Today's special Songday uses a Beatles title ("All Together Now"--they were on the studio on 5/12/1967 in the Yellow Submarine sessions) and old song of mine from 5/1992 ("Fly High Veronica"), where I'm using the same chord changes, then using it for a Mother's Day greeting. The original song was about a first date between people with nothing in common. But the alternate story is that they eventually got married and had kids. They might still have nothing in common. https://musescore.com/user/30768085/scores/16709839/s/xBG5nr?share=copy_link
Some of the original lyric: A man in search of love A woman in search of same They meet at the corner cafe To drink espresso and cafe latte She's a cultured artist He's in a labor trade They sit at their table And never have a word to say Her life's a watercolor In his football field of dreams He talks of scores and players She doesn't even know the teams
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A diary entry in the future, from Reset 2046:
5/11/2078, Brooklyn (Anthony Townes Diary) For the past month the city has been preparing for the total solar eclipse. Throngs of people are heading to the coast for the event, with the total eclipse occurring mid-afternoon. It is an almost perfectly clear day with just a few puffy clouds. The light is already dimming, with maximum in another hour. [There is in fact going to be a total eclipse in New York in May 2078.] 5/10/2022
Lyrics to pop songs seldom mean anything—at least at the point they are written. But they usually gather meaning over time. For example if you just search the phrase, you will get the literal meaning. If you reverse-engineer them, it's the typical hook. The idea must have been the title because it's in the hook, then beyond the first stanza, the rest is love song filler: Hey, girl, stop what you're doin', Hey, girl, you'll drive me to ruin, I don't know what it is I like about you, but I like it a lot... [This is essentially what I'm doing with Songdays, where I cherry-pick words and phrases and then assemble them in such a way that meaning becomes a by-product. In pop music, no one is thinking that every song is a story, and words are sometimes just a form of percussion or are otherwise filling a vocal space with something] 5/10 "lyrics": Ava, Ava Seemed too human Barely born Then deified Or rather climate change and changing patterns. In contrast, this year has been a veritable rain forest. It is rare to have droughts in Chicago in May.
5/9/2005 This is the first spring I've ever experienced in Chicago where it hasn't rained. Climate change? 5/8/2005, Sunday
News has become more and more idiotic. Once you have decided what's important to know, news generally becomes less important to day-to-day functioning. A wacky song potentially. Times were wacky back then and they still are, but cranked to 11--and there are things that are in fact more important than they were in 2005. Today's abstraction is from Eno's 5/7/1995 entry: Split Music. I don't know how to develop such a simple idea. He mentioned "rare chord changes". Using "split" and "vertical" as metaphors might be interesting.
"New piece of music in morning...with rare chord changes. How difficult or discouraged are changes when working with sequencers! The effect of computer sequencing is to split music into vertical blocks with sheer edges." Today's is partially written by ChatGPT in an attempt to create a character and narrative. As always, I grab the first line and rhythm and go with it, i.e. "Got a letter from Sally". I made a note about the girl in the Jarmusch film. I'll have to re-watch it. I'm hearing the "swamp" groove cliche (think Credence CR Run Through the Jungle.
Got a letter from Sally Ghost Dog Life of the Samurai What role did the girl have In the Jim Jarmusch film? 5/6/1886 (ChatGPT Diary) Learned about the terrible events that have been unfolding in Chicago. Haymarket Riot/Labor strikes turned violent and police firing at workers. I cannot help but reflect on the state of our country. I hope that we can find a way to resolve these conflicts peacefully, and that we can move forward as a nation with compassion and understanding. Received a letter from my friend Sally who recently moved to California. It was lovely to hear about her new life on the West Coast. 5/6/2000, Saturday Summery, 85 degrees Out to see film: Ghost Dog Life of the Samurai—a Jim Jarmusch film. I like the ambiguous elements and characters. What role did the girl have? As the books move into their second and third editions, I'm continuing to add images and diary excerpts into the accompanying blog. The print editions have some of the images, but they are black and white and are all quite small. (Similarly with all other graphics, such as musical notation). The blog is also better for entries that have audio links in them. The plan is to discontinue all the ebooks. Ebooks have lots of formatting issues--much more than print (ironically). I may in the future convert the print editions to ebooks (or EPUB).
Here are the May blog entries, some of which have excerpts from the diaries. https://insumseries.blogspot.com/search/label/May |
AuthorLee Barry, Musician/Content Producer Archives
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