songwriting

Lorelei from the Performing Songwriters United Worldwide group on facebook has posted a thread regardgin what songwriting means to the group and there are already very interesting responses coming back from everyone.

You can have a look at the thread here:

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=110532175707&topic=12599

THE TRUTH ABOUT really great SONGWRITING is that it HAS NOTHING TO DO
with industry, money, production, success, acceptance…

THE TRUTH ABOUT great SONGWRITING is that it HAS EVERYTHING to do with PEOPLE, and their stories, OUR STORIES, the past the present and the future. It’s about having something important to say about matters greater than oneself.  AND a song can be whatever you want it to be as long as you mean it; that way a song takes on an energy and a life of it’s own beyond the here and now.

It’s that simple. Like riding a bicycle.

2005

after spending time at the docks and at the historic pub in the valley:

” I asked Davey to come and cut my lawn, but he never blaady did it. It was 6 feet high – he said a chinaman used his lawnomower to hang himself between the boats…”

All the bars are drunk right dry
like Napoleon came here to die
with a sacred codex that ever ry body else..er seems. to… know
pour yaself another bourbon and wait until-a timeball comes down
old ghosts’ll dance the rattlebones in prsion cells across the town
beneath the chapels that falling down
we all fall down

But that was back in `69, when the Queen of Bath went down the sink
Mack says “yowa goddamned liar” and then storms outside to think
but back in the bar with a cluster of stars  he had stolen from the trinket sky
“Never turn your back on a drink” says Mack, but we all know that hes’s a lie

IN walks the local providore, who’s brought his cross to bear,
And drags behind a broken anchor; a sextant and a rusty square,
where rusty hulls of dying fleets are drowning in the Irish bar,
the guitar maker plays the barb wire whilst speaking to his guitar.

silent russian sailors are drinking poison in the seafront hotel
the flaking paint dolls head lampshades glimmer for a different clientele
gramaphonic histories from
broken trombones groan their mysteries
to the people that know me well

I didn’t see the time fall, didn’t hear the midshipman’s bell.

2006

Let not your heart
be so sad baby
jesus gonna meet me in the air

meet me in the air, air
you know my time is soon
meet me in the air
we’ll meet behind the moon

i been trying to reach you baby
in the mountains and the sky
in the distant echo of my memory
it’s no shame for you to cry

meet me in the air
you know my time int long
meet me in the air, maybe
soon I will be gone

upon the clouds, upon a white horse shining
steadfast, faithful and true
eyes aflame and with a head of many crowns
and with a name that no-one knew

met me in the air
you know my time is gone
meet me in the air air baby
you know my time is gone

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…stormy rough-hewn glory recorded in about 10 minutes using the inbuilt microphone on a laptop, a wineglass, drumstick, table leg and guitar… a missionary song  -

It was one friday morning three years ago
when he appeared the way a cigarette smokes
a name of warning, a lonely sermon about the war
with the truth
He said “theres only them and us, the good lord above
And now; just me and you”

Sho.. he was standing at the side of the road when I come around the curve standin there face and no face,
hangdog determined and calm too like he done desperated himself up for the last time.

[break - fall, break - fall, break - fall]
[for the last time, to take the last chance, for the last last time]

With Blood yellowed eyes and dirty nailed hands
We sealed with signs our terrible plans
Lord strike me down
You dance with the devil else you don’t dance at all
In Jackson town

[break - fall, break - fall, break - fall]
[for the last time, to take the last chance, for the last last time]

Fate and circumstance had brought us together
But memory believes before knowing remembers
I coulda bit my tongue in two when he shot her down
Love and hate is all we got, all we really need
And all we believe.

Take two stolen pistols down that dirty old road
Past a pillar of salt and a yella column of smoke
Hi Ho Silver lightning and away we go, Hi Ho, Hi Ho

A bloodless coward and a prodigal son
A one armed messenger with the rebels gun
Get outta here Judas, you’ll kill us all
(he shot me down)

So sing a song of six cents
And a pocket full of rye
Hoist me like a mainsail…HI HO HI HO HI HO
Swinging through the sky
Onward christian soldiers
Marching as to war
“I never meant to kill her”
Where the grapes of wrath are stored
Where the grapes of wrath are stored
(lord forgive me , please forgive me now)
Stamping out the glory
(lead us not into temptation)
Stamping out the glory
(And forgive us our sins)

Sho.. he was standing at the side of the road when I come around the curve standin there face and no face, hangdog determined and calm too like he done desperated himself up for the last time.

(c) jake edwards may 2008

…working fucking hard on sorting through demo tracks recorded hastily under pessure when I wa flying up to the studio alot. It’s time consuming and of course, as everybody knows the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune still fly, and smart so keenly.

Myself right now, well I moved back down south;canned my job – it was sucking the life out of me -  living in an old spare room, next to the washing machine and that’s thanks to the charity of the only real friend I have; with little beyond a bmx bike, some clothes, one laptop, recently collected second hand literature, two mint condition old blues LP`s (muddy waters & ???),  a painting, two vases I don’t need, one stratocaster and one beaten up hofner for slide playing, a collection of rocks, pauau, a dreamcatcher bricolage of  found objects, talismans, feathers, trinkets, rosaries, crosses from as far afield as Barcelona, London, and Waikakahi, Hawea…

One day hopefully I’ll eulogise nostalgically about the good old days when I had nothing…and the washing machine was god.

down at the studio november `08 I cut this guide on the plank:

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Desolation angels everywhere….I’m on the road, thank god for freedom; after the sting of disappointment and the hard earthquake work of a tectonic shift is gone comes the mellifluous colour-tones and taste of time, motion; mountain, river and ocean, vision and celebration, dedication and devotion.

Be the water – you cant stay in one place too long but unlike the million raindrops falling on the glass around you  – avoid the path of least resistance. Take the difficult road and be prepared to die for what you believe in…risk everything to complete your vision…just to write and breathe; songs, messages, art that eat worlds…

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

Rudyard’s IF represents more than adequately the struggle and difficulties of being an outsider, a traveller with no real destination, a tree broken off from its roots, driftwood amongst a million lonely stones, dispossessed, lacking in direction. Encapsulating a moment ‘beyond’ time and space in the mind of the lone individual, fraught with the vicissitudes, slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; in the eye of the storm & the heat of the battle silent volumes speak.

I woke up this morning and crudely, using a cassette recorder, quickly threw down the lyrical amendments I`d written to the world gone track asi t played in the background.. so that rehearsal can start across the water. the sun is shining. it`s rough but a good guide…burning hearts…golden hearts scattered, lonely in the road bleeding…what does it feel like really breathing?

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IF you want to select specific SONGS then use the menu to the right…or read on…

Well, its a dirty old world we live in and music is dirty business that`s for sure.  Is it possible to separate your art and your integrity, your ego and your conscience from the business of your product?

Sure. There`s no product without a business model or a channel behind it. Similarly there`s no revolution without subscribers to it`s system of belief or even it`s system of belief marketing. [click to continue...]

Use what you’ve got – if you’ve got a hook use your telephone, if you can get to a computer just video your performance. Move damn fast, get your idea down and review. Last night I improvised a song & threw it together -  move fast `cause the world is moving quicker than you are – also that way, you can dodge the bullets. Get the right tools for you. If you wanna write a song, write it , SO don`t write a song about the equipment, the set up, don`t let that get in your way. You can`t feel a mixing desk, you can`t emote a machine or elaborate a microphone set up – leave that for  Ron, later on.

When you have a song idea it`s best to get it down fast. The germ of an idea is all it takes and I `m not here to produce; simply to document in the roughest infancy the intimacy of the idea and capture the moment of inspiration rather than process it.

blood like cold needles that slide in my veins
you fell from heaven in the yellow rain
steal the flowers of the day
singing fragments of a tender song
black embers of a time now gone, burning embers
crosses and candlesticks, conquests and cathedrals now forgotten

little grey angels surround all your gallows
little grey angels surround all you girl
they all scatter just like shadows
they all shadows you cant hold on…to

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(c)jake edwards 2009

Thanks to Pete at Mojo Sound here in Wellington we`ve just picked up the Aston Martin of Martin guitars – a custom model Martin valued at around 8 thousand dollars. This particular Martin has an acoustic tone that is smooth, rich and highly natural; bright, lively and warm with an entirely even response across the strings. Its a breeze to play and when simply strumming an E chord resonates with rich, manuka, gently oscillating overtones.

[click to continue...]

What is it about old guitars, old planks, old timber, old gold even? Who knows? Analogue or digital? I`d definitely rather listen to an L.P. or even better still a 78 on my gramophone.

If you write from experience you will develop a sense of place, character, a message, tone, symbolism, imagery, and figurative language, metaphor and simile. Ignore everybody and never even consider any filthy dirty money. Remember though the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

Today I picked up the awesome Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee – Midnight Special album and the Muddy Waters` album I`m ready (produced by the mercurial Johnny Winter). Waters` style is particularly inspired in it`s use of Microtones. I also managed to find the 80`s Hendrix compilation Crash Landing which I hadn`t seen for twenty years or so. My old friends in the band the Beautiful People sampled alot of it on their release If 60`s were 90`s.

Well, it`s a very simple and easy methodology I use when it comes to songwriting. After 20 years of blistering licks, absorbing the music and magic of feedback, of tonal exploration, of distortion, of brainwashing with as many records as I could get my head around I found that alot of this “learning” would get in the way, that alot of equipment, amplifiers, effects, preconceived notions, riffs, hooks, rhythms and ideas just don`t even help with writing a song. It`s like writing, you can pin it down to a set of motifs, a set of ideas, devices and techniques…but these alone do not a great piece of work create. You need genuine experience. Remove from view all the pillars in your sight. I find the hardest guitars to play, and don`t mess about with any kind of notions of playing finesse as you can see in the video on my other posts. Writing a song aint about playing the guitar.

I`ve been carrying these songs around for about 3 years; one of them for at least ten…the ideas within them are obviously a lifetimes work. I started discussing songwriting previously on this blog and I`ve already suggested there is no “one way”, no method, no guide… Being patient also helped. Initially I kept the songs on paper, working on them every day, for about a year; then I recorded them into a camera as a video and extracted the audio. Just to get them down. I kept working on them. Another year passed and I played one to a producer. A year after that he invited me to record them. I didn`t really set out to make any of these things happen. Muga mushin. I’ve been collecting ides on paper all my life. Boxes of it. BY the time my life is over I`ll have used it all. Today a lonely drifter I befreinded beneath abridge told me a story that would put the Da Vinci Code to Shame…..tomorrow I seek him out and write it all down….

…there is no substitute for pen and paper IN ANYTHING, FOR ANYTHING…..

…to design anything start on paper, to design a song – start with pen and paper, and, take to it your experience.

I once met a girl in a Sauna, told her I was a musician, she invited me back to her place; besotted with fame, glory, cinema and singing. She played her music, it was all wrong, she couldn`t sing, the lyrics were meaningless. She read some of her screenplay – it was plotless, unfinished rubbish and she couldn`t tell me what it was actually about. She popped some pills and told me she was an actress destined for great things. Apart from being on the unwholesome and anorexic side of thin she was also mildly delusional. Her imaginary world existed quite wholly and was manifested through her sacred laptop. It would deliver her into the welcoming arms of global success and wealth; her screenplay was going straight to Scorcese or Jackson or some other cinematic mogul. She was going to ring them up and email it through. No sweat, it was going to be that easy for her. I slyly asked if she had Bob Dylan`s number `cause I  just wanted a quick chat.

I met her again six months later in a different city and her laptop had been stolen, and now she couldn`t write. I laughed, sardonically, I laughed out loud, said she oughta use a pen, it would help her, the theft was a gift in disguise. A chance to write properly, a chance to become productive, a chance to lose that fucking laptop reliant cant face reality mindset. Its very easy to think you are working when you aren`t, being productive when really you aren`t. The mind has a great way of tricking itself, like an ear will always try to hear in tune or in time, to make sense from disparate, dissonant elements. She said,

“What the f@#k do you know you`re hardly famous are you?”

No one worth a damn is doing anything for those reasons. She just couldn`t see the wood for the trees. It was no big deal but I`d just been on the television that week playing guitar besides…it didn’t mean a thing. I laughed again and left. It`s easy on a long journey like art or music or in developing your life`s work, your oeuvre, or discovering and beginning your mission to become waylaid by bad reasoning, to taste a bit of glory and start doing things for all the wrong reasons. If you are involved in something just for the glory, the fame, the gold and all that other “rockstar bullshit” you will probably fail. I spent the nineties working so damn hard and furiously towards some kind of selfish ego-driven success but it was only when I finally relaxed and started to do things for all the right, altruistic, selfless reasons that things started to come together. I started doing things for no reason at all in fact. I threw my ego away; smashed my old life and self to pieces, picked up the good bits and hit the road on a Kerouacian road trip mission of discovery with no real plan apart from the experience itself.

Well in an intense X day period in the studio with my producer I`ve managed to track 4 songs, using the unlikely combination of some very expensive Schoeps microphones, some incredibly expensive top end pro-tools hardware/software, a million dollar environment and a borrowed acoustic nylon string guitar worth around 50 bucks. But its a small step in the right direction….

n’

_{Last time I was in London I attended a party replete with goldfish bowls in the stairwells, famous chef, name dj and a stunning view of Tower Bridge, the Gherkin and the Eye. It was pretty good and the champagne was flowing. I also attended a business meeting in the West End. I arrived at around 12 and left at four. We made our way to the Tube/Underground afterwards to say farewell. As I stood within a maelstrom of bodies pouring in and out the entrance to the Underground I realised with complete acuity that if I had expired and fallen to the floor no-one would have paid the blindest bit of notice at all.}Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000186 EndHTML:0000043111 StartFragment:0000002570 EndFragment:0000043075

The architecture of destiny 2005

The conversation thus ignored flies on up towards the yellow ceiling

Cant decipher being bored, cant decode this desperate feeling

Whilst the truth fights the trash on the garage floor

Between the rotten old chairs and the broke down doors

And the rusty old cars, that rot out on the lawn

And I just don’t care

Really I don’t anymore

You say we`re all equal but some more equal than others

Who does the judging and as your god discovers

Your history is all lies and all your truths are whores

Call all your prophets, call your disciples call them to your cause

Your suffering fathers and all your surrogate mothers

To wash all your dishes and sort out the cupboards

The kids start to fight and the rain beats the shutters

Theres a howling in the wind for Jacqueline, but she only mutters,

Strange cries in the kitchen the antenna just stutters

Smoke ourselves to death outside whilst the rain fills the gutters…

And of course you`re just so, over it all, and you say I don’t give nothing

back at all

Oh mercy me, bad luck designed

Oh mercy me, bad luck design, my destiny

Three sisters in the distance their resistance fills my eyes

They fight the amber rain, whilst silently we drive

Im waiting at the station for the future to arrive

In this desperate situation the conversation… slowly dries

There`s Jesus at the crossroads hanging out to dry

Abandoned by his god baptized in thorns and lies

And even that kids got something to say

When the arguments don’t go your way

Its okay I`ll leave all my faults here at the door

You can stamp them all out as they creep across the floor

Guess it`s just a change youre going through, guess its got something

to do with the moon

Oh mercy me bad luck designed         

Oh mercy me bad luck design

I think the house is talking to me, asking me to leave

You fucking friends who hang around are just old buildings falling down…

Falling down.

In november `08 three years later I went down to the studio to cut a guide track and see if I could make it through the song:

Architecture of Destiny guide track

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… I could write a million acerbic verses…..

I used to own a Hendrix biography, an interesting part of which was mention of Hendrix` fascination with Bob Dylan. Buying a copy of “John Wesley Harding” rather than food is a noble move as far as I can discern and wholly more palatable than a trip to Walmart. Helps to keep the fashionably thin look too. But Hendrix` is often eclipsed by his own guitar focused genius and I’d like to offer some feedback on why Jimi Hendrix is actually a man of ideas who, beginning with the simple ideas of other worldliness such as UFOLOGY,  extended his sonic, lyrical and experiental palette to encompass and map a far more complex journey, beyond playing the guitar, that is both personal and political.

That Hendrix was able at points in his career, such as the Machine Gun performance on the Band of Gypsies Live film and record, to encompass the entire journey into singular moments is testament to his greatness not only a a guitarist but also as an artist per se – at points like these Hendrix is able even to dispense with vocabulary itself and really paint with sound.

What is more interesting is the broad transition from Are You Experienced ( A.Y.E. ) to Axis:Bold as Love and beyond to Electric Ladyland especially in terms of Hendrix` lyrical expression, lexical development and what appears to be efforts to develop coherent meaning and make sense of “the experience” rather than simply to detail “the experience” itself.

To illuminate; the song “Are you Experienced” Hendrix` eponymous first album opener takes Dylan`s “Like A Rolling Stone” and makes it a call to action, a call to begin “the experience”.

I know, I know
you’ll probably scream and cry
That your little world won’t let you go
But who in your measly little world are trying to prove that
You’re made out of gold and -a can’t be sold.

So-er, Are You Experienced?
Ah! Have you ever been experienced?
Well, I have

The subject of Dylan`s Rolling Stone and the failure expressed therein upon so many levels, to understand, to see or gain awareness is offered here a solution directly through “experience”. The “er”`s and “-a”s have a distinctively Dylanesque time and feel no doubt.

More traditional blues lyric cliche content  (Highway Chile) or simple psychedelia (Purple Haze) all but disappears on the Axis disc. “If 6 was Nine” furthermore introduces politics and social commentary into the equation. I`d say the Axis album represents a move away from a perspective of psychedelia towards one of entheogenic purpose.

The song “Bold As Love” most especially marks a continuing departure from the fundamentally direct, acid soaked expressionism of A.Y.E. and a move towards defining a more positive, transcendental cosmology beyond simple psychedelia, time or space and extend earlier natural metaphor and imagery as found in “Wind Cries Mary” and “Third Stone from the Sun” towards a development of meaning or perhaps a system of belief.

This finds its logical conclusion in the third and final album “Electric Ladyland”; especially side three and the song “1983″. One might argue that “1983″ actually represents a defeat in the face of real world concerns, that the hope of defining such a meaning or system of belief had failed – war  still raged upon the land mass – and escape into the sea to avoid holocaust the only conclusion – OR,  that submersion into what is ostensibly another dimension beneath the waves represents a triumph of consciousness, belief and will over political and physical impossibilities.

Strangely enough certain parts of the piece 1983 bear melodic parallels with the Chilites chicago sound.

On the album “Electric Ladyland” we find a song such as “Voodoo Chile” formulating a pantheistic fusion and microcosmic omniscience in an attempt to reach enlightenment – lyrically it perhaps metafictionally encapsulates the journey from “Are you Experienced” through to “Electric Ladyland”.

In “Voodoo Chile” Hendrix takes the traditional blues structure and explodes it using the tonal and expressive palette later heard in Machine Gun. Lyrically beginning with traditional hoodoo, blues and gypsy superstition, fiery moons, night time birth, and resuscitation from strange instantaneous death Hendrix fuses and describes the intervention of messengers or gods in animal form, lions and eagles, from traditional AmerIndian and European paganism, a journey through infinity, science, and space (”Venus”, “Jupiter”), love, desire, union, transcribes the transcendent microcosmic omnipresence of his mind and finally the collapse of civilisation.

This post is in its infancy, this is as much as I can write before breakfast. I am going to expand this post to try and examine the movement across Hendrix` three studio albums from psychedelic rock to entheogenic purpose, the formulation of successful meaning and understanding with a few glances in Bob Dylan`s direction – can “the experience” form a remedy? If a visionary artist like Hendrix looks to the oeuvre of Dylan then maybe we all should….

Briefly, it`s interesting to note the sense of the Sublime (Edmund Burke) in the Lyrics of Radiohead`s “In Rainbows”  – particularly  the use of gargantuan scale – there is “falling off” in three songs that I have noticed thus far.

This spatial exaggeration and use of outsized objects reminds me of  “Castle of Otranto” and “House of Leaves” (Mark Z. Danielewski / Horace Walpole respectively).

A house of cards, an organization, structure, consciousness even,  or plan that is weak, fragile and liable to collapse. Household objects suddenly take on vast proportions at a particular junction in the song:

“Fall off the table and get swept under” – House of Cards by Radiohead.

Similarly in “Weird Fishes”, which is highly spatial, the protagonist falls off the end of a (pre-copernican?) earth. There is also a parallel between Hendrix` “1983″ (Electric Ladyland side C) and “Weird Fishes” in overall schemata – escaping through immersion into the depths of the sea.

Listening to B-sides from several Radiohead singles – e.g. “Melatonin”, “Pearly”, “Lozenge of Love”, and  “A Reminder” the effect of the In rainbows record isn`t surprising at all.

.

In the previous post Songwriting I
it was suggested that:

“…no matter how hard I try to ignore it I feel the real context within which a song operates, the luminescent, spectral halo of moonshine is the mind of the reader/listener.”

This of course is not to imply Roland Barthes `Dead Author` but it`s worth considering if it is actually possible to free a text from the socio-historical tyranny of its author or the Intentional Fallacy ?
What of the contexts from which the listener emerges ?

IF then the author`s meanings and intentions are wholly irrelevent then is it mere coincidence that texts which upon the face appear pared down and oblique e.g. “The Wicked Messenger” speak such vast volumes to so many ? The Wesley Harding album exudes an almost Burroughs-esque cut up reductionism as though Dylan had taken complex song-mythologies and fed them through some kind of shredder.

If the song [as narrative] is to be freed in this way then surely it would be a previously unheard song from an artist unknown to the reader? Bob Dylan has intimated that he is merely a cipher, that the songs came from the ether and in some way every song one writes does appear or concretise through some kind of osmosis – but he is talking specifically from within the realm of the rock cliche perhaps.

You still have to find inspiration, play an instrument, form a melody…have something different to say, especially if your material will be a verisimilar material of ideas, rather than some bland, insipid, secondhand, wallpaper.

Back to the brass tacks of songwriting for the next post perhaps, with a touch of ludology & narratology thrown in.

I briefly mentioned  an approach perhaps even a “method” of songwriting….A highly foolish notion indeed but one nonetheless of great interest – a songwriting method.

I`d like to extrapolate, in a highly subjective way, across the time and space that this humble blog is yet to occupy, my own  ideas and thoughts. Of course there is no one method, subject, genre, approach or way; no set of rules, no map or compass and that`s what makes songs so fantastical,  interesting, different, invaluable. One mans turgid, drone is another mans celestially illuminated supernova of clustered genius. ZEN.

Watching No Direction Home I was not surprised to learn that Dylan himself had methods or ways – visit the library, search and research, read the classics, look through old newspapers &cetera. I happened to be watching the film with someone of Dylans age, who was there in the early Sixties and I was highly surprised when he commented:

“I had no idea he worked so hard to produce that material. I thought he just did it.”

Well, it is true that in a way song will “just come together” but you have to have that kernel of an inspirational idea and Conrad quite succinctly elucidates this in his marvellous metaphor at the beginning of Heart of Darkness :

“The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical … and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of those misty haloes that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.”

So, the meaning is illuminated by context rather than the immediately internal and this works on many levels obviously. It is quite clear in listening to Dylan`s earlier material that the personal musical & lyrical context from within which he writes is one encompassing the earliest blues/folk forms both lyrically and sonically, but also that of popular Fifties music and movies.

If you want to make these connections yourself you can do no wrong in listening to Smithsonion Folkways collections and reading Michael Gray`s “Song and Dance Man III – the art of Bob Dylan”.

My personal feeling is that a great song should have at its core narrative elements, be borne of some sublime experience, a time and a place, historicism, meter and rhyme but these are only elementals.

But no matter how hard I try to ignore it I feel the real context within which a song operates, the luminescent, spectral halo of moonshine is the mind of the reader/listener.

More later {Roland Barthes of course plus formalism/estrangement and emotion recollected in tranquility etcetera etcetera…}