(TV) Song Composing: Verlaine's Modus Operandi / TV on Public Taste

["Casey, Leo J" <CaseyL@VOLPE.DOT.GOV>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark G. Ryan 
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 6:38 AM
To: tv@obbard.com
Subject: (TV) a capella?

>Or maybe he just writes the songs starting 
>out with guitar riffs...I dunno.  

>From the interviews I've read over the years, I 
recall Verlaine saying he composes both ways, 
sometimes making use of fragments of phrases 
 that he has written down in notebook and 
become the genesis of a song (sometimes years 
after the fact (i.e., lyrics come 1st), 
and other times he'll have some guitar melody 
or riff that he's 'saved' in his head and it 
later becomes a song--I believe "Bomb" was created 
this way.  [by the way how about a less melodic 
pop/top-40 oriented TV song 
than "Bomb"? Maybe "The Rocket" or Mars" ]  

Can anyone recall the specific interviews 
that I'm referring to above (they're all on 
Keith's Press section of The Wonder)?  

>Public taste just needs to get educated 
>not to expect a sing-along.

"There are always those people with no sense of aesthetics. 
They may be in the majority now. I'm wondering about that. 
*But it seems to me that there's always room for something 
different. Something new. Sooner or later, people will hear it.* 
In this country it's all radio. . . ."  (Tom Verlaine, Guitar World, 
November 1981) 

Alas, the last 21 years make his above comment between *  * seem
a little naive or overly optimistic.
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