That snake put it in front of me

[sovay]

From stephen_dedman:

List all the songs you've quoted or referenced in your writing, published or unpublished. Tell everyone!


short stories

"Constellations, Conjunctions" has some students sing "Happy Birthday" to their TA. I don't think this counts.

"Return on the Downward Road" includes a Gregorian Kyrie and mentions Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain."

"Moving Nameless" mentions Benny Goodman's "Sing, Sing, Sing," and by implication the rest of the concert at Carnegie Hall, 1938.

"Like the Stars and the Sand" is partially based on, and quotes a stanza from, the ballad of Thomas the Rhymer.

"Till Human Voices Wake Us" contains two lines from the version of "Portland Town" that my mother used to sing, although I have since learned that they do not correspond particularly well to any of the lyrics I have found on the internet.

"A Maid on the Shore" takes its title and misapprehension from the folksong "The Maid on the Shore."

"Letters from the Eighth Circle" quotes the Dies Irae, and I have always considered its subject material a reference not only to Dante's Inferno, but also the ballad "Kemp Owyne."

"Clay Lies Still" has a character sing along to Robert Johnson's "Crossroads Blues," and Ravi Shankar and Dead Can Dance are mentioned.

"Retrospective" includes David Krakauer's Klezmer, NY and Dead Can Dance's Into the Labyrinth, specifically "The Wind That Shakes The Barley."

"Kouros" quotes the aria "The Black Swan" from Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium.

"Nights with Belilah" has a character whose cellphone ringtone is Less Than Jake's "Nervous in the Alley." There is also Synthetic Parameter's "This Wasted Land," some of whose lyrics are taken from W.H. Auden, others supplied by me.

"Featherweight" contains Sarah Vaughan's "My Funny Valentine," Elaine Stritch's "You Took Advantage Of Me," and Loreena McKennitt's "Cymbeline." The Song of Songs is also quoted.

"Another Coming" alludes to Tori Amos' "Crucify."

"A Ceiling of Amber, A Pavement of Pearl" quotes in full a song unofficially titled "Meet Me in the Morning," composed by one of the characters; whose trio also rehearses or performs the folksongs "Cruel Sister," "Eyn Mol," "Anathea," "Di Zun Vet Aruntergeyn," "The Maid on the Shore," Jane Yolen's "The White Seal Maid," strange_selkie's "Tog Broyklikh," and Stan Rogers' "Fogarty's Cove." Phil Och's There and Now: Live in Vancouver and Rehearsals for Retirement are mentioned, as well as lyrics from "Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore" and "No More Songs" and a line from the eighteenth-century comic song "Married to a Mermaid." Another character plays Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer at very high volume.

"The Dybbuk in Love" contains lyrics from the folksongs "Di Grine Kuzine" and "Oy, Dortn, Dortn," the Klezmatics' "Honikzaft" and "Shnirele, Perele," Shmerke Kaczerginski's "Friling," Jill Tracy's "Extraordinary," The Verve's "Weeping Willow," and "Do You Love Me?" from Fiddler on the Roof. Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and Highway 61 Revisited, specifically "Like A Rolling Stone," are also mentioned. The closing epigraph comes from Jill Tracy's "Hour After Hour."

"On the Blindside" takes its opening epigraph from Tom Waits' "Tango Till They're Sore" and quotes a line from the ballad "Tam Lin."

"Little Fix of Friction" takes its title from Jill Tracy's "Make It Burn," its opening and closing epigraphs from My Favorite's "The Radiation" and "The Suburbs Are Killing Us," and the opera attended in ellipsis near the end is Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

"Drink Down" takes its title from Anne Briggs' "The Bird in the Bush" and its opening and closing epigraphs from PJ Harvey's "Yuri-G" (which also provided the central inspiration) and Tears for Fears' "Sea Song." Lyrics quoted in the text come from The Decemberists' "I Don't Mind," Tom Waits' "Another Man's Vine," Concrete Blonde's "Tomorrow, Wendy," the Dresden Dolls' "Sex Changes," and the aforementioned "The Black Swan." Other musicians mentioned include Electrelane, Le Tigre, Jacques Brel, and David Bowie—in the case of the latter two, I was thinking of their respective versions of "Amsterdam."

"The Road of Excess" takes its opening and closing epigraphs from Jill Tracy's "Quintessentially Unreal" and Tom Waits' "Innocent When You Dream" and contains lyrics from Barenaked Ladies' "Wrap Your Arms Around Me."

"Chez Vous Soon" is built around the song of the same title by Nobody's Home and similarly mentions or quotes their songs "Iconoclast," "Objects of Desire in Motion (A Death or Two)," "Bones and Bitters," and "Paper Trail," all of which were written by me. The lines from A & W's "Peste" and the title song from their album The Waking Side of Sleep were written by lesser_celery. Songs by actual musicians that appear in the text are the Pixies' "Monkey Gone to Heaven," 3 Doors Down's "Here Without You," and Tom Waits' "Barcarolle" and Frank's Wild Years.

"In the Praying Windows" contains lines from the folksong "Deep Blue Sea," Sting's "The Soul Cages" and "Valparaiso," Leonard Cohen's "Undertow," and "The Black Swan" again.

"A Voice in Caves" quotes repeatedly from Pretty Balanced's "Permanent Guest," as well as Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie's "The Toronto Song" and Division of Laura Lee's "Dirty Love." Jacques Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann and Peter Bellamy's The Transports are also mentioned.

flash

Every other line in "The Third Corbie" comes from Steeleye Span's version of "The Twa Corbies."

"Skins on Sule Skerry" alludes to the ballad "The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry."

"Roadside Ballads" quotes from the folksong known variously as "Tom o' Bedlam's Song," "Mad Tom of Bedlam," or "Boys of Bedlam."

"And the Ocean Waves Do Roll" takes its title from the folksong "The Mermaid."

"The White Swan" quotes from a version of "Twa Sisters / Cruel Sisters / The Bonny Swans" that I heard once on the radio and have never been able to find again.

"Teinds" is based around the ballad "Tam Lin."

poems

"Mad Maudlin's Search for her Tom" takes its title from the same folksong as "Roadside Ballads."

"Postcards from the Province of Hyphens" contains the folksong "Wild Mountain Thyme" as played on a squeezebox, although this is perceptible to no one other than me.

"Shirat Hayam" shares a title with Miriam's triumph over the Egyptians in the Book of Exodus.

"Daughters of the Ash-Tree" takes its opening epigraph and inspiration from Goethe's "Erlkönig," which I know as set to music by Franz Schubert.

The title of "Wintertime Loves" is a reference to the Doors' "Wintertime Love."

"Bonny Fisher Boy" takes its title and inspiration from Eliza Carthy's "Fisher Boy."

"Follow Me Home" takes its title from Rudyard Kipling's "Follow Me 'Ome," which I know as set to music by Peter Bellamy.

"Perdidit Spolia" takes its title from "Personent Hodie," as performed by Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band.

I think that should be everything to date. If I've overlooked a obvious reference, let me know . . .

Comments

[xterminal.livejournal.com]

There's no way I could even think about doing this with 2,500 poems and a few handfuls of stories. I'd be writing for two weeks straight, and I've probably forgotten 90% of the references anyway...

[sovay]

I'd be writing for two weeks straight, and I've probably forgotten 90% of the references anyway...

I'm just glad this meme didn't include references to poetry and prose: we'd have been here all night. I considered including all the music that I'd listened to while writing various stories, and which almost certainly had some effect on the language or atmosphere, but then I remembered that I'm not clinically insane.

[xterminal.livejournal.com]

Yup. I ended up doing it (read "doing it" as "skimming the database", and that took almost four hours), and I had to delete seven or eight times when it was nothing but a reference to another poem. heh.