New Post Tomorrow!!

The flowers, Mick….

Last week’s Bonus Round: John Prine’s song, “Lonesome Friends of Science” uses a Verse-Chorus structure, and breaks a few “rules” along the way. First, it leads off with the chorus. Second, the lyrics in the chorus change as the song progresses. There’s no lyrical bridge, unless you count “uh-huh” sung rhythmically over the instrumental break between the second Verse-Chorus and the third. The verses are in two “sections” and the rhyming structure (almost nonexistent in the first section of the first verse) varies. The verses don’t seem coherent, the first being about how annoyed he was that astronomers changed, seemingly arbitrarily, what he had learned in grade school about Pluto being a planet, the second about a legendary statue in Birmingham and the (maybe) tragic romance behind it, and the first section of the third verse about science experiments on animals. The story (perhaps apocryphal) about the second section of the third verse is that he kinda ran of stuff and so he just wrote about his dog. I absolutely love this song and all the broken “rules” it represents. Another song on his album “Tree of Forgiveness” titled “When I Get To Heaven” pretty emphatically demonstrates his distaste for music critics, probably over (I think) unjust criticism of his guitar and vocal skills. John Prine was, as a sticker that came with some of his merch I bought says, “Pretty Good”! He may have been subtly giving a last middle finger to those critics by breaking a bunch of rules and writing a unique song about them (metaphorically, anyway) - and if he was, good for him!!

Tomorrow we’ll talk more about song structure rules and breaking them with impunity, and even gleefully!

Bonus Round: Last week we talked a little about covers of songs. I clearly have a whole bunch of songwriters who inspire me, and I love to play and sing and cover their songs. One of my favorites covered a song which was then used in the ending credits of one of my favorite films. Who wrote “Dead Flowers”, covered by Townes Van Zandt, used in which movie?

See you tomorrow!

Cheers, and keep playing!!

Michael Acoustic