Day 253: Bulgarian Feedback And Failing To Write About Nothing

A while back I was slogging my way through recording and arranging Never Be Silent and put a rough mix up on the 50/90 site to get some second opinions on a thread titled Bulgarian Feedback. As well as a lot of cool advice a number of people said Bulgarian Feedback would be a cool title for a song. But only one man was cool enough to make it so - Johnny Cashpoint.

Bulgaria has fallen and there’s terror in the air.
Conquering invaders have arrived with questionnaire:

“Please rate our occupation on a scale of 1 to 4
Where one is sheer perfection and four is very poor.

How’d you find the food? (Please only rate food you can find.)
During interrogations were our men polite and kind?

and this classic couplet

Promised to provide a service that’s both harsh but fair.
Just ‘cos we’ve over-run you doesn’t meant that we don’t care.”

Listen to the song and read the rest of the lyrics

Jonathan Coulton wrote about his excellent song Mr Fancy Pants*

 It’s almost like this song was generated by the non-thinking parts of me, by the systems level utilities - sitting down and typing gibberish until something gets traction. Strangely, it was the first time I tried this technique during Thing a Week, and I wish I had surrendered to it earlier. I relied on it quite a bit for this new album, and it often led to much more honest and personal expression than I could have gotten to otherwise. It’s very hard to write about nothing for very long, and the real stuff sneaks out of you when you’re not looking.

It reminded me of my song Let's Build An Airport. I started with a weird title, which was actually the title of a children's book and what flowed out of me (oooh don't sound like a reel arr-teest!) was a reflection of the escapism and frustration I was feeling inside. Like Coulton I want to try that more often.

I'll be posting the new recording up soon, but for now here's a live recording I did at the FAWM Over Party at the Vauxhall Griffin Pub in London. (Note: the audio starts before the video)

*You can listen to Mr Fancy Pants on the page but why don't you go here
Find Thing A Week Four
Find Mr Fancy Pants
Click on the smiley face next to Mr Fancy Pants and get a FREE DOWNLOAD
See all those other smiley faces?
You can thank me later


Free download: Never Be Silent
Other free songs by Matt Blick


[If you're subscribed to this blog via email, you will have to click on the post's title to watch any video content (the link will take you my site).