From minyan, who I don’t know, but found through a particle on the Making Light sidebar:
Our story begins with (insert appropriate pronoun later): Yakety Yak (The Coasters) living in: Church of Women (XTC) who spends time: Everybody’s Crying Mercy (Elvis Costello) and longs for: Samhradh, Samhradh, (Summertime, Summertime) (The Chieftans) In his troubled past, he: Dinner Bell (They Might Be Giants) and since then he has: Don’t Come Around Here No More (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) leaving him conflicted over: Angry (Rosemary Clooney) On this fateful day, our hero: Break Your Heart (Barenaked Ladies) . . . which causes this conflict or risks this loss: Beginnings (Chicago) He resolves to: Rip it Up (Little Richard) . . . and fail to: Someday After a While (Eric Clapton) . . . intensifying their conflict by: Miss Fritchie (Eddie from Ohio) Pressures build until: Mood Indigo (Duke Ellington). At this crucial point, he chooses: Struttin’ with some Barbecue (Louis Armstrong), And the story resolves.
So. Pretty clearly, here, we have a frustrated and lonely teenager named Jack, who feels confined and suffocated in a house with his mother and older sisters. He’s one of those quiet kids, intense but in the background, getting good grades, not a discipline problem, but carrying around intellectual-rebel paperbacks in his backpack, and occasionally startling his teachers with viciously bitter comments about the school, the town and his fellow students. He tries to convince his mother (Stella) to let him backpack around Ireland for two months in between high school and college, but she won’t agree, being a strict disciplinarian. Remember all that fuss they went through over his picky eating habits, and her insistence that he eat everything on his plate? And all that pressure over his grades? And now, just as he’s going away to college, he’s going to bum around with a bunch of hippies? I think not. In fact, she is worried about him since his girlfriend Rosie dumped him. He took it very badly. Then, Rosie comes back and wants to get back together. He agrees, but is even more miserable, and quickly breaks up with her. Then, missing her, he falls into silent depression, mooning over her picture for a while before starting some desperate and self-destructive teenage socializing, drinking and fighting and so forth. And then ... it looks like Jack runs away, gets a train down south, and joins a white-supremacist group, gets arrested and jailed (possibly first jailed and then falls in with the racist group in prison?), before finding redemption, reconciliation, and resolution. Or, more likely, prison suicide. It isn’t absolutely clear.
You know, it’s all random. I could have had a story about a brother and sister going fishing, driving their mother’s El Dorado to a dance hall, building a rocketship and visiting the moons of Jupiter, and then going to a Simchas Torah party. I will say, the odds are pretty heavily in favor of some sort of heartbreak at some point in the story, and the odds of the story including oral sex are only slightly greater than the odds of including a maniac shooting everybody, but really, I think this set is skewed to the tragic.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
I can find neither the rules nor the structure for this meme on minyan’s spot, and his “this came from here” link fails to turn up anything on this either.
So, I’m going to assume that the way it works is to shuffle your music player and take the first 15 songs, turning that into a story by filling in the blanks based on what the songs suggest?
Interesting enough meme for me to participate in, even if my understanding is flawed. Here I go!
Wheee!
peace
Matt
That’s how I did it. The ones I’d seen previously (the minyan and stealthmuffin entries) had narration after each song-entry, but it seemed more entertaining (to me) to line up the songs with the plot points, and then look back and sketch out the story. And, yes, I chose the songs randomly out of my music-playing-software playlist. I think it would be fair to skip instrumentals, although I included my three, because they seemed to fit.
Oh, and it case it wasn’t clear, the parenthesis after each song contains the lead performer, bandleader or group name on the track that came up. That person is not necessarily the writer or arranger of the song in question.
Thanks,
-V.
Groovy, I already have my list together, but I haven’t put a post together with a narrative – the story seems kind of Wagnerian, just looking at the song titles…
Highlights:
Will post a detailed thingy on my blog about it at some point 😀
peace
Matt
that’s funny. i’m tempted to generate a story and have people guess the songs. i don’t hate easy puzzles, i’m just that mean.
oh ick. it’s too much work. i barely know the stories of the anglo songs let alone the mystery language ones. i hope i’m not accidentally playing fascist crap this loud. the only liner notes i remember talking about evil doings concerned rwanda. no there were several from africa but all were essentially “stop hurting them/me/us/yourself/indiscriminately.”