(no subject)

[jfb]

This morning I had the Blue Nile's "Heatwave" running through my head, specifically the little interlude:

Will I tell you?
Will you listen?
If I tell you,
What will happen?

I quote this mostly so I can share my theory with you Frou Frou fans that "The Dumbing Down of Love" pays homage to the Blue Nile. As we all should.

Anyway, enough of that and I had to try to play it. So I picked up the electric guitar and found some chords that sort of work--one of the great things about that song is that it's like it doesn't even have chords, it has, like, chordal textures built up from the interplay of all these different sounds. So yeah, I had to dumb it down to fit onto a guitar. For the freeform sections, I used my recently resurrected technique of fretting a chord and then tapping on the strings with a Pilot Precise V7 rolling ball pen--the absolute best pen to write with, and, I am now convinced, the best to play guitar with as well.

So that's what I did at the open mike tonight. And a mostly unsuccessful rendition of Whiskeytown's "Avenues", and "Four Days Low", a former mandolin song which I actually wrote at this very open mike one night because I needed something to match my bad mood, and which has barely been heard since.

It's been demanded that I play accordion at the open mike next week, so I'm going to see if I can work something up.

Comments

[helloreplace.livejournal.com]

I remember having a tape (I'm dating myself) that was one side Blue Nile, the other side Guadacanal Diary. And there was some Blue Nile song I loved so much and can't for the life of me remember what it was.

[jfb.livejournal.com]

I'd try to help narrow it down, but I feel that way about pretty much all of their songs. Late to the game, I spent a year or two around the turn of the millennium listening to almost no one else.

beneath another star

[ahkond.livejournal.com]

"Heatwave" is one of my all-time favorite songs. When Dave Stewart* & Barbara Gaskin covered it, they screwed up the lyrics and replaced "What will happen" with a repeat of "Will you listen". Bah.

* not the Eurythmic Dave, but the fusion keyboard guy

Re: beneath another star

[jfb.livejournal.com]

I had trouble with the lyrics in that section too, for some reason. But yeah, it seems like that line "what will happen" is almost the whole point of the song--how could they lose it?