December 2004
Guild Tidings
The official publication of
The International Songwriters Guild
Volume 9, No. 12
NEXT MEETING - 5:00pm Sunday, December 5th 2004
President's Letter
Dear Members,
I’m looking forward to the Christmas
season. December is my favorite month.
Being single, I get lots of great invitations. I see friends I seem to never get to see the other 11 months.
We had some local songwriter excitement a few weeks ago. Our Guild secretary, Jacque Fain, co-wrote a song called “She’s No Lady” referring to Presidential candidate John Kerry’s wife Theresa Heinz Kerry. You may remember Mrs. Kerry’s remarks made during the election. Jacque and her collaborator appeared with President Bush while he was here in Orlando, and they got to sing their song. The tape they made got radio airplay as a news item. We’ll get her to play the tape for us at the next meeting.
I expect we’ll be having a great Christmas party on December the 11th. We’re having our party this year at the Village Oaks at Conway retirement community, and it’s a beautiful place. Please bring a covered dish; the place is furnishing tea and coffee for us, and is feeding the retirees. But we need to bring our own food, and we can discuss beverages/alcohol and other arrangements at the meeting. Please do not bring food to our regular meeting on the 5th. We decided to just do our regular meeting and have a separate party. Spread the word!
I’m looking forward to seeing you Sunday. Bring in your songs and let us hear what you’re working on.
Best ever,
Russ Robinson
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Seasonal Songs, but Only One Season
By Matt Griffin
There are lots of Christmas songs out there, hundreds of them. We’ve heard many original Christmas songs at our monthly meetings, too. How many Easter songs have you heard? How many Halloween songs? It seems that when people talk about seasonal songs, there is only one season!
It’s not hard to understand why Christmas songs are so popular. Christmas is easily the biggest holiday we celebrate in this country. And the themes and ideas of the holiday are cheerful and relatable: Santa Claus, gift giving, family get-togethers, even snow. The religious among you will quickly add the birth of Christ to the top of the list. Christmas songs sing to almost all of us, it seems.
But again, why are there so few songs for other seasons? There are certainly Christian songs for Easter, and many other religious songs for the holidays celebrated by various faiths. But if you look at secular holidays, Christmas is almost by itself. Easter? “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” and…well, nothing else. Anyone know a Thanksgiving song? We have patriotic songs that get played and sung every Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, and Veteran’s Day. But I don’t think any are really tied to any one day. We have a few springtime and summertime songs, but they don’t seem to fit the bill, either.
Part of the problem may be the holidays themselves; after Christmas, our lineup is kind of weak. Go ahead, name the second most popular holiday in the U.S.; not so easy, is it? Ask 10 people and I’ll bet you get 5 or 6 different answers. I think other countries do this a little better; Mexico has several big holidays, as an easy example. Another problem is the themes of the holidays. The patriotic holidays all have similar, well, patriotic themes. Halloween is kind of dark and creepy (though fun). Easter has a rabbit delivering eggs—weird if you think too hard about it. Our holidays don’t seem to lend themselves all that well to songwriting.
Thanksgiving is better, though—think of family dinners and giving thanks. Why not get busy and write the first great Thanksgiving song? I think the holiday is asking for it. A Halloween song might not be warm and fuzzy, but I think a well-written upbeat song could be great fun. New Year’s Day notions like starting fresh and making resolutions might make for a terrific song, too. Give it a try.
And write another Christmas song while you’re at it.
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November 2004 Top Five
(1) Falling Stars Dan Cook
(2) Don’t Let Me Walk in the Rain Lloyd Marcus
(3) Wasted Love Darrell Monroe
(4) Talk to Me James Gavin
(5) Light of Love Robert Pulliam
© 2004 ISG