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Recommended Reading
Here's something I wrote about a song I really like.
Crazy Dreams
The Porchester Hall is tittering with chatter, but as Paul Brady introduces his next song the buzz fades from the room of black-tied tables. Brady has half a head of thick wavy grey hair, and as he speaks you can still hear his young soft voice, now crackling at the edges. I turn up the volume on BBC 4's Songwriter's Circle.
He says that he left the first sketch of this song for a month and nearly forgot about it. Tentatively, he concedes it doesn't have a chorus, "though it seems to go down alright". In his youth Bob Dylan loved this man's song writing, and Tina Turner loved his voice. I wonder if he knows how good he is.
It's the worn steel strung acoustic that perked my attention. Up until that point, about half way through the show, the songs from the other writers were weary like they'd played them far too many times, as they no doubt had done. But this guitar playing was fantastic, crisply ringing open strings while his fingers slide a catchy melody, all while his palm rhythmically thumped out a driving beat.
Snow-bound siren in the Winter Dawn
There's a Blizzard Blowing in Across the River
His voice is like an old vinyl, strong and grainy. It matches his hair perfectly. He seems wise but not at all old. He sets out this wintery scene, and you sit easy and await the story to be told.
It's ten below out on these city streets
But the feeling in your heart is even colder
The sunrise screeching down the line
And the fog-banks swirling out of time
But you won't be here when they creep in tomorrow
I picture a man, walking to work on a snowy pavement, dizzied by the "screeching" sun and nauseous from the rolling fog. Brady plays a run of four rising chords, his voice rising with them, emotionally and freely and then falling on "tomorrow".
He plays that same guitar line again, open chords ringing, and I realise that the song doesn't need a chorus at all. Like Dylan's harmonica in Don't Think Twice it’s the perfect bridge between sections, a little chance to let the images settle from the previous verse.
You're tired of dreaming someone else's dreams
When they really don't include you any longer
Miles from home, you’re sliding down with each day
And you need a woman's love to make you stronger
And lately you've been getting doubts
A voice inside keeps calling out
That someone else's dream don't get you nowhere
Brady's lyrics are folksy but straightforward. I connect with them on the first listening. I suppose that makes it pop, original and creative pop. The climax at the end of the previous verse repeats and fits perfectly with "the voice inside calling out" and resolves with "someone else's dreams won't get you no-where" - a common sentiment but it somehow avoids cliché. I have the image now of a lonely young man, away from home and working for a cause he doesn't believe in. I suppose from here we already know where the song is going but the pleasure is in listening to it unfold.
