About The Song: Giving the Game Away, from the album The Age of Melancholia
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ABOUT THE SONG: A WORD TO THE WISE (A HISTORY OF THE WORLD)
The music business is an unforgiving profession.
Survival is difficult enough for any budding musician and often bandmates, colleagues, road crew, fall by the wayside. Whenever I mentioned my aspirations to work as a musician I was advised against doing so. Unlike many other professions there was really no professional path that you might follow. Nowadays there are University courses, Colleges that specialise in ‘contemporary music’ and relatively cheap ways of producing high quality music for broadcast which is at least liberating.
THAT SAID, I DON’T THINK IT IS MUCH EASIER TO BE SUCCESSFUL NOW AS IT WAS THEN.
We are saturated by popular music. And, as the argument goes, the best has already been written and recorded, which is why it features highest in the streaming data the industry can now obtain. This somewhat mirrors ‘Classical’ music – here the ‘canon’ of major composer works dominates the repertoire while most contemporary composers have but occasional successes.
The handful that become this generations new crop of ‘major’ composers are few and rare, others survive through teaching and performing.
It was always the case that much of the money was sucked up by the ‘business’ itself and but a fraction reached the artist, so only top, consistently successful artists became truly wealthy. Most of the rest went on to work in other areas of the business, as I did, or had new careers entirely. It is for this reason that parents, teachers, career advisors, rarely took anyone who, as I did, dared to suggest a job as a songwriter/composer, remotely seriously. The song accepts this premise and the cost.
LYRICS
A Train trip to the countryside to visit a friend who lost his mind
He lives a quiet convalesce trying to cure his nervousness
It’s not what you’re thinking, enough with the drugs and the drinking
He lives a quiet convalesce trying to cure his nervousness
It’s not what you’re thinking, enough with the drugs and the drinking
Distance settles on friendship lost, fragments memories blindly tossed
In this world of compromise we stick to our guns and we live out our lives
I gaze at the skyline, this may be the last time
In this world of compromise we stick to our guns and we live out our lives
I gaze at the skyline, this may be the last time
Tracks rolling out endlessly
Away from the smoke and the misery
Every mile like a memory, aah…
Away from the smoke and the misery
Every mile like a memory, aah…
Dreams creeping like children, and then society stills them
Until she finally kills them with just a word to the wise.
Until she finally kills them with just a word to the wise.
Tracks rolling out endlessly
Back to the smoke and the misery
trying to be who you want to be, aah…
Back to the smoke and the misery
trying to be who you want to be, aah…
Andrew Higgins ©
About THE SONGS
About The Song: A Word To The Wise, from the album A History Of The World
About The Song: Between The Lines, from the album Existential
About The Song: The Refugee Song, from the album Searching For The Dolphin
About The Song: For All We Know, from the album Catastrophic Futures
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