21st Century Freak Show
A WIP song
Greetings, my fellow vagabonds.
It’s been a minute since I last posted a song WIP.
What follows is a song I started tinkering with last week and finished a draft of last night in the AM. I recorded the draft version some time after 2AM on my mobile phone and figured it was decent enough to share.
My muso pal, David Park, collaborated on this one. I’ll get into that collaborative creative process later in the post.
But for now, here is the song 21st Century Freak Show followed by the lyrics:
21st Century Freak Show - lyrics by Fargo DuBois
Roll-up, roll-up
To the freak show
Feed your curiosity
Roll-up, roll-up
To the freak show
There's things you cannot unsee
Witness god's
Stranger things
Bear witness
To the pain and suffering
And their
Woe
And their
Woe
For your entertainment
Here's the latest atrocity
Mustn't turn your eyes away
From this monstrosity
Witness these
Unholy things
Bear witness
To the souls' withering
Your soul
Your soul
Is a blackened husk
Is dust
Roll-up, roll-up
To the freak show
Feed your curiosity
Roll-up, roll-up
To the freak show
There's things you cannot unsee
And they will haunt you
They will haunt you
They will haunt you
They will haunt you
I don’t think it will take a huge leap of the imagination to interpret the lyrics as intended, but, death of the author and all that.
Is there a millennial whoop in the melody? I’ll leave that determination to someone who actually knows what they’re talking about.
As an aside, the wee soul I’m speaking to at the beginning of the recording is my friend’s cat whom Nadine and I are looking after for a wee while. He was up and slinking about in the AM spying on me in the kitchen.
David helped enormously by helping us find that lovely wee dissonant note (I think that’s what it’s called) section that accompanies the sliding notes. Below is a wee insight into that collaborative creative process.
I sent David this short voice message on Friday (it highlights nicely my limit when it comes to musical knowledge):
A minor point here is that I had a capo on the 3rd fret, so the open high E wasn’t technically high E.
David popped round later in the morning and we sat with a tea as I watched him play around with the notes and finally settle on the version you hear in the phone demo. It’s by far my favourite part of the song.
We’re still at it, of course. Here’s a wee exchange we had this morning.
Fargo:
David:
What a lovely soothing voice David has, and what talent.
So, it’s still very much a work in progress, but as has always been the case with this space (try and say that ten times in a row as fast as possible), I’ll continue to share parts of that process.
Cheers,
Fargo.
Great work!