Here’s the last Talkin’ Headline of 2011. Did you listen to all 52 this year? How did they make you feel? I really hope this was the only place you got all your news.
I’m planning to keep going with the Talkin’ Headline Blues all throughout 2012. We’ll see if it grows and changes at all, I guess. Or if I get tired of doing them.
I’m still working on the final new song and 2010 re-record, so look for those probably tomorrow, or later this week.
Yes! Some really great headlines yesterday, although no a whole lot of good rhyming ones. I had to work at this one, but I think it turned out well. Made me giggle in a couple spots. Can you figure out which ones?
I’m doing the re-record first this week cause I didn’t quite get the new song done last night. I think I’ve got the music down, but the words just weren’t ready yet. So, you get this today.
Lately I’ve been thinking how these re-recorded songs are taking up a lot of time and maybe taking time away from writing new songs, but then I decided that they also help me to get to new places each week. I’m at least thinking of doing something different with an old song, so maybe some of that seeps into my head to do something different with a new song. In any case, at least it keeps me working.
So, for this one, today, I think it’s fairly different, not just from last year’s (go listen and compare!), but also from a lot of other tunes I’ve been writing and recording lately. The phrasing is different. The singing is a little different. It’s just different. Different for me anyway.
Let me know what you think….
So I had the idea for this new song on Tuesday last week. For one reason or another the old tune Goin’ Down to Cairo popped into my head while I was driving around in my car. Don’t know if you’ve ever heard that tune, check it out if you haven’t. This video is a pretty good approximation of how it’s always sung. You can also read about what that tune is all about over here, courtesy of the Old Town School of Folk Music. That’s where I first heard the song. People up there love it. Can’t get enough of it.
Anyway, I had that tune goin in my head and then I figured I hadn’t ever tried to write a song about the Arab Spring. Mainly, probably, because I don’t know a whole lot about it and because it ain’t really affecting me and my comfortable life. Other than for a week or so, a month or so ago, the news channels couldn’t get enough of it.
It’s pretty obvious, I think, how I went from a song about a town way down south at the tip of the bottom of Illinois to something about what’s going on over in the Middle East. And it was pretty easy, actually, to go from one to the other and back again. People in Illinois say “Kay-ro” and people in Egypt say “Ki-ro,” but they all want the same things when you get right down to it. Ain’t anything hard about that.
So that’s the song for today. Have a listen.
I wrote Fairway 12 back in May of 2008. Or, really, I reworked it from the original tune, Banks of the Ohio, which you can see here. Mine’s pretty much the same, except for the parts that I changed.
Anyway, I wrote this because two of my close, affectionate friends were about to get married. So this is from their perspective. They spent their wedding night at the Fairway 12 on June 7, 2008. Actually, most of the wedding guests stayed there. Only some of us made it home without developing a foot fungus.
They do have the “best dance floor around,” though.
That’s the song for today. It’s a funny song. And it’s a true song.
Music Vomit 