Earth Day Music

The Problem With Lyrics . . . and Music: Why There Are No Rebels in the Music World

The transition from 5/4 time to 4/4 was my primary interest. The finale then drops gears to 3/4. I probably should have dropped again to 2/4. But how far can you take intellectualization of music before you force things out of their natural shape?

The original song name was Way of the Dodo. I planned on playing on the duality of the word "dodo," which is both a synonym for "stupid" and a figurative synonym for extinction.

I meant to write some chilling lyric about how stupid people are and how they're killing all the animals and plants, etc. etc. and how we're now entering the 6th Great Extinction.

But then I realized that that is what books are for.

And that I was a pedantic a-hole and probably should just stop talking and/or writing lyrics altogether if that's all I could talk/write about. Which is what I did.

I mean, I still talk. Because I have to at work and when people call, but, for this song, I didn't write lyrics. I just sang words. Which seems to be pretty much what everyone on the radio does anyway.

While the lyrics may seem trippy and experimental, they're really not much different than the blarney of a Celine Dion or even the supposedly more intellectually challenging bands, e.g. Radiohead or Talking Heads.

I verge on apologizing for the lyrics, but right now a song by STP is playing and I'm listening and thinking this is a good song that's made even better by the fact that I can't understand the lyrics.

I'm usually grateful to bands that are unintelligible.

The only song I've written that actually has lyrics is Save Us From the Christians, which has killer lyrics.

I'm not bragging, it's just that those are really good lyrics. Even Christians have begrudgingly say so, and they're the object of derision.

The lyrics to that song are probably better than 99.9% of all songs ever written.

It made me feel good to have written those lyrics, but not so good that I've taken the time to do it again.

The bar for pop song lyrics is comfortably low. As far as I'm concerned, it should be kept that way.

So . . . I'm sorry for the lyrics to this song. At best, they don't make any sense. At worst, they kind of do. Can we move on?

Hey, what do you think of those switch ups? It's lounge jazz, no, it's Smashing Pumpkins, no, it's a galloping love song.

Music is too conservative. Way too conservative. That this song can even be considered experimental says it all. It's not so much experimental, as just unusual, against the back drop of so much music that is so usual.

That humanity will not change in time to save itself is completely evident in the music. Despite all the fuss about thinking outside the box, we just don't. The music is pretty much all similar.

Which as much as anything brings out my misanthropic tendencies. Jesus Christ, people, demand more from your radios.

One of the best songs I ever heard was actually two songs.

I was half asleep in the car and my wife was listening to the radio and this otherwise bland hard rock song suddenly made a U turn and became seemingly miraculously melodius punk song.

I sat up. Wow, I said to my wife. That was genius. Who are these guys.

After a few minutes, when the song didn't change back, I realized that what I'd heard was two different songs. Back-to-back.

Which gave me the idea of creating a radio station where all I would do all day is artistically switch back and forth between songs on other radio stations.

The irony of heavy metal, hard rock and even punk is just how conventional these music forms are, despite their claims otherwise. While the singers screech for us to drink, party, fight, f***, do drugs, and look down on church goers as hopelessly conformist, heavy metal, hard rock and even punk are unobservedly conformist.

Conformist, rule-following, submissive, pliant little vassals--to the core, to the hard, hard core.

For instance, every band in the world--even the most extreme, radical, whacked out, feces-throwing, drug addicted--uses the 12-tone system.

That is, they play the same 12 notes that have shown up on every piano in the Western world since pianos were invented.

How f***ing lame is that? No one has bothered to play the in-between notes or make their own pianos. (Mental image: Spinal Tap: "Our amps go up to 11.")

Has it ever occurred to them to use 13 notes? Or how about 24?

Tone is a continuum. You can divide it anyway you want. You can divide it 5 ways or you can divide it 24 ways. But we stick with 12. Not because it's the best, but because that's what everyone does. Just like going to college, getting married and starting a 401K. That's just the way it's done.

The 12-note system does make a lot of sense for a number of reasons, most of them rooted in physics and sound mechanics, but . . . well, if you're going to tout how renegade you are, why not truly shake things up?

But no one, and I mean no one does.

Most people will live and die without ever hearing a song played with anything outside the 12-note system.

So much for rebels.

Yep, the Sex Pistols are so rad.

The truth is: The music world, on the whole--despite the controversy of early Rock-n-Roll history (Elvis' Pelvis and the Beatle's long hair, Nancy's murder by Sid, etc.) tend not to deviate too far from the norm.

So, should it be any wonder that the lyrics are so bland and predictable too?

I say all this by way of excusing my bad lyrics in this song. But I actually do have a valid point.

What's more: No one is listening to my sh*** anyway. So, why should I take the time to string together a bunch of words that others will consider meaningful, make them want to be better people, or at least allow them to feel that they are deeper than other because they can appreciate such words.

Which begs the question: Why did I write all this?