Sunday, September 17, 2006

Lou Reed wants to hear my songs

Playing right now: Henry Mancini - Uniquely Mancini (a rather unsyncopated, but kind of swinging version, of "Green Onions," specifically)

I've been having all kinds of weird dreams lately, many of them taking place at work. Which is weird, because I don't think that's happened since I first started there.
But last night, sleeping at my in-laws' house, my dreams took another twist. Not sure where I was, but I was talking to George Harrison, who was something of an acquaintance in this dream. At least well enough that I could chat freely with him about music. I told him that I was listening to one of his albums and that it was helping me in writing songs. My problem, I said, was I can come up with words and chord changes, but when it comes to a melody for the lyrics, I always end up singing a fairly monotonous part. But listening to him was giving me ideas.
Lou Reed was in the room. And when I finished talking to George, who seemed interested and supportive of my efforts, Lou chimed in, "Hey, Mike, why don't you ever show me your songs?" I was kind of taken aback, because Lou has such a rep for being a bastard. And all of a sudden, he seemed willing to help me.
"Because I just figured you'd hate them," I said.
"No, that's not true."
"Sure, you'd go through my lyric book and say, 'This one sucks.' [make a gesture of flipping to the next page] Boring. [Next page]. Oh geez.'" I really wanted to do my Lou imitation for him, but, worrying that it might piss him off, I kind of couched it in a low mumble.
But Lou was really encouraging and said he'd really like to hear or take a look at my song ideas on Monday.
Tomorrow's Monday. I better get some songs together.
Oddly enough, I have a song idea that I want to get down on paper with chord changes and lyrics. Last Thursday, the synapses were firing and I came up with an idea for the final verse [I already know what the chorus and first verse are going to be], and a bridge.
Not sure why I dreamt about Lou Reed. George might've been in my head because I recently dug out a Let It Be bootleg and, a couple weeks ago, I was revisiting his 2 songs on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack.

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