Bill Roper's Journal

Sometimes you get an idea for a song and it just doesn't work out the way you planned.

In this case, I was contemplating the fellow who was trying to use modern AI technology to create an on-line replica of his parents simply because he wanted to talk to them so badly. I had a verse. I didn't like it. At all, the longer I considered it.

Yesterday morning while lying in bed at oh-dark-thirty or thereabouts, I got the chorus. And a couple of verses. And random bits to build the rest of the song out of.

Today, I have the whole song. It is not *anything* like the song that I set out to write.

Overall, I think that's a good thing.

I hope you like it!
( Lyrics inside... )

I have been suffering from what I will describe as a mild case of musical constipation. This is a condition in which various ideas and lines drift through your consciousness, but none of them actually manage to escape and become songs. I hate this.

Today, however, is my birthday (about which more later) and my subconscious decided to solve my problem as I drifted out of sleep around 6 AM this morning, apparently as a birthday gift from it to me. I started scrawling lines into my phone, putting it down, then picking it up and scrawling more lines. Before I went back to sleep, I had pretty much the whole song, save for one missing line, a couple of places that clearly needed some editing, and the missing bridge which -- while theoretically optional -- felt like it needed to be there to connect the second and third verses so that none of the listeners fell into the bottomless chasm.

I am a big fan of Jim Croce. He wrote incredibly beautiful love songs. He also wrote some of the most amazing piss off and die songs which *also* managed to be beautiful.

All this song owes to Croce is the sentiment. The bits and pieces of music that were flowing through my head as I was constructing this while not sleeping were clearly much more inspired by classic rock. I realized that when I got ready to put a tune to this beastie and lock it down, I was going to need to channel my inner McCartney. Or maybe Steve Martin. (There were a lot of very strange things going through my head this morning.) And there was still the matter of the bridge which was going to need its very own tune, different from everything that surrounded it.

So, liner notes:

Key of E, everyone, with no chord odder than B7 anywhere to be found. There is a thumping bass somewhere in the accompaniment and probably some aggressive drums. There is also a big old break after the bridge which I hope someday to hear my favorite fiddler, Amy, fill in. :)

This is not a political song, despite some of the references that will seem very obvious. It is a relationship song.

Happily, it is not any of *my* relationships...

( Lyrics inside... )

I had thought that I would post our current OptumRX saga (which *may* be resolved) today. But instead, I have finished a song -- more or less, as the tune is still settling down. And I would *much* rather post that.

So here is the cheery little ditty that I started last night and finished up today. There is *nothing* like having a con coming up to engage the songwriting gears...

Anyway, I hope you like it!
( Lyrics inside... )

I've had the chorus of this song rattling around in my brain for well over a month now. It has become clear that nothing else is going to get written here until this song is done.

This song is now done. :)

And I hope you enjoy it!
( Lyrics inside... )

Did I mention that I'm a fan of Adam Strange?

Not the vast majority of the deconstructionist Adam Strange stories that have been written since Alan Moore passed by the character, to be sure. I want Adam to be a hero. And I have come up with a framework that allows him to be one, which I was sharing with my friend, Sam, over the weekend.

My theory is that the civilization on Rann (which is the planet of Alpha Centauri that Adam Strange travels to in best ERB-like fashion) is old. And static. And virtually everyone on the planet is completely lacking in problem solving skills, because the great machines that their ancestors built supply their every need and are self-repairing.

Except after some untold number of generations, the machines are breaking down. Oops. The things that the machines defended the planet from, whether natural disaster or critter from outer space, are breaking through. This is a bad thing for the people of Rann.

The last scientist on the planet (because, really, why would you need scientists in this utopia?) invented the Zeta beam and aimed it at Earth, hoping to establish communications with the more primitive people just one star system away. But he didn't account for the effects of cosmic radiation on the beam, which converted it from a communication beam to a teleportation beam. Surprise!

Enter Adam Strange, archeologist, who is picked up by the beam and taken to Rann. There he meets the lovely daughter of the last scientist. And unlike everyone else on the planet, Adam Strange has actual problem solving skills. (The scientist and the daughter are trainable. Everyone else is hopeless.)

You may not think of problem-solving skills as a super-power. I invite you to think of some of your co-workers and reconsider that.

And this is why Adam Strange becomes the champion of Rann.

At least, that's *my* take on it.

And I am now visualizing this as a movie starring Paul Rudd. Because it would be a *good* movie.

Anyway, given all that, I wrote a song about it.

And I now have an entry in my personal songbook with a title starting with the letter Z.

I hope you like it!
( Lyrics inside... )

It is possible that my subconscious will do anything to help me avoid working on taxes. Or maybe I've just been listening to Mac McAnally a bit more than usual lately.

But this song came pushing its way up the queue past the song on my desk that I've been working on for several days at about five in the morning. I grabbed my phone and wrote down a verse and a half, then wrote the chorus and the remaining bits this morning after I woke up.

After we got back from lunch, Gretchen took Julie out for a drive. I went upstairs and (instead of working on taxes) set chords to the song and beat the tune into shape. And added the coda when I realized that the song would never resolve without it.

So Gretchen hasn't heard this yet.

But she will soon.
( Lyrics inside... )

So maybe it's fair to call this my last Chambanacon song -- not because the song is about Chambanacon in any sense, but because it has rolled out of Jen's songwriting panel at the last Chambanacon. I will say more about that in a subsequent post (a *lot* more about that!), but for now, here are the lyrics to the new song.

I hope you like it!
( Lyrics inside... )

I think this is done now. :)

For those of you keeping score, this is the song that ended up with the chord that I *think* is nicked from The Who, except that they go from Emadd9 back to A7, while I head off to Dm6.

Anyway, I hope you like it.
( Lyrics inside... )

So Gretchen and I set out to write a song that can be performed either as a duet or as a solo piece if she's not around. We're still finishing up the patter (so you'll have to wait to hear that!), but here are the lyrics, because it's a long time until the next convention.
( Lyrics inside... )

My brain seems to be determined to produce some songs lately.

I woke up with the idea for this song in my head one day last week. It wasn't hard to pull together the chorus and the tune for the verse. Then I later produced words for the first verse. So far, so good.

Except that I woke up around four or five in the morning and couldn't get back to sleep, as my brain was stubbornly determined to produce another verse. And it did, but since I wasn't clever enough to write it down, it vanished into the ether the next day.

I didn't have time to get back to the song-in-progress and two mornings later, I woke up between four and five in the morning and couldn't get back to sleep, as my brain was stubbornly determined to produce another verse. And it did, but being a slow learner, I didn't write it down and it vanished into the ether again.

I had, by this point, lost way too much sleep to this particular song. So yesterday, I pulled together a bridge and the remaining two verses and declared victory, taking it to Gretchen to try it out. Done.

Except that I decided I wasn't quite happy with the two new verses, so I rebuilt them today after typing them into the computer.

I think I'm done now.

I had *better* be done now.

Because this is getting silly for a fairly lightweight, retro song.

I hope you like it. :)

( Lyrics inside... )