It’s been a busy week in Benville. I’ve been selling tickets, plastering posters and organising video, wireless, poetry, comedy, pianos and shrubs for Ben’s Big Gig.
We’re still hammering out the details of the set and coming up with quirky and amusing vocal harmonies to lift the arrangements to a new level of pop genius. Here’s a little treat from the phone camera archives:
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I don’t know if it’s an extension of my character, or a subconscious desire to write like Ben Folds or Little Feat, but I like my lyrics to be funny but deadpan. To the point that my songs might easily seem very earnest and humourles if you weren’t really listening.
But sometimes that backfires. Sometimes people just don’t want to listen so hard. I play them my witty lyrical insights into modern society and all they hear is “La la la la. Dum dum de dum dum.” Because in their minds they are running through shopping lists, trying to remember the name of that great Steven Seagal film they saw last night, or maybe just concentrating on the way I’m fretting a G13 chord (usually 3X345X – a great shape).
So it’s good to have some songs that boldly state their purpose in the first bar or two. The Twitter Song was one of those – I knew I had about five seconds to make people laugh, hence the “Twittaaaaahhh” backing vocals – and Make A Difference is another: it opens with a mouth trumpet solo. I learned this beautiful skill from watching endless episodes of A Bit of Fry & Laurie as a teenager. You can see some fine examples of Hugh Laurie’s mouth trumpet virtuosity in this compilation of Soupy Twist endings (the MT kicks in at about 0:58).
So is Make A Difference a dig at eco-freaks?
I sit firmly in the eco camp, and this is not a climate change denial song or a lame attempt to poke fun at those who are actually trying to effect change. It’s a satire of the North Oxford greenies. I’m sure this type exists everywhere. They are well-meaning and very organised, but rather inward-looking as a community. They carry a Bag For Life around the Organic Farmers Market once a week, eat an expensive Organic Fried Breakfast and that’s their contribution.
Of course, I only mock because I am one of them. I used to cycle down to the Organic Farmers Market in Wolvercote every Sunday, but now I’ve settled down with my own Organic Box Delivery from Abel & Cole (whom I heartily recommend). So it’s a subject close to my heart. And it’s great that people can find it amusing and entertaining on different levels: “Isn’t it funny how these greenies behave?”, “Isn’t it funny how these middle class eco-wannabes behave?”, “Isn’t Ben a posh twit?”, etc.
Where do we go from here?
Last weekend I got the band back together to start rehearsing all these new songs I’ve been writing. When we came to Make A Difference, we had to make some tough decisions. It needed to have the comedy Latin intro, but could the verses really be that quiet and folky? And what about harmonies? Hmm…
I’m quite happy with what we came up with after half an hour or so. It has much more of a Kinks feel than before, and I like its strumminess. What do you think?:
