The Song Fight Bulletin Board

FIRE BAAAAAD MUSIC GOOOOOOD

Yarrrrrrrr. This is an official warning!

There is an entry in this fight by the rock and roll band "charcoal." It:

• is rather longer than a typical rock song,
• does not have lyrics,
• sounds like "charcoal."

If you are offended by any (or, as is not unlikely, all) of the above, feel free to not download and listen to it. I'll understand. I mean, I think it's good, or I wouldn't have entered it, but it does kind of strike at the heart of some popular biases, so I felt that the polite thing to do would be to provide advance warning.

bzl wrote:sounds like "charcoal"

Does it sound like dying charcoal?

bzl wrote: strike at the heart of some popular biases

i'm stealing that line.

Morbid Morgan i really like the cover art you did for this one. For me personally, if I had a vision of art to go with my rendition of this title, you've captured it. Rok! [/b]

boltoph wrote:Morbid Morgan i really like the cover art you did for this one.

Seconded!

I think my vote is going to go to A Werkenhorse, but I'm gonna give the list a few more listens before I commit. Nice work to everyone though - feels good to finally get an entry in again.

I am posting because I am retarded

8LO has made the proper edits and vigilantes need not be called.

There are some fine sounds this week, and they deserve more listens, but
here are initial impressions...

<b>Nigel Bibbet</b>
This is sweet! Love the feedback tones, though they may be a little strong
at times. Nice pace, great voice.

<b>A Werkenhorse</b>
I didn't expect to make it to the end, but I dig the textures and the
sticato guitar. The voice I don't like but I kinda dig the lyric.

<b>Hope, Oath, and Suspicion</b>
This is a bit too good-feely for its own good. Could be...darker still. It's also just too repetitive. Oh, OK, nice break down towards the ending. Still too repetitive.

<b>Tuba Toothpaste</b>
I like the changes a lot...some refreshing turns harmonically. And I like your vocal delivery. Then there're these stray notes towards the end...flutes I think. minor seconds off. I sort of like that.

<b>Charcoal</b>
I love the glockenspiel thing goin on (keys). The build up after the snare starts leading has great energy, slow nervous anxiety, with a nice resolution. This is my favorite of yours to date. Great loop at the end.

<b>Rusty Iguana</b>
Not an uninteresting piece of composed noise. If it weren't for the vocal...

<b>Father Bingo</b>
Like an incidental que from Hawaii Five O, this charms while it underperforms. It has that certain "die for me" mood, certainly, yet falls seemingly short of actually coming out and saying it.

<b>Boltoph</b>
The narrator thinks too much. Girls. Don't they know what they do to us? Some off-the-cuff remark sends us into a death spiral. Yeah, easy for her to say...I'm the one dyin' here! I like your song, too. I'd let the ending ring longer, though.

<b>Astrolamb</b>
Stangely B52s. Liking the lyric "I'll burn in hell if it's burning with you." and the low-fi crunch. Wish your vocals were more up front. The guitar is cool.

<b>Luke Henley</b>
No, I'm not in this space.

Rusty ig
This reminds me of the last time I tried to vacuum up a penny - sucked sucked sucked but I could dance to it..

Tubotooth
Hmmm. Seemed like there wasn’t an agreement on the key between the Harpsaguikeyboardist and the singer. Reminded me - lookup maudlin before doing anymore reviews

Luke
I used to …. Uhmmm uhhh …. I used to know a guy who would smoke a bunch of hash and spend all night sitting on the floor playing/singing into a cassette recorder. He was never quite this good, but damned close. Maybe SF should be separated by the amount of money the artist has spent on production equipment. Kinda like weight classes in boxing. Anyway there were to many flub-ups and no arraignment. You prolly needed 10more takes. But hey at least you meant it.

Nigel
That feed back noise thingy didn’t work for me - just to shrill - nice song - having a brit accent on McCartneyesk lyrics is cheating.

Roymond
The violin or viola or whatever was sooo nice. Some of the harshly obvious rhymes pushed you down lower on my list. Nice music.

Charcoal
I was full on interested for 4 minutes. To bad you’re disqualified. I have been lurking here for over a year and only submitted one song . If it was an instrumental fight no one would listen and I have a submission every week.

Father Bingo
The syncopated rhythmic skip thing is great - this one even had a melody line …. but no lyrics - gotsta have words - disqualified.

Hopeoath - oh, that’s what the title was referring to. Well balanced tone color (huh?) in the composition. The single clean little guitar hook is perfect pop. I couldn’t make out the words threw the whole thing - maybe a headphone issue maybe a mix issue.

Der werkenhorse
The Mick Jagger hoot voice can be fun - but you need Keif behind you. There wasn’t enough going on here. The pachinko kabuki instrumentals would be ok if they would vary and resolve. Dude! tension wants resolution .

Astrolamb
I saw astrolamb on the play list and thought ooo coool this dude can play some guitar. But the punk vocals don’t deserve to be on the same song as the axe. The guitar has that punk sound, but it’s just to good for a throw away monotone vox. A.L., my brother, hand on your shoulder looking you in the eye -Jimi couldn’t sing either.

Boltoph
To my production retarded ear this was perfect production - I love this one - long time.

pegor wrote:Roymond
The violin or viola or whatever was sooo nice.

That's a 'cello. :)

dang - I had cello in that sentence and deleted it - dang! - 'course I had tuba in there too....

wow! what a turn out! for nearly all the fights, even. awesome.

astrolamb
- good guitar riff
- sounds underproduced, a little muddy

a werkenhorse
- interesting guitar lick
- part of me wants to say up the vox in the mix, but with your sense of melody, that probably isn't a good idea
- is that a banjo in the second verse? nice touch
- you keep improving: more focus, better production; keep up the good work

boltoph
- after the first two offerings, a wonderful silky feeling
- thank you for fultilling the promise of that first electric guitar strum
- nice solo
- could actually be a little edgier, especially the singing; don't be afraid to let it hang out with those guitars

charcoal
- an interesting idea, but 8 minutes? this is pretty, but it might border on pretentious (mind you, this coming for the reigning king of pretentious lyrics)
- it's always really hard to justify titles for instrumentals at song fight; i'm wondering if you have a reason
- about 4:00 you lose my attention; good break at 4:50 but it's already too late

father bingo
- kind of bops along; fun
- nearly falls apart there at the end
- instrumental; explain the title

hope, oath and suspicion
- i recently read a book that posited the idea that judas was the only disciple who understood that jesus had to die to fulfill his destiny
- the lead guitar might be a little too far up in the mix: at times it overpowers the vocals

luke henley
- the vocals are out of sync and out of tune; added with the slightly out of tune and meandering guitar strumming, it's quite grating

nigel bibbet
- touches of pink floyd
- nice electric guitar bits on the right side
- what is that at the ending? it seems out of place.

roymond

jb wrote:That's a 'cello.

- thought it was hitting some notes a little too low for a plain ol' violin. a very nice touch.
- your singing seems out of tune, maybe take it down an octave.
- could use some percussion when it kicks it out

rusty iguana
- percussion is too raw and not solid; it sounds like your whacking on a plastic bucket
- go listen to some x-tokyo-river-god in the archicves and take notes; come back next week and good luck
- i like the vocal tone variation, but how about some real lyrics?
- dynamics, dynamics, dynamics

tuba toothpaste
- fun & campy; a little sinister, which i like
- would sound better with a real piano

pegor wrote: Roymond
The violin or viola or whatever was sooo nice. Some of the harshly obvious rhymes pushed you down lower on my list. Nice music.

Yes, the fine JB of the JBB stepped up and cello'd (thanks again!)

I'll take the rhymes criticism, although they all serve the story. i wanted it to be simple, even though the story is more somber. anyway, thanks.

nyjm wrote:father bingo
- instrumental; explain the title

Indignant: Come on, you can't feel the sad irony with the pauses and the anger at 1:44? I need words to tell you that's how I'm feeling?

Straight forward: I wrote it thinking about my ex-wife. I was going to use the lyrics submitted by Minty Handy in the prefight thread but decided against it because the narrator is still married.

Meanwhile:

pegor wrote:I have been lurking here for over a year and only submitted one song . If it was an instrumental fight no one would listen and I have a submission every week ... gotsta have words - disqualified.

Pegor, if that's true about how you could have a submission each fight, then I call you out. I don't write lyrics fast enough for SongFight, so mine are almost always wordless. So you and me, a side fight of sorts. We'll figure out a title we both agree on in the prefight thread and go at it without words.

Conclusion: Instrumentals are people too.

Meanwhile:

pegor wrote:I have been lurking here for over a year and only submitted one song . If it was an instrumental fight no one would listen and I have a submission every week ... gotsta have words - disqualified.

Pegor, if that's true about how you could have a submission each fight, then I call you out. I don't write lyrics fast enough for SongFight, so mine are almost always wordless. So you and me, a side fight of sorts. We'll figure out a title we both agree on in the prefight thread and go at it without words.

Conclusion: Instrumentals are people too.[/quote]

Here we go again my big mouth getting me a public ass kicking .. Errr uhhh I mean yeeeaaaaa biatch! Ellis Island if you think you can bring it !!!!

how was that?

Father Bingo wrote:Straight forward: I wrote it thinking about my ex-wife.

no, that's really all i wanted. in fact, it's perfect; i wouldn't want any more information. now i have to go back and relisten.

i don't have anything against instrumentals, i just like to have a little indication.

pegor wrote:Here we go again my big mouth getting me a public ass kicking .. Errr uhhh I mean yeeeaaaaa biatch! Ellis Island if you think you can bring it !!!!

how was that?

Heheheh. Awesome.

But shit, I didn't really like any of this week's titles. Hmmm.

Okay. You're on!

Hulkamania!
Grrrrrr!

Shut up and write a song with words, bumfaces.

I strive to be the pretentiousest! Really I was trying to create my take on the sort of music I've been listening to recently, and along those lines, eight minutes is probably a bit shorter than average. I mean, I listen to it and it doesn't feel like it's that long, though I bet your mileage will vary by a lot. I know a lot of people won't care for it, but I hope that a few will like the song as is, and that's really all I can aim for.

On titular connectivity, I was just trying to convey a mood. If someone asked you to die for them, you'd probably decline, right? Unless maybe it was your spouse or child, or something. I wouldn't wish that sort of choice on anyone, but imagine how you'd feel if it happened to you. Say your five year old daughter needs a spleen transplant or she'll die and you're the only donor available but you know you wouldn't survive a spleenectomy. You might say you'd do it, and you might say you wouldn't, and I'm not gonna judge either way, except to say that I doubt that most people would know for sure how they'd act unless the situation actually came up. It's one thing to jump out into traffic to push someone else out of the way (or something), but way different when you have plenty of time to think about what you're going to do.

Now imagine that she knows that you'd be giving up your life for her; how do you think she'd feel?

Anyways, that's the sort of mood I was going for. I don't have full reviews at the moment, but I will say a few things. I think I like Boltoph's song best to just listen to, but I find the lyrics to be a bit of a turn off. Dad Bingo's is good listenin' too. I think I will probably end up voting for Nigel Bibbet; the song is pretty silly but I like it and it's growin' on me. Lyrics make me giggle and I'm just slightly embarassed by that. Luke: mix louder! This could be a lot better if I didn't have to turn the volume way up; I actually missed the song the first few times through. Is Astrolamb connected with the Primitive Screwheads? This really reminds me of their "Stranded" cover from GOM-04, for some reason. The prosody I think.

Also, where are all the Clearmountain pauses? I ended up cutting about six seconds of pure silence out of my song, so if anyone needs a sample of some good, high-quality nothing, I'd be happy to help out. It's also great when run through a grungy LPF to get that "uncomfortable silence in the middle of a telephone conversation" feel!

I guess that's all.

Lots of great entries this week. I kept most of them. Here are the ones I kept:

Astrolamb
A Werkenhorse
Charcoal
Father Bingo
Luke Henley
Nigel Bibbet
Roymond

I really liked the 2 instrumentals, it's just a shame there were no words. I don't think either would've gotten my vote though, because Roymond's was so fantastically amazing this week that it completely dominated everything ever. Another Roymond song on this list of my favorite Songfight songs (with Hey Ruth). I might review these later.