The Song Fight Bulletin Board

And from here, it is but a short jig to 'why are instrumentals frowned upon'? Is it some unwritten law that all threads on Songfight will ventually end up in this debate????

I do find it surprising that people complain that they don't feel inspired by the titles. there will be periods where you are and periods where you aren't. That's the nature of having someone else think up the titles. Because I am nice, for anyone struggling, here are the ideas I had this week (minus the one I am going to go with)

Snow Fort - 'Neptunes' style beat song about Tony Montana's cocaine-infested ranch, as per the end of 'Scarface'.

Tank Top - sweet boy 'n' guitar 'n' weird noises song about the legend of 70s porn (I already did an AAD song 'Porn Stars of the Seventies' about gay porn stars which featured the line 'Give me tank tops and stripy sports socks ...' so I happily offer this up for a heterosexual take!)

Turn the Power On - just screams for a Grandaddy style song about post-apocalyptic, breakdown of society, type song. Leaving this one because I already covered the subject matter in 'Upcoming Downtime' and because I don't have the skill to pull off a Grandaddy song.

Man Speaking German - I have a cool idea for this one, as stated elsewhere. Otherwise there's room for a song about Hitler (in the style of brecht's 'Arturo Ui', or a song taking digs at newspapers in the sense of the real horrors in the world, but the headlines are always shallow, emotion nigglers, like 'At 6.00! American Man Wakes from Coma after 16 years and now only speaks German'!

Not trying to show off, these are all fairly literal. If anyone wants them, they're welcome to them.

j$

I don't think the wording of the FAQ is ambiguous at all. I think it's worded so that songs which do not include the title in the lyrics are welcome, but also worded to suggest that you should write a song for the title that is provided.

If the title is "Let's Learn to Do the Cabbage Patch" and you write a song about leprechauns from Brazil who want to go to outer space, I don't think you're really following the guidelines of songfight. Which is not to say that every song has to be a straight-up literal interpretation of the title, but there should be some connection, some reason why your song has the same title as the one posted to songfight.

15-16 puzzle wrote:........ but there should be some connection, some reason why your song has the same title as the one posted to songfight.

if for no other reason to sort of validate the fact you actually made a new song for the week and didn't just submit something recycled.

15-16 puzzle wrote:........ but there should be some connection, some reason why your song has the same title as the one posted to songfight.

jack shite wrote:if for no other reason to sort of validate the fact you actually made a new song for the week and didn't just submit something recycled.

johnny cashpoint, trying to avert a major three-page deja-vu experience, had already wrote:And from here, it is but a short jig to 'why are instrumentals frowned upon'? Is it some unwritten law that all threads on Songfight will 'ventually end up in this debate????

I wasn't repeating what you had said, because I don't think instrumentals are necessarily bad. I was commenting on something different, which was that just because you aren't required to use the title in lyrics doesn't mean that you should feel free to write anything you want and send it in.

bzl wrote:

deshead wrote:

• 1. Write a song based on the title of your choice...

I always thought the FAQ is deliberately ambiguous in this regard. It would have been just as easy to say "write a song containing the title of your choice..."

It would also be just as easy to say "write a song containing the vegetable of your choice" but, well, I do hope you see why your two things are different. A song doesn't have to "contain" its title (in the lyrics, I assume you mean) to validate it.

Exhibit A

A good sidefight BTW in "The Jig is Up". Also I think complaining about the titles is akin to looking a gift horse in the mouth.

15-16 puzzle wrote:I don't think the wording of the FAQ is ambiguous at all. I think it's worded so that songs which do not include the title in the lyrics are welcome, but also worded to suggest that you should write a song for the title that is provided.

Not to split hairs but Deshead did say "based on" before he said "ambiguous". And then of course theirs always this.

Pronunciation: am-'bi-gy&-w&s
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin ambiguus, from ambigere to be undecided, from ambi- + agere to drive -- more at AGENT
1 a : doubtful or uncertain especially from obscurity or indistinctness <eyes of an ambiguous color> b : INEXPLICABLE
2 : capable of being understood in two or more possible senses or ways

But I'm sure you were already aware of the second definition.

Just wanted to jump in and point out the fact that we're now discussing the ambiguity of the word 'ambiguous'. Whee!

Sorry, that had little to do with any of this, but it made my morning for some weird reason.

15-16 puzzle wrote:I wasn't repeating what you had said, because I don't think instrumentals are necessarily bad. I was commenting on something different, which was that just because you aren't required to use the title in lyrics doesn't mean that you should feel free to write anything you want and send it in.

I know. TATJ. I was actually responding to Jack, making the point (or trying to) that discussing the validity of titles is as unresolvable as discussing the validity of instrumentals. I thought a little humour would lighten up a rather too worthy thread. I was either wrong or not funny.

j$ wrote:I was either wrong or not funny.

I laughed.

Dan-O wrote:Not to split hairs but Deshead did say "based on" before he said "ambiguous".

I also linked the 18 possible definitions for for the word "based", but I guess my intent there was ambiguous.

Heh.

deshead wrote:

j$ wrote:I was either wrong or not funny.

I laughed.

Dan-O wrote:Not to split hairs but Deshead did say "based on" before he said "ambiguous".

I also linked the 18 possible definitions for for the word "based", but I guess my intent there was ambiguous.

Heh.

I tried the "link", @ 15-16, several times, it didn't work.

Hmm.

Dan-O from Five-O wrote:
Not to split hairs but Deshead did say "based on" before he said "ambiguous".

I can read. I also know what ambiguous means. I can't fathom more than one interpretation of the sentence in question. I think it's <i>vague</i> on purpose to be as accomodating as possible, but not at all ambiguous.

15-16 puzzle wrote:

Dan-O from Five-O wrote:
Not to split hairs but Deshead did say "based on" before he said "ambiguous".

I can read. I also know what ambiguous means. I can't fathom more than one interpretation of the sentence in question. I think it's <i>vague</i> on purpose to be as accomodating as possible, but not at all ambiguous.

At the risk of this getting ugly, and boring for others, you don't think being "as accomodating as possible" and leaving something that is "capable of being understood in two or more possible senses or ways" is "at all ambiguous"?

In an effort to end this, I will restate yet again that I don't think that the FAQ is ambiguous. I will also restate that it is vague, which is not the same thing as ambiguous. I do not see another interpretation besides "Write a song that has some connection to the given title". If you're going to allow misinterpretations of what is stated to count as valid alternate meanings, then there is not a single thing that isn't ambiguous, and the word loses all meaning. If you would like me to repeat this all again, you can pm me.

The rules allow for almost any plausable interpretation. I can only recall one or two disqualifications. One was an unabashed commercial cover, and the other made no bones about being largely generated before the title was announced, both unquestionable violations.

What about LEF's submission of a popular artist's song? I think the fight was feathers, I don't recall.

15-16 puzzle wrote:In an effort to end this, I will restate yet again that I don't think

OK, it's ended.

Nah that's just mean on my part, and I am mostly just trying to rile you up anyway. You're pretty easy to do that to from what I've seen. I do respect you're opinion, and agree with a lot of the time it's just not right now.

For instance take a title like "You Rock". You might right a song about how you think someone "Rocks" in the many ways that could be intepreted like "Man that guitarist rocks" or "That dress she's wearing rocks". And I might write a song like "You rock" as in you stupid, incapabale of reason and thought, inanimate piece of igneous. Deshead might write a song about two people being "Thick as Bricks". Though technically not a rock, a brick is rock like and would have a connection to the title.

Hence "capable of being understood in two or more possible senses or ways". Hence "ambiguous". Hence "vague".

My point is that anything that can be interpreted in multiple ways is inherently vague. If there was only one way to interpret something, that would be specific.

The Sober Irishman wrote:What about LEF's submission of a popular artist's song? I think the fight was feathers, I don't recall.

He totally ripped that off. Check out Jim Varney All Stars - Is It Cold?

Dan-O from Five-O wrote:I am mostly just trying to rile you up anyway. You're pretty easy to do that to from what I've seen. I do respect you're opinion, and agree with a lot of the time it's just not right now.

I'm pretty hard to rile up. I'm pretty easy to get talking. If you really think you've upset me, you're both terribly mistaken and a bit full of yourself.

john m wrote:Is it just me, or have the titles for the last month been terrible? I've had time to write/record, but these titles drive me away.

In an effort to rerail the conversation, it seems to me that new title excitement is inversely proportional to how long one has been at songfight. Like it seems everyone liked the title(s) the first week they showed up.

Yeah, there must be some function of time one has spent on songfight that determines how much one will like the titles.

I stepped in at "Between the Rain" and loved the titles. I think reached a low point of liking around the "Hey Ruth" week, and have wavered steadily at about that rate ever since.

Well, I've been here since ABCD Puppies (the real one where NiL won, not the newer revisionist one), and I love the current titles.