Josh at Boring Future Generations tagged me with the following MeMe:

Find a song that inspires you to write something, whether it gives you an idea for a script or just puts you into a better frame of mind. AND/OR (don’t you love choices) peek into the lyrics and find a stanza that sums up the theme of whatever script you’re working on. It’s quite uncanny how the two circumstances go together.

If possible, post a video of the song to really get people into the mood.

In my early writing days, the people I worked with liked to listen to CBC radio all day. They were artists — drawing, so they lived to listen to talk radio. I’d look at my page and notice I’d just written the weather report.

Music is a better choice for writing, but I mostly write in silence. I do like to choose a song to listen to before writing. Something that captures the mood of the piece and helps launch me into a writing headspace.

I like Paul Simon’s Proof – the energy, the lyrical point of view and the horn shots.

This video is pretty lousy visually but the Steve Martin and Chevy Chase crack me up.

Proof
(Paul Simon)

Proof
Some people gonna call you up
Tell you something that you already know
Proof
Sane people go crazy on you
Say ”No man, that’s not
The deal we made
I got to go, I got to go”
Faith
Faith is an island in the setting sun
But proof, yes
Proof is the bottom line for everyone

I also like Give Me Some Credit by the queen of Memphis soul and funk, Ann Peebles. Strictly, speaking it’s not a writing song. Instead, I use it to bolster myself against notes — in advance of them, in the face of brutal ones, on delivery of the draft following notes I couldn’t quite agree with.

I wish you could hear it, but alas my taste is too obscure for YouTube. I found a sample of it on Amazon.de.
You’ll have to do a little searching for it on this page if you really want to hear it.

Here’s a sample of the lyric:

Give Me Some Credit
(Carl Smith)

All I can give you is my very best
And when I do that
I aint gonna worry ’bout the rest

I couldn’t give you everything that you wanted
I couldn’t give you everything that you need
But when it comes down to giving true lovin’
You know that mine is always here to please.

Give me some credit where it’s due honey
Give me some credit where it’s due baby
Give me some credit where it’s due
After all I’d do the same for you.

Now I have to tag someone. Jim Henshaw is in my sites because his piece on Andre Bernard Berge was so great.

And Rob Mills would you care to weigh in? I figure anyone who has a blog category with 15 items in it called “clusterfuck” has to have something interesting on in the headphones.