling bblorted, why not try new Blorted B?" Of course, those lyrics aren't actually in the song. Wow, such a long explanation for such a ridiculous song. Link!

4-21-09 Grapefruit Watermelon Cucumber

Sorry, o tens of readers. I have fallen behind. The show I've referenced in several past songs, West, just opened last night, so I've been a bit crazed. So today, you get a triple dose of songs!

First, we have a frivolous, food-based word play song. Link

3-23-09 Careful With That Spanner, Eugene

Sometimes it's fun to just go with the first stream of consciousness lyrics that come in to your head. I think I was influenced by Paul Gude's lyric writing in this one (stay tuned later in the year for some of his lyrics set to music). Link!

1-27-09 Recipe For Disaster

This is a title that was bandied about as a good song to be written for the Half Brothers. I think Rick may have even taken a stab at it. In any case, there's some clever relationship/cooking analogies that are fun. If you like fun. (Does anyone remember fun?) Link!

It actually brings to mind a picture that Rick took while we were brainstorming the cover photo for the Half Brothers album.



I love the fact that the knife is in the photo. As if the maker of the sandwich is contemplating cutting the sandwich in half to make it easier to eat. Now that's what I call a RECIPE FOR oh forget it.

1-24-09 Sitting On The Edge Of The Quay

Did I mention that I hate writing lyrics? Okay, I don't hate it, but it's something that doesn't come to me as naturally as I'd like. Many times, it's helpful to have constraints to narrow down what to say. In the case of this song, the constraint was that the last word in each line had to come from the game of Scrabble that Sarah and I had played that night. 'Quay' and 'zombie' were the most interesting words we could muster. As much as I love zombies, I don't think I rose to meet the challenge in the most engaging way. It was just one of those days.

1-16-09 Pencil Parade-Dragon Display

A bit of Tropicalia-tinged nonsense featuring some off-the-top-of-my-head alliteration. "Watch out for the stupid things you say", indeed.



I do have to say that the fact that there is a photo online of an actual pencil parade fills me with boundless joy.

1-11-09 Catching Up With You

Hey, it's a song with a lot of gerunds! The three operative gerunds in this song are: catching, hanging, and waiting.