It’s a long weekend so here’s a bonus throwback! This is the furthest back we’ve gone. As a kid I learned to write pop songs by setting classic poetry to music. I think I was barely fifteen when I put this one together. Plus, as followers of this blog already know, I have a thing... Continue Reading →

My high school's production of Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" was a bittersweet allegory for all the folderol going on with me at the time (not to mention that our theater department opted for an interpretation that was a veritable pastiche of Bowie's Jareth, Peter Pan's Lost Boys, Robert Smith, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the... Continue Reading →

This week’s selection is also from high school times, and it’s just a good old song about le desir. By the way, I just decided tonight to call these things “Wayback Weekends,” so I had to go back to all the other ones and update them to look like they’d been called that all along.... Continue Reading →

In 1999 I was 17 and a senior in high school, and I liked to write, uh, moralistic saloon music - ? https://youtu.be/tnIBQp7MHbQ GatesShe with the lipsAnd the prodigal flameWho curses the heavensFrom which she cameMixes her pain And her faith all togetherAnd grinds them to dustOr wraps them in leatherShe who draws heatLike a... Continue Reading →