Regarding my 12-pointer...it took me a while to find this, and I'm SO ****ING SAD that I lost some of my wikkid PM conversations, but my selection was in part in honor of him.
This was the fourth song he shadow-picked in one of Captain Cranks's charity drafts. Dale was on strike against Joe at the time (hi,
@Dr. Octopus ) so only sent his picks to me with the vow I wouldn't share them at the time, but I think it's OK now.
4.xx I Only Have Eyes For You, The Flamingos, Pop
What makes Pop? The moment. The created moment. The moment that consecrates life &
music as part of the soundtrack of existence and crystalizes both into a synesthetic element.
Dbop-shbop. With that reverberating in my ears, my heart, my deepest places, I see daylight fade, bright midnight, starry eternity, misty dawn, musky dusk. I see ecstatic forms writhe above and below me. I see yesterday, now and forever. All at the same time and one-by-one at once. And only have eyes for it.
I'm reminded of the moment i realized i could be a songwriter. Having come to "my book" late in life, i was unsure (which i rarely am) at first so i started experimenting in as many musical genres as i could think of. When i was exploring doowop, i wrote a stanza on a whim and was so struck by the beauty &
simplicity of it that i could go no further.
Ruby baby
Ruby baby
She smiled at me
Now I can see
No one but Ruby baby
Many times over several years did i go back to build a song around it and find again &
again that any addition besmirched, if not insulted, its purity.
I found a way to use it, though. It's in GLASS, my Alice musical. The premise is a successful Manhattan publicist, whose inner life doesnt match her outer, has a date with yet another charming loser - a struggling musician who shoots publicity stills as a sideline - falls asleep at home alone afterward, reading her favorite book and has a wine & Ambien dream where the people and aspects of her life are represented by Alice characters. She ends up on trial @ GLASS, the hottest club in town which is the principal domain of the Queen of Hearts. As she defends her life (in song) she has the Scroogian revelation of her dream and starts to grow, gigantically as she sings until, at the big note, she breaks the GLASS ceiling. It awakens her, only to find that she's just knocked her wine glass over because someone's buzzing. It's the dateboy she's been dreaming about, with bagels & coffee. They play tag, in and out of song, until they find a reason to continue and a closing song.
Part of the tag is that she asks him if he has a stock song to hit on women. He shyly reveals...........Ruby Baby, cept it's Lisa Baby (Alice is Lisa in real life, the Loon in her dream gets her to say "Lisa" over&
over until the emphasis changes and becomes "Alice"). So i dont have to fill out the song, yet get to use it for great moment. Pop!