26-11-2009

The 80s is a drag, so I've bailed out.

The last news I did here (some time ago) was suggesting that I was to learn the '80s in much the same way as American ukulele Player Patsy Monteleone comprehensively knew the Great American Songbook.  This has proven difficult for several reasons:

Firstly, I'm not Patsy. Since I wrote that garbage I've actually met Patsy, and watched him work up close. Our styles of playing are very different. Patsy's playing is beautiful, yet simple, serving the song in a minimalist, impressionistic way. He only plays enough to drive the song along, and barring the extremely rare ornament, nothing more. I can't do that. I'm more for photorealism, pinning the song out on the dissecting table, unhappy with it unless every little detail of the original is represented in some way.  What this means in practical terms is that Patsy can do a song with the vaguest whiff of the melody line and structure, whereas each song I do is agonised over in microscopic detail. That's got to put a crimp on the number of songs you can effectively do. It takes me days, even weeks to get a song performance-ready, and I usually forget it soon after if not regularly polished; Patsy can store dozens of these impressionistic sketches.

Secondly, the hits of the '80s are not the hits of the '20s and '30s. Those old tunes seem to run along well-worn patterns and sets of changes. Know one set of changes and you've got the key to about twenty songs right there. The 80s don't do that. They're all wildly different - especially when viewed in said microscopic detail.

Thirdly, the '80s stuff just isn't pretty in the same way the older stuff is. It doesn't lend itself as naturally to vox and uke as those lovely old jazz tunes. It's a question of motivation.

So, in the summer, I tried out the '80s experiment, and it went the proverbial way of the pear. I'd pored over about 3 tunes, and I went to play them in public and realised I couldn't remember a single one of them all the way through. I stuttered a few beginnings, blanked, stuttered a bit more, lost my bottle with it, blanked some more, and at that point abandoned the idea as a bad lot.

Luckily I was at a uke festival being watched by friends, who witnessed my choking with a lighthearted good grace. Still, a salutary lesson learned.

Besides that, I've been getting more and more enthusiastic about writing original material, and outside the Re-entrants, my interest for doing covers has waned a good deal. Nowadays, if I think a cover has got the potential to be good, I'd much rather do it with Phil than work it out as a solo thing. We know each other's methods very well now, and working out covers with him is far more interesting, and the results so much better, than doing it on my tod.

I find it a little bit scary - your own stuff is much more personal than doing covers, and the potential for it to be disliked is far greater. Pretty much all of the covers I've put up on YouTube have 5 stars; if I start putting original material on there, it's inevitable it won't get the same reaction, and my star rating will probably plummet. Particularly if I put some of my stranger songs on there.

The question is, do I care? Obviously I do, but do I care enough? Is it worth potential disapprobation for doing my own thing, regardless of what the listeners think? Isn't that just self-indulgence?

Then I realise it doesn't matter if it is. My own thing is my own thing; it has no real bearing on The Re-entrants or the people who like The Re-entrants. It's not like I'm charging people to listen to it.

So the eighties is out; apart from The Re-entrants (and the odd one-off for an invitational or some such) covers are out. I'm writing material, and I'm having a blast doing it, and that's good enough for me.