I Wanna Rock
Posted: May 27, 2025 Filed under: Bobapalooza, Culture, Uncategorized | Tags: Bobapalooza, Bobapalooza 2025, culture, entertainment, music, pop culture, rock Leave a commentLet’s face it: our country is at war with itself. Red against blue. Liberal against conservative. Rich against poor. Cat against dog. We need something that can pull us together, something we can all rally around. We need… the power of music.
*Ahem.* I said, “We need the power of music.”
(I swear, there’s never an inspirational John Williams score around when you need one. Okay, we’re doing this the hard way.)
Almost a decade ago, I was tired of listening to the same old music, so I decided to ask my friends for suggestions. Of course I couldn’t be so pedestrian as to just say “what do you recommend?” I had to have some fun with it. Instead I asked, “If there was a music festival coming to town, and you found out a specific act was there, what one act would make you buy a ticket no matter what?” I promised I would listen to any suggestion, and the fifteen best would be in my fantasy music festival.
Well of course I started getting suggestions like The Beatles and Pink Floyd among some more modest, less famous acts. That didn’t seem entirely fair to me, because OF COURSE you’re gonna have The Beatles at your music festival, right? So I decided to create the Stage of Legends, five acts so amazing they transcended the form and deserved to be, well, Legends. And thus was born Bobapalooza, The Greatest Show That Never Was, with five acts on the Stage of Legends and 15 Main Stage bands.
It was so popular (and honestly so much fun) that by popular demand I brought it back several times. But like all good things, it had its season, and I’ve only even attempted to do a Bobapalooza once in over a decade.
I think it’s time to change that.
BOBAPALOOZA 2025: ONE NATION UNDER BOB
Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Now it’s time to do your part and contribute.
Here’s the rules:
MAIN STAGE
1. You have to pick a band you would sit through the entire set. Not “I love this song!” I want “I love this band!”
2. Yes, you can post as many as you like, but really, how many bands are THAT good?
3. If you intend to post more than one, please don’t spam the feed (more than 10 bands a day from one person is a bit much. I do have a life. And see 1 & 2.)
4. If you post it I will listen to it, so please, be gentle.
5. Please note that this is a Main Stage entry.
6. Any band that made it to the show in a previous year (main stage or Stage of Legends) will not be considered for the main stage this year. See the lists below.
STAGE OF LEGENDS
1. All of the rules for Main Stage apply, only even more. I mean, think about 1 & 2 especially. These guys are supposed to be LEGENDS.
2. Testify! Tell me (and the world!) why you think this band deserves to be named a Legend. For an idea of the sort of thing I have in mind look at the write up from Bobapalooza 2011 or Bobapalooza 2012.
3. Any band that made it to the Stage of Legends in a previous year will not be considered this year, however, Main Stage acts may still be nominated.
And remember, just as Master Yoda told us, “Do, or do not; there is no try.” Once a band has been nominated for the Stage of Legends, they are no longer in the running for the main stage. The whole point of the Stage of Legends is to give a fair shot to lesser known bands. If you think your favorite band has what it takes to compete with the big boys, put ‘em in, but don’t hedge your bets. Go big or stay home.
To answer a question I get all the time, YES, you can nominate a Main Stage alum for the Stage of Legends. They just can’t come back to the Main Stage.
Submissions can be made via comment or DM at @bobbonsall.bsky.social. Send me a link to your favorite song by the band you want to nominate as well as letting me know if this is a Main Stage or Stage of Legends submission. If you don’t say I will assume Main Stage to give them the best chance, unless they are not eligible for the Main Stage. (If they aren’t eligible for Bobapalooza at all, I will taunt you a second time.)
Starting July 1 I will decide who the winners are, and I will post my fifteen favorite bands for the main stage and the five act Stage of Legends. I will also give credit to the first person who suggested them, so get in early for your shot at fame!
If you still have questions, please feel free to comment on this blog post or DM me at @bobbonsall.bsky.social. Insightful questions will receive careful, well-thought-out answers. Off-hand questions will get off-hand answers. Questions that prove you didn’t bother to read everything I already wrote will be met with shame and ridicule, not necessarily in that order.
Stage of Legends Alumni:
The Beatles
Rush
Led Zepplin
Iron Maiden
Pink Floyd
Bob Marley
David Bowie
Michael Jackson
The Cure
N.W.A.
Nirvana
The Doors
Sting
Nine Inch Nails
Johnny Cash
Jefferson Airplane
AC/DC
Weezer
Black Sabbath
Simon & Garfunkel
Depeche Mode
Alice in Chains
Madonna
The Grateful Dead
Tori Amos
Main Stage Alumni:
Flogging Molly
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
The Decemberists
Mumford and Sons
Owen Pallett
Regina Spektor
Moyseis Marques
R.E.M.
Grinderman
Foo Fighters
Mika
Our Lady Peace
Jessie J
A Sunny Day in Glasgow
The Beastie Boys
Gorillaz
Silversun Pickups
Amadou and Mariam
Rancid
Lindsey Sterling
The Band Perry
The Airborne Toxic Event
Manchester Orchestra
Grimes
Deadmau5
Fun
Glen Hansard
Muse
Foxy Shazam
Adele
Matsiyahu
Awol Nation
Volbeat
Divine Fits
Axis of Awesome
Garbage
KMFDM
The Heavy
Aesop Rock
Animal Collective
Preston Reed
Dream Theater
Death
K’Naan
The Thermals
Boney M
The Cult
George Thorogood
Kae Sun
Metric
Disturbed
Al Green
Sitali
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes
The Black Keys
Soundgarden
Petite Noir
James
DJ Kool
Dominique Pruitt
Artic Monkeys
Billy Talent
The Explorers Club
Pop Evil
Orville Peck
Rhianna
Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties
MGMT
Rival Suns
Public Enemy
Moby Grape
P!nk
Eminem
Portugal. The Man
Bob’s Jukebox: Recovering the Satellites
Posted: December 1, 2023 Filed under: Bob's Jukebox, Culture | Tags: 90's, 90's music, 90s, 90s music, A Long December, August and Everything After, Bob's Jukebox, Counting Crows, culture, entertainment, music, pop culture, Recovering the Satellites, reviews Leave a commentI’ve been away for a while due to holidays and technical issues, so I thought I’d do something a little different this time. Nah, just kidding. Back to the early Nineties we go!
More serious and reflective than the earnest and, dare I say, innocent sound of their debut album August and Everything After, Recovering the Satellites is an unusually effective and affecting sophomore outing for Counting Crows. From what little I understand of the music industry, this tends to be because record executives like to “strike while the iron is hot” as it were, which is to say they don’t want to spend more money promoting a band they already spent money promoting while they already have songs on the radio. So, the push is on to get another album out practically as soon as the first one is done (sometimes even before the first one is done). This tends to result in a significantly less… well, less album, for lack of a better way to say it. Whatever it was that made the first album spectacular (or even tolerable) tends to be missing, because it was often the work of years, and the record execs want it in months, and inspiration and artistry can’t be turned on and off like a faucet.
Fortunately for us, Counting Crows waited three years (and apparently did a fair bit of touring) before releasing their second album. The tone is a bit more somber and introspective, which pretty well fit the mood of the time judging by the top albums of the year (and no, I don’t care that Celine Dion is on that list. If anything, that just proves that people felt like the end times were only a few years away, and they were trying to suck up to the Antichrist*). Either way, it made for a solid evolution for the band, moving them forward without being so different that fans were unable to identify with their sound anymore (Metallica, I’m looking in your direction). And speaking as a fan, I have to say I very much enjoy the entire album. So, let’s break it down.
The first track, “Catapult”, feels like it could have been on August, but it would have been one of the more somber songs on the album (it’s a bit more somber in tone than “A Murder of One”, if not subject matter). “Angels of the Silences” may well be my favorite song on the album; a powerful and poignant song with driving guitars and a surprisingly deep message if you take the time to listen. “Daylight Fading” is a fine song, well-constructed and performed with a bit of a western twang to it. “I’m Not Sleeping” could also have been off of August, but again it lacks the innocence of that album; it has an edge to it that the former album lacked, which is not a slight to either album but simply an acknowledgement of reality; in fact, the song even states it:
Spend my nights in self defense
Cry about my innocence
But I ain’t all that innocent anymore, more, more, more
“Goodnight Elisabeth” is a beautiful song by itself, but it also reminds me of someone I knew decades ago, which gives it a special personal meaning to me. “Monkey” is a cute song, fun basic pop. Otherwise, it’s another one that reminds me of someone I used to know which also gives it special personal meaning. (And no, I’m not going to talk about either of them, so don’t bother asking.)
“Children in Bloom” is fine, although to be honest I find it a bit self-indulgent. That’s not to say I don’t listen to it, but it really depends on my mood. If I’m in the mood to listen to anything and everything Counting Crows, absolutely. If I’m just listening to the songs I particularly care for, I tend to skip right past it. “Another Horsedreamer’s Blues” is far more to my taste and seems to me to be what “Children in Bloom” is trying to be, even if it never quite gets there. It has a restrained urgency to it, a desperate yearning and subdued anger that at the same time feels somehow on the edge of hopeful.
“Have You Seen Me Lately?” is fine. It’s bouncy background music, mostly standard pop, but it does have an edge of harshness and even a bit of bitterness born from experience that works for it. It’s like the bit of lemon that cuts through the sweetness of a cola. “Miller’s Angels” is pretty, if somber.
The title track, “Recovering the Satellites”, is kinda middlin’ and kinda maudlin. Another one that I don’t mind listening to, but I wouldn’t seek it out specifically. “Mercury” is a pop song with a funky southwestern twist. It’s a good track, worth listening to.
And at last, we come to “A Long December”. Look, I love this song. It’s a great song. Sweet, sad, poignant. If you somehow haven’t heard it, rectify that situation right the fuck now. Yes, that was aggressive, but seriously, I think it’s a great song, and everyone should hear it once. Once.
See, I have a couple of friends who post “A Long December” toward the end of the year on Facebook (for obvious reasons), and I have to say, with all the kindness, love, and respect I can – let it go. Please, find your inner Elsa and Let. It. Go. This is a tradition that, much like my own gone and in no way lamented tradition of listening to Pink Floyd’s “Time” every year on my birthday, has far outlasted any value it may have once had. Just to be clear, this album was released in 1996. That’s almost thirty years of “A Long December”. It’s been long enough. And this is coming from a guy whose sister told him he was stuck in the Nineties, and I wear her scorn as a badge of honor.
“Walkaways” honestly feels like the perfect way to finish the album. Simple, bittersweet, ambivalent, like the album itself.
What’s my takeaway? If you are a Counting Crows fan, you should already have this album. If you don’t, why not? If you’re new to Counting Crows, I suggest starting with August and Everything After. I think it would just be a little too hard to walk back to after starting here, although probably far from impossible. There’s enough good music here, and certainly enough great music here, to make the whole album a solid buy and a solid listen all the way through at least once, although on subsequent listens you’ll probably be sticking to your favorite tracks (although please do me a favor and don’t post them to social media.)
*I’m not saying Celine Dion is the Antichrist. I’m also not not saying it.
Bob’s Jukebox: The Crow Soundtrack
Posted: October 27, 2023 Filed under: Bob's Jukebox, Culture, movies, Movies | Tags: Bob's Jukebox, culture, entertainment, movie soundtrack, movies, music, pop culture, reviews, soundtrack, The Crow, The Crow movie soundtrack, The Crow soundtrack Leave a commentHi everybody! Been a busy month, but I didn’t want to let Gothtober go by without an album review. As anybody who knew me in my early teens to late twenties can tell you, I have a plethora of self-indulgent choices, ranging from the obvious to the obscure (don’t worry Cure fans, I’ll be getting to Disintegration eventually). Fortunately for me, I was watching Awkward Ashleigh review The Crow, and I remembered how much I enjoyed the soundtrack which I also haven’t listened to in well over a decade, so here we are. (And not for nothing, but you should totally check out Awkward Ashleigh’s channel on YouTube. She’s adorkable.)
This album is pure 90s post-punk nirvana, with goth-industrial, alternative, and grunge all up in the mix, with only a single song at the end of the album being the lone dissenter. It’s so on-point in the artists and songs that were selected that, from the distance of a few decades, it almost feels like satire; it’s just that perfect at depicting a specific time in a particular sub-culture. There’s no fat on the bone here, no deviation from the clear focal point of the album (that one song not withstanding; it borders on being goth with its pretentious self-absorption). That is both a blessing and a curse; while I got exactly what I came for, by the time the album was over I couldn’t help yearning for some Neil Diamond or Captain and Tennille as a palette cleanser.
To be fair, there are a lot of bangers on this album. “Burn” by The Cure, “Golgotha Tenement Blues” by Machines of Loving Grace, “Big Empty” by Stone Temple Pilots, “Darkness” by Rage Against the Machine, “Color Me Once” by Violent Femmes, and “Milktoast” by Helmet. So, most of the first half of the album. There are a couple of minor exceptions though.
I enjoy “Dead Souls” by Nine Inch Nails, even if it is one of Trent Reznor’s more commercial entries. (For those of you who disagree, I refer you to basically anything off of The Downward Spiral. Seriously, even compared to “Closer” this is tame.) This may be because it’s a cover of a Joy Division song, although quite frankly just about anything off of Pretty Hate Machine would have worked for this movie. I guess they figured it was overdone by that point, and with Spiral releasing the same year as The Crow, Trent wanted to keep all the fresh stuff to himself.
“Ghostrider” by Rollins Band is… I mean, it’s Henry Rollins. Do you like Henry Rollins basically screaming into the microphone over top of screaming guitars and banging drums? If you’ve never tried it, I promise, it’s better than I make it sound. But it is a distinct sound, and either you’re gonna like it or you’re not. Personally, I kinda like it, but I’ve never been a Rollins fanboy, so it’s only just okay for me.
Then we get into the second half of the album, or as I like to call it, “we frontloaded the album so you would buy it without looking at the entire track list”. That’s not to say there’s no good songs here, far from it, but it definitely isn’t as strong.
“The Badge” by Pantera is another one that’s fine but not great. I’m just not much of a thrash metal fan, and there’s nothing about this song that’s going to change my mind on that count.
“Slip Slide Melting” by For Love Not Lisa is good but not quite great. I’d rate it somewhere between the big hitters that started the album and “Dead Souls”, more satisfying than the latter, not quite in the range of the former. “After the Flesh” by My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult is about the same, although with the caveat that I don’t see this one being for everybody (I just happen to be a Thrill Kill Kult fan).
“Snakedriver” by The Jesus and Mary Chain is about on par with “Dead Souls”, although I can see someone who is more of a fan of that specific alternative sound enjoying it more (again, this is my own personal bias creeping in; I’m not big on The Jesus and Mary Chain).
“Time Baby III” by Medicine is nice and mellow, leading into the aforementioned last song on the album, “It Can’t Rain All the Time” by Jane Siberry, which for all of my poking fun at it is still quite beautiful.
Would I recommend buying this album? That depends entirely on whether you like this specific sound. This album is very much of its time, and there are some songs on here you would have trouble finding anywhere else if at all. Then again, streaming services are a thing now, so there’s that. But there is something to be said to hearing them all together, experiencing the moment, as it were. If you don’t know if you like this sound, or this genre, this is an excellent sampler. If you do like it, this is also an excellent sampler. So yeah, I would definitely recommend it.
Bob’s Jukebox – Off to See the Lizard
Posted: September 29, 2023 Filed under: Bob's Jukebox, Culture | Tags: Bob's Jukebox, country music, culture, entertainment, Jimmy Buffett, Margaritaville, music, Off to See the Lizard, pop culture, pop music, reviews, Tales from Margaritaville Leave a commentThis one’s a little late for a tribute, but I’m on Margaritaville time, so I’m sure Jimmy won’t mind. I decided to do Off to See the Lizard as my first Jimmy Buffett album because it holds a special place in my heart. It wasn’t the first album of his I ever heard (I’ll get to that one eventually), nor is it my favorite (I’ll get to that one as well), but it does have the special distinction of being tied to the first concert I ever attended.
Yes folks, I was a big ol’ Parrothead when I was younger (as My Not So Humble Sister can attest to, much though she might wish otherwise), and when I was just about to turn 15 Jimmy released this album and came through my neck of the woods on tour. My dad took me to see him at Merriweather Post Pavilion, and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. If nothing else, I will always be grateful to Jimmy for giving me the memory of sharing my first concert with my Dad.
So what about the album itself? Well, I’ve already admitted it’s not my favorite Jimmy Buffett album, but I should probably qualify that. Mr. Buffett is one of those rare artists that I put into the category of “self-compare”. What I mean by that is that they have transcended their genre or are just in general too good to compare to other artists; it wouldn’t really be fair to those other artists. The best you can do is to compare them to their own work. That being said, do I like the album? Of course I do! But if I were to pick one Jimmy Buffett album to listen to, it wouldn’t be the first, or even third, I would reach for.
In some ways I feel like this is a good “introductory” Jimmy Buffett album. It has more of a contemporary pop sound than some of his other albums I have heard, which lean more into a country/reggae sound. I feel like that pop sensibility might make it more approachable for the casual listener who isn’t familiar with Jimmy’s work. Unfortunately for me, I feel like it dilutes his unique sound. Not overmuch, but it does take away somewhat from what I find enticing about his earlier albums. I also find some of the lyrics to be a little too “attempt to be clever” and “forced to fit” rather than actually clever or a good rhyme scheme and scansion. This probably has a lot to do with the album being paired with Jimmy’s first book of stories, Tales from Margaritaville, which I received for Christmas that year. If I’m being honest, I think I would recommend the book of fiction over the album, but not by much. Both are good, but not great, although I loved them both when I first experienced them.
Most of the songs I really enjoyed: Take Another Road, Gravity Storm, Boomerang Love (one of my favorites on the album, which is not surprising, since it is one of the ones most reminiscent of his earlier work), I Wish Lunch Could Last Forever (he makes it sound so perfectly decadent), The Pascagoula Run, and Changing Channels (the other one of my favorites on the album, which is also not surprising, since it is the other of the ones most reminiscent of his earlier work).
A few of the songs on the album I think are perfectly acceptable, I just don’t find them outstanding: Carnival World, Why the Things We Do, and Strange Bird.
And then there’s a few songs that I just skip past, because I feel like they exemplify all the flaws I talked about earlier: That’s My Story and I’m Sticking to It, Off to See the Lizard, and Mermaid in the Night.
When you consider the majority of the album is songs I enjoy, and even of the ones I’m not a huge fan of half of them I still listen to, that’s a solid album. Like I said before, if you haven’t heard much (or any) Jimmy Buffett (although how you’ve managed to completely escape him before now must be a miracle), this is a good album to start with.
The Same Lame Blame Game
Posted: March 9, 2018 Filed under: Culture, Politics, society | Tags: art, books, free speech, games, gun violence, guns, media, movies, music, politics, technology, Trump, video games, violence Leave a commentHere’s a fun little experiment you can do at home. Pick up a video game. It can be any kind of video game, all the way back to an Atari 2600 cartridge to a PlayStation 4 disc. Now, use it in the way it was intended by the manufacturer.
How many people did you manage to hurt? How many people did you kill?
Okay, now try using it in any way you can conceivably think of, even in ways never intended by the manufacturer. How many people can you manage to injure or kill before you get taken down by the police or your fellow citizens?
According to President Trump, the greatest threat to our country, and particularly our young people, comes from video games “shaping young people’s thoughts”, according to a report from the Washington Post. The report added that “[h]e also proposed that ‘we have to do something about maybe what they’re seeing and how they’re seeing it.’”
Well, yeah. Because goodness knows that we’ve established time and again that playing violent video games leads directly to an increase in violent behavior. Oh wait, no we haven’t. But just in case, we should violate the First Amendment rights of video game makers to be on the safe side, because that’s the best and most direct way to resolve the problem.
Apparently Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Council, suggested that violent video games “needed to be given the same kind of thought as tobacco and liquor.” Of course, because video games have been known to cause cancer and drunk driving. That’s some quality thinking there, Brent.
And that’s not the worst of the kind of conclusion-first, evidence-not-at-all thinking on display at this particular meeting. Rep. Vicki Hartzler was quoted as saying “[e]ven though I know there are studies that have said there is no causal link, as a mom and a former high school teacher, it just intuitively seems that prolonged viewing of violent nature would desensitize a young person.” I’m just curious, exactly what did you teach? Because I can’t imagine any teacher I ever had literally stating “I know there are studies that have said there is no causal link” and then trumping those factual studies with their own “intuition”. Then again, they never had the benefit of being legislators, which apparently gives you… supernatural powers?
Speaking of legislators, Sen. Marco Rubio felt the need to chime in with his usual wisdom, “acknowledg[ing] there is no evidence linking violent video games to the tragedy in Parkland. But he said he wanted to ensure ‘parents are aware of the resources available to them to monitor and control the entertainment their children are exposed to.’” Wow, that’s a brave stance. I wasn’t aware that the ESRB rating system for video games and the MPAA rating system for motion pictures were state secrets. Thanks for getting those declassified and making them available to parents everywhere, Sen. Rubio. With leadership like that you should consider running for President.
If these politicians and other “crisis actors” (yeah, I said it) really believe there’s a causal link between video games and real world violence, they need to step up and put their money where their mouth is. Start funding some quality, rigorous studies into the phenomenon, or better yet lift the ban on the CDC investigating the potential link. Address the very real concerns raised with the studies they continuously lean on (you know, the ones that don’t show a causal link?) and find something more than a spurious correlation.
The hysteria over video games recalls the hysteria over Dungeons & Dragons from the early 1980s, the outrage over explicit music that managed to stretch all the way from the mid-80s to the late 90s, banned books that seem to be a perennial controversy, or any time bad or undesirable behavior is blamed on media or culture rather than placed squarely where it belongs: on the people who perpetrate it. That’s not to say that the media doesn’t influence behavior to some extent, but to ban media in an attempt to control a handful of bad actors is very much akin to cutting off the noses of an entire community to spite one face.
Heartbreak Symphony Songlist
Posted: February 15, 2017 Filed under: Culture, Uncategorized | Tags: art, collage poetry, creativity, mix tape, music, poetry, song list Leave a comment| Side A
Song |
Artist |
| Happy Ending | Mika |
| Time | Pink Floyd |
| When You Were Young | The Killers |
| She Talks to Angels | Black Crowes |
| Raining in Baltimore | Counting Crows |
| In Our Bedroom After the War | Stars |
| Pompeii | Bastille |
| Glycerine | Bush |
| Jumper | Third Eye Blind |
|
Side B Song Grey Cell Green |
Artist Ned’s Atomic Dust Bin |
| Closer | Ne-Yo |
| Bizarre Love Triangle | New Order |
| Another Rainy Night (Without You) | Queensryche |
| Little Lion Man | Mumford and Sons |
| Rock On | David Essex |
| Demons | Imagine Dragons |
| I Miss You | Blink-182 |
| Panic Switch | Silversun Pickups |
| Sex On Fire | Kings of Leon |
| First | Cold War Kids |
The Making of “Heartbreak Symphony”
Posted: February 14, 2017 Filed under: Culture, Uncategorized | Tags: art, collage poetry, creativity, making of, mix tape, music, poetry Leave a commentThis project started out as what I thought would be a simple idea. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, a lot of us who were teenagers at the time would try to impress the people we had crushes on by making them mix tapes. For those of you who are too young to know what those are, they’re kind of like playlists that you had to make with cassettes (no I am not going to explain what those are, just Google it), and they had a limited run time. You had to find just the right blend of songs to express what you wanted to say in the time you had to work with, and there was definitely an art to it.
I got to thinking about that old art form, and about how sometimes you would pick a song because of a certain line or phrase, and how in many ways you were crafting a poem with someone else’s words. That inspired me to do just that – to write a poem completely out of other people’s words, taken completely out of context but arranged in the order that made sense for my needs, to express my feelings. I also wanted to do it in such a way that it would make a good mix tape, because that was an essential element of the original art form as well – it couldn’t just be a random jumble of songs. Well, I suppose it could, but a poem can also just be a random jumble of words. That doesn’t make it good. The artistry is in the flow, putting them in a certain order so that they sound good and take you on an emotional journey. I felt that if I could manage to do both, to create a poem that worked while at the same time creating a mix tape that worked, I would have achieved a multimedia art form unlike anything I had done (or seen) before.
The first step was the same as any mix tape: picking the songs. I went through and gathered up a list of over 60 songs by artists ranging from the Eagles to Limp Bizkit, paying particular attention to songs that had lyrics that grabbed me. They didn’t have to be anything in particular so long as it was something unique. From there I compiled all the lyrics of the songs with only two rules in mind: first, I had to use a given line complete as written in the song, and second I couldn’t use any line that contained the actual title of the song (I felt that would be cheating). At this point I started narrowing down my list fairly quickly, as I found many of the songs on my list either weren’t as compelling as I originally thought, or else they didn’t have lines I could use. I also found the general outline of the poem already beginning to form, which may have been due to the songs I selected. Whether it is due to my own particular taste in music or perhaps just the nature of pop music itself, I found that most of the songs I was finding quality lyrics in tended toward the melancholier end of the spectrum. (Personally, I think it’s more the latter – the first person who can find any poetic value in “Call Me Maybe” wins a gold star.)
Crafting the poem itself was a bit more of a challenge. It was easy to pick out individual lines I found compelling – too easy, in fact. As the goal was to make a mix tape, I couldn’t use any given song and (preferably) any given artist more than once, and I had a time limit as well. I had to consider the run time of each song I used as part of the poem, and although I have always been fond of the 90 minute cassettes, apparently I am also fond of songs with long run times. Sometimes I wish more artists heeded the mocking advice of Billy Joel from “The Entertainer” and “cut it down to 3:05”. But I digress. As I went through and wrote the poem, I quickly realized I was piling up a large number of songs and likely would run out of time, so I went back and started adding in the length of each track next to its complementary line in the poem. As I did I saw that I would run out of space before the end of the second stanza, so I made the decision to cut that stanza entirely, which to be honest was not particularly strong anyway.
In this way, the constraint of the time limit turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It forced me to keep the poem tighter than it otherwise would have been and cut weaker material that I might have left in. It also provided me with the artistic guidance to break the poem into two stanzas which equate to the two sides of the cassette. While I believe both the poem and the playlist work very well as a comprehensive whole (and both are meant to be enjoyed that way), there is also a certain completeness to each component part, whether it be the individual stanzas or Side A/Side B of the mix tape.
I hope you enjoy it. Come back tomorrow for a complete playlist so you can enjoy the mix tape for yourself, and feel free to leave any guesses in the comments below.
Heartbreak Symphony
Posted: February 13, 2017 Filed under: Culture | Tags: art, collage poetry, creativity, mix tape, music, poetry 2 CommentsTicking away the moments that make up a dull day,
you sit there in your heartache
in certain company.
And I don’t have nothing to say;
if there’s no one there, then there’s no one there, but at least the war is over.
We were caught up and lost in all of our vices –
I couldn’t change though I wanted to.
And if you do not want to see me again, I would understand.
When your desire has been found
I just can’t pull myself away –
living a life that I can’t leave behind.
You leave me wanting, always leave me wanting more.
But it was not your fault but mine,
and where do we go from here?
I need to let you go;
I cannot sleep, I cannot dream tonight.
Could I be anything you want me to be?
But it’s not forever –
Call it a dark night of the soul.
. And be sure to leave a review with your not so humble opinion!
My Not So Humble Opinion 