The Danger of creativity

Subject: The Danger of creativity
From: Cappuccino
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 07:41 AM

Of all the musicians who read this forum, I bet very few of you do a song 'straight' – I bet you add a little style, flavour, maybe your own tempo or rhythm, re-arrange the odd chord here and there, perhaps the odd word to help it suit your style better. So what do the songwriters think of what you do?

My friends and I often record stories to sell for charity, and those who do the readings don't talk in monotonous monologues – they think about the story, and work out how to give the narrative some flavour and characterisation. And occasionally you have to adapt something, like you arrange a song. Maybe cut a few seconds to fit the time available, maybe change a word that a reader finds difficult, or which pops and hisses through the microphone, or adapt a phrase that reads well on the page but comes over badly in the spoken voice.

We've had authors so pleased with our treatment, they've copied the sound files on to their websites for people to hear. And we've just done a recording in which our reader has been widely praised for his characterisation and interpretation… by everyone except the slightly-well-known author of the story, who went ape. In a letter which is currently smoking gently as its sulphurous contents burn a hole in my desktop, he rants and raves about 'idiotic tinkering' with his masterpiece, and withdraws his permission to use it. (This from a writer whose fame rests on his image of gentle Christianity, kindliness and understanding!)

We've responded politely, of course. But I despair of an artistic world in which we have to conform rigidly to every last word or chord as originally written.

Have you ever had a bollocking from a songwriter because of the way you arranged their work? If so, what did you do?

- Ian B

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: kendall
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 07:46 AM

I wont post them here, but, if you would like to see what Utah Phillips and Eric Bogle said about my rendition of their songs, I will scan and send you a copy.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: KingBrilliant
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 08:04 AM

Oh Kendall - do tell...
I personally can't abide slavish repetition - I think a song (and equally this applies to stories being told) should be sung from the heart and will therefore vary in many small ways each time it is sung - that is what keeps a song fresh for me.
The verb "Plausiblisation" was invented for me by friends who at the time prefered to learn the exact tunes from CDs. I always sounded as though I might be singing the right tune - but seldom was.
That's why I mostly sing alone now...... :>)
At a session the other day the organiser turned to me after I had sung The Snow It Melts The Soonest, and asked (somewhat sceptically I thought)whether that was the right tune. I nearly fell into my drink, and replied faintly that I seriously doubted it!
I'm not averse to messing with the words & combining bits & pieces either - hence I was able a couple of weeks back to introduce "Come Kiss Me Love With Bits Of Peggy Gordon And Some False Young Lover".
I passionately believe in taking the original as a starting point from which to diverge a little or a lot according to your fancy. I know that's not a universally held view though.
I don't think I've ever sung anything in front of its writer yet - I think I'd have to throw myself on their mercy.

Kris

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: MMario
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 08:29 AM

Hmmm - I guess you'd have to ask Don Miexner - I sang one of his in front of him last night. he seemed pleased.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: gnu
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 08:30 AM

I have three of Kendall's tapes and I'd bet my bottom dollar that the reason he won't post such reviews in the forum is modesty. If he won't self-laud, I will do it for him. They're excellent.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 08:30 AM

I am not going to mention names here but I too have heard a couple of well-known Scottish songwriters complain bitterly about their songs being "bastardized".

I tend to take the view that once a song has been performed by the composer then it is fair game and up for grabs. However I do think that it is important to give the composer the respect of learning the words as originally written, and the tune as well. Then if you feel it necessary, you can make alterations which you feel improve the song (if absolutely necessary.)

IMHO Songwriters should take it as a huge compliment if people actually want to sing their songs, and shouldn't bitch unduly about minor alterations. Especially if they are getting paid royalties. Sheesh, what's more important, feeding your ego or feeding your family?

After all, as one of the earliest songwriters said, "many a song is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air."

Well, he didn't say that exactly but that's the folk process for you ....

Murray

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Bobert
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 08:49 AM

That's why I write my own anymore. I never do 'em wrong. Hey, I've always been flattered when someone did one of my songs, no matter how they did 'em.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 08:54 AM

The songwriters rarely perform the same song the same way twice (unless they're miming!!). So how can they expect anyone else to slavishly follow a single standard rendition.
Performances vary not just with the singer's perception of a song, but with their perception of that particular audience.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 09:08 AM

I don't think that the fact I wrote a song gives me any ownership rights over it in terms of how it's sung.

Songs have a life of their own and change; what is special about the music we talk about as folk music is that it recognises this in a way that other types of music don't the same with stories.

Sometimes people make changes that are changes that make a song worse rather than better. The person who wrote a song has the same right as anyone else to think, or in extreme cases even say "you are wrecking that song" - but no more than anyone else. Whether their opinion is given value depends on other things.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 09:08 AM

Recently I homemade a CD including versions of a song Larry Otway (InOBU) wrote, and one Áine Cooke had written - and I had made quite a few changes, because I'm like IanB in that. I sent copies to both of them - and I was really pleased that they both said they liked the way I'd done it, including the changes. That was partly because it's always nice to have people you respect say things like that - but also because it was confirmation that on this particular matter we are in agreement. And I think it's important for us to keep thinking that way, and it's away of thinking that is very much under challenge today.

As Woody might have said:

As I went singing, I saw a sign there;
On the sign it said NO TRESPASSING,
But on the other side it didn't say nothing--
That side was made for you and me!

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Jeri
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 09:13 AM

Getting seriously offended by someone else's interpretation of your work is usually silly. I reserve my right to be offended to what people do with other people's songs.

I haven't been writing songs that long, and I don't know if I'll ever hear anyone else sing them. So far, I've heard one person do one of them on PalTalk. I believe he was concerned about my reaction. My philosophy is that, if you find something in the song you like, if you hear the song a certain way in your head, do it that way! Even if one day I hear a reggae version of something I've written, complete with a horn section and a bit of rap in the middle, I'll be honored that something I wrote inspired someone else.

Songs and stories are about the enjoyment of the performer and the listener. If they're about the author's ego, something's wrong. If they inspire the creativity of a performer, something's right. You don't have to like the result, but to stifle that creativity is just plain anal.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: mack/misophist
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 09:23 AM

The details escape me at the moment, but I think it was Joe Green ,Guiseppi Verdi, who is credited with single-handedly destroying the bel canto style of singing. It's said he threatened to sue any soprano who changed a note of his music. The consensus now is that he was wrong. That says it all, I think.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 09:32 AM

"That says it all, I think." A bit cryptic that.

Does misophist mean that this shows that even someone like Verdi got it wrong sometimes, or that, if Verdi thought this way, it must be the right way to think?

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: harvey andrews
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 09:42 AM

Okay, I'll be as honest as possible. I regard a song as two art forms, lyrics and melody. I'm telling a story with the lyric and it's a bit like building a pack of cards, every word is carefully, carefully chosen to take the weight of the others, and I feel if one word is changed the whole pack can collapse.I regard the lyrics of my songs as my personal artistic statement and therefore sacrosanct. I have two of my songs recorded by well known artists and they are a disaster because they were so sloppy with the words that by changing two or three they actually changed the complete meaning of the song, and believe me this is possible. I know ego is probably discernable here, but in all honesty I don't think anyone can improve on my lyrics any more than Van Gogh would have thought anyone could improve on his paintings. This is a necessary feeling for being a creative person, the feeling that what you have to offer is unique to you. To some this is misinterpreted as arrogance etc, but my lyrics are my children and I will always protect them. I love the poetry of Philip Larkin, and I love it because I couldn't write it and certainly couldn't improve it, and to try to change it would be a definite arrogance on my part. However, I see the music and the arrangements as more the frame for the picture and I love to hear someone approach the song in a novel way musically and have heard some wonderful things done..one of my favourites being a male voice choir version of "Margarita" from Canada. So to sum up, as a lifelong writer of songs I welcome all sorts of musical innitiatives, but all I ask is, please get the words right, it took me a lifetime of learning to find them.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Wolfgang
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 09:45 AM

I'm curious, would you think in the same way, if the artist was a writer? If her short story was included in an anthology by somebody else, would she have the right to insist that the story is printed as she had written it or would you think it correct if a couple of words were changed by the editor?

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Jeri
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 09:58 AM

I think what misophist was getting at was that too much control over "intellectual property" kills the property and ensures no one else will want to perform it. I may not like what someone does to a song I wrote word-wise, melody or arrangement-wise, but I don't think I'd ever try to stop anyone from doing it.

There is only one instance and one version of Van Gogh's "Starry Night," and that is all there will ever be.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 09:59 AM

I understand what most of you are saying about bringing your own interpretation to a song.......but.....I think it can be taken too far, and the result is a 'bastardization' of the original. Even though Jeri says she would be pleased to hear a reggae version of one of her songs, this was not how Stephen Foster felt (and IMO rightly so) when he heard what the minstral shows did to Swannee River (Old Folks at Home). They jazzed it up double time to dance a two-step shuffle to it...he wrote it as a sad plantation song. (But then he later wrote My Old Kentucky Home for a plantation song! and a great one I might add.)

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: harvey andrews
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 10:01 AM

An editor is an editor a writer is a writer. The final say should always be with the writer in my opinion.The editor could offer changes for reasoned debate but the writer should have the final say even to withdawing from publication.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: KingBrilliant
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 10:08 AM

Perhaps there is some difference between a permanent recording of a song (equivalent to the published anthology mentioned by Wolfgang) and a transient performance of the song (equivalent to someone telling the story).
I can see little harm in changes made for a transient performance, but I can see that a permanent recording could be irksome if it diverges from what you intended the words to portray. And I imagine the aggravation would be increased by the fact that you can't EXPLAIN to everyone that hears the recording - so it might be a bit like the road-rage effect - and argument with no closure.
This is pretty aweful I guess for the songwriter. But I also believe that you can't really OWN a song even if you did write it. It's communication, so its subject to change and mutation as it travels, like chinese whispers, and could end up totally different from where it started. Its a signal vs noise thing - and some of us are very noisy singers...... :>)
My serious point is that if I am performing a song then I want to communicate, and that means adding something from me, not just forwarding someone else's message.
Harvey - I don't think people change lyrics with the intention of improving a song, its more a case of adapting the song. I'd like to think that the changes can't actually take anything away from the original creation.

Kris

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 10:10 AM

Harvey's a great songwriter, and Margarita's one of my favourite songs. If I heard someone singing it in a way that seemed to spoil it, I'd feel defensive about it too. But that isn't the same for me as saying that there is one set of word fixed in stone

Songs are slippery things. Even in the mouths of the person who makes a song up, it changes. I've even heard people complain because a singer doesn't sing a song the same way they sang it on a record, not because they've spoiled it, which might be fair, but because they've changed it.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 10:10 AM

I think the analogy with wanting to protect your children extends further than Harvey allows it to. You do want to protect your children, and you do need to, and it's nothing to do with vanity or egotism. But you also have to stand back at some time and let your children go their own way. And I think that happens with songs.

Here is what Sydney Carter wrote: "There is nothing final in the songs I write, not even the words, the rhythm and the melody. This is not an oversight; I would like them to keep growing like a tree. They have a form, I hope; so does a tree. But it is not fixed and final. It must develop according to the time and place, it must adapt itself to soil and weather. In time, if not in place, a tree is always travelling."

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Jeri
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 10:13 AM

Hey, once I'm rich and famous, I might be offended by things like that.

And I DO think there's a difference between poetic songs and folky-type songs. Most people wouldn't screw with a Dylan song, or Leondard Cohen. Even the folky songs would have less of a chance of being changed because the original is a matter of public record these days. That hasn't stopped people from creating different versions of Ewan McColl songs, for example.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Wolfgang
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 10:15 AM

A Van Gogh picture is a perfect example. You can now scan it and creatively redraw it, change some details, mirror it, blend it with another picture, change the colours, defocus it (I did a search for the famous block portrait of the Mona Lisa, but I failed) and then you sell it on a T-shirt, in a book, or whatever.

Except that he is too long dead by now, should he have to tolerate it if he was alife?

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 10:17 AM

Harvey, I have heard all of your recorded songs and I cannot recollect any lyric that could have stood improvement.

But nor all songwriters are so meticulous. I am not suggesting that Richard Thompson is anything other than a songwriter supreme, but in his beautiful song "How Will I ever be Simple Again", in the verse
"In her poor burned-out house I sat at her table
The smell of her hair was like cornfields in May
And I wanted to weep and my eyes ached from trying
Oh, how will I ever be simple again?
" I do wish that he had written "but my eyes were not able". It would have made a much better line, IMHO.

Murray

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 10:18 AM

People wouldn't screw with a Dylan song ?! Looking at the thread "Dylan's Use of Trad" Here suggests that he's being let off extremely lightly then!

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: MMario
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 10:22 AM

Even without changing words - lyrics (ditto poems, novells, stories) can be interpreted differently by performers OR audience - based on the performers or receivers interpretation. This can be true even WITHOUT verbal/aural interpretation - but directly from printed word. the same is true of paintings.

But when music moves off the printed page and becomes a performance piece, a whole new level enters into the equation.

With all due respect to Harvey - because I can understand his feelings - the lyrics he wrote might have a completly different meaning for the artists performing them.

In essence - unlike a book or a painting, which remain static once finished - a song is mutable. Poems can be very different based on the delivery even when no words are changed - likewise songs.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Jeri
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 10:32 AM

The beauty of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is how he did it. It's the record of his performance, so to speak. With a visual work of art, the "performance" and the thing performed are one and the same. It's more like a recording of a song than the song itself. I believe if other artists had painted from the same model, their "performances" would be equally valid.

I personally wouldn't want to paint the Mona Lisa - it's been done. If people have the same general feeling about a song, that song is a relic.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: KingBrilliant
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 10:39 AM

Murray - it just goes to show how personal the changes can be. I prefer the line as it stands and see more meaning and flavour in it. So its wrong for you and right for me, so in my opinion you should sing it your way and I should sing it my way - and neither of us should be judged as being right or wrong.
Its a very good example.

As for changing Dylan songs around - yep, all the time!

Kris

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: wysiwyg
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 10:40 AM

I change our church music around all the time, and sometimes I have to if I am going to take pieces originally meant for concert performance, like bluegreass gospel, and use it in a church-authorized setting.

The changes can be minor or major-- and I print, on the songsheet, what I have done. If I have just edited a bit and added a verse, I say so, but if I have done more, I say I have adapted it from the original, or that it is based on such-and-such. Not only do I think this is fair to the original, I think it's fair to stake my claim to credit (or blame) for my own "artistic contribution." And it's accurate as well as thoughtful of the historical record-- if you find one of my songsheets in 50 years, in print or posted here, I don't want you to think I had miraculously found an otherwise-undiscovered "original" verse no other collection includes for that song!

~Susan

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: heric
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 10:52 AM

IanB: Just a thought, one that you may not be inclined to act upon for a multitude of reasons. Since there's no such thing as bad publicity, you could do your charity (and the incendiary author) a favor by taking the dispute public. Opportunity knocking.

Dan

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Peg
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 10:57 AM

Jeri; interesting comment about Van Gogh's Starry Night; it got me thinking about Don McLean's "Vincent" and the idea that some songs are so beautifully performed by their original creators that they should just be left alone, and that if someone else is going to sing them they better do a damn fine job or their "reinterpretation" need sto be fresh and new and ingenious. When an insensitive someone tries to "cover' songs by unique singer-songwriters like, say, Harry Chapin, Suzanne Vega, Kate Bush, etc. often I cringe at the result. But some songwriters' work seems to survive this sort of treatment (Neil Finn, Richard Thompson, Joni Mitchell)...then again I think this whole discussion is subject to, well, subjectivity!

Go forth and sing and do yer best.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: harvey andrews
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 11:10 AM

Good thread this...so many points. Yes, I think the change to Richard Thompson's lyric improves it for me, but it's not what he wrote so I wouldn't touch it. Imagine everybody going to a sculpture park equipped with hammer and chisel and doing their improvements to the Moore or the Frink sculptures. In the end there would be nothing of the original left, just a pile of stone chippings. I don't believe any work of art was ever created or improved by a comittee.As I've said I don't care how the music is handled, innovated, etc but the WORDS are the whole point of a song as they are of a poem, a play, a novel etc. I'm baffled today by audiences who sit and listen to a whole concert sung in a foreign language as is a lot of world music today. Its like putting on glasses at the cinema to remove the colour from the film,or watching a foreign movie with no subtitles..but that's just me you see..a wordsmith.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Jeri
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 11:13 AM

Yeah, Peg. Whether or not someone can, in my mind, "get away with" an interpretation of a song depends solely on whether or not I like it.

Ego can also be on either side of the issue. It can be a singer/songwriter not being able to stand hearing someone else's version of their song, or it can be a performer who has to change something (or anything) just to leave their stamp on it. They're both extremes examples - most folks fall somewhere in between.

The best non-McLean versions of Vincent I've heard have focused on the singing. Simple guitar, same words, but it was the feeling in the way those words were sung that made me like the singing of it. Focus on song, not singer.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: MMario
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 11:20 AM

Watching foreign films with no sub-titles is an art form in itself - if it is truly a well executed movie - you understand it without the dialogue.

A lot of music acts on two levels - the music (which includes the vocals - but not necessarily the content of the lyrics) and the lyric. The two portions sometimes send different messages.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: heric
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 11:33 AM

This is very true, Mr. MMario. Although I hesitate to mention Van Morrison on this board, this is why I enjoy his music so much. Often inane lyrics, where the words just fit the mood of the music anyway. And a perfect example is in Words, on Harvest. Meaningless, and yet perfectly ascribed. They are integral to the music, and unchangeable, but meaningless.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 11:42 AM

Well spake..er spoken..er speaked, Harvey. I've heard soooo many songwriters grumble about versions of their songs that had liberties taken. I've heard an equal number (at least) say that they couldn't care less what happens when their songs get passed around from "folk" to "folk". I don't think THOSE writers are any less passionate about their work...just more fatalistic about inevitable human tampering. What I HAVEN'T heard (that I can remember) is the songwriter explaining in detail, AND acknowledging that it can make them look pompous, just how PERSONAL and important those lyrics are (to them). I've mentioned on this forum before that one of the things I admire about Harvey is his willingness to constantly take chances with public perception of his music.

I have been notoriously lax at times in my professional career regarding accurate singing of lyrics. (my own as well as those of others) Other than apologizing for a weird kind of memory, and trying as hard as I can to get my shit together, I just have to accept that it happens now and then. A perfect example would be last week in Boston, when I left out a verse of a Tom Paxton song, with the author in ear-shot. I apologized afterward, and he just shrugged and smiled. Boy, he must be used to it!

What really gets my shorts in a knot, is when the instrumental accompaniment gets really screwed up. When I hear someone leave out an important chord, I feel like I'm on a mission from god to show it to them. I'm (sort of) joking, but if it doesn't look like they'll punch me in the mouth, I'll usually find a (nice) way to get my point across.

So, as much as I think we're both tilting at windmills Harvey, you for lyric integrity, and myself for instrumental appropriateness, as causes go, they ain't that bad.

By the way....I've started singing one of your songs again, that lay dormant in my repertoire for close to thirty years. "Death Come Easy" (Man, that's an appropriate song, no matter how long ago you wrote it) So here's a question. I learned it from an Ian Campbell record. Was their version close to what you had in mind?

Cheers

Rick

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Cappuccino
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 11:46 AM

Good heavens, I didn't think I'd started such an active thread...!

Thanks, Dan, but I think we're going to quietly let this one die and take a non-argumentative route. I've only got a hundred cassettes, and he won't know whether they've sold or not; maybe they'll become collector's items! And the CD's I burn for hospital radio are one-offs, and I'll just delete his item as I do them. The annoying thing is that it was by a mile the best item on the album!

And Harvey's well-thought points (as always) bring two thoughts to mind:

1. In song, I guess the words are so tightly crafted that a change is far more noticeable than in a 1,000-word story. In a story, I think it's easier to stay true to the writer's intention, but adjust to suit your practical needs.

2. I remember talking to the lady who formed the first guitar-led worship band to hit the British charts (the Joystrings, a Salvation Army band, in 1963-ish) and she told me that she hates even to hear people change the key of her songs. That, I feel really is going too far - if I can't sing it in C, then if I have to transpose to Bb, then I will!

Right, I think I'll just go and improve some Vivaldi...

- Ian B

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 11:53 AM

An interesting topic. I have no relevant experience as a singer/musician, but I used to be an amateur actor, and I can tell you that directors often make changes to plays. (Not counting the small changes that actors make inadvertently by misremembering their lines.)

Let's start with Shakespeare. Now you'd think Shakespeare's words, more than those of any other writer, would be considered sacrosanct, but probably no author is more often "edited" than Shakespeare. It is the exception, rather than the rule, for Shakespeare's plays to be performed "as written." While it's true that directors today seldom ADD any words to Shakespeare, they often delete parts of speeches, whole speeches, whole characters, and whole scenes.

And up to the nineteenth century, even the great actors used scripts that had been tinkered with a great deal—more so than we would tolerate today. (See this link to Colly Cibber's The Tragical History of Richard III, or this article about Nahum Tate's King Lear. This version even has a happy ending! The text is here.)

I probably don't even need to tell you about what happens to the scripts of Hollywood movies, but a writer who whined about his screenplay being altered would probably be laughed out of town.

It's too bad you had to deal with the author directly. I have a hunch if you had gone through his agent or editor, the agent or editor would have tried to talk some sense into him. On the other hand, if you had gone through the agent or editor, you might have had to pay for the privilege of recording his work.

Ian, can you post any links to web sites you mentioned?

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: harvey andrews
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 12:03 PM

Rick's point is soooo good. Being the master musician he is that lost chord is VITAL. I so understand. I think the point about the conciseness of lyric is a basic one. The art of the song lyric is the art of saying the most in the least, and my experience shows me that most people add redundant words to lyrics and it offends mine ear! In speech now in England everybody is adding redundant "up"s to everything and it drives me potty. "fess up" ie confess.(hang on, this is another thread!)

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Cappuccino
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 12:43 PM

Jim, did you mean links to websites using our stories, as mentioned in my original post? The only one I can find at the moment is:

http://www.joyfulheart.com/xmas/joseph.htm

which is an American pastor's website who reproduced a story of his we did on our Christmas CD.

I regret I've lost my blue clicky instructions...!

- ian B

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 12:52 PM

Yes, that's what I meant. And thanks.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: KingBrilliant
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 12:52 PM

I'm still not prepared to just reproduce the music. So does that mean I should stick to trad & self-penned?

Kris

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Jeanie
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 01:04 PM

I totally agree with Jim Dixon's comments. It's a risk that an author/playwright always takes in handing his "baby" over to someone else. He must either direct the piece himself, or take the consequences of other people's interpretations and inventiveness.

Alan Ayckbourn has always chosen to direct his plays himself in a theatre in Scarborough, before they go to the West End. His dialogues are very carefully crafted, right down to the last "Hmmm" and "Well..." (and are therefore *hell* to learn) - but that's what makes his dialogue and hence his characters so real. Likewise, Harold Pinter specifies the exact length of pauses in his plays.

But even Ayckbourn and Pinter have had to "let go" at some point and their plays are directed and performed with successful inventiveness all over the world.

Every performance of exactly the same script, by exactly the same cast, is different. That's the magic of it.

- Jeanie

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 01:10 PM

I basically agree with Harvey Andrews.....if you don't like the song the way it was written, find a different song! We do know there is no way to stop folks from messing with them, but we don't have to like it! Subtle changes in tempo & phrasing are one thing, wholesale alteration is quite another.

Yes, I know, the 'folk process' happens, even if it is inadvertent, and I will 'occasionally' change a word myself,(though, if I were a recording/performing artist, I would NOTE what I did)...my objection is to gratuitous change JUST to make "Freddie Folksinger's" version different and highlight his style.

You have all seen and heard singers who don't look for a "good song to sing", but rather for a "song that makes me look good". And very rarely do they improve anything.

Now, I do have to say...*sigh*...I have heard songs that just simply sounded like the author had a good idea (maybe a catchy chorus) but never polished and crafted it. The temptation to 'fix' it can get unbearable to some, I suppose. I just don't know what to say about this....again, if I were a recording artist, I'd contact the author and ask and discuss before I did anything 'public' with it.

No easy answer, folks...music is such a subjective thing and we ALWAYS put something of ourselves into it, no matter what the origin.

(By the way, Harvey...having listened to the MP3 of "First You Lose the Rhyming", I must say, I think the guy I mentioned in the other thread who sings it stays VERY close to how you do it!..If there are changes, I don't hear them.)...

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: harvey andrews
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 01:10 PM

Kris..no. All I ask is you respect the words. How you perform them, what nuance you put on them etc is up to you.You can still make anyone else's song your own by the way you interpret it for an audience..in the same way that some actors are great Lears and others are disasters. I recently heard a young female singer of growing reputation sing "Black leg Miners" Now this is one of the most ferocious and hate filled songs I know and yet she sings it with no emotion whatsoever, she might just as well have been singing the phone book. To address Rick's point re "Death come easy". That was the song that convinced me I could do it.it was first recorded by me on an E.P. (remember those?) with martin Carthy as my guitarist back up. Then it was recorded by a Danish trio who toured with Paul Simon in Europe and I have a letter from Paul saying "the damned thing is driving me crazy. Fine song man." Now, if he'd have recorded it how could my life have changed? Then the Ian Campbell group did it on an album and it entered my past...until one morning as the Fleet sailed towards the Falklands I was in Exeter having breakfast with a friend and listening to the national radio news when a song extract was played..I thought "I know that song". It was being transmitted by Argentina's Tokyo Rose and broadcast as anti_British propoganda for the troops in the ships to hear, they played another extract and then I thought "Bloody Hell! I wrote that!!" It was "Death come Easy" By the time I motored home the tabloid press had traced the writer and my agent had a phone call from "The Sun" newspaper asking if she represented this "traitor" who'd written a song against "our boys". Well, you can imagine with all the patriotic crap clogging up the brains of the nation at such a time I was in a pretty pickle.A reporter and photographer turned up at my house and thankfully accepted my explanation that the song was an old one, I had no idea how the Argentinians had got hold of an Ian Campbell album, but they owed me royalties and they would be donated to a fund for injured survivors of the coming war.So I made it into "The Sun"..but it was a very scary moment..if they'd decided to play the story anothr way I could have been lynched. So thank you for singing it Rick...but be careful, PLEASE!

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 01:18 PM

I agree with Harvey about the way a syllable added or missed can change the whole feeling of a line away from the way you wan it to be, and not just because if scansion. The little details that people can so easily ignore really matter.

The thing is though, I know that the version that gets put on paper or on tape isn't all that likely to be the definitive final one, and there has to be room for the song to adjust itself.

Where a singer has held onto a song, and has sung it through that stage, till a version of it has been reached that really feels right, before it ever gets pinned down in print or on a record, that is a different thing.

That Richard Thompson song - I assume that he was intentionally avoiding the rhyme table and able because it felt a bit facile. So the line he puts in gets seen as contrived. Can't win.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Wolfgang
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 01:24 PM

I got curious and looked up Death come easy on the web and was surprised to find a German version. Translations have to change at least the words and often more than the words to be singable. Have you similar feelings towards translations, Harvey, and how do you keep control? (Bob Dylan for instance, or perhaps only his manager, insists not only on seeing the German lyrics but also on seeing a verbatim retranslation into English before giving his o.k.)

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: alanabit
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 01:32 PM

Interesting discussion here. I must admit, if I heard some jerk chanting rhythmic doggerel in the middle of one of my songs, it would piss me off big time! I'm happy enough about hearing different arrangements and slight adjustments etc, but I have never liked the school of interpretation which is more interested in trying to say something else than in searching for what a song means. I have always felt that if you don't like a song's basic thrust, you can always find sing another song.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Wolfgang
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 01:43 PM

Just as a short exercise and food for thought:

Death come easy if you come before your time
Death come easy to a young man in his prime
They put a gun in my hand
Said, Fight for the freedom of your land
Death come easy to a young man in his prime (Harvey Andrews)

now a retranslation of the (a?) German version (sticking as close to the German as possible even if as a result the English sounds awkward)

Death make it easy for me, if you come before your time
Death make it easy for me. My way in life is still long.
With the weapon in the hand
I am sent in this and that land
Death make it easy for me, for I am not ready yet.

Quite close in parts and further away from the original than any English variant could be. I guess the decision to say yes to a translation must be a hard decision for a true wordsmith. One loses a bit of the control one has in one's own language. But that is maybe a different theme.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: lamarca
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 01:51 PM

This issue brings up one of my pet peeves with the Digital Tradition database. The database started its life as a couple people's own personal collections of songs that they liked and scribbled down the words of as best they knew them. This meant that words were frequently misheard or mistranscribed, songs weren't attributed to anyone or to the wrong author, etc - but that's typical for personal song books.

Now the DT has gotten huge, and is a major reference for people all over the world. Unfortunately, being an all volunteer effort, those same mistakes and misattributions are becoming more and more etched in stone. We could just brush it off with a "Oh, that's just the folk process...", but where the author of a piece is known and his or her actual words are obtainable, it's disrespectful to leave the mistakes in place.

The wonderful people who have been doing "Lyric Add:"s recently have been doing a much better job of documenting them, with identification of sources, stating if it's from a written source or a transcription from a recording (and from WHICH recording or source), etc. Maybe we could find a grad student who wants to make editing and analysis of the DT his or her thesis project for a degree in Ethnomusicology or Library Science?

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Jeri
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 01:54 PM

I should say something here, because I'm afraid I can sound very black & white, right & wrong about things sometimes. I'm not.

I suppose I have a double standard. I AM fatalistic about my own songs. The most fatalistic belief I could hold is that no one will sing them other than me. That's fine - if I wrote them for any other reason than I loved writing them, I never would have bothered.

I will berate myself for making minor mistakes and completely miss other people making them. I would miss changes to songs I'd written because I'd probably be too excited that they even cared enough to sing them. When I learn other people's songs, I do my best to learn their words and tune although I'll sing it my own way. When I hear other people take liberties with the songs of others, it bugs me. Not the mistakes, but what seems like a deliberate change. There are songs I don't sing because one line drives me nuts. I'm capable or re-writing it, but I don't feel I have the right. Plus, if enough people know the song, it would be pretty obvious to them I messed with it. I just don't sing it.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Ebbie
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 01:58 PM

When I sing one song a local songwriter wrote I don't change the lyrics, but I do change the order in which some of the choruses are sung. And I have her permission to do so.

In her Forge a Link she invites the audience to sing along and ends with:

Did you do what you came to do, say what you want to say
Did you make this world a better place to live and work and play
Did you share their love and joy and pain and help them on their way
Did you forge a link in the holy chain to build a brighter day?

In an earlier chorus, she sings 'I' rather than 'you'. I end with I in the final chorus instead because I is inclusive and invites the audience to look inward, while I feel that You at that spot is confrontational and accusatory.

I feel it makes it a better song- but would others say that I'm negating the songwriter's message?

Ebbie

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: harvey andrews
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 02:03 PM

Wolfgang...translations are another kettle of fish entirely. Take all the hoo ha about the various attempts at rendering Brel into English. However, your translation seems to have all the sense of what I am trying to say in the verse. I think the point is the writer must be able to trust the translator..or learn a lot of languages!

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: CapriUni
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 02:03 PM

I am not a songwriter, but I am a writer. And I have to disagree with Harvey a little bit when he wrote:

"An editor is an editor a writer is a writer. final say should always be with the writer in my opinion."

Okay, so I can't disagree that it is his opinion *G*, but my opinion differs. ;-) And I acknowledge that the rules are probably different for prose and song lyrics (which have even tighter requirements than poetry).

The editor of a magazine (or audio anthology, as in Ian B's case) is like the captain of a ship, and the writers are like the crew -- able-bodied seamen, all! (Yo-ho-ho, and an inkjet cartridge!). The ship won't go anywhere without their efforts and toil, but the final say is with the editor/captain. The magazine, anthology, concert performance, whatever, is the editor's and/or publisher's responsibility (Often different people in large-ish publications, and the same person in smaller ones). It is the editor/publisher who decides on the "message" of the publication: its goals, audience, and the overall tone or voice. It is the writer's responsibility to meet the editor's needs (which is why it is vitally important for an editor to make those needs clear, including length, tone, clarity, etc.).

I've had some of my work cut for length, and also returned to me because it was unsuitable in tone. In the latter case, I have rewritten parts of it and/or submitted something totally different. Or, sometimes, if I felt really strongly that the work should not be tampered with, I've withdrawn it completely to submit it to another publication for which it was suitable. But I have always tried to be gracious about the editor's right to make those decisions. Anything less would be unprofessional, In My Not So Humble Opinion.

If this unnamed slightly-famous writer gave his permission beforehand (and I'm assuming Ian B acquired this permission, for legal copyright reasons) for his story to be included, he should have realized that he was also giving permission for an editor to edit (after all, I'm assuming he became slightly famous through being published, and working with editors in the past -- unless he is self-published [possible red flag, there]), especially if the piece is being done in a new medium. What is suitable for the page is not always suitable for the ear or voice (though it should be, again, in my not so humble opinion).

Of course, the writer has a right to voice his disagreement with an editor's choices, but to be, as Ian B put it: "sulphurous" is just plain diva-ish. And if you have a diva streak in you, you have to either tame it before putting words to paper, or stop being a writer.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: harvey andrews
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 02:10 PM

The points you make are certainly valid vis a vis journalism. Would you allow the same freedom to an editor of your hopefully, heartfelt, years in the making, world shattering novel?

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: lamarca
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 02:10 PM

I think Harvey's comment about the editor is being misinterpreted - I think he was trying to say that an editor of an anthology of ALREADY published works has no right to change the copyrighted words of a short story or poem because he or she feels "it would sound better this way".

An author will work with the editor for the original publication of a piece of work, but later editors usually don't feel that they have the "artistic" freedom to change a published story, except to perhaps condense it (and, hopefully, state that the piece is abridged or excerpted).

In a community theater for which I worked crew once, the director yelled at the actors who were screwing up their lines "This play won a Pulitzer Prize the way it was written - don't think you can improve it!"

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Mark Ross
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 02:15 PM

Pete Seeger once said that a song is like a child, you can control it when it's around the house, but when it goes out in the world it's on its own

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 03:29 PM

The evolutionary process is painful, but it's the way new things come into the world.

Not all songs are folk songs, or ever going to be folk songs. But if a song is in the process of becoming a folk song, that means entering into the oral tradition, and that means variants. (And that is still true, in spite of all the technology and the recording systems and all that). The end result is a song that says more, probably says it in fewer words, and says it better.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: lamarca
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 03:58 PM

I think Harvey's comment about the editor is being misinterpreted - I think he was trying to say that an editor of an anthology of ALREADY published works has no right to change the copyrighted words of a short story or poem because he or she feels "it would sound better this way".

An author will work with the editor for the original publication of a piece of work, but later editors usually don't feel that they have the "artistic" freedom to change a published story, except to perhaps condense it (and, hopefully, state that the piece is abridged or excerpted).

In a community theater for which I worked crew once, the director yelled at the actors who were screwing up their lines "This play won a Pulitzer Prize the way it was written - don't think you can improve it!"

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 04:07 PM

Wow, Ian! Who let the horse out of the barn?

Just a few immediate thoughts. There are a lot of reasons why people change lyrics to songs. In another thread, I said that song writers write their own songs because they're too lazy to take the time to learn someone else's song. Someone thought that was a memorable line. (I suspect they weren't a songwriter. Here's another perspective. Sometimes folk singers change the words to a songwriter's baby-child because THEY'RE too lazy to learn the words. How much are we discussing "creativity" and how much laziness? Some of each, you can be sure.

I've been in the enviable opinion of having several of my songs recorded by other musicians. I'm appreciative that they usually learned the words and respected the song as it was written. Once they've gotten inside the song, then I don't mind if they change a phrase here and there, as long as it makes sense within the song, doesn't change the meaning, and flows within the rhythm of the song. So far, every recording of performance that I've heard of my songs has been "improved" in some way. The improvement isn't necessarily changing the words or the melody, although that has happened. It's that the person has made the song "theirs" and it has a new, fresh perspective which I find very flattering... that someone took something I wrote and embraced it as their own. If you're just doing imitations of the original, it's a little like chewing someone else's food. And me a songwriter, yet.

Ed Trickett, Dave Para and Cathy Barton do several of my songs, and I liked the chord change they made in one of the songs, Cabbage Patch Waltz, that I decided that I should do it that way. Ed, Gordon Bok and Annie Muir recorded Living on the River, and brought the song home by intertwining and overlapping the lines on the last time around on the chorus. Really delightful. Sally Rogers wrote another verse to one of my songs, thinking it was traditional.

To continue the analogy of your songs being your children,when you send your kids out on their own, you hope that people will respect them, try to understand them and that whatever change they might bring about, that it be done because they care about them. If other singers do that with my songs, I can only thank them.

Hey, but if the songwriters these days aren't writing folk songs (and I agree with that,) then where is the logic in applying the folk process to them. Anyone want to apply the folk process to Irving Berlin or George Gershwin? What's the philosophy here? They ain't folk songs now, but they damn well will be when we get through with them!! :-)

Just funnin'

Great thread!

Jerry

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: lamarca
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 04:12 PM

Oops - sorry about the double post...

As a molecular geneticist, I feel I have to remind everyone that the process of natural selection, be it of critters or folk songs, does not imply that changes are necessarily better. Mutation is usually a random process; the results are frequently non-advantageous and sometimes lethal. Only a small percentage of mutations are actually improvements on the original which lead to greater survivability; many more are alterations which are less viable.

Whether you inadvertantly change words because you mis-remember them or deliberately change them because you think yours are "better", the selection advantage of your variant of the song won't be apparant in our lifetimes.

I think that folks who want to

perform

other people's material (as opposed to just sitting around swapping songs with friends) have an obligation to learn the song backwards and forwards, practicing until they can deliver it comfortably in their own voice rather than just mimicking the version they learned. It's a matter of respect; for the material, for the author, and most of all for your audience. If you don't like the song well enough to do it well, why bother learning it at all?

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 04:46 PM

Lamarca: Hear, Hear!!! At least learn the words, live with them, make them part of you, and then if you feel the need, change them..

Jerry

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: harvey andrews
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 05:13 PM

Jerry. you sound as if you've been lucky with your lyric changes. All I can say is I haven't. When I am I'll be the first to let Mudcat know!

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Cappuccino
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 05:48 PM

Yes, CapriUni, he did give permission for it to be used. And yes, I too, as a journalist (Lord forgive me for that career choice!) have been both in the position of having to edit other people's material, and to swallow having mine edited when someone else is in charge. And I've had newspaper editors quite deliberately alter the meaning of what I've written, in order to get a more attention-getting (but now incorrect and untrue) story.

So I acknowledge both viewpoints, and agree that when someone else is the 'project manager', you either allow them the decisions or insist you want it used untouched... in which case your material will probably be ditched.

He made no conditions. We his original words, but abridged, and kept true to his original meaning. The characterisation by the reader fitted the author's own description of the main character when the story was first published, thirty years ago.

Everything was done with the best of intentions and the most honest approach - and the silly old bugger hated it, and said so in fairly abusive terms. But because this is a Christian project, I am keeping a polite smile on my face and trying not to say what I think about him.

But believe me, I'm certainly thinking it!!!!

- Ian B

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Cappuccino
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 05:50 PM

Idiot - that should have been 'we used his original words'.

My keyboard's going dyslexic.

- Ian B

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: CapriUni
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 10:24 PM

Harvey asked of me: "Would you allow the same freedom to an editor of your hopefully, heartfelt, years in the making, world shattering novel?"

In a word: yes.

But then again, the writing of a novel is a very different process. For one thing, a novel usually runs anywhere from 10,000 words and up, so the changing of a few lines here or there isn't going to make or break the piece as a whole. For another, book publishing is much more complex, business- and creativity-wise, and the responsibilities of an editor there are somewhat different. They don't have the time or will to make the changes themselves, so they return the work to the writer with comments on what they think should be changed, and leave it to the writer to make the actual changes. If the writer doesn't want to make those changes, s/he simply takes it to another editor.

But whatever you think of an editor's decisions, I still stand by my earlier statement that it is just plain unprofessional to call the editor an idiot for making those decisions.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: hesperis
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 10:54 PM

It's just plain unprofessional to call anyone an idiot for making changes - even if they are. I hope I never do it. *Crosses fingers*

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: DonMeixner
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 10:55 PM

I have not written a ton of songs. Only a few. And when MMario did The Mother's Kiss last night at our little local open mic I was thrilled. That it was not strictly the melody and some of the lyrics wren't quite as I'd written them was unimportant to me. That other people think enough of my songs to do them at all is a thrill that I can't describe. I'm sure other song writers must have felt the same thrill when they first heard some one else sing their song for the first time.

Thanks again MMario, I appreciated it then, I do now.

Don

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: wysiwyg
Date: 14 Mar 02 - 11:34 PM

Well, the Louvin Brothers are gonna probably want to have a talk with me when I get to Heaven, but it being Heaven and all, they'll be in a pretty good mood. And we'll see if the Big Boss says "well done," too, when He gives me my most important report card on the stuff I sing. *G*

~Susan

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: CapriUni
Date: 15 Mar 02 - 12:09 AM

Jerry --

So it was you who wrote "Living on the river"... Great song! I learned it from one of the Bok, Tricket Muir recordings, and I agree: the way they finished it was marvelous.

I've always wondered, and now that I have the oportunity, I'll ask: Was that song written in honor of one particular river? And if so, which one (or which part of one? Rivers change their characters mightily from source to ocean)?

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Cappuccino
Date: 15 Mar 02 - 02:27 AM

Just a quick acknowledgement and thanks for all the various points made on this thread. Although I think I was right, I've still learned a lot!

- Ian B

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 15 Mar 02 - 03:59 AM

Refresh***
Nothing to add at the moment, but by refreshing at this point I know where to start reading next time I log in!

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: MMario
Date: 15 Mar 02 - 08:23 AM

Don - the words weren't quite what i *intended* to sing in a few places...*grin*

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 15 Mar 02 - 08:29 AM

CapriUni: Yep, I did it. I grew up in southern Wisconsin, and the Rock River flows right through the center of town. It flows down and joins the Mississippi at Rock Island, Illinois. "Now the Rock Island line, she run down to New Orleans.."

A few years ago, word filtered back to me from family who live in Rockford, Illinois (also on the Rock River) that the High School produced a musical titled Living On The River, based on my song, and sang my song as the centerpiece.

Many years ago, I sang this song at a folk festival in Ironwood, Michigan. Someone came up after my set and said that they really liked the song, and that they had fished off that same railroad bridge. I asked him if he grew up in Janesville (my home town) and he said, "No, I grew up in Colorado, but I fished off the same bridge." If I wrote the song right, it could be any bridge or river in the world. Roy Harris recorded a song I wrote about a river boat/floating dance floor, The Silver Queen that cruised up and down the river during the Second World War, and it sounded like a music hall song from England.

Rivers are the center of life in a small town, and I've written several songs that revolve around or at least mention the river... one about the settlement of the town, one about the last Missisippi River Steamboat to come up the river on an excursion. With the exception of mentioning the Mississippi, the river could be anywhere.

Thanks for asking...

Jerry

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: mack/misophist
Date: 15 Mar 02 - 08:31 AM

Sorry to take so long to respond. What misophist was saying was that Verdi single handedly killed a vibrant singing style and tradition. It wasn't necessary or desirable. It was just his ego getting in the way. It didn't harm his career; or, as far as I know, the careers of any singers. It robbed the world of music.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: Peter T.
Date: 15 Mar 02 - 08:50 AM

What bothers me is people changing little words that change the sense of a song, or wreck a line, because they aren't paying attention, or don't think it matters. A lot of this is the shift from hypotaxis to parataxis, which is normal in folk and popular literature (that is, the elimination of causality and subordinate clauses, and their replacement with simple additions, "and", "and"). It is understandable, but for people who know the original, there is a loss of structure that is painful. For example, Alison Kraus does a beautiful version of the Beatles "I Will" on one of her albums (actually from a Tony Rice album originally), but it is marred by the loss of one word. The line is: "And when at last I find you, your song will fill the air, sing it loud so I can hear you, make it easy to be near you, for the things you do endear you...." She changes "for the things you do" to "and the things you do", which eliminates the specific causality of the line. To me it is exactly like Rick Fielding's sensitivity to a missing chord. Drives me crazy.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: The Danger of creativity
From: kendall
Date: 18 Mar 02 - 08:02 AM

Someone asked me for a copy of the letters from Eric Bogle and Utah Phillips, but, I cant remember who it was.It might have been an e mail or a PM, and I dont save those. If it was you, please tell me again. My mind has been otherwise occupied these days!