'All My Songs Are Serious'

Subject: 'All My Songs Are Serious'
From: alanabit
Date: 16 Jun 03 - 03:14 PM

Here's one for all those songwriters and people who are interested in songwriting here. I was at a Pete Morton gig a few weeks ago, and he said, "This is a serious song..." and then corrected himself with, "That's nonsense! All my songs are serious." The sentence stuck in my mind, because it sums him up well.
Nobody who knows Pete would describe him as humourless, yet he is never frivolous just for the sake of it. He writes serious songs which sometimes contain funny lines. I would write a song for no better reason than that it simply made me giggle. Pete would never do that - and it's fair enough.
Listening to Rick Fielding's, "If Jesus Was a Picker", I don't think he wanted to do much more than have fun with some puns. I wonder how many Mudcatters would eschew writing silly songs as a matter of principle?

Subject: RE: 'All My Songs Are Serious'
From: Art Thieme
Date: 16 Jun 03 - 03:58 PM

There is great value in looking at the world through morose colered glasses.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: 'All My Songs Are Serious'
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Jun 03 - 04:17 PM

I think a funny song is all the funnier if it's got a serious point somewhere at the back of it. And it often works the other way round, too - the light touch can give a serious song greater penetrating power.

Is Mrs McGrath a funny song or a serious song?

Subject: RE: 'All My Songs Are Serious'
From: alanabit
Date: 16 Jun 03 - 04:36 PM

Good question Kevin. You can play it both ways, can't you? Cole Porter's song "Miss Otis Regrets" can be played both ways just the same way. I heard a lovely version by the London comedian Earl Okin (who is also a very accomplished musician) in which he brought out the loyalty that the tragic lady inspired in her maid. It was a real heartbreaker.
I have a song called "Madame Whiplash", which is ostensibly about a strange man craving the walloppings he gets from a professional lady. I think that to those who lived in the UK through the Thatcher era (most of which I happily missed) it might mean something else. I like to think it works anyway just because of the bizarre character. I wonder if someone else could sing it and make it really sad?

Subject: RE: 'All My Songs Are Serious'
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 16 Jun 03 - 06:10 PM

I like both good serious and good funny songs. But I know some performers who would not be able to put a funny song across to an audience (and vice versa) and figure they should stick with what they're good at.

Subject: RE: 'All My Songs Are Serious'
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jun 03 - 07:36 PM

Even "Nobody Loves A Fairy When She's Forty" can be a tearjerker if done right

Subject: RE: 'All My Songs Are Serious'
From: harvey andrews
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 03:18 AM

I've quoted it before but again the dedication of Danny Abse's poetry is apt;
"I hope this seriously entertains"
I can be seriously entertained and entertained seriously and I think this is the thinking at the back of Pete's quote.

Subject: RE: 'All My Songs Are Serious'
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 03:27 AM

Yes, Guest: grown men wept when I sang "Fairy"; one was heard to say it was "pathetic"!

Steve

Subject: RE: 'All My Songs Are Serious'
From: alanabit
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 08:40 AM

I am sure you are right that was at the back of Pete's mind when he made that comment Harvey. I also agree that it's possible to be funny while serious at the same time - and serious and entertaining as well. I heard Danny Abse read when I was at college and found him very engaging.
Not all funny songs have a serious point behind them though. I think the writers simply enjoy the craft of putting words together in a way which they know is funny - Noel Coward, Flanders and Swann,etc. Personally I like both, but I think there are certainly writers who would never allow songs to slip from their pens if they felt they were merely frivolous. I guess I was thinking aloud and wondering - does that make them lesser writers?

Subject: RE: 'All My Songs Are Serious'
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 08:56 AM

I think that any number of songs which on the surface are just fun and wordplay have the capacity to make a serious point in some context. Even where the person who wrote them probably wasn't actually thinking of that at the time, and even where that quality doesn't come from the song itself, but from what happens to it.

"It's a long way to Tipperary" isn't a funny song, but it certainly wasn't written with the thought that it could break hearts to listen to it nearly a hundred years later.

Subject: RE: 'All My Songs Are Serious'
From: MC Fat
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 09:15 AM

The Writing of Tipperary is bonzing song tho'

Subject: RE: 'All My Songs Are Serious'
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 01:00 PM

"bonzing" ?

Subject: RE: 'All My Songs Are Serious'
From: GUEST,Slickerbill
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 01:28 PM

I quite admire those who write funny songs. I think I've got a decent sense of humour, but to sit down and write a song that will make people laugh is an incredible gift, whether or not it's got a point to it. I tend to like those that do. My favorites are Eric Idle's ditties. And I find they're very helpful on hard days; just sing a bit of "Bright Side of Life" and whistle that bit and a little perspective on life's problems seems to return. I wish I could write funny stuff, but I think you don't necessarily set out to be funny. Anyway, nice thread. sb

Subject: RE: 'All My Songs Are Serious'
From: alanabit
Date: 17 Jun 03 - 01:52 PM

I like your point that songs can mean things to people which were not necessarily what the writer was thinking of at the time, Kevin. I guess that is one of the qualities which all great songs have, which is resonance.

Subject: RE: 'All My Songs Are Serious'
From: Mr Red
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 06:15 AM

eschew silliness ? Me?

I find the difference between clever wordplay and pun is more about context than about syntactical juxtaposition. In a serious song it is pithy wit, in a silly song it is pithy banana skin and the listener decides which - all together.

Oh yes they do

Subject: RE: 'All My Songs Are Serious'
From: Hamish
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 08:56 AM

I've only seen Pete Morton once, and he made me laugh. One song he sang was about the Middle East which makes a slightly frivolous comparison to children squabbling. And I surprised myself by crying: it was just so apt and caught the tragedy of the situation so well. I booked him for the club as soon as I got back from the gig.

Subject: RE: 'All My Songs Are Serious'
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 10:07 AM

Thanks for opening up an extrordinary can of worms, alanabit! So, would you like yours stir-fried, or baked to an angel's food type texture?

I like to sing 'serious' songs, and it is my personal preference to do so...

There are a million-zillion ironic chuckles in the viewpoints presented to the passengers of the whisking away handbasket... and though I might be found laughing too, it's the serious thoughts that alter the course of things... usually... For my part, I love to laugh, but I do it in unexpected places... mostly at situations and irony... and seldom in the arms of vaudvillean rehearsal...

Humor so often seems to be a last ditch effort to tollerate the intollerable... and I'm more geared towards the curing of endemic illnesses, than to the silly aggrandizement of it's side effects...

That being said, I wonder if you could ever have thought that while I was writing this, I was stark naked and shivering... with damp hair and a soapy smell... clutching a cup of quickly cooling coffee... and laughing like my life depends on it... at how funny seriousness can be...
ttr

Subject: RE: 'All My Songs Are Serious'
From: alanabit
Date: 18 Jun 03 - 02:39 PM

The song of Pete's you are referring to is called "Two Brothers" Hamish. I was very moved by it too.
I think Mark Twain is with you in the point you made Thomas. Some interesting responses here...

Subject: RE: 'All My Songs Are Serious'
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jun 03 - 01:39 PM

Ooh, I'm not overly familiar with Pete Morton's work, but he's coming to my local folk club in a couple of weeks... I'm excited about that.