Like (seemingly) everyone else, when I heard that F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel "The Great Gatsby" was entering the public domain I set to work writing a musical adaptation. I haven't progressed very far (though a different Gatsby-inspired work *is* nearing completion), but I did write a couple of songs, including this one. My Gatsby musical is very meta: it isn't a straight adaptation, but rather tells the story of a group of people who are attempting to write a Gatsby musical. This song is sung by the two lead male characters who are vying to be Gatsby if they ever get to mount the show they're concocting. Musically, the song is inspired by many different composers -- many of which I can no longer recall -- but as I was recording it, I was reminded a little bit of Help!/Rubber Soul-era George Harrison, so I double-tracked the vocal in the bridge to sound more like The Beatles.
Trigger warning: suicide.
The more I read about Stephen Foster, the more I think that he killed himself. Foster was one of the most prolific popular composers of the 19th century and has remained popular well into our own era. Songs such as "Camptown Races," "Oh! Susanna," "Beautiful Dreamer" and many, many more are still standards. But Foster had a tough life. His marriage fell apart pretty quickly, and, while his songs were favorites of theater troupes and minstrel companies, he was not always well-paid for his efforts. (Any songwriter can relate to this last part.)
By the end of his life in 1864, Foster was living in the New England Hotel on the Bowery in New York City, estranged from his wife and having trouble writing another hit song. His official cause of death was an accident -- he allegedly fell and cut his neck in his hotel room. That is to say, he DID cut his neck in his hotel room, but it might have been intentional. It was a sad end to a dynamically creative life.
When he died, Foster had a note in his pocket (included in the video) that said nothing but "Dear friends and gentle hearts." Was it the beginning of a song or the beginning of a suicide note? We’ll never know. At first, I thought I would write a song with that title, but one of my all-time favorite Stephen Foster songs is "Hard Times Come Again No More." So, I took the piano phrasing from the chorus of that song and built this one around it. My "Hard Times" attempts to act a bit like a Cubist painting -- it is simultaneously told from Foster's own point of view and that of Jane, his estranged wife. It is also, at its core, more universally about being pummeled by grief.
Uh....enjoy?
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Week #50 means it must be February and we are counting down to the final song in this 53-week project.
This is a pretty straightforward blues number. I've had the line about making three left turns instead of a right in my head for years and I always knew I'd make a song out of it -- I just didn't realize it would come so close to the end of this venture.
The opening line is an homage to Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Matchbox," in which he sings that he's "sittin' here wonderin' will a matchbox hold my clothes." In an altered form, Matchbox became a hit first for Carl Perkins and then was recorded by the Beatles.
Week #36 in the "53 Songs" project is a re-recording of a song I wrote a couple of years ago. It received some airplay on Maui radio, but I never released it because I wasn't completely happy with the final mix and with my vocal performance. So, I took the opportunity to record new vocals and create a little video for it and I am pretty happy with the way it turned out. This is a song very much in the spirit of "My Hometown," and "My City of Ruins" by Bruce Springsteen, though I'm not sure it's set in New Jersey. I don't know where it's set, but it has a more midwestern vibe.
This week's song has a lot in common musically with last week's song ("Dorothy Kills Again") in part because they were written and recorded at the same time, and in part because I seem to be channeling my inner Brad Roberts a lot lately. (If you don't know who that is, he's the lead singer of Crash Test Dummies with an awesome bass voice. I can totally hear him singing either one of these songs.)
Anyway, the title refers to the following quote from "The Brothers Karamazov":
“The more stupid one is, the closer one is to reality. The more stupid one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence squirms and hides itself. Intelligence is unprincipled, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.”
Enjoy! Leave your feedback! And, most of all -- do share!
Song #32 in the "53 Weeks" project is a little wordplay about wordplay. I'm not entirely sure it makes sense -- and I realized that as I was writing it -- so I included a line about the meaning not always being "in the words you've read." That's one part cop out, one part truth. While it's true that words are just a vehicle for meaning -- not the meaning itself -- it also gets me off the hook of having to parse all my analogies. Is the person you love your palindrome if they can see you from multiple angles? Or are YOU the palindrome? Or is it just a fun way to use imagery in a song? You decide. Speaking of imagery, this video is my third in a trilogy of songs that use A.I.-generated images based on the styles of famous artists. This time, I chose a number of early-to-mid-20th century artists, like Agnes Martin, Jasper Johns, Mark Rothko, Alexander Calder, Roy Lichtenstein, etc., with a smattering of slightly later artists such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. As in the previous two videos ("Thanatopsis" [https://youtu.be/vwegr5uQfjM?si=t-jbyxnVDsjsOqBp] and "Walk On" [https://youtu.be/Q0RfUXRdHNA?si=2i9JSDjuoERsnmMO]) the results are mixed in terms of fidelity, but I think they fit the song.
There are quite a few program notes here for Week #11, so let's dive right in. I was having a wee bit of writer's block, so I decided to return to the same inspiration as my Week #2 song, "Read Lots Good Books," -- namely, the 1943 list of New Year's resolutions drafted by Woody Guthrie (https://www.businessinsider.com/woody-guthries-new-years-resolutions-2013-12). I asked the computer to pick a random number and it chose #17, "Don't Get Lonesome." As I wrote this song, I was thinking a lot not of Woody, but of one of his disciples, Bruce Springsteen, in particular his amazing 1982 album "Nebraska," which Springsteen recorded primarily on a 4-track recorder. Though my song is souped up with some strings and piano, I was aiming for a Nebreaska-esque vibe, both in the lyrics and final production. I certainly think I'm channeling Springsteen with my harmonica playing. (There's also so line about "turning all the girls' heads," which is a play on a line from "Glory Days," written around the same time but included on his "Born in the USA" LP.) The imagery in this video is entirely generated by A.I., specifically the DALL-E2 program. I simply entered the lyrics into the program -- one stanza at a time -- and let it decide what to do. I used about 60% of the images it generated. The one featured in the instrumental section is, I think, the computer's attempt at creating a motivational poster. Ha! Lastly: if you haven't had a chance to listen to songs #1-10 and give feedback, the survey remains open at https://s.surveyplanet.com/cp7ukspx
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