Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Gordo's going out again (the gestation of a new song)
It started with a couple of chords that fit together nicely, barred up three frets -G D C D - those classic chords, but tied together at the end of a phrase with what I think is a Bm7, which, well, sounds very Spanish. Back in June I was sitting on the beach at Madara with my guitar, tired out from a very brief foray into the waves, feeling a bit sorry for myself for being so out of shape...
and the first stanza of the lyric below popped into my head.
I came up with the backstory for a funny and tragic "Gordo" (which means "fatty" in Spanish but isn't quite as insulting), he's an over the hill surfer trying to recapture his lost youth, and getting in over his head in big waves at Machete' and making a fool of himself... and wrote all that down, and went back to the US for a while.
(any resemblence to the author is exaggerated, but intentional, but I note my baggies were a 38 then, and are now closer to a 35)
I had a few more fragments of lyrics but there the song sat until my return to Nicaragua, when I played the chords for Codo Lopez, and sang the first stanza, and explained in my halting spanish what the song was about.
He grabbed my nokia 770 and scribbled down an entire poem - in spanish - that mostly rhymed and fit the melody - that killed "pobre gordo" (poor gordo) off in the final stanza.(I didn't find this out til I got another friend to translate it back into english!)
This was not exactly what I wanted, (Gordo CAN'T die - he's partially me!) but many bits worked. I've been struggling with the story, and with Spanish, and with trying to construct a rhyming sentence from a non-rhyming dictionary, for a couple weekends now (in my spare time)
Now, my first attempt at pulling together this song on mp3 is here. It's pitiful. A later attempt is in progress, and is starting to shape up with a new neat little riff, (I'll post it soon but I still need to tell a coherent story of some sort....)
In the end I may drop the first lyric entirely and make this be pure spanish, but without further ado, here's the lyrics to my first attempt at writing a surfing song... in spanish.
G D C D
Gordo's goin out again
G D C D
His board's 9 11 but he's 5 foot 10
G D C D
His baggies are a 40, men
C C C Bm Bm7
So gordo's going out... Again.
El viejo gordo queria surfear,
El viejo gordo queria recordar,
cuando era joben y solia estar,
todos los dias en el mar podia sortear.
Esto es lo que pasa,
cuando tienes mi edad,
un joben nino te dice quita,
como cuando tu heras el manda mas.
(Bridge)
C D
Ooo me duele recordar,
C Am
ooo me duele ir surfear,
C D
ooo me tengo que parar
E Em7
ooo o o o.
(this doesn't work but it's a decent part of the story)
Si todos mis recuerdos de lo que hice en mis tiempo;
tu no te atreverias ni siquiera en pensar
en que esta seria mi ultima ola.
(this lyric works)
Gordo todos dicen ya,
gordo me siento libre ya,
gordo quiero ser tu amigo
El dia que tu mueras, un joben se nos ira...
Ooo me duele recordar,
ooo me duele ir surfear,
ooo me tengo que parar
ooo o o o.
(and there are bits and pieces that don't fit anywhere yet)
Vieeejo un gran surfista heras.
Vieeejo las olas te extrañaran.
del viejo gordo que cresiendo en una playa...
tratada por el aresife....
Vamos por madaras, y loco y nos ira
y coloreada por el sol. (the color of the sun - I love this line)
Y el punto final lo puso
(Coda) C Bm7 Em
cuando una gran ola, sus pulmones llenooo. Pobre gordo
Em7
More news as it happens.
Labels: audio, music, nicaragua
¶ 10:20 PM
