Thursday, March 06, 2014

I Love the Whole World (and baby animals)

At a recent weekly jam night with friends, I brought the four chord I Love the Mountains song with all the verses as sung by Houaida Goulli. It's got the same chord progression as the ubiquitous piano duet favorite "Heart and Soul" by Hoagy Carmichael, and is good practice for chord changes. With guitars and banjo, we played it with the C/Am/Dm/G chord progression, but G/Em/Am/D works fine too.

Someone brought up the Discovery Channel's "I Love the Whole World" song to the same tune. Of course, I've had to play it a number of times since then. My favorite couplet: I love tornados, I love arach-anids, I love hot magma, I love the giant squids.... 

It's quite possible that these lyrics were inspiration for a song I'm working on with my friend Dymphna, called "All the Baby Creatures Need Love." We were kvelling over baby animals that don't traditionally show up on calendars. I mentioned baby squid. She nixed baby squid as looking like "jellied lucifers." That does it, I said, I'm writing a song with baby squid (called larvae, I found out) as well as many of the other baby animals that need care and attention. I acknowledge the faint possibility of anthropomorphization, but hey,there is a precedent.

The lyrics are basically done, and Dymphna is working on the music. A few insects were deliberately excluded, such as lice and mosquitoes (clearly, I've got a ways to go), but Crocodylia, Cephalopoda, and armored/spiked mammals are well represented.

No comments: