Brainstorming Post

[morbane]

Here if you'd like to share music you're keen on, or sound out whether someone else might be interesting in reading/writing the songs you want to write/read for.

Links are welcome.

Nominations will open 26 July are open now (!) and close 1 August.

(See also: http://jukebox-fest.livejournal.com/816.html for the same post on the LJ community.)

Comments

[alexseanchai]

Any song Seanan McGuire has ever done. Seriously any. I only know Wicked Girls songs, unfortunately, though I think that's the only album of hers that CDBaby actually has in stock so those should be the easiest to get hold of.

Florence + the Machine, too.

Has anyone else heard of Three of Hearts?

Any Celtic folk song with a narrative. "Rocky Road to Dublin", "Black Velvet Band", "Follow Me Up To Carlow", "Star of the County Down"--ooooo now I really want "Star of the County Down" ficced, using as the canon one of the versions that has a female singer and the verse where the singer watches Rosie sing and dance.

Actually any folk song with a narrative. I just know the Irish music best.

"Easy as Life" from Aida, "For Good" from Wicked, "Shadowlands" from The Lion King.

"Shee An Gannon" by The CRAIC--I'll get that on Youtube later so I know it's widely available-- hah!

Has anyone else heard of the movie Ember Days starring Bekah Kelso? Because there's two songs off its soundtrack, "Crossroads" by Bekah Kelso and "We Were Angels Once (Wake the Fallen)" by SJ Tucker...actually, speaking of SJ Tucker, "Mary Mary". Probably some other good stuff in the rest of her work (and Kelso's, for that matter) but I haven't scraped together the money for it yet.

[raspberryhunter]

I am SO THERE for folk songs! *makes notes to listen to these*

I also love "For Good" -- were you thinking something relating to the musical, or something more general taking off from the lyrics of the song?

[alexseanchai]

But apparently SJ Tucker's music is available for free listening on her website! How did I miss that before...

[alexseanchai]

Know what I really wish I'd nominated, now that I've remembered about it?

Silly Wizard's "The Queen of Argyll".

[deep_dark_waters]

Such a great theme for a fic exchange!

Anything and everything by Tom Waits. Creepy, tragic, romantic, funny, it's all there.

Also Hawksley Workman's album Treeful of Starling (Spotify link) - I nominated this one for Yuletide last year but it's not that well known. It's an epic, beautiful concept album spanning the entire stretch of human existence from pre-civilisation to post-apocalypse. I would love to read fic about these songs, there's so much possibility.

(edited to fix rogue html)

[morbane]

Thanks, I'm glad you're interested!

Would the songs from Treeful of Starling work on their own, instead of only as a whole? I'm aiming to keep canons as simple and discrete as possible. (Which I guess is a nice problem to have if one of the album's strengths is its complexity.)

[pleonasm]

I am pretty sure that I am going to nominate the following songs, but I am wondering if anyone else would even be interested in reading or writing for them. I don't see a lot of country fans in fandom, but maybe we're all undercover. (Jill and Erin aren't country, though, so maybe that'll work.)

We Owned the Night - Lady Antebellum
I Kissed a Girl - Jill Sobule
Monroe Suede - Ashley Monroe
To A Hammer - Erin McKeown
Follow Your Arrow - Kacey Musgraves

[morbane]

I grew up on Garth Brooks and Guy Clark. I'm probably not the only one. :)

I really like Kacey Musgraves' voice.

[moetushie]

DECEMBERISTS! ALL THE SONGS BY THE DECEMBERISTS!

Oh, all right, I'll narrow it down.
Oh Valencia - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJXQSBWO5Qc
The Soldiering Life - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pd_nzOvgis
Red Right Ankle - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYwkmPKsctQ
The Rake's Song - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM1NuFhXhgA

I also adore Josh Ritter's The Curse. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9XfFGIwXT8) That has a lot of potential for ficwriting, I think. MUMMIES, Y'ALL.

And I've always wanted fic for Johnny Cash's (+ a bunch of other people) Highwayman. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPHuQFN7L70

[soundingsea]

DECEMBERISTS!

And I adore that Highwayman song, but I've already committed fic for it, alas. :)

[seekingferret]

Handful of Josh Ritter songs I'd love to see fic for:

The Curse (Mummy romance/angst)
The Last Temptation of Adam (post-apocalyptic love)
Hotel Song ( unrequited yearning from a hotel clerk)
Girl in the War- (honestly not sure what it's about, but would love theories)
Harrisburg -the classic railroad ballad of our time


Also would enjoy seeing someone try to convert the Jefferson Starship's "Blows Against the Empire" back into prose. Especially "A Child is Coming".

[moetushie]

I would love to see fic for 'The Curse'!

[eternallyfab]

I would like a lot of fic for Belle and Sebastian, specifically "She's Losing It," "Lazy Line Painter Jane," "I'm Waking Up to Us," "Judy and the Dream of Horses," and "Sukie in the Graveyard." There are surely more, but those are the most.

And holy shit, I would adore something for "High School Confidential" by Rough Trade.

[madame_oryx]

Oh, this seems like it'll be fun. c:
Some songs that could potentially be interesting fanfic-wise:

"Sultans of Swing" - Dire Straits
"Eleanor Put Your Boots On" & "Fade Together" - Franz Ferdinand
"I Woke Up In a Strange Place" & "Mojo Pin" - Jeff Buckley
"Hung My Head" - Johnny Cash
"Bedshaped" - Keane
"Dead Man's Party" - Oingo Boingo
"Tempted" & "Goodbye Girl" - Squeeze
"Once in a Lifetime" - Talking Heads

Might be hard to narrow it down, hehe.

[delwyn_cole]

I have a fair number I'd be interested in. All links are to Youtube videos

I See You, You See Me -- The Magic Numbers
Any of a whole slew of Carbon Leaf songs, but I'm especially thinking of
Life Less Ordinary
or
The War Was In Color
or
On Any Given Day
Curve of the Earth -- Matt Nathanson
A Beautiful Lie -- 30 Seconds to Mars
Skywriting -- Artificial Joy Club - I don't actually think this live version is that great, but I can't seem to find a studio recording on youtube.
Amazed -- Poe
Ever After Happily -- Jay Brannan - or anything else of his really

And pretty much any song by Live

[primeideal]

<3 Carbon Leaf!! Life Less Ordinary or anything else on that album would be amazing.

[raspberryhunter]

Folk songs and art songs, anyone?

I've always wanted fic for Scarborough Fair (either Simon and Garfunkel or not).

Mandoline by Faure, lyrics here

Le Secret (Faure), lyrics here

Schumann's setting is gorgeous and moving, and at the same time the text sets off all my creeper vibes: Du bist wie eine Blume, lyrics here

I'm sure I have a bunch more, I will probably be back...

[alexseanchai]

Scarborough Fair! \o/

There are a great many Child ballads I'd like to nominate, actually, Tam Lin, Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight, Riddles Wisely Expounded, but I'm planning on writing those myself for other reasons so I'm not sure I'm actually going to nominate any of them. Though it is not as though there is only one way to interpret any of the ballads...lemme go edit my initial brainstorming comment.

[alexseanchai]

Addendum to my original comment: All the Child ballads. ALL OF THEM. I think "Scarborough Fair" (it's on the list under "The Elfin Knight") and "Tam Lin" and "Twa Sisters" are the best known.

And "Poem of War" from the Ember Days soundtrack, if it qualifies--it's setup for the film and it's rather Eurocentric but damn is it beautiful. The reason I think it might not qualify is the words are spoken, not sung.

[raspberryhunter]

More folk songs, possibly even more later...

The Plough Boy(arranged by Britten). Somewhere I have an awesome recording of this by Christopher Maltman which used to be available on amazon as a single mp3 and no longer is (wah), but which if I can figure out where I put my mp3s maybe I will try to put up somewhere.

Greensleeves (arranged by Britten); this particular recording is by my favorite tenor of all time, Ian Bostridge

Loch Lomond (arranged by the Harvard Kroks; this was the first arrangement I ever heard, and still my favorite)

[alexseanchai]

Loch Lomond!

[minutia_r]

Almost anything by Warren Zevon, but especially "Lawyers, Guns and Money." I just want the story of the waitress who is also a Russian agent, okay?

Richard Shindell also has a lot of songs with a strong narrative thread.

Also, Bar the Door Casey. So creepy!

[sirvalkyrie]

The Wooden Girl ~Millennium of Wiegenlied~ - Story about a forest spirit who see a sad girl with white hair who wishes she had never been born. The forest spirit is turned into a human by a sorceress. Towards the end of the song the tree spirit realizes she loves the white haired girl
Note: While it is the tree spirit singing in most the song and is subtitled in white, the tree spirit is singing the green text in the duet part. The girl with white hair is singing the white text in the duet part.

Double Melody - She can never sing as well as all the rest no matter how hard she tries.

Wings (English Version) - I don't care if it is a video game song, it is one of my favorites of all time.

[raspberryhunter]

I love that Wings song! Though I don't know the faintest thing about the video game...

[elanya]

Apparently the theme of my life currently is Finish Dissertation --> Write All The Fic

I'm down with Child Ballads, and am happy to see them mentioned here as they have been falling out of Yuletide lately (last year there were *none*! *cries*

Someone mentioned Tom Waits - I would love to see 'Hell Broke Luce', particularly, or maybe one of the versions of 'Innocent When you Dream'

More folky stuff:
Shirley Collins - The Crow on the Cradle
Stan Rogers - Witch of the Westmoreland

Things completely in the other direction:
Scissor Sisters - Invisible light, song alone *or* video because @_@

That's all I've got for now :3

[alexseanchai]

Ooooo Witch of the Westmoreland!

How am I ever going to get my noms down to five or my requests down to four. ;_;

[snowynight]

Regina Spektor - On the Radio
Suzanne Vega - Angel's Doorway
Dar Williams - Blue Light of the Flame
Loreena Mckennitt - Marrakesh Night Market
Vienna Teng - Antebellum
Tori Amos- Etienne Trilogy

[glaukopis]

Yes to Vienna Teng! I'd also suggest "Blue Caravan," "Enough to Go By," and "St. Stephen's Cross."


"Firewood" - Regina Spektor
"Slow Revolution" - Alexi Murdoch
"America" - Simon and Garfunkel
"A Smiling Shore" - June Tabor

[raspberryhunter]

Okay, two more songs/links -- I promise that will be the last of them for this post, sorry for spamming the comments; I keep thinking of more songs I want fic for...

Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd), I feel, would make a great SF story. Or any other kind of story, honestly. Or possibly "Shine On You Crazy Diamond"?

Chiron Beta Prime (Jonathan Coulton) -- I have so many questions! Why are they there? What happens next?

[karaokegal]

I'm interested in nominating some cover versions where the gender changes the meaning, or at least the feeling of the song. One I'm specifically contemplating is Bryan Ferry's cover of Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow. I love the idea of the POV being the jaded older man with the younger woman (possibly a gold-digger) as opposed to the naive younger woman about to give it up and wondering the title question.

[alexseanchai]

WIN. Though I can't think of any such offhand. I suppose any love song that uses I pronouns for the singer and gendered pronouns for the beloved, sung by someone of a different gender to the original singer...?

Scratch sentence two. Taylor Swift's "You Belong to Me". Though last Yuletide someone did a fabulous job genderbending that.

[seekingferret]

Somehow nobody has mentioned Ziggy Stardust. So I am mentioning Ziggy Stardust.

[hopefulnebula]

Someone's in this for Boten Anna fic, right? Right?

[existence]

Songs I am pondering off the top of my head:

- Aesop Rock: Coffee or No Regrets, maybe. (I always did like little Lucy.)
- Phenomenauts: I Am Robot comes to mind as the one with clearest narrative without context. But basically I want spaceship adventures, okay.
- TV on the Radio: I cannot nominate all of them. Ugh. Life, very unfair. Satellites I have a fondness for, for early stuff, but I also think that Blues From Down Here and I Was A Lover would be good too. And, well, most of Will Do and Dear Science, really.
- Black 47: Bodrahns on the Brain, or I Slept On James Joyce's Grave. Or one of the many, many songs about martyrs...they have a lot of those.
- Jason Webely: Icarus from Counterpoint, maybe? I will admit a particularness for Two Stars and Jack of Spades off of Against the Night as well tho.
- Zombina and the Skeletones: Nobody Likes You When You're Dead
- Illyaria Graziano et al: Christmas In The Silent Forest
- Iron and Wine: Woman King

Other acts who I'd consider with some more reviewing of their music probably: Gnarls Barkley, Rasputina, Janelle Monae, Tom Waits, Queen, VnV Nation, the Killers, Mathew Good, the National, something something Bowie something something maybe Mumford? LET ME INFLICT MY PROBABLY TERRIBLE TASTE IN SONGS ON YOU.

[xenoglossy]

Ooh, I'd love to see what could come out of Woman King or Nobody Likes You When You're Dead. I also love Janelle Monae, but I'm only familiar with her Metropolis suite and I feel like those songs work better together than individually?

[xenoglossy]

Here is an extremely haphazard list of songs that have occurred to me at one point or another as being possibly good sources for stories:

Dessa - The Beekeeper (lyrics) - Kind of evokes a creepy surreal dystopia to me. I'd love to see what kind of worldbuilding could come from this.

Dessa - Dixon's Girl (lyrics)- Okay, mostly I just want femslash based on this.

Dragonette - Pick Up the Phone (lyrics)- Wild girl convinces more serious female friend to go make some trouble with her. Then they get married.

Leslie Fish - Serious Steel (lyrics) - I know this (like most Leslie Fish songs, really), is mostly just "the SCA is so cool, you guys!" but I still want to read about a bunch of medieval-reenactment nerds rebuilding society after the apocalypse.

My Little Airport - My Little K + J (lyrics)- My Little Airport does a lot of little character sketches that could be fun for this exchange, but I particularly like this one, which is about two women falling for each other and is kind of adorable.

No, Really! - Thousand Yard Stare (lyrics)- More dystopia, this one a bit more realistic.

Nochniye Snaipery - Ti darila mnye rozi (lyrics) - If you are noticing a theme here involving lesbians, it's totally coincidental, I assure you.

Tori Amos - Past the Mission (lyrics) - I have no idea what's going on in this song, but whatever it is, it's fascinating.

Also, while Sound Horizon mostly does large-scale fantasy concept albums rather than songs that can stand on their own, there are at least some tracks off of Elysion that are more self-contained and could be interesting for this. (Basically all the tracks that aren't "ERU no Whatever," plus "Majo to Rafurentse".)

Aaaaand I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting, but I've already taken forever trying to compile this list and nominations open tomorrow, so I'd probably better just get on with it.