Ununnilium: What about that Kraft Macaroni & Cheese "I've got the blues" one? It seems as if it were a rewritten pop song to me, but I can't discover the original.
Looney Toons: I can't state this authoritatively, but I believe it's just a generic blues sequence, and not any particular song. There's a specific pattern to the blues that's very easy to set up and execute, and just about anything following that pattern is recognizable as the blues, regardless of its actual tune.
Ununnilium: Yeah, probably. Bah!
Looney Toons: Not that it's terribly relevant, but one of the best guides to building a blues song is a blues song — "Poppa's Blues" from the musical
Starlight Express. It's a wonderful
deconstruction of what makes a blues song "right", as well as a bit of a parody of an impromptu blues song. Just as an example, here's the first verse:
Oh, the first line of the blues is always sung a second time
Yes, the first line of the blues is always sung a second time
So by the time you reach the third line
You've had time to think of a rhyme!
TJDevil02: Whoever wrote this about American Pie:
The Broken Aesop effect applies here, too, however, as the reason he's driving his Chevy to the levee is so that he can jump in and commit suicide.
...is wrong. The Levee was the name of the bar on Iona University's campus (which Don Maclean attended). The Levee being "dry" means that authorities refused to sell alcohol there anymore.
Phartman: So the "good ol' boys drinkin'
whiskey and
rye" were just metaphorical? Well, it
is a folk song...
TJDevil02: As I recall, the "good ol' boys" weren't even at Iona. They were members of Buddy Holly's backup band, since the next line "this'll be the day that I die" is an echo of a line from one of Holly's biggest hits, "That'll Be the Day (When I Die)". For the record, "That'll Be the Day" is the day she dumps him, but it's all the more ironic as Holly played that on the day he did die... Somewhere in my library is a whole printout of what Don meant for each line. The list of references is mind-numbing.
Phartman: So he throws in a literal reference and then -
wham!- blindsides us with an metaphor. Boy, that Don
Mac Lean; what a sneaky feller.
