The Regular Friday Post
Rando Lyric: When your heart won't tell your mind
SPECIAL THANKS TO Dave The Scholarship Coach, and his outstanding Substack, “Your Daily Scholarship” - Dave apparently gave me a great recommendation lately and I’m pleased to welcome an impressive number of new subscribers and followers. It’s an especially important Substack for folks who have children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews and anyone else who may be concerned about affording college for family or friends either starting or continuing a college education this fall. Jump on Dave’s recommendations for financial assistance NOW in anticipation of the upcoming college year. Thanks Dave, and thanks new subscribers!! After nearly 300 posts, I’ve covered a lot of ground involving popular and maybe not-as-popular songs, how to play them on guitar, and as much music theory as I thought my readers could tolerate. Unfortunately, Substack doesn’t really have a way to index posts by topic, but you may be able to locate something interesting in the Archives, or leave me a question in the comment section and I’ll do my best to track down an answer for you!!
Last week’s rando lyrics: The lyric, “There’s a skeleton in every man’s house” is from the song "Perfect Blue Buildings”, performed by Counting Crows. Written by:…
Ed. - “written by” is a little confusing - Spotify credits: Adam Duritz, Ben Mize, Charlie Gillingham, Daniel Vickrey, David Bryson, Matthew Malley, Steve Bowman; however Songfacts credits lead vocalist Adam Duritz alone for writing the song; and Wikipedia more or less credits Duritz alone by omisssion with a note “All tracks are written by Adam Duritz unless otherwise indicated.” and it wasn’t otherwise indicated…so…).
It was released in September 1993 as Track 4 on the original album “August And Everything After” on the Geffen record label. Produced by T. Bone Burnett (Ed. who also has a guitar credit on the album..)
Welcome to The Regular Friday post!
Well, it’s been a long and wonderful ride to this, which Substack indicates is my 300th post! Much more to come as we pass this milestone and I hope to see all of you and many more on the road ahead! Today we’re going to feature as A Song To Play: “Perfect Blue Buildings” by Counting Crows, a bit of a challenge with a few barre chords. Don’t be intimidated!
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Some Stuff:
It’s been a busy week around the Acoustic household, so I’m a bit short on the usual, but I do have some Grok created downloads that I used the prompt (more or less): “Old man with a guitar and a cat on a dark night with a moon in the sky” that came out kinda cool:
Some Links (Ed. - limited to a timely link this week from Music Business Worldwide):
From Music Business Worldwide:
Ed Sheeran, Superfan; No Fakes Act, and more...
A Song To Play:
A bit challenging, in the Key of Dminor (probably - it could be FMaj - but not likely). Dminor is the relative minor key to FMajor - and the chords are exactly the same, and in the same order, in each - just a different starting point (Minor keys “start” on the vi-, read as “6 minor”). The chords in FMajor are FMaj, Gm, Am, BbMaj, CMaj, Dm, Edim, and since Dm is the vi-, we start with it and use the same sequence (but sort of repeated) in the minor key. (If this is new/incomprehensible to you, no worries, I’ll do a music theory primer next week since we have a lot of new subscribers and it may be the right time for it.) But by all means…
…have fun!!
Chordify Link: Perfect Blue Buildings
Ed.: I’ll assume for beginning/intermediate players the Gm and Bb chords are potentially difficult - discuss them with your guitar instructor (you do have one, right? - if not, get one!):
There are other shapes/ways to play each, and you can find them at my go-to resource for chord diagrams: JGuitar.com
Genius Lyrics: Link: Perfect Blue Buildings
Just down the street from your hotel, baby
I stay at home with my disease
Ain't this position familiar, darling?
Well, all monkeys do what they see
Help me stay awake, I'm falling
Down on Virginia and La Loma
Where I got friends who'll care for me
You got an attitude of everything I ever wanted
I got an attitude of need
So help me stay awake, I'm falling
Asleep in perfect blue buildings
Beside the green apple sea
Gonna get me a little oblivion, baby
And try to keep myself away from me
It's 4:30 a.m. on a Tuesday
It doesn't get much worse than this
In beds in little rooms, in buildings in the middle
Of these lives which are completely meaningless
Help me stay awake, I'm falling
Asleep in perfect blue buildings
Beside the green apple sea
I wanna get me a little oblivion, baby
I'm trying to keep myself away from myself and me
Well, I got bones beneath my skin, mister
There's a skeleton in every man's house
Beneath the dust and love and sweat that hangs on everybody
There's a dead man trying to get out
So please help me stay awake, I'm falling
Asleep in perfect blue buildings
Beside the green apple sea
I wanna get me a little oblivion, baby
I'm trying to keep myself away from myself and me
Asleep in perfect blue buildings
Beside the green apple sea
I wanna get me a little oblivion, baby
I'm trying to keep myself away from myself and me
Oh, in a perfect blue building
Well, I can't keep myself away from me
In a perfect blue building
So how am I gonna keep myself away?
How am I gonna keep myself away from me?
Keep myself away
How am I gonna keep myself away from me?
Keep myself away
How am I gonna keep myself away from me?
The “ME!” Section…..
What I’m Listening2: - “Songs For The Barre”- 25 songs, some more playable than others… (Note - you may have to go to Ultimate Guitar or Chordify - subscriptions required, but worth it - to find chord charts for them)!
Shameless Self Promotion Section:
My song is out! Link: “>Long Road Back<”click on this link for streaming options, then scroll down for links (or just click on these links) to Amazon, Apple, Pandora, iTunes and even Spotify
If you’re enjoying our content, please let your friends and musician acquaintances know about us!!! Thanks for supporting this free newsletter!
Disclaimer Section
This Substack is free, I receive no compensation of any kind from companies or products I mention (except when you click on one of the links above for my song - then I might make 0.003 cents - yes 3/1000ths of a cent… just sayin…). Some linked or quoted material may be copyrighted by others, and I credit them. I rely on the “Fair Use” doctrine for educational purposes (Link: Fair Use). *I do not use AI for any of the text that’s found here, things I embed or link to (such as some images) might…
-Michael Acoustic
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This Week’s Conversation With Mika, The Cat:
Me: “A cat’s life looks pretty nice…”
Mika: “More than you’ll ever know, human….I’m going to sleep now so turn the light off and stop talking…“
Cheers and keep playing!!
Michael Acoustic
“It’s never really final - you just run out of things you can bear to change…”
Congrats on 300!