• Log In

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog

Subscribe on Android Spotify Google Podcasts audible patreon
  • Home
  • Podcast
    • PEL Network Episodes
    • Publicly Available PEL Episodes
    • Paywalled and Ad-Free Episodes
    • PEL Episodes by Topic
    • Nightcap
    • Philosophy vs. Improv
    • Pretty Much Pop
    • Nakedly Examined Music
    • (sub)Text
    • Phi Fic Podcast
    • Combat & Classics
    • Constellary Tales
  • Blog
  • About
    • PEL FAQ
    • Meet PEL
    • About Pretty Much Pop
    • Philosophy vs. Improv
    • Nakedly Examined Music
    • Meet Phi Fic
    • Listener Feedback
    • Links
  • Join
    • Become a Citizen
    • Join Our Mailing List
    • Log In
  • Donate
  • Store
    • Episodes
    • Swag
    • Everything Else
    • Cart
    • Checkout
    • My Account
  • Contact
  • Mailing List

Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 9

February 25, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

This week I mixed a demo from a failed 2000 collaboration: "Mush."

One of the first musicians I met in Madison upon arriving in 2000 was Ken Labarre. "Mush" was a song he wrote for his previous band, and it rips on people who bare their feelings on daytime talk shows (not the kind of topic I typically write about, but if it's good enough for Peter Gabriel, it should be OK with me).

I wasn't fond of the lyrics (the previous chorus lyrics were: "Have I told you that I think you’re crazy; bag of bones hanging with your daisy; you talk so darn proud of the hurting inside; it’s MUSH."), so I rewrote them and tweaked the melody to come up with this demo. Ken said he thought I captured the original intent well, but his wife Mel was supposed to actually sing it in the new band we were trying to form, and she didn't like the faux tough stance (despite my already softening the word "shit" in the choruses to "bit"), so the two of them rewrote the lyrics again, in a way that I thought made it worse, so she quit the band, which led to the whole project getting scrapped. I started Madison Lint, and Ken (who for some reason likes being called "The Jammy Bastard" now) started a great band called Tangy, which apparently recorded part of some version of this, though I don't know if any of the ideas I contributed were retained.

Despite this acrimony, and the apparent hurriedness of the demo (my guitar is out of tune, and this was recorded on my Tascam 4-track, which is what I HAD to record on prior to 1996 but at this point only used when too lazy to set up the more elaborate digital equipment), this song has been going in my head periodically since November when I digitized the original audio tracks (which had degraded quite a bit), so I used this as a test of my ability to make crappy tracks sound OK through heavy use of digital processing and effects. It's a nice song, and it would have been nice to hear a full band version.

So, my question: Do lyrics matter? My biggest barrier in this and other cases to working with other songwriters is that I don't like their lyrics. Most people write in clichés, or to be less harsh about it, they don't write in a way that would feel natural coming out of my mouth, and this embarrasses me, despite the fact that listeners, especially in a live situation, just don't care. Ideally, I like bands like Roger Waters's Pink Floyd where the lyrics have a definite and consistent narrative viewpoint that goes across all the tunes, but at the very least, the different songwriters have to have compatible styles.

My chief means of songwriting collaboration in the past has, then, been my "fixing" other people's lyrics, sometimes to their satisfaction, sometimes not. Collaborative lyric writing can be great, but should be argumentative, I think, to polish each and every line into something better than each participant could come up with on his own, and the respect and deference that you typically want to offer to someone else's ideas when you're working with them usually precludes this.

I think I'm less of an arrogant bastard re. this issue now, but that's probably just because the other songwriters I currently work with usually don't set me off, though there was a bit of the second verse to one of the songs we recorded on our last album that I asked Matt again and again and again to fix, and he just couldn't think of anything better and didn't like my suggestion... bah!

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Filed Under: Nakedly Self-Examined Music

Comments

  1. Ken LaBarre says

    March 8, 2012 at 1:44 pm

    I quite like it actually and I’m glad you put this up.
    The opening verse is great, ie; “gradually fading”. Very strong.
    Tangy recorded a couple of different demos of the song but never released it.

    BTW – there wasn’t any “acrimony” over this song, the re-write, or anything else. We just were going in different directions.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Citizenship has its Benefits

Become a PEL Citizen
Become a PEL Citizen, and get access to all paywalled episodes, early and ad-free, including exclusive Part 2's for episodes starting September 2020; our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email and chat more causally; a community of fellow learners, and more.

Rate and Review

Nightcap

Listen to Nightcap
On Nightcap, listen to the guys respond to listener email and chat more casually about their lives, the making of the show, current events and politics, and anything else that happens to come up.

Subscribe to Email Updates

Select list(s):

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

Support PEL

Buy stuff through Amazon and send a few shekels our way at no extra cost to you.

Tweets by PartiallyExLife

Recent Comments

  • Jason Engelund on Ep. 318: Friedrich Schiller on the Civilizing Potential of Art (Part Two for Supporters)
  • Eric on Ep. 318: Friedrich Schiller on the Civilizing Potential of Art (Part One)
  • Vincent Czyz on Lucifer: How a Decent Deity Got a Bad Rap (Part 1)
  • Matt Kuenning on Ep. 310: Wittgenstein On World-Pictures (Part Two)
  • Sean Fournier on Not Episode 69: PEL Players Full Cast Audiobook of Plato’s “Gorgias” (part 1)

About The Partially Examined Life

The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we’re talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion

Become a PEL Citizen!

As a PEL Citizen, you’ll have access to a private social community of philosophers, thinkers, and other partial examiners where you can join or initiate discussion groups dedicated to particular readings, participate in lively forums, arrange online meet-ups for impromptu seminars, and more. PEL Citizens also have free access to podcast transcripts, guided readings, episode guides, PEL music, and other citizen-exclusive material. Click here to join.

Blog Post Categories

  • (sub)Text
  • Aftershow
  • Announcements
  • Audiobook
  • Book Excerpts
  • Citizen Content
  • Citizen Document
  • Citizen News
  • Close Reading
  • Combat and Classics
  • Constellary Tales
  • Exclude from Newsletter
  • Featured Ad-Free
  • Featured Article
  • General Announcements
  • Interview
  • Letter to the Editor
  • Misc. Philosophical Musings
  • Nakedly Examined Music Podcast
  • Nakedly Self-Examined Music
  • NEM Bonus
  • Not School Recording
  • Not School Report
  • Other (i.e. Lesser) Podcasts
  • PEL Music
  • PEL Nightcap
  • PEL's Notes
  • Personal Philosophies
  • Phi Fic Podcast
  • Philosophy vs. Improv
  • Podcast Episode (Citizen)
  • Podcast Episodes
  • Pretty Much Pop
  • Reviewage
  • Song Self-Exam
  • Supporter Exclusive
  • Things to Watch
  • Vintage Episode (Citizen)
  • Web Detritus

Follow:

Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | Apple Podcasts

Copyright © 2009 - 2023 · The Partially Examined Life, LLC. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy · Terms of Use · Copyright Policy

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in