Wincers

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Bert
Date: 09 Apr 06 - 02:27 AM

If a line is too bad you can always use it in a funny song.

I wrote a song about Momma spit once, it is horrible really but always gets a laugh.

The trick is to sing it WITHOUT wincing.

Here 'tiz

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: alanabit
Date: 09 Apr 06 - 02:26 AM

It sounds a bit like the Ian Dury school of songwriting (which I rather like).
"Van Gogh did some eyeball pleasers
He must have been a pencil squeezer
He didn't do the Mona Lisa
That was an Italian geezer
There ain't 'alf been some clever bastards...."

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 08 Apr 06 - 11:59 PM

I know we have mentioned this before but how oh how could the person who wrote the beautiful song which now I forget the words..but come to the something like a warrior nothing will bore yer...I at least sing not like a lawyer....mg

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 08 Apr 06 - 10:46 PM

Alan

Thanks for inviting me to post on this thread. I came to songwriting rather late in life and tend to go for humour and I carefully evaluate every line. I've written my fair share of wincers but they are usually done on purpose.

Like in my "Mona Lisa Smile" on the reason for the smile.

Maybe its a wish for the faint hearted.
Or maybe it was just because she farted.

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: alanabit
Date: 22 Mar 06 - 05:55 AM

I just dug this thread up and read it through again. It had me howling with laughter. Thanks everyone. If anyone else is going to be brave, there is still plenty of space here...

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: GUEST,reggie miles
Date: 10 Mar 06 - 11:59 AM

Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, wincers are in the ears of the belisteners.

I concur that some of the worst lines imaginable have made it to the tops of many charts, pop, country, folk, rock, etc. They still manage to do this today.

Oh yes I'm bad
Chamon, you know it...(Whacko Jacko)

When you've got money, connections, popularity and power you can produce and popularize any stupid idea you see fit and the funny thing about it is that there's a whole lot of folks out there that'll eat it right up with a smile on their face and then say, "Thanks! May I have another?". For example, take the idea that we here in the US were fed by our brave feds, that all would be safe from attack by using duck tape and platic sheeting on our windows and doors. It was a fifty year old variation on the theme of duck and cover I suppose. It's hard to imagine that any message could be more of a wincer but that didn't stop the masses from depleting duck tape supplies across the nation.

What prompted my foray into songwriting was when I caught Dolly on a morning talk show singing one of her songs along with a karaoke kind of sound track. She sang badly off key in front of a nationally televised audience. I guess I didn't expect that from someone with all of that fame and skill. I suppose we all have our bad days. I guess it's the ones with fewer wincers that make it to the top. It was a wincer of a performance. I figured if someone like that could offer such an embarrassing show to a national audience, well, then I certainly shouldn't be shy about honing some of my material in front of a local audience and the rest, as they say, is hickstory or perhaps a hackstory. ;o)

The wincers of today could very well be the hits of tomorrow. Just make sure you've got plenty of chicken wire stapled to the front of the stage you're about to mount and watch out for low flying empties and vegetable matter.

"Thick skinned tomatoes have been known to reduce a guitar to rubble when hurled from as far as 8 or 10 furlongs." (Utah Phillips)

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Bert
Date: 10 Mar 06 - 02:14 AM

Well bugger, there's my buddy McGraw talking about wincers that are better than some of my best songs. Don't you just HATE people like that:-) Rotten bloody show off!!!

He wrote that song about "The blue clicky thing". One of the best songs ever posted on Mudcat. I still sing it now and then, and it's so powerful that nobody ever quite knows how to react (I HATE HIM) *BIG GRIN*.

What I say is, take those "wincers" and sing then as though you mean them. There's a hell of a lot worse out there.

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: alanabit
Date: 10 Mar 06 - 01:55 AM

It may be an appalling line, but I bet it entertained the audience!

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Stephen L. Rich
Date: 10 Mar 06 - 12:46 AM

I've been mulling this over for a while. I've written enough bad lines over the years that picking out just one is a bit of a chore.
    I'll settle for the worst one that I ever actually performed before an audience (Shame? I've heard of that. Do people really do such things?).

    Last April I did my first performance on a live, radio, variety show called "Higher Ground with Jonathan Overby". Jonathan threw me a wild, on-air, curve. He chose a young lady from the audience, told us to go out into the studio hallway to see if I could teach her to yodel before the second hour of the program.
    The young lady, whose name was Rose, and I retired to the studio hallway to see what we could do about, at the very least, not making fools of ourselves on a state-wide, live broadcast.
      The first hurdle was that Rose was taking voice lessons. Voice teachers tend to teach one methods to specifically AVOID yodeling. Fortunately, Rose was eager to learn and managed to rise to the occasion and to plausibly learn the simplest yodel I could think of in just under ten minutes. The girl was a trooper (and, yes, I mean "girl". She was seventeen).
       It was at about that point that I made came to a horrifying realization. I didn't have a song that would go with the yodel part that I had just taught her. OOOPPPSSS! It never ceases to amaze my what blind panic can enable onr to achieve. In the four minutes we had left, I wrote a short song. It wasn't a very good one. I knew that, but I pressed on in the hope that the situation would help to make it funny in spite of that.
       When, in the second hour of the program, we were called upon to show what we had done I sang, and Rose yodeled the following:


       I taught a young girl to yodel,
       For the Jonathan Overby Show.
       We're going to show it.
       I hope we don't blow it.
       Rose, are you ready to go?

       (we yodeled)

       Jonathan asked us to yodel,
       So yodeling is what we will do.
       Since the word to this song are redundant,
       We'll shutup and yodel for you.

       (we yodeled)

    The third and fourth lines were bad enough, but "shutup and yodel"? That's bad. That's really bad.


Stephen Lee

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: alanabit
Date: 05 Mar 06 - 01:50 PM

I could not agree more.

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Mar 06 - 12:57 PM

"Resonance" - I take it that means that a good song needs to link up with something inside the listeners. I'd agree there, but I don't think it need rules out songs that draw on very personal experience. Where songs often fall down is when the personal drama gets broadened out into broadbrush generalisations above "emotion" or whatever, rather than about a particular experience that has brought it to life.

So, to get away from love songs for a moment, a song about a specific factory closing down, or a particular incident in a war, is far more likely to have "resonance" than a generalised song going on about capitalism or militarism and so forth.

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: alanabit
Date: 05 Mar 06 - 04:06 AM

It sounds a bit precious to me, but maybe someone could make it work in the right song. I don't do that sort of stuff any more. You get to the age when you realise that your own feelings are no more "sensitive" than anyone else's.
We had quite a good thread about personal songs a couple of years back. I think they are pretty dangerous territory for all but the most accomplished writers. The problem is, (in my humble opinion), that the most important quality of a good song is resonance. That is less likely to be achieved if you are preoccupied with your own dramas. I am getting off the subject now, though aren't I? I wonder who else is going to step forward and own up?

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: michaelr
Date: 04 Mar 06 - 05:46 PM

Hiccup on your speck-cheller there, McGrath?

Alan, I agree that line is a keeper. But I do think that love songs are best when pulled from the tradition. Then, at least you can do them with a straight face and have the excuse, "hey, it was written 300 years ago -- not my fault".

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Mar 06 - 04:41 PM

'm with Peace on that last line in that stocking song of alanabit's there being a good un.

Good lines often turn up in songs that don't work too well, as Jerry said back there. I've always regarded any song I've written as being available for recycling by me. Even when it's a song I like well enough.

It doesn't matter too much what a song looks like written down - but I think you have to be able to imagine saying it rather than singing it.

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Mar 06 - 04:40 PM

I'm with Peace on that last line in that stocking song of alanabit's there being a good un.

Good lines often turn up in songs that don't work too well, as Jerry said back there. I've always regarded any song I've written as being available for recycling by me. Even when it's a song I like well enough.

It doesn't matter too uich wahta a song looks like wrutten down - but I think you have to be able to imagine saying it rather than singing it.

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: alanabit
Date: 04 Mar 06 - 02:19 PM

Love love me do
You know I'll love you
I'll always be true
So please love me do...

Well, they were young men at the time!

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Maryrrf
Date: 04 Mar 06 - 10:42 AM

These wincers are no worse than many songs that have become hits over the years.

"People smile and tell me I'm the lucky one. We've just begun. I think I'm gonna have a son"

"I am I said to no one there, and no one heard at all not even the chair"

If you actually write out the lyrics to most pop and many folk songs they sound terrible. Sung, depending on the tune and delivery, they might sound better.

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: frogprince
Date: 04 Mar 06 - 10:05 AM

Maybe I shouldn't admit it, but I don't think Cluin's last one is bad at all. If ya can get more verses that work with tongue in cheek the same way...

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Linda Kelly
Date: 04 Mar 06 - 07:14 AM

I did attempt a Hull meets country and western song about a man with a personal body odour problem who found true love with a woman who had had her nose cut off by a bacon slicer it has a verse and this was an earlier version, which went

His name was Stanley, he was manly and he owned a big saloon
It was a Ford Cortina
You won't smell nothin' meaner
when he drive it round on Sunday afternoons
Chorus
He'd ride the range that lonesome cowboy
From Bilton Grange to north of Louth
Smelt somewhat strange that lonesme cowboy
But his heart is bigger than a texan oilman's mouth.

eventually I changed the names to protect the innocent but its still fairly hammy and not ever sung by me even though its a bit of a classic!!!!

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Peace
Date: 04 Mar 06 - 02:57 AM

The last line is a keeper, IMO. Good hook for a country and western song.

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: alanabit
Date: 04 Mar 06 - 02:50 AM

My own first attempts at love songs were so excruciating, that my memory has thankfully erased most of them. One of the worst went:

"I can see your face reflected from the posters on my wall
You're pulling on your stockings as the night begins to fall
It takes me back to what I lack and where I long to be
To think I used to laugh at love and now it laughs at me."

There was even more of this garbage. I don't "do" love songs any more, which is a mercy to both me and my listeners!

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Cluin
Date: 03 Mar 06 - 10:04 PM

One I started, and abandoned after the one verse (Didn't wanna go there)...:

Whiskey over cornflakes,
That's nice.
Vodka in my orange juice,
With ice.
The sky's the limit, when you find
Your time is all your own
Baby, won't you please come home?

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 03 Mar 06 - 07:09 PM

I'm from your school, Jerry!

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 03 Mar 06 - 07:42 AM

Part of my saving grace, michael is that I didn't start writing songs until I was almost 30. And, I never "wanted" to be a songwriter. I rarely set out to write a song. In my whole life, I've only written three or four songs "intentionally." I still love traditional music, whether it is folk or gospel, and there is an endless supply of great songs already written. If I never write another song, it's fine with me. That said, I write a half a dozen a year, just because a line pops into my head that I find interesting, and I sometimes "but not always" let it grow into a song. Throughout my life, many songs have started in that half awake/half asleep state of early morning... or mid-night. Many more have started as a response to having a good time with friends. Another batch come as a response to strangers I run across who make a deep impression on me... or a simple event.

As an example, as I'm typing this, I can imagine writing a song titled "I'm Fine" for all the people my wife and I visit who are housebound or in nursing homes. That spirit that responds to the question, "How are you feeling?" with "I'm fine," even though the person is blind, or has been bed ridden for years always hits me. It makes me realize that whatever small irritations or frustrations I have are foolish and self-centered.

When I "write" ("make-up" would be a better term) I often don't write down the words until well along in the song. Same with the melody. It's not laziness (sometimes it's inconvenince, like when I'm driving.) Mostly, I have this attitude that if I can't remember the words or the melody, they are be definition not memorable. And, who wants to write a song that's not memorable. That means that the wincers that I "write" slip away quickly.

I also tend to write more observational, or anecdotal songs, which don't lend themselves to profound, artsy-fartsy lines. The closest I get is lines like:

"We all live by patterns we don't understand
That drive us as surely as a clock drives the hands"

And I don't even remember all of that song..

I draw from a well of traditional folk, rhythm and blues and very simple gospel music. Not a lot of self-conscious stuff in there.

My wincers have long since been forgotten, michael. So have some pretty good songs. I come across songs I've written and don't even remember. I look at them in amazement, and am surprised that I wrote them down.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: alanabit
Date: 03 Mar 06 - 02:33 AM

Yep, I'm with you Michael. Some of that stuff you and Alba wrote was hilarious. It makes me think about the sort of conversation which I could have had with a folk club organiser twenty years ago.
"So why do you book Richard instead of me?"
"Well Alan, Richard makes people laugh."
"I make people laugh, don't I?"
"Yeah, but Richard does it on purpose..."

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: michaelr
Date: 03 Mar 06 - 01:21 AM

Cowards!

I came forward, didn't I? I challenge El Greko, Alba, Jerry Rasmussen to fess up and post their worst.

Michael

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 10:32 PM

Sometimes wincers and good lines come in the same song... check out the Good line/Bad Song thread..

"Moonlight sonata, or snot on your sleeve
If I had the choice, I'd rather leave with you."

Jerry

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Alba
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 08:10 PM

LOL Bobert, you could add another few verses and you would have a first set for a gig with that one:)
Don't know how many Folks would stay around for the second set but hey! or you could make it into a Musical....
Look at me giving out suggestions...Jude of The Big Blue Submarine Song fame!**BG**
Love to you and P Vine
Jude

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Bobert
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 07:54 PM

Well, tell ya the truth, Alan, I've buried most of my clunkers so deep that a George Bush Bunker Buster bomb wouldn't get to 'um...

But I did write one song back around '71 entitled "
Piss in the Wind" about a Volkswagen bus I owned... Might have performed it once before burying it...

Alot of my early songs were real beatnicky because I had been influnenced by the beat poets like Laurance Ferlinghetti and Gregory Kelso and the like and, well, beat poems make lousy songs...

But, now, I did write a song about a train tunnel that collapsed on a train in Richmond, Va. and I tried too hard to include the entire story and it ended up an 11 minute song that is so long winded that, though I recorde it, I'd never perform the blasted thing in public...

Bobert

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 07:50 PM

Like El Greko I tend to change the lines in a song till I feel happy with them - and I have a memory that fades out the ones I'd wince at.

But sometimes the system breaks down:

Oh the punk with pink hair
has her own kind of flair
with a ring in her nose
and a stud in her ear...

I could go on. I did go on.

It came out of an overheard snatch of conversation, the way songs sometimes do - "Oh he's still in love with this punk with pink hair, and she doesn't want to know him". But...

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Peace
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 07:43 PM

Michael, I'm with you on the too painful remark (about my own stuff). Makes a guy want to find a truck and see how long it takes to reach terminal velocity. However, all part of the growth process I guess. If we hadn't written stuff like that we wouldn't be writing the stuff we do today.

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: michaelr
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 07:40 PM

Omigod Alan, you've done it now. You've made me go dig up my old songbooks, and boy did I just have a wincing session! And now it's your turn: (I won't post the whole song, though -- it's too painful)

Isn't love like a two-part harmony
Each singer has to feel the music just like the other

I'm just a man, you know
Men really ain't all alike
How are we ever gonna make love grow
When the lovers are on strike?


Now SWEAR never to show this to ANYONE!

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: GUEST,KT
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 05:32 PM

Sins, there's only one good use for that song. As the ring on a cell phone. (It was very funny, but drove me crazy!) KT

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Cluin
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 01:15 PM

How about a whole song? I wrote one many years ago to persuade a then-girlfriend we should stay together. My ego got in the way of seeing we were best to call it quits; we were bad for each other.

Anyway, I sang the song for her... long story short: it didn't work and I never sang the song again.

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 12:52 PM

my latest classic is a song tackling the thorny issue of fashions in ladies pubic hair coiffure

Hairy Mary Song

Chorus
Oh Babe you are my girlie
And I love you – you're so curly
I love to run my fingers through your hair
I think any man's a vill-ian
Who wants to give you a Brazilian
I love you hairy Mary – you're my girl!

Now I know you're in love with a noodle
Who should be trimming poodles
Oh how he loves to clip and snip your hair
But afterwards it's prickly
In fact its durn right tickly
You can call my interest prurient
But I prefer you more luxuriant

Now Brazilians they make coffee
Down there, they tend to shave it off-ee
As anyone in Rio, can see-oh!
They run round playin' their maracas
They shout ariba! And go crackers
There's men in great big frocks
and women with great big other attractions


So remember you must scorn him
If he offers you a Californian
Try looking grim
When he says, fancy a trim?
He will say its more hygienic
But it isn't half so scenic
And as a matter of fact I'll
Admit its me! I'm tactile!

©Alan Whittle28/12/2005 02:08:39

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: GUEST,Qwirky Thing
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 12:33 PM

Alaska Mike once wrote and recorded the following:

"I've got my seatbelt firmly fastened,
And there's a barf bag just in case,
The plane goes up and down, my head it spins around,
And I end up with the belly ache-ache-ache-ache-ache."

"And so they climb around like monkeys,
On their sets of wooden bunkies,
For their normal beds are much too large to fit.
And the bathroom is so small I get no privacy at all,
When I try to brush my teeth or take a shower."

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Alaska Mike
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 12:19 PM

I can't think of a single lyric I've ever written that would be appropriate for this thread. All of my lyrics are gems.

(The mind is a quirky thing isn't it?)

Mike

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: stallion
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 10:48 AM

don't write much but I did write one once and presented to the other guys to the comment "Kieth Marsden wrote most of that" bugger me...I must have subliminally remembered it, they played the CD, DOH!

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Peace
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 10:21 AM

Alan, just though of a few--and the thing is I recorded them:

"Try an ask a river why it takes to flowin'
Try and ask a flower why it takes to growin'"

There are three or four four-line stanzas equally good (which I have thankfully forgot). It was fun being sixteen and thinking that was writing that would ever live in the tide of times. Now I have to go clear my mind. However, the record company released it. Enough blame to go around, IMO.

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Alba
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 10:19 AM

Well now after several hours of achy breaky I have decided that it might be best to confess to a "wincer" that I put on paper and then had the audacity to sing to some Frineds, in Public:)

It was a while ago..a long while ago, I remember that well because I was young and had an ego and I was going through what I believe, may have been, a feeble soul searching phase. I went to a pub to meet some other Musicians and Friends every couple of weeks or so for a session and an chance to bounce ideas off one another. I thought I had a great idea going so, having nearly completed my first attempt at writing something which I thought was rather "Joan Armatrading" (ish) and what I also though was a deeply personal insight I struck the chords of, if I remember correctly, a song titled "The Big Blue" and off a singing and playing I went.
I got to the chorus, which I honestly can't remember now, except for the last line......" I want to dive to the bottom, dive, dive, dive"

The others at the table, who had been listening politely (odd for them at the time, didn't even join in with a whistle or fiddle!!) erupted into laughter.
Dive, Dive Dive shouted one, another making the sound of the alarm in a Submarine when she is warning she is about to.... Dive Dive Dive!!
Needless to say the song was the object of humour for a while after that night, I would go along as usual to the session but there was always some joker there who would say , Jude do the submarine song would you. My Glasgow Friends can always be counted on to 'keep me real' **BG** I love them all for that gift.
Well now that this particular repressed memory has come up I will spend the rest of this morning wincing and trying to remember the rest of the awful song....aghhhhhhhh:)
Is it worse than achy Breaky..in my book....yes.
Humbly and with Love,
Jude

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Peace
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 10:12 AM

I can put any of the above to shame. Will post later.

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: alanabit
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 09:46 AM

Yes Jerry, there are guitar licks like that too, aren't there?

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 09:05 AM

Hey Alan: I've certainly written enough clunkers to feel humble. But like others, I can't remember any of the particularly poor ones.
When I am writing a song, and I have some momentum going, I often will beed a line to complete a verse, and will use seomthing that I know isn't going to work. It's a way to keep what's worth keeping fresh in my mind. Sometimes it turns out that I have to scrap the whole verse because I can't find a suitable line to replace the clunker (not necessarily a wincer.) But often, the line I really need will come to me. It may require changing another line in the verse to make it all work together, but the temporary filler line served its purpose.

I'll start another thread that will be more popular, Alan... lines we liked in songs that never worked..

Jerry

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: SINSULL
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 08:36 AM

"Let it please be him
Oh Dear God!
It must be him
It must be him..."

GGGGAAAAAAHHHHHHGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Jeri
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 07:00 AM

Alba, yes!
There's a Dave Carter song with the line "...but his rebel heart lay bleeding on his knees." Now, I'm sure he MEANT that to inspire people to think "What the...?" - but it's still messy.

I wrote, "The notes can fall on withered hearts and bring them back to life again." The target of that song didn't really take note of that, but I wanted to change it. I just didn't/don't know what TO. This from somebody who was singing "Ain't no gra-a-a-a-ave gonna hold my body down," and walking around with my arms outsretched a la zombie. (I think it needs a chorus line of them.)

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Purple Foxx
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 05:35 AM

If your counting commercially succesful & well thought of songwriters
"but in this ever changin'world in which we live in..."
"wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup."

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: alanabit
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 05:31 AM

"What really gets me is the "wincers" are always the bloody lines that stick in your head and drive you nuts!!!"

Got it in one Alba!

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: Alba
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 05:28 AM

Some of the lines I have thrown away over the years are so bad I won't even admit to them, let alone post them!! **BG**

What really gets me is the "wincers" are always the bloody lines that stick in your head and drive you nuts!!!

Lines like "But don't tell my heart, my achy breaky heart
I just don't think it'd understand.............aghhh

Well that's that in my head for the rest of the morning...oh the pain, oh the wince of it all..:)

Love
Jude

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: alanabit
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 05:16 AM

I wish there was a waste paper bin for lines, which stick obstinately to the inside of the head. I could deposit them there. That would dispose of the blighters for ever, so they could never come back to haunt the memory! I think you had the advantage, that by the time you started writing George, your adolescent angst was well behind you. That was not true for all of us.

Subject: RE: Wincers
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 02 Mar 06 - 03:54 AM

I've written dozens at least, but I don't keep them anywhere, Alan. I overwrite them as I correct (I write the lyrics in Word). And my mind probably does the same, as I can not remember a single one. But I know I have written some crap in my time. I'll keep thinking...