Day 304: Forty Three And Counting

I find I'm not playing with a full deck

I'm up to my neck like Toulouse Lautrec

So Oct is over. Spent a week workshopping, writing, recording and performing with another batch of talented kids as well as Joff and John from Swimming and Nottingham's first lady of Electro pop Ronika. A couple of songs with the young peeps and completing Never In A Million Years takes me up to 43 songs completed this year. 

I guess I'm informally shooting for completing 50 songs this year, but at the same time I'm hoping to get into a real studio to record a four song EP by the end of the year. That's gonna take a lot of work, not least trying to complete 2 more possible songs for that project. 

But tonight I wrote 4 choruses for a song about Elijah and the prophets of Baal, working title is…wait for it…Maybe Your God's On The Toilet. You might want to check your hebrew commentaries now…

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

New Song: Never In A Million Years

Never In A Million Years [2011] Humorous Rock
Let's do some science in a song
Unapologetic apologetics. The Foo Fighters send back the soup.
Downloads      mp3      Lyrics(pdf)

Let's do some science in a song. Let's pick a prehistoric pond.
It's small and warm and has all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts.
Zapped with electricity, a protein forms there chemically
And once that protein's fully formed, it's ready to evolve some more.
That's the theory now let's try again with carbon dioxide
Water and some nitrogen and life will happen sometime … when?

Never, never in a million years
Never, never in ten million years
Never, never in a hundred million
Four hundred million years
Never in a million years


Let's give Oparin his due, he proposed we should make soup
And Haldane said that it just might cook with ultraviolet light
Urey said we should put in methane and some hydrogen
So Miller cooked it but since when did we have those ingredients back then?

Chorus

Don't cry Charlie Darwin, what does Louis Pasteur know?
Just tell Frankie we can pin the whole damn thing on undetectable spacemen
Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry
(That ship has sailed and it ain't never coming back, there's always
Much too much speculation running after too little facts)

But let's just say you make that soup, most amino acids you can't use
Right handed ones you throw away but keep a hundred lefties (give or take)
Stick 'em together with peptide glue. You've made a protein - clever you!
You know I hate to be a bore - for a cell, we only need 200 more.
Now we just got instructions left to write, 30 volumes worth that we gotta fit inside
There are only four letters in DNA, so how much longer do you think it's gonna take?

A million years?
Or ten million years?
Maybe in a hundred million?
Four hundred million years?
Never in a million years.




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

Something For The Weekend

I'm full of cold and recovering from being hit on the head with a piece of lighting rig. Here's something to cheer us all up!

Free download: Never Be Silent
Other free songs by Matt Blick
 
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New Song: There Goes The Moon

There Goes The Moon [2010] Love Song
There are plenty of other moons in the sky
A mellow Metallica ballad of a lovelorn lunatic.
Download      mp3


They promised me the moon
And like the moon she was cold
She was desolate and distant
And blessed with a light not her own


They promised me the moon
And around me she spun
But her love waxed and waned and
One casual eclipse she was gone


But oh, how she drew me to her light
And oh, how she tugged at my heart like a rising tide


There's plenty of other moons in the sky
One is waiting for me, silent as light
But morning arrives too soon
There goes the moon


They promised me the moon
To love and lose was my part
But can you say you've lost somebody
If you still know where they are?


They promised me the moon
And like the moon she was cold
She was desolate and distant
And blessed with a light not her own


I know I was irrational and insane
But oh, how she toyed with the tide inside my brain


There's plenty of other moons in the sky...


There goes the moon
They call it 'the moon'
But it's only the moon of the earth
Only a moon
Not the brightest or best
But she filled up my sky 'till I just couldn't see that...


There's plenty of other moons in the sky...


Mars has two Pluto has three
There must be a moon out there just for me
But morning arrives too soon
There goes the moon


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

Day 285: We're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat

Tried to do a bit of recording at Shabby Road after teaching but the mac was flat so I switched all the lights off and improvised in the dark. It seemed the thing to do.

I'm still slogging away with the evolution song "Never In A Million Years". I'm not sure why it's taking so long but I'm nearly there. It's teaching me about the limitations of 3 minute pop songs to get across humorous points about scientific arguments, but I'm going to finish it dammit. Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger...

I'm having to rethink my whole blogging posting songs method. What worked when I was writing six songs a year, is groaning under the weight of 40. I'm writing songs and not getting around to posting them, or not getting them on the download page. Expect some changes soon. And a few old songs that never made it onto the blog.

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

Rock And Roll Injuries

Lou Reed was playing a gig in Buffalo in 1973 when a man invaded the stage, shouted “leather” and bit him on the buttocks

Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham collapsed onstage in Nuremberg in 1980 after eating 27 bananas

Limp Bizkit singer Fred Durst suffered 'testicular trauma' after being hit in the balls with a lemon while onstage in Chicago

Courtney Love's dog died in 2002 after eating one of her breast implants (having had them removed previously and kept as souvenirs)

Elvis Presley died of a drug induced heart attack. Drugs in Elvis' system when he died: Codeine, Morphine, Demerol, Avental, Valium, Quaaludes, Placidyl, Carbrital, Valmid, Amytal, Nembutal, Elavil and Sinutab.

Keith Richards crashed his restored Nazi staff car twice in 1969 after falling asleep at the wheel. He fell off a library ladder at home and broke three ribs in 1998. And he was injured when he fell out of a Coconut tree in 2006.

Source: The Q Magazine Music Bible



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

Joanne's Difficult Decision

In 1954 Joanne Schieble was pregnant, unmarried, university student. She faced the difficult decision whether to keep the baby, give it up for adoption or have an abortion.

She had no way of knowing how things her life or her baby's life would turn out, the kind of dilemma I was trying to capture in the song First Black President.

I could have been a hero
Covered in glory 'cos I gave my life
I could have been a mother
Three young kids and working nights
I could have been a nurse or a football coach
Could have had your smile, your eyes, your nose
Would my coming still be something you'd lament
If I'd have been the first black President?


Thankfully Joanne decided not to have an abortion but to give him up for adoption. Her son didn't become the President of the United States. He became the CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs.

It's impossible for anyone to accurately assess another's life. But I think Steve Jobs made the world a better place.

Rest in peace, Steve. And thank you Joanne.

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