ABOUT: Black & White Memories

“Ahhh, there’s nothing like a two chord song” my friend Howard used to say. This started out as a two chord song in the grand tradition, but over the years of tweaking this song, I brought in more chords.

The Verse music and Verses 1 & 2 came in 1987, as did the picture falling image in Verse 4 and a howling dog reference in Verse 5. I had gotten back to Halifax after a working trip to Germany and spent a few days in Amsterdam. (“Tourist Trapped in Amsterdam” also sprang from that trip.) The work was on a cool film by Bill MacGuilvary called “I will not make any more boring art”, that you should seek out and watch. It was very nice of Bill & Terry & Lionel to take me with them there. In fact, I used to have a lot of pictures taped to apartment walls and when the tape failed, I would take this as a sign to move out.

I added Verse 3 & tweaked the chorus section in 1993. Then in 2004, I stole the 1987 chorus and turned that into the song “Into Me”. Finally in 2005, I revisited this now chorus-less song to see if there was anything left there to salvage.

I found new words and music for the chorus (after creating a big pile of rejected lines in the bone yard) after writing the current Verses 4, 5 & 6.

The chorus line about “dust & debris” come directly from watching news about Katrina hitting the gulf coast of the US (as did the song “Any Where”) and the massive earthquake in the middle east shortly afterward. I found it strange that every month there seemed to be a “storm of the century” yet no government official was able to admit the obvious: these storms are a result of global warming.

For a while, the line in the chorus was “carved chords into songs”, but singing the words “chords” sounded strange to my ears and didn’t relate to the close up of the photos in the verses, so it was tweaked to be “carving notes into song”.

Verses 4 & 5 are fun (for those who should likely get out more) as I “break the 4th. wall”, a difficult task to do while keeping the surprise element and tone of the song in check. In the 2005 session, I was trying to “Goyette It Up” and believe I did ok on this task. (NOTE: Sue Goyette, in addition to being a great guest at any party, is an amazing poet & writer based in Halifax. You should go buy her books right now.)

I’m not going to tell you anything about the girl in Verses 1, 2 & 3. But I like the idea of someone treasuring only close up pictures from a trip or an event that anyone else seeing the picture would just shake their head saying “what the ……… is that??”.

But, it was neat to finally get a song written about writing songs.

Contact me with your thoughts on who should sing this song.