Monday, December 8, 2014

Wide Nets, Heavy Loads

Have I told you this? You hear all those stories from writers who claim to be mere conduits for the stories. I never believe them.

Several years ago I had decided to write a song about Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. I didn't know all that much about them. I had more or less missed the whole punk thing. I knew enough to know that it was a storybook romance with all the horrible trimmings.

In the car, on the way to Skipper's Smokehouse in Tampa to play a show, this song started going through my head.

"Shine, shine, shine like a vein of gold for me. I'll open like a bag of jewels and I'll set you free."

It probably took me forty five minutes to get to Skipper's and I couldn't get the melody out of my head. I couldn't figure out what those words meant, either. I found a pen in my bag when I got there and scribbled it down. I didn't really need to. That refrain was completely stuck in my mind.

When I finally sat down to work on the song about Sid and Nancy a week or two later it occurred to me that it was the chorus to the song. There's not much more to it. The facts for the verses just happened to rhyme


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