A Song A Day: #5

I got distracted by Bonnie Greer giving Nick Griffin a good drubbing on Question Time tonight, so didn't get round to writing the bulk of the song until almost midnight. I'd had a few ideas brewing since the afternoon, though. This morning I was thinking about the musical influences on the 4 songs I've written so far, and how there hadn't been any real correlation between the music I'd listened to that day and the song I ended up writing. Well, today I bucked that trend. I had Beirut's 'Gulag Orkestar' album on at lunchtime, and when I sat down at the piano I started fiddling with some gypsy-ish chords. More flamenco than Balkan, but still decidedly Beirut-ish.

I then went out for a couple of hours, and jotted down a few lyrics on the train. The music called for something wild and exotic, and I went for a description of a hellishly drunken evening in a dive bar. Admittedly, 'Everybody Makes Their Own Jam' was also about a boozy night, but THIS song would drink THAT one under the table. Whereas 'Jam' (as it's sure to be known among fans) was about bored kids in the British countryside, I wanted this to feel like a foreign country (the opening lines are "Smoke and gloom / Filling the darkened room", which wouldn't wash in post-smoking ban Britain).

In contrast to the minor-modal verse I wrote quite a tuneful, but structurally awkward, chorus:

Take me away from this watering hole
This hanging and drawing and quartering hole
Won't someone help me to stand
Looks like I'm three sheets to the wind
And miles from land

The scansion makes sense with the music. Sort of. Note my use of "quartering" to rhyme with "watering", thumbing my nose at my American friend Rhymezone.com. The ye-olde / nautical imagery gave a slight sea shanty dimension, which I liked. I went with 'Miles From Land' as my title.

I bashed out verses 2 and 3 pretty quickly (in truth I wanted to get the thing finished): more stuff about reality slipping and oblivion drawing close. My structure for the verses (AAABCCCB) meant that I was having to dig deep into the rhyme box (as with 'Jam') - so in order to find a rhyme for "cab" and "tab" I put in a line about walking like a crab. In fact the line was originally about a hermit crab, but I realised hermit crabs don't walk side-to-side. In fact, as the clip below demonstrates, they don't walk much at all.

[I enjoy her repeated claims that the crabs are "walking around" despite the overwhelming visual evidence to the contrary. Though Sonny deserves a mention for his attempted jailbreak at 1:25.]

Enough about crabs. Not sure this one's a keeper, but with the addition of an accordion and the odd brass or string instrument it could be fun.

So, after 5 days, the tally stands at:

2 songs about getting pissed
2 songs about public transport
1 song about some bollocks with a ladder...