[13] The March of the Skelingtons

Written and Performed by Monty Dicksion

Newly Re-recorded December 30, 2021



About "[13] The March of the Skelingtons"

 

  I believe it should be a law that every guitarist must have at least one blues song in his or her arsenal.

  I like and appreciate a good blues song and there’s a lot that can be done with the range of different blues formats that there are.  And blues have been a significant part of the music I’ve listened to in my life.

  And yet you’ll notice something about the blues songs that have lyrics.  Invariably, they go from lyrics that are silly, to ridiculous, to just plain absurd.  Take, for example, a stanza in the song “You Shook Me,” by Led Zeppelin:  “I have a bird that whistles, and I have birds that sing.  I have a bird – don’t do nothin’.  A diamond ring.”

  Sure, in most blues songs, there’s the “my baby done me wrong” or “I’m just down in the dumps” subject.  That’s to be expected.  Blues are about having the blues.  But there can be different twists.  Take, for example, the song “Superstition” by Stevie Wonder.  As rockin’ as that song is, or whether you class it as soul, funk or R&B, it’s structure is essentially a blues song, and it talks about different common superstitions that people have.

  I think it was that song that inspired my lyrics for The March of the Skelingtons.  I thought about how the lyrics of blues songs could be most any goofy thing people wanted them to be and it didn’t matter because it was still a blues song.  So March of the Skelingtons is really meant to be something of a parody on blues lyrics.

  I made the song up in 1977.  At the time, I had a Docorder reel to reel tape recorder that I had bought in 1976.  It had a feature that it called “sound-on-sound,” and it was with that tape recorder that I was first able to play the different parts that my songs need.

  “Skelingtons” is one of the songs on my “Summer of ’77 Keepables” collection.  Some time later, I transferred the songs onto cassette tape.  It must have been at least 25 years later that I then made digital copies.

  This new version of “Skelingtons,” with its accompanying video, was completed December 30, 2021.

  Recording-wise, I’d say the new version easily tops the original.  Musically-construction-wise, the new version is exactly the same as the original, except for the last half of the final guitar solo.  On the original version, I didn’t take the time to work out the ending of the song.  I was just winging it, or faking it, you might say.  I guess I thought, “It’s just a silly little blues song, it doesn’t matter.”  But with the new version, I went to the trouble to work out a coherent, sensible, suitable ending for the song.

  So, as I think back on the recorded history of this song, and how close the new version is to the original, I’m really rather amazed that I had such a near-complete foundation to work with to make the new recording.

  I thought this song would be a piece of cake I could knock out pretty quickly.  But it wasn’t easy at all.  Besides learning how to make audio recordings, I’m also teaching myself how to make videos.  The videos are necessary because I put the songs on YouTube.  People don’t just listen to music anymore.  They have to have something to watch.  Oh, sometimes you see YouTube music videos where the person has set the music to a single static image, but that’s usually not the way that people do it.

  So I make the videos.  That means I’m trying to learn how to do photography and also video editing.  Both of those skills are artforms all on their own, and I’m not very good at either one yet.  It’s enough of a learning curve for me to wear the hat of a recording engineer, and I’m still a novice at that too.

  Now that it’s done, I’m very happy with how it turned out.  It’s definitely a very fun song to play, and I hope it is equally fun for people to listen to and watch.