Wish My Friend Wasn't Such A Slacker
i got a whopper of a song here and i excitedly sent it to my friend to write words and sing. this was 3 days ago. not that i expect him to have something created in a matter of 3 days or so but he hasn't even responded that he's listened to the mp3.
it doesn't seem he has the same "let's go get this done" mentality.
When I first saw this post, I was reminded of something that happened to me 20 years ago.
I had written a few lyrics down the years and I'd written lots of music, complete songs, but without melodies or lyrics. I'd always intended to record them 'one day'. Well at the start of 1991, I would be jamming with a friend I'd been playing music with for 10 years. And we always taped our jams. I got lots of great songs down the years that way. But around this time, he would take my chord progressions {he's a drummer/percussionist} and craft lyrics and melodies to them. I thought the ones he initially came up with were really neat. Then he started coming up with these grand lyrics and melodies, to which I would craft the music. I was impressed with his ability to put together concise, attractive words and melodies in a very accessible way.
Anyway, as I was learning the guitar {I was really a bass player}, when I'd learn a new chord or two, I'd shove them into a 'song'. I came up with this progression that I thought was kind of interesting. It was sort of unusual so I recorded it and gave my friend the tape and asked him to come up with something. When he listened to it, he said something like "I can see where you're going with this" and he said he'd have a go at putting some words and a melody to it. That was in mid 1991. Three years on, he'd not said a thing about it or even mentioned it. By the autumn of '94 I thought, "I've had enough of this !" so I decided I'd write some words. By then I'd had some experiennce of writing complete songs. I was on my way up to this theme park for a day's mad riding when I saw this double rainbow in the sky which I thought was quite a sight. And a short while later, almost in one go, these words tumbled out of my head and a melody to boot. A year after
this, my friend and I recorded the song, well, we put down drums and guitar {the guitars were so thin and weedy as I'd gone DI with an electro~acoustic; this was how I learned to fix errors of weediness with tight layering} and he never said 'oh, that's that song you gave me to work on !'. I don't think he even recognized it.
That was not the last time I gave someone a tape of something for them to work out a little something. But no one ever came back and said I've got this bit.......so I stopped doing that. In the end it did me a favour because I learned to draw confidence in my ability to come up with the goods even if no one liked it ! With that song, I combined it with another piece that I had and with some Aerosmith "Uncle Salty" round type backing vocals it took on it's own life. Badly recorded in the end but I dug it.
The moral of the story is a three day wait is chicken feed !
