A college buddy of mine posted a quote on my Facebook wall today, a quote from a song I wrote back in 1999, at age 16. That instigated a revisitation of all the bad music I’ve written over the years. Since I’m turning 30 in two days, I thought I’d share some of it with you. I’ve left out much more than I’ve included. (I’ve even ignored an entire album. You’d thank me for it if you heard it.) All the recordings are quite poor. I never tried to do this professionally. So get over it.
01. gabriela’s song (1999) – I wrote this at age 16. It’s an instrumental which tells the story of the life of my daughter from birth to death. Admittedly, my daughter wasn’t born until 2007, eight years later. But I knew back then that her name was Gabriela, and what her life would be like.
02. move on (2001) – A crummy, cliched Christian song that nevertheless holds a special place in my heart because my friend Frank and I loved to play it over and over again on slow afternoons back in Denver.
03. surprise, surprise (2002) – Lame lyrics, lame recording. Fun tune.
04. edinburgh mourning (2002) – Written for a co-worker of mine on whom I had a crush. She went to the UK on holiday one summer. This is about that.
05. in the distance (2003) – An apocalyptic love song.
06. with m’boots on (2003) – Inspired by a Brennan Manning book. Dumb fun.
07. it’s superman, man! (2003) – I don’t know what the hell this song was supposed to be about.
08. living in typicalville (2003) – Nothing special.
09. my lady sleep (2003) – A song about dying.
10. when i’m with you (2003) – A love song, written by two fictional characters in a movie I wrote.
11. valparaiso (2003) – A love song to the city of Valparaiso de Chile. I spent an afternoon with her once, and never left.
12. folk in you, folk in me (2003) – A folk song about folk.
13. under the sun (2004) – A song written to my friend Matt Bellows, shortly after his death in his early twenties.
14. the road (2004) – Probably my favorite of my songs, although I messed up the guitar part in one section of this recording.
15. rock in my shoe (2004) – FTR, the disparaging reference to gay marriage and rampant abortions is meant to be ironic. The first three verses of the song are meant to be interpreted in light of the fourth. I had a crush on this girl, wore my heart on my sleeve for her, and she didn’t reciprocate. The melodrama of the first three verses is meant to poke fun at my own version of suffering, and weren’t necessarily written in my own voice.
16. danger, danger (2005) – I wrote this song for some friends of mine and performed it at their wedding. I don’t know what’s up with the effect I put on the guitar, so don’t ask.
17. black belt baby (2005) – I wrote this for Erica (my wife) after our second date.
18. here and there (2009) – My most recent, and perhaps my last.
This post was written by
Thom Stark – who has written 100 posts on Religion at the Margins.
Thom Stark is a multi-award-winning filmmaker whose filmography includes Dear Whiskey, and the award-winning films Who Art in Heaven, Revolution, and Note to Self. He is the author of The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong (and Why Inerrancy Tries To Hide It). Thom was a Fig Tree and Ledbetter scholar at Emmanuel School of Religion, A Graduate Seminary. Thom has lectured on Second Temple Jewish apocalypticism, Christian origins, the Parables of Jesus, and early Christological controversies. He has also been the recipient of numerous lectures on tact.
RSS
Twitter
Facebook
NetworkedBlogs
