Well, several of us were late yesterday. Yesterday was also the first class that Detroit Angie missed. We'll cut her some slack for making every class up to this point despite a roundtrip in excess of 600 miles each week. My theory for the tardiness is that songs scare the Hell out of us. Like many of my classmates, I am convinced that song writing is hard. Damn hard. I kept trying to brainstorm song ideas during the week, but came up with nothing. My day job also had me very busy this past week, so nothing made its way onto paper, either.
I arrived 30 minutes late and caught the final bars of Ben's song about menstruation. It was pretty good, at least what I heard was pretty good. It seems as if it's a song that could easily be adapted to a six-person (three male, three female) ensemble: three couples singing about the effect menstruation has on their lives. And the three couples could be: three hetero couples or one hetero couple, one lesbian couple (who gets sent to the store to buy tampons in that situation?), and one gay male couple (who could be confused by their inclusion in the song, or maybe their neighbors are the lesbian couple, the lesbian couple's cycles are synchronized, and they demand that the gay male couple has to buy the goods for them).
I arrived too late to hear Shane's song, but it was discussed later in class. It was about Drones. This led to a discussion about Shane's point of view about Drones (the pilotless planes beloved by our military), and we brainstormed other applications of Drones. This didn't get that dark in class, but it could really go to some amazing depths.
Laura announced her song as a "fuck it" song. No, not "fuck it" in the 2 Live Crew sense. (I don't think their records were sold in Iowa.) It was "fuck it" in the "I've-got-to-do-this because-it's-the-assignment-but-we-all-know-Shane-is-the-music-guy" sense. And, indeed, the song mentioned Shane's talent, and the lyrics tore down the wall and sang about why the song was being written and its purpose in the show. Joe compared it to the self-reflexive songs in Urine Town. One my favorite examples of such a song comes from the boys at The Chaser.
Dan announced his ditty as being in the "fuck it" genre as well. His song was a piss take of Alannis Morrisette's "Ironic." It wasn't a parody of the song, but it did have several non-ironic things being deemed ironic. The music director liked his feel for rhythm, but chided him for taking the "fuck it" approach. I think she was trying to compliment him, but it only came out as a half compliment. She asked him to write another song during our time in class. He did, but denied that he had anything when asked. Classic Dan. He shared it with us on Facebook afterwards. It was really good and about conspiracies. I'll leave it at that, but it should be set to song one of these days.
My lateness prevented me from hearing Mark's or Brian's songs. I used my class time to write the beginning of an uplifting melody about suicide. We even tried to find find a suicide note with Siri's assistance using Joe's iPhone 4. She was no help. Thanks for nothing.
After class, Joe gave his feedback on our show. He thought it was really good, but some of the sketches ran long. A fair criticism and not surprising. He specifically mentioned "Douchebag," "Cocky," "Twilight Fan," and the suburban satanists as sketches that he liked.
And one more thing for this week: Go see Robot vs. Dinosaur's new show.
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