Thread: Red Shifting

When the bomb drops
Like a pin in a silent room
We'll stuff our ears with cotton balls
And wish that shit away

With the sun controlled in human hands
All we do is throw it at each other
A high-tech monkey hissy fit

We could run away
With a solar flare beneath our tails

Why is it we only make to destroy?
Without the race space is just a void
A dream forgotten every smokey dawn

We're stuck here on earth
As the future lays in mass graves
Not ashes amongst the stars

I'm not sure whether this would be a lyric or simply a poem. Not really long enough to be very effective as a lyric unless you've planned a mighty buttload of instrumental work. Doesn't really express much that Geezer Butler didn't say in Into the Void 30 years ago.
On the other hand, it parses...all the moving parts spin nicely. Don't mean to be a negative nelly here but I dunno. Not your best work, North. Appreciate your posting it though. Thanks again for the comments, and for posting to the lyric section.

I think you're too rigid in an opinion of what makes a lyric, and by the sound of it, what makes a song. A song doesn't need to be 3 minutes plus. If it needs to be, it can be less than a minute of intensity, nor does it have to be sung etc. This is a similar sort of length to a lot of stuff I listen to, perhaps actually a bit longer. Haha, and I've never heard of Geezer Butler before. But thanks for taking the time to read and comment.

You're serious, aren't you? That's funny.
Geezer Butler was the bass player and wrote the lyrics for Black Sabbath. Heard of them, haven't you? Without Black Sabbath, 90% of the things you listen to wouldn't exist.
With all due respect, I think you need a sense of history and context.
Here:
Into The Void

words by Terry Butler
Rocket engines burning fuel so fast
Up into the night sky they blast
Through the universe the engines whine
Could it be the end of man and time?
Back on earth the flame of life burns low
Everywhere is misery and woe
Pollution kills the air, the land and sea
Man prepares to meet his destiny

Rocket engines burning fuel so fast
Up into the night sky so vast
Burning metal through the atmosphere
Earth remains in worry, hate and fear
With the hateful battles raging on
Rockets flying to the glowing sun
Through the empires of eternal void
Freedom from the final suicide

Freedom fighters sent out to the sun
Escape from brainwashed minds and pollution
Leave the earth to all it's sin and hate
Find another world where freedom waits

Past the stars in fields of ancient void
Through the shields of darkness where they find
Love upon a land a world unknown
Where the sons of freedom make their home
Leave the earth to Satan and his slaves
Leave them to their future in the grave
Make a home where love is there to stay
Peace and happiness in every day

(c) 1971

Yeah, fair enough its the same message. But then, there aren't many songs out there with a completely new message, its just a matter of doing it differently.

And yes I know Black Sabbath, it doesn't mean I need to know all the band members. Hell, I don't know the names of most of the people in the bands I do listen to.

*smiles* There are gulfs between you and I. I know the names of everyone in the bands I listen to. A decent percentage of them know my name as well.
There are new things to be said...but yes, most expression in the form has been done. A sense of who has done what previously can help to avoid that, though.
So who do you listen to? I'd bet I've heard of very few of them.

Well the main reason I don't know the names of everyone in the bands, is because there's too many of them and it'd just be a waste of brainspace. The band is a unity and its all I need to know, unless I'm going to be playing with them or something. I'm aware to some degree of what has come before, I know the history of music as well as I feel I need to. There's too much to know it all and I'm not that interested anyway.

Anyway, my favourites include Deftones, Refused, Poison the Well, Fear Before, REM (whom I'm sure you know), Bloc Party, Modern Life Is War, Defeater, Killing the Dream, Brand New, Thursday, In Flames...etc etc etc. My influences are wider than that, just my current faves really.

You're certainly entitled to your opinions. Deftones I've heard of. REM, yes. The others, not a clue. But then I'd bet dollars to donuts that you haven't heard of most of the bands I like (even the current ones). And since you don't care about musical history, that doesn't matter.
I'd guess that a goodly number of the professional musicians you've mentioned do know the history, though. Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Michael Stipe certainly do. That's all. You're young. Over time, your tastes and ideas will change and grow.

Well how about you tell me some of the bands? I may not have listened to them, but if they're not underground in genres I'm not familiar about I probably would have at least heard about them a bit. And yes, I'm sure they do know the history, but from what you've been saying I'm going to guess you're quite alot older than me and so what you may not really see as 'history' has already become it for me. The 90's were fucking AGES ago to me, same with the early 00's. That'll be the history I base my music off. Why would I need to dig back even further, when the bands from that period are already influenced by them? I'm actually increasing the degree of influence.

Sure. I like Frozenbones. I like Peter Gabriel. I like Conor Oberst. I like Red Hot Chili Peppers. I like Hello Citizen. That's just a few. Feel free to google. Don't really care about genre. I don't care for rap or mainstream pop, but anything else I'll give a listen to.
I'm gonna guess you don't remember conversations we've had here before...yeah, I'm a LOT older than you are. I've been a practicing musician for 30 years. The degree of influence foreshortens with time, it doesn't increase. It is diluted.
I'm directly influenced by bands that are antediluvian to you. Probably stuff your folks like.

I'd never heard of Frozenbones, but thats it. The others aren't exactly unknown or anything. And no, I meant the amount I'm influenced by. The idea that music played years ago was so much more 'pure' than nowadays is ridiculous. There is more variety now, more bands incorporating bits and pieces from everywhere into their work. If I was to be purely influenced by the bands from decades ago, I'd play the same stuff that came ten years ago. Progress is made by paying attention to the new, while keeping an eye on the old. I am aware of the old, just because I don't know every band member and all the songs doesn't mean I don't know what they did. =/

And yeah, don't remember you, sorry. xD

Sure. I don't disagree about the "purity" angle. And I don't mean to put you on the defensive. Not my intention at all.
Remember a lyric of yours called "waterlungs"? Here's the discussion.
Here's the track. Never did do the vocals. Sorry. Got other things going on.
I was being intentionally obvious about the bands. Most of the ones I like are people I know-Frozenbones being an example of that, and Hello Citizen. I don't listen to radio at all.
As far as influences...even if you draw from the original wellspring, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and the like, you learn and grow as an artist. Or at least one would hope so. I can do a damn good Beatles or Genesis or Pink Floyd imitation but I spent years covering their music. That doesn't mean that's all I can do.
But I'm a musicologist as well as a former pro...those being why I'm the mod of this section

Yeah, sorry about getting defensive. And ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, you're that guy. Hahaha. Man, I hate that set of lyrics now. So sickly sweet.

But you're right, you do grow and mature as an artist, I just don't think there's any more value in the old than there is in the new.

Yeah, I'm that guy. Nothing wrong with those lyrics. They have a couple of nice images. Sweet is okay at times, especially to balance out the dark stuff. As far as value, maybe, maybe not. I place a little more value on rock between, say, 1966-1974 because that was before everything got totally determined by the bottom line and bands still had time to develop creatively in the public eye before the distribution companies wanted their investment paid back. A&R people especially were a little more farsighted. I don't even think that group exists any more.
That's all...I do think that with the development of internet indie bands, that aesthetic's coming back more and more. And that's good. Otherwise, music is music. A talented and creative musician is still just that-I don't see the reason for any old vs. new value judgements.

Hello, I know a lot of responses have been posted already but I wanted to respond to this because I liked it. The title is good and it had some nice phrases. I admittedly looked at it like a poem but feel that it could work as a song as well.

The only other thing I noticed is that there is no hook-like phrase to work with in the song (even though there are a bit of nice phrases). This isn't necessary, of course, but does help (especially considering the title is not the hook and nowhere in the song).

Good job!