Jocko Homomorphism - On the Beach (SHADOW)

from SpinTunes #15 Round 4 by Spintunes

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In Nevil Shute's "On The Beach," a naval officer visits the post-apocalyptic USA to see who left the lights on, while the rest of Australia waits patiently for radioactive fallout to end life as they know it. The gender roles are pretty garbage even for 1957. Despite the theme of going out stoically, I imagine there's a lot of intrusive thoughts repeating through the protagonist's head, which I try to capture in a cumulative song with a touch of noise.

Making noise music has been fun for the past few years, so I decided to write some for my final shadow entry in Spintunes 15. Really, I wanted to do this back in round 3, except the challenge was to sound like someone else. I'm glad I waited, since sound collage is a good fit for the cumulative song challenge. Also, the judge commentary on Brian Gray's "Boy and His Kumquat Tree" was relevant to what I'm trying to do here.

I've injected more traditional structure into this noise song to help make it digestible, like a four-bar structure and distinct chord changes, though it's not entirely in a Western scale. The lyrics are disjointed, but prominent, and I save the sentence mixing fun for the end, after the story has been heard the whole way through.

lyrics

Nothing to do but head for the bar,
As we wait for the toxic cloud.
We didn't drop the first atom bomb,
And we only won by default.

There's a radio station in the US of A,
And you know I'm all about that noise.
So everybody in the submarine,
I'm sure my baby will be fine. (You bet?)

They're dead here, John.
How bout we head back and race to the death?
Let's get on dry land, before the captain sinks the ship.
Honey, have you seen my cyanide?

Nothing to d-d-d but head for the "Bob,"
As we wait for the toxic cloud.
Didn't we drop the first atom b-b-b-bomb?
And we only won by defauf.

You know I'm all about that radio,
You know I'm all about that noise.
So everybody in this rhombus,
I'm sure my baby will be She-Ra.

They're John here, John.
How bout we head back and race to the john?
Let's get on the captain, before the captain ships John.

credits

from SpinTunes #15 Round 4, released December 17, 2018

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Spintunes Union, South Carolina

Spintunes is a semi-annual songwriting contest. Every other week, the competitors receive a challenge and a week to meet it.

Each album on this site contains the responses to a single challenge.