This is a week of songs that I wrote with children in mind. Really, all my songs are written with children in mind. These are just a few of them, though.
I wrote “Shapes” last week at the dinner table during dinner-time. Dinner-time is a pretty good time to write a song and this one just came spilling on out. Until I ran out of shapes that I knew off the top of my head and to go searching for some more. There’s only so many verses you can write about a square. Unless you’re writing any kind of political protest song or something like that.
I tired to keep this song fairly complex because children really appreciate it when you give them complex things to puzzle over. That’s in contrast to adults who need simple things to muddle their brain. That’s why most of my other songs are really simple with repeating lines and such. “Shapes” is loaded to the brim with difficulty, though. I’m not even sure how to explain it. I bet I couldn’t even try.
This is a week where I post songs that I wrote from someone else’s perspective. Either because I wasn’t around to actually experience the event, or because someone else has a better view (as far as I know or think they do) of something that I just don’t get.
So here’s this song. It’s from someone else’s perspective. It ain’t my perspective. I don’t even know if it’s right. It’s just maybe what they’re thinking. Or what I think they’re thinking. Or hope they’re thinking.
It’s a pretty basic blues structure, expect that there’s a two-chord in there where the five-chord usually would be. I stole that from another song by someone else. But that’s okay cause everyone does that and there wasn’t any sign saying I shouldn’t. So I did.
Anyway, there’s the song for today. Tomorrow will be another one from another perspective.
This song I started a few months ago. I dug it out of an old notebook a couple months back when I was starting to put together my 2 CD albums that just came out. This song didn’t fit and it wasn’t finished and I didn’t really know what to do with it, so I put it in a stack of other unfinished, unstarted, unknown songs.
I brought it out tonight cause I didn’t have anything else. Obviously. That’s also why I’m posting it at 11:17pm and also don’t have any kind of theme set up for this week.
But oh well.
I added a couple verses and I edited some others from the original. I wrote the music tonight. It ain’t much, but at least it’s something. That counts.
Here’s a song I wrote Sunday night. I was just kinda working around on the guitar and a part came out and then some words just kinda happened. No long knock-down, drag-out with this one. I’m not sure what it’s about or why I wrote it, but here it is.
And I’m not really sure of a theme for this week. Maybe just “No Theme.” Songs that don’t mean anything, that I didn’t write about anything in particular. Usually, though, that kind of song is one that I listen to again after a couple weeks and it kinda knocks me over cause then I can see from the outside what the song’s really about (at least to me). I guess, right away, I’m too involved in getting it written, making sure all the words are there and all the parts fit, to make much sense of what it’s all about.
Not for every song, though. Some I know exactly what I’m setting out to do and why. Those are actually probably harder to write. Mainly because I’ve got a really great idea and if it doesn’t come together right away it’s a little discouraging. Like if I can’t find the right rhythm or the right chord order or mostly the right words to say what I know needs to be said.
But, anyway, that’s probably an explanation for another week. No Theme Week is about nothing and the road to nothing and the road away from nothing.
Here’s to nothing. I hope all your days of this week are filled with nothing but nothing.
This week’s songs will all be about subjects that I encountered when being entertained by mass media. So, songs I’ve written after reading newspaper articles, hearing radio stories, seeing art installations, feeling television pulses, inputing keyboard maneuvers.
This new song, today, is one I wrote after seeing the movie “McLintock!” starring John Wayne as some sort of cattle barren in the Old West. It was a really ridiculous movie. I saw it just this past Saturday night at about 1am after biking back from a Barehand Jugband show on North Hooker Street on Goose Island. I think the basic premise was something about how settlers were afraid to move into John Wayne’s community because there was a strong Native American presence. (Note, that in the movie the Native American’s were referred to as “savages” and portrayed by actors as drunk idiots.) John Wayne (McLintock) had no problems with the Indians, though, and even seemed to like them a little bit, or was maybe just amused by them.
Anyway, John Wayne was having trouble getting people into his new settlement, and then his estranged wife shows up with her full bouncing bosom and loud mouth, telling him that she wants to take their daughter with her someplace. (Note, that this is the first mention of any daughter.)
Then John Wayne punches out a guy that he’s hiring into his cattle company and so the guy becomes his good friend and let’s John Wayne taste his mother’s biscuits, which are the best biscuits John Wayne has ever had (although I thought they looked a little small). John Wayne then meets this guy’s mother, who turns out to be a complete knock-out-fully-loaded-babe. So John Wayne hires her as his new cook and makes his old Asian cook “retire.” (Note, that the Asian cook is played to be a crazy little man who speaks in broken English and is always angry about something, but who loves and respects his Big White Master, in this case, played by John Wayne.)
Then there’s a big fight scene in a mud pool.
And then I wrote this new song and went to bed.
I like the music for this song, the words may just be there as place-holders for some other song. Who knows.
Also, my two new albums, “It’s Chicago” and “Andrew Francis,” are due to arrive on Tuesday, August 10. I guess that’s when they “drop.” I’m not having any kind of big-time CD release show, but I am playing at Jerry’s in Wicker Park this coming Saturday (August 14) at 10pm. I’ll have the albums there for sale. I’ll also have them for sale this week at Gallery Cabaret during the open mike on Thursday. They’ll be available for a special discounted price. And, of course, they’ll be available for purchase through itunes and CDBaby.
Music Vomit 