Monday, October 11, 2010

Waxing lyrical

Coming up with song lyrics is tricky. For an audience as varied as ours, they can’t be too soppy or poppy, must be meaningful without being emo, and should be recognisably hooky and easy to sing along to.

At our Monday night prac a couple of weeks ago, while we were jamming, sweet Cathy came up with the most lewd line. She crooned: ‘You float by me, still inside me’.

Well, that’s what the rest of us heard, anyway. This whopper (ahem) resulted in hours of sniggers, but it turned out her words were actually ‘You float by me, still and silent’. Much more poetic, wouldn’t you agree?

Misheard lyrics have always given us all a good laugh. Everyone remembers the famously shocking Jimi line, ‘Excuse me while I kiss this guy’. In the early noughties my friend K thought the words of ‘Leave me breathless’ by The Corrs were actually ‘Go-oh on, go-oh on! Tease me, Bradley!’ (Ja, I don’t know about that either.) And the father of one of Coal’s members used to sing along to R.E.M. in the family car, ‘That’s me in the corner, losing my erection.’

You float by me, still inside me? Perhaps not so bad after all, Cath!

The threads of the new song will hopefully come together tonight to form a beautiful tapestry – or least a comfy crocheted knee rug – and I will share with the rest of the band my terrible dream from last night. Coal was on stage in front of an awful audience of youngsters, most of them resembling those monsters I used to teach. It wasn’t going well: we had to stop mid-gig because our new mystery member (a tall, gangly chick I don’t know in real life) was useless and kept forgetting her guitar parts. I was so embarrassed I just picked up a newspaper that was lying off stage and stood there reading it, feigning nonchalance. *cringe*

I hope the ‘spring’ weather improves soon, and we will see you all at ROAR for Halloween on Saturday 30 Oct. With no useless new members in sight, promise. (Only the old ones. Nyah hah.)

Yours in lyrical productivity and nocturnal brain-activity,
Linky