Songwriters in the Round

[jwgh]

As some of you might now, I've been booked to play at RISA's Songwriters in the Round show next month, on Sunday September 9 at 7 pm.

Part of the deal is that each month the audience picks a theme for the next month's show, and then the four singer-songwriters who play at that show have to write a song based on that theme. The songwriters who performed tonight had to write a song about "Too Many Hats", for instance.

So tonight I got to find out what theme I have to write about. It is: Absolute Zero. (It beat out "Dumb Blonds", "The History of my Feet", and "Too Many Shoes".) One of the people I was at AS220 with tonight asked me, "What is absolute zero exactly?" I said, "Oh, I think it's, uh, -273.15 degrees Celsius. It's the lowest possible temperature, the temperature at which all motion ceases." Now that I am home I can check my facts before posting nonsense to Livejournal ... huh, guess those high school physics classes stuck with me.

So, we will see what I do with that. I keep thinking of the Sonny Boy Williamson II song "Nine Below Zero", which is about getting kicked out of your house by your girlfriend in the middle of winter when it is nine below, but this theme is pretty far beyond that level.

(Also, Ryan Fitzsimmons, who normally hosts the show, is going to miss next month's, which is too bad, but Frank Martyn is going to guest-host for him. I like Frank a lot, so that is cool.)

Comments

[motis.livejournal.com]

After converting Nine Below Zero to Celsius, your theme is only 260.372 degrees beyond the level of Sonny Boy's... and imagine the implications of being kicked out of your house at absolute zero, where all molecular motion stops and you become not only cold through and through, but eternally changeless. Maybe your cold-hearted woman would have a change of heart years later, only to find that you're now much younger than she is and no longer have any interest in her.

[jwgh]

I also think of this song:

THE FROZEN LOGGER
(James Stevens)

As I sat down one evening within a small cafe,
A forty year old waitress to me these words did say:

"I see that you are a logger, and not just a common bum,
'Cause nobody but a logger stirs his coffee with is thumb.

My lover was a logger, there's none like him today;
If you'd pour whiskey on it he could eat a bale of hay.

He never shaved his whiskers from off of his horny hide;
He'd just drive them in with a hammer and bite them off inside.

My lover came to see me upon one freezing day;
He held me in his fond embrace which broke three vertebrae.

He kissed me when we parted, so hard that he broke my jaw;
I could not speak to tell him he'd forgot his mackinaw.

I saw my lover leaving, sauntering through the snow,
Going gaily homeward at forty-eight below.

The weather it tried to freeze him, it tried its level best;
At a hundred degrees below zero, he buttoned up his vest.

It froze clean through to China, it froze to the stars above;
At a thousand degrees below zero, it froze my logger love.

They tried in vain to thaw him, and would you believe me, sir
They made him into axeblades, to chop the Douglas fir.

And so I lost my lover, and to this cafe I come,
And here I wait till someone stirs his coffee with his thumb."

[motis.livejournal.com]

I forgot to mention that I also qualify as a "songwriter in the round", but since they told me I'm diabetic I've been dieting.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Don't know if you've heard the expression, but the Brits have another way of saying "n degrees below zero;" they sometimes say "n degrees of frost." Alistair Cooke told me and the rest of his radio audience that once, and then he died, thereby ending the life of the last BBC employee who ever liked America.

[majorzed.livejournal.com]

It doesn't have to refer to temperature. How about intelligence or state of knowledge?

[chaos-are-me.livejournal.com]

Or the amount of money forever in your bank account?