Thursday, June 16, 2011

The Song is In, And The Fight Is On

Well, this is it, the outcome of a week's effort (well, spare time that is) to take part in a Song Fight! battle.  I was planning to wait until the song showed up on their website, but I decided I might as well go ahead with the post. There was no point in doing it last night, either; everybody was watching the hockey game, and then any potential readers I might have in Vancouver were busy setting fires (what, too soon?).

Isle Dauphine

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I think the reason I was drawn to the title for this SF! battle was because I remembered Dauphine Street from the French Quarter in New Orleans. The song was initially more uptempo when I first came up with the chords, but it settled into a darker, slower feel more along the lines of "St. James Infirmary Blues". If I end up deciding this song is worthwhile returning to in the future, I'd love to get horns and piano in there for a better dixieland jazz sound. At least I managed to work in some banjo.

Isle Dauphine is actually the name of a golf club on Dauphin Island, which is on the Alabama coast. When the island was discovered in the 17th century by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, he originally dubbed it "Isle Du Massacre" when he stumbled across a large pile of skeletons (it turned out later that it was just a burial ground broken open by a hurricane). Now, given those two pieces of information, which would you be more likely to draw material from?

I kind of feel like it unconsciously borrowed a bit from The Law Did Rise. The vocals are somewhat alike in their phrasing, and the song structure has some similarities. They're even thematically similar in their tales of caution. Don't get a zombie to fight your battles, they'll eat you afterwords. Don't overindulge on your host's hospitality, or they'll kill you in your sleep and steal your transportation. Perhaps I should take up writing jingles for PSA ads.

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