Sunday, February 22, 2009

Working Titles

Towards the end of my freshman year in high school I started writing songs. This eventually led to me forming a band with some friends, which experienced moderate success playing concerts for our friends in various garages, empty school hallways, and even once in the parking lot of a bowling alley.

Since I first started sticking simple melodies and chord progressions together like Legos, my song writing has developed fairly substantially. (I am sure those who tolerate my more recent songs are likely appalled to know I was once worse- much worse.) Nevertheless, in recent years I have given little to no thought of lyrics or song titles. It seems my high school self was much more adept at the literary side of song writing.

Some of my favorite song titles that guitarist Darrick Dowdy and I came up with include:

"I Used to Have Friends" - most emo title ever, but sounded surprisingly indie
"Ember" -This song was originally named for a girl. One letter was cleverly changed after she got married... not to one of us.
"You'll Never Know" - our hit single. it start out straight up pop punk, but it slowly became more screamo over time.
"Murder at Black Canyon" - this Coheed-esq narrative told the story of a deceased teenager and featured clues as to who/what may have caused his fate: a tragic accident, the girlfriend, the best friend who dates the girlfriend soon after the accident , the over bearing parents. In true post modern fashion I refused to definitively solve the mystery, leaving the listener to develop his/her own answer.
"The Kindness of Strangers" - same shtick as "Murder at Black Canyon" only involving a cult and a strung out junkie living in a cabin in the woods.
"Mystery" - the only song featuring the whole band on our ep. we coined the term "Dreamo" to refer to the genre. To my knowledge it hasn't been used since

2 comments:

B. Anne Jarboe said...

do you have lyrics to "The Kindness of Strangers"?

michael said...

No. It was actually instrumental.... or as Darrick used to say InstuMETAL.

It does feature some pretty cheesy special effects in the background, such as the car crash right outside the cabin and the creaking of the door as the protagonist goes inside.