Category Archives: Song Writing

MISADVENTURES IN SONGWRITING: Nobody Cares About Your Love-Life, Watch Cartoons For Inspiration Instead

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From the desk of Horsepower:

All things considered, I, Horsepower, am most likely the least talented member of the Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad.  I can’t play a guitar to save my life.  I can’t kick ass and take names like Captain Mediocrity. I certainly can’t crunch numbers like DrumBot 200X.  So what am I good for?

Us horse-headed folks are most likely good for only one thing, and that’s “sticking out in a good way.”

On Boneslinky!, I wrote a few tunes, one of which is a personal favorite: Big Fist.  My brief description of it is something like “how someone with big hands solves all their problems: smashing whatever’s in their way.”

But where would such an idea come from?  I’m not a violent person, by any means.  I’m more a lover than a fighter (opinions of ex-girlfriends are the exception here).  I can’t remember ever smashing things with my average-sized mitts.  So how did I do it?

I watched Saturday morning cartoons.

I remember the day clearly.  I was sitting at the bar of a vegetarian restaurant at breakfast time.  It was a clear Saturday morning in early Autumn, and I was chowing down on a big-ass plate of tofu scramble.  The weight of Nikc’s offer to contribute to the album was heavy on my shoulders, particularly since my offerings for the new album had all been shuffled off to the side for one reason or another, and I wanted to do something about it.  I looked up at the television whilst taking a sip of my coffee, and there was a hyperactive kid’s cartoon show playing, the sound muted so that all the important conversations that happen in bars at 9am wouldn’t be interrupted.  Seeing all the strange characters jumping around, blowing things up with energy blasts and other craziness, struck a chord in me.  I immediately wrote down the first three ideas that came to my mind regarding the characters in the show I was watching:

  • A song about a kid who has molten lava in his skull in place of a brain, which causes him to be obsessed with geology.
  • Someone with huge fists that crushes buildings or causes earthquakes when punching the ground.
  • A sea shanty-style song about a group of sailors fighting a giant octopus.

Perhaps it was the fact I was watching those cartoons, and I saw plenty of examples where people were smashing things already.  But out of the three, the story about someone with big fists was the most vibrant in my head at the time. So I casually munched on more tofu scramble and put pen to paper, jotting down what eventually came to be “Big Fist.”

Now, the following practice may be standard operating procedure for most bands, but I fall back on my lack of experience for my testimony to the process that undoubtedly unfolds.

I presented my lyrics for “Big Fist” to the rest of the band through e-mail, explaining to them a few things

  • I wrote this song at breakfast, putting down the first words that came to mind (truth be told, it took maybe 10 minutes to write, and that’s probably overestimating)
  • It’s one of three current ideas I wanted to submit for consideration on the album
  • It simply MUST be an old-skool, thrash-punk song…I love singing those in the car, along with my tape deck.

Murmurs of approval were sent around the band in various messages, and I was feeling pretty stoked.  Then the eventual happens: Nikc writes back and says something like “I’ll fuck around with it this weekend.”  I wrote back and said, “Okay, just remember: thrash punk song!”

Two days later, Nikc sends out an e-mail with an MP3 attached labeled “bigfistdemo.”  I download it, turn on my speakers, and start up the song.  And true to form–as this always happens with lyrics I had written and submitted–the song I hear from Nikc surpasses all expectations I had set for it.
Big Fist (demo) by flutesquad

No, it’s not quite thrash punk.  It’s more like this blistering mesh of psychobilly and surf punk from another planet…A planet inhabited by speed-snorting NASCAR fans wearing jetpacks and armed with nail-studded baseball bats and rusty chains.  It fucking rocks, and whenever the breakdown happens, I’m running and jumping all over whatever club it is we’re playing it.  Plus, it ends on me calling out, “Muthafucka yeaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

If that’s not sticking out in a good way, I don’t know what is.  So, it has my vote.

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Like this Song Origin? Check out the story behind Innocent Night, our parody of Benny Mardones’ two-time hit “Into The Night!”

CHASING BENNY: Listen To Songs You Hate For Song-Writing Inspiration

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It’s no secret. When I wrote the lyrics to “Innocent Night” only one person was in my mind, guiding me with beautiful musical inspiration: Benny “The Voice” Mardones.

Benny’s epic “Into The Night”  had recently been brought to my attention by soft-rock afficionado and Flute Squad lead guitarist Father Ryan O’Graham. I later realized this very song that began with the line “She’s just 16 years old, leave her alone, they say…” had tortured me time and time again during the seven years I spent stocking shelves in my neighborhood grocery store. I mean, who was this dude? Why was he singing about a 16 year old chick? Why is he not listening to everyone around him who tells him to leave her alone? How could everyone in America not see through what I saw as a blatant admission of pedophiliac date rape?! I absolutely could not stand it.

Alas, I wanted to write a hit, so I begrudgingly looked to Benny for guidance. He’s the man that should know, right? The album featuring “Into The Night” ironically entitled Never Run, Never Hide is virtually unknown. In fact, Mardones is widely considered to be a one-hit wonder. But his one-hit topped charts TWICE (once in 1980, and again in 1989). Future songs of this chart-topping caliber became known as being “Bennyized” or having “The Mardones Touch”

I wanted that kind of power. I wanted “The Mardones Touch”. Wikipedia (which never ever lies) sums up what I am in interested in quite nicely:

“[Mardones] still lives quite well on the royalties received from this song… ”

So, I grabbed my pen and paper and locked myself in my bedroom with a song I absolutely hated playing on repeat. I swore I wouldn’t come out until the evil elixir of this song had seeped into my subconscious and forced me to write lyrics that could top the charts at least twice. 

But I had to figure out the “it” factor that led to “Into The Night”’s great success. Was it the moody bassline, the infectious groove? Could be. But then again, so many other songs have these elements but never even break through the top 100. In fact, I’m not even sure Benny knows, otherwise he’d write another hit (he’s still making albums you know).

After two long weeks of eating crumbs off the same floor I had been defecating on, I figured that sooner or later I had to let myself out of my bedroom or I was going to die! Then it hit me:

AMERICA LOVES PEDOPHILIA!

How else could you explain the seemingly unsolvable murder case of Jon-Benet Ramsey, the never-ending infatuation with a total freak known as the King of Pop, or the millions of Americans that still go to boring Catholic church every Sunday?

Mardones had tapped the cultural sub-conscious , and I was to copy his success. But what to call it…hmmm… Into The Night…. Int-i-mate Night?? Into The KNIGHT?!?!?! Wait…..I got it… INNOCENT NIGHT!!

I quickly scribbled down a nasty little story. It was about having to confront a friend on his annoying habit of being a child molester. I mailed the song to the Kashgrab Records hit factory, and a new Benny-ized epic was born.


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Up Next: Email strategies to get famous people to recognize you, even if they ultimately reject you. No for real, we actually approached Benny Mardones about singing on Boneslinky!