Damn you, Monaco!

[jwgh]

One of the things that I have been thinking about regarding the dance band is that when we play at AS220 we will have to perform all original material (I assume that policy will still be in place), and almost all of our original material is written and performed by Chris (the exception being a song I wrote for my nephew Ezra in February).

So I've been thinking about writing more songs; kind of difficult. The other week I was listening through some stuff I recorded and I thought that Interests Are Stupid might have some dance band possibilities, although I wasn't sure whether we would actually want to do it or not. So I emailed the link around to the other members of the band and asked what they thought.

Some time passed, and after a week or so Chris sent me a note about something unrelated which included this:

Also, on the orrig JH song you asked about last week: Musically I like it and I think we could do some interesting thing. Lyrically I think its kind of thin. I rarely feel that joke lyrics hold up to repeated listenings. This week I told the same jar-of-jellybeans joke 4 times 4 different people. It was not funny after the second time, because it wasn't funny to me and I couldn't put my heart into it. That being said, if you want to stand by the lyric and you want to do the song, its OK with me.

...which is reasonable and fair enough. However, the font I use to read my email (Monaco) has the unfortunate feature that lowercase 'a's and 'o's look pretty similar, so where Chris had written 'I rarely feel that joke lyrics hold up to repeated listenings' I thought he had written 'I rarely feel that jake lyrics hold up to repeated listenings'. 'Ow! The sting of honest criticism!' I thought.

Anyway, I was relieved today when I reread the email and discovered what it actually said.

The end.

Comments

[christychristy.livejournal.com]

Ha! Glad to hear it. Sounded way harsh when you related the story on Saturday.

[jwgh]

I was trying to rationalize it into constructive criticism, but it was a bit of a bitter pill to swallow, which is why I felt compelled to blab about it at dinner.

The rationalization had to do with the fact that 'rarely' implies 'sometimes'.

[christychristy.livejournal.com]

Also, I happen to think he is totally wrong about songs with funny lyrics.

[jwgh]

Well, he says in a later email:

You have made a sort of 'joke' song work, tho: I think Lady Luck is a great song. It is not a serious song, but it COULD be, it has a powerful emotional resonance other than being just 'funny.' That's why I can listen to Lady Luck 2,000 times and still think its a good song.

So he likes there to be a little more going on than just humor. I think that it probably is more a question of taste than anything else, and my tolerance for songs that are just out and out goofy is a lot higher than his, I think, but I try to respect that when I pick out songs to bring to him.

Here's Lady Luck, by the way: http://killdevils.com/demo/LadyLuck.mp3

[christychristy.livejournal.com]

Ever heard/heard of Phoebe Kreutz? Not a guitar vituoso but she is a master at the art of the humorous song that has a certain emotional resonance.

[jwgh]

I haven't, but I see she's got a few songs available for download from her website, so I'll check 'em out. Thanks for the recommendation!

[kerri9494.livejournal.com]

I hope you tell this story to Kibo.

[jwgh]

Frickin' Monaco!