PG Music Home Forums General Discussion User Showcase Side Effects (Featuring Tom Adams on lead guitar)

I very much enjoyed that! Great job on the RT's and production. Tasty guitar work from Tom.... And as I've said before... I could listen to her sing all day!

Great Job,

Greg

Thanks! We very much appreciate you both listening and commenting.

Really professional sounding track! The mix really fits together seamlessly.

The line "maybe I should have read your label" makes me think of how some people don't let you read their label. Or if they do, the label does not give the correct info!

Thank you and an extra thanks for your interpretation of that line. We appreciate that.

J&B

Hi Janice and Bud,

I thought for certain that I posted a comment on your SC page, but I just looked and ... evidently not. But I did see this:

Ever get tired of those prescription drug ads and their litany of side effects? That inspired this tune. A big thanks to Tom Adams for playing lead guitar.

What I wanted to say was,

Picture this: a young couple loping in slow motion toward each other under a blue sky in a springtime meadow. Romantic music. The announcer is saying - quickly, quietly - possible side effects of Durfenol include: Your head falling off; other body parts falling off; fatigue; blindness; and explosive diarrhea. If more than one body part falls off, please visit your doctor."

Sorry to be so late on this great tune.

Dean

Dean, that is genuinely hilarious!!! We'll never divest ourselves of that imagery

Janice and Bud,

It's taken me a long while to get back to this song. I don't know where time goes. When I checked out the document that I started typing up in relation to “Side Effects”, I discovered it was created on January 25! I thought it was only a couple of weeks ago!!!

From a 'whole package' perspective, this song shines brilliantly, dazzles even. From an individual component perspective, each contribution sparkles: Janice's vocals, Tom's guitar work, Bud's mix. Everything about “Side Effects” is top notch. Everything.

Regarding the lyrics, they really intrigued me and, believe it or not, took me on quite an academic journey as I tried make sense of their structure.

I'll explain …

It all began with the rhyme scheme. The first thing I noticed was that the AAXA rhyme pattern consistently used perfect rhyme; that is, do/you/blue, by/high/eye, etc. This instantly appealed to me because I'm finding myself leaning more and more to perfect rhyme as a starting place in my own lyrics these days. The reason for this is that the brain-cell weightlifting needed to find a perfect rhyme and then to get it to work lyrically in a conversational tone is, sometimes, quite a challenge and one that I really enjoy. This process also opens up many lyric possibilities that would never have occurred to me if I hadn't tried to find a perfect rhyme. I greatly admired your lyrics.

I asked Google to help me out with AAXA (and a little later, AABA) because I couldn't think of any poem that I knew that had this rhyme scheme. Google led me to this site and introduced me to the Rubai/Rubaiyat – a form called the Persian Quatrain. I'd never come across this before. Below is an example taken from that web-page.


I've discovered that to appreciate how a rhyme scheme flows, it's necessary for me to read the poem or lyrics aloud. It is only then that I can feel the journey of the rhyme and the effect that it creates.

When I read your lyrics and then the above poem aloud, I found that the AAXA rhyme scheme creates an interesting effect to my ears. At the end of the second line, when the rhyme is paired, there's the usual sense of completion that accompanies such a pairing. Line 3 came along and with its different ending, my brain anticipated that line 4 would create a rhyme pair with line 3. This is often used and would have produced an AABB series of couplets. It didn't happen, though. Instead, line 3 dangled rhymeless and line 4 swerved back to lines 1 and 2. The effect was one of pleasant surprise. Having 3 lines of rhyme interspersed with a non-rhyming line created a lyrical instability for me. What a wonderful way (alliteration intentional) to boost emotional intensity!

In addition, that fourth line, third rhyme, caused each stanza to float like in a dream. Perfect prosody for the concept of 'side effects'. That's clever writing! This fourth line also gave the song a 12-bar blues feel from a lyric perspective even though it's only 8-bars (compare 3 lines of AAA found in many 12-bar blues songs).

All in all … a terrific write!

Regards to everyone,
Noel

P.S. Because of "Side Effects", I've now discovered and like the concept of an interlocking Rubaiyat that uses the rhyme scheme AABA BBCB CCDC. I've made a note to write some lyrics that use this pattern! It could be interesting. Thank you for the journey you've taken me on

• latest song: Just A Little After Midnight

Noel, just you taking the time to write the above about our song is alone flattering...but then to have put so much thought provoking information into it makes it even more so.

When I first started work on the song I had a 12 bar blues in mind (AAA) but it just seemed that the lyric needed more information. I didn't want a chorus or a bridge so I turned to an 8 bar blues format. I wanted to keep the "I should have read your label cause..." line in every verse but I knew that finding rhymes for cause for all 4 verses that worked with the particular "side effect" in the verse would be about impossible.

That's when I decided to see if I could get away with the AAXA scheme. I thought using better rhymes might soften the dissonance of having line three "hanging out there." It's very exciting that you not only noted this and explored but it, most importantly, that you thought it worked.

We have a saying here that "if a blind hog roots around long enough, he'll find an acorn." That's the way I feel about my song writing attempts. I know so little about convention that sometimes (but not often!) my floundering around produces something that seems to work.

And thanks for digging out that example of the AAXA. It was fascinating to see and read it.

Thanks again for your time, patience and analysis of this structure. And we look forward to seeing where you take it.

Best regards,

J&B

Thanks for the extra information. That's good to know!

Regards,
Noel

• latest song: Just A Little After Midnight