Sunday, February 24, 2008

Baby, what do you want me to do?

I made a list this morning, going through all the songs I know. All the songs where, at the least, I could play the rhythm part. Some of 'em I could sing the verses, some I could play some leads, but for all of these, I could play the chords from memory. OK, not quite right: there's "Red Haired Boy", a fiddle tune. I can play the melody, but I'm not sure I could do the rhythm part. OK, there's variety in my definition of "know" here. Here's the list.

2541
All Along The Watchtower
Alone Again
Born On The Bayou
Breakdown
Closer To Fine
Day Tripper
Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
Fortress Around Your Heart
Friend of the Devil
Gimme Shelter
Hard Times
Hey Hey (What Can I Do?)
Hot Rod Lincoln
I Lift Your Name On High
I Wanna Be Your Dog
Indianapolis
Lawyers, Guns and Money
Layla
Like A Rolling Stone
Long Cool Woman
Love Bites
Love Stinks
Nine Headed Woman
No Answer
No Depression
Red Haired Boy
Red Rocking Chair
Redemption Song
Ripple
Rock 'n Roll
Santa Monica
Shoot Out The Lights
Sister Golden Hair
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Soul Man
Spanish Fandango
Splendid Isolation
Spoonful
Statue of Jesus
Sunshine Of Your Love
Sweet Georgia Brown
Sweet Jane
Take Me With You (When You Go)
Talk Dirty To Me
Talkin' 'Bout A Revolution
The Weight
Train Kept A'Rollin'
Watermelon Man
Werefolves of London
Wildwood Flower
Wish You Were Here


Lotta Dylan. Lotta Zevon. Bit of old folkie stuff. Some 80s folkie stuff. Velvets. Some alt-country. Some classic rock. Some hair metal. Some worship. I could throw it all together into a gig, but it would be a fairly schizophrenic set list.

As previously discussed, I think I should know more. I should establish sets of half hour or so of genre-acceptable songs, like a country set, a rock set, an alt-rock and a folk set. I should. I will make concrete the goal: I will learn one song and one fiddle tune a week for the rest of the year. The fiddle tunes will come from this list from Steve Kaufman's Acoustic Kamps website.

I think one of them should be "Freebird", too.

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