Songs: What I Always Think While Watching Poetry

notes / gigs / releases

If you can't be bothered to learn an instrument
At least learn the lines
If you can't be bothered to learn the lines
At least make it rhyme
If you can't be bothered to make it rhyme
At least make it scan
If you can't be bothered to make it follow roughly the same scanning system throughout
At least make the subject matter interesting
If you can't make it interesting
Keep it short

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing



I woke up on the morning of 22 October 2007 with my BRANE thinking about how Slightly Annoyed I nearly always get when I do gigs with poets. Despite every effort to think PURE THOUGHTS i almost always think "Come on poets! Why not learn the basics on and instrument of some sort - or find someone ELSE who can play one - and turn these words into a SONG? And if you can't be bothered with that, can't you at least LEARN the words? People would NOT be impressed if I came on stage and read all my lyrics off a sheet of paper, so how come you can get away with it? Eh? IT'S NOT FAIR!"

On this occasion I decided to make up a POEM about it all, which I then tried to make FIT the IDEAS (like it rhymes when it talks about rhyming - CLEVER EH?). It was all done before I got up but then lay FALLOW for - yikes! - FIFTEEN YEARS (!!) until it came time to record my solo album. I was trying to gather up lots of different material that I'd never got around to recording and this had always been at the back of my mind, so rather than try and turn it into a song I kept it as An Actual Poem, and recorded it as such. However, just having me say it was a bit BORING, so I added some background chatter from a Totally Acoustic recording, and put the plunky stuff in by drawing the word "POETRY" in a MIDI file and seeing what it sounded like.

Now all I need to do is find a poetry night to perform it as - I'll probably take a piece of paper with the words on though, just in case.