Notes from New Sodom

... rantings, ravings and ramblings of strange fiction writer, THE.... Sodomite Hal Duncan!!

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Mind Meld, Matelotage and Mutiny

The latest Mind Meld over at SF Signal is on the book that introduced you to fantasy. I've got me own contribution up there, a general raving on the wonder that is THE BORRIBLES. This may not come to much of a surprise to them what's read the book(s) in question, especially not if ye've read "Scruffians Stamp". And even less so if ye've ever heard me rant about these books in person (and there's a lot of you who have, I'm sure.) Cause, yeah, these Scruffians are pretty openly influenced by Michael de Larrabeiti's Borribles, and I ain't ashamed to admit it. Hell, soon as I can think of how and where I'll be working in a little tip of the cap to de Larrabeiti in one of the tales.

Talking of downloads, I got an unexpected request the other day from someone who'd come across "The Ballad of Matelotage and Mutiny" in a web search on "matelotage" -- which, as any Scruffian of the Seas should know, is both a) a weird form of art/craft made by knotting of frayed rope-ends, and b) the gay marriage of two mateys, as practiced by those of the piratical persuasion. Anyways, this chap turns out to be a collector of bawdy ballads, and he asks if by any chance there's a recording of it. Well, no, I thinks, but after all the work I've been doing on NOWHERE TOWN it occurs to me that GarageBand might exist in the manifesting of such musicality. So I spent the other night getting into the spirit of it with a hearty amount of grog and snout (well, OK, it was red wine with the fags, but it does the job,) and came up with a version of it.

A thirty-five minute version of it.

Well, I suppose it is forty-odd verses long. Still, this is probably at the idiosyncratic end of my output. Four hundred thousand word, two volume magnum opus of cubist fantasy? Check. Forty thousand word irreligious John Carpenter homage? Check. Gay punk Orpheus musical? Check. Forty-odd verse, thirty-five minute long sea shanty? Check. Hey, predictability is for physics experiments.

Anyway, I stuck it up on the fileshare site I normally use, for this chap to download, so I thought I may as well, punt one of the embedded doohickey things up here, for anyone what's cracked enough to want a copy, or who has a spare thirty-five frickin minutes to listen to me play at being a pirate. I mean, I suppose it does constitute a reading and all, given that the ballad is highly narrative, basically a wee story told in song. So, yeah... enjoy?



You know, actually I do sorta wish I knew a folk-punk band who could do a proper version of the music, and some crazy animator folks who were up for making a 35 min movie just for the sheer WTFery. Cause listening back to it meself, I couldn't help thinking that you could make a kinda cool wee short.

1 Comments:

Anonymous zxvasdf said...

Hal Duncan the sodomite now a scurvy bum? You should star in the short. Nothing like faggotry in the high seas to clear the constitution!

I love musicals, which might be queer for a man in my position, but I love 'em. Musicals written down is pretty much the only way I can really appreciate the art form, which might account as to why I am partial to Pynchon novels... if only real life burst out in song and dance! You'd find yourself swept up, going, hey, what the hell am I doing? Whoa, that's gonna pull a muscle!

Anyways, best of luck getting your stuff considered by a real life music group. Just keep talking about it, and it'll catch someone's eye after enough time. But then, you probably already knew this.

Kudos

PS
(CAPTCHA's "aphallu". Had to chuckle. Of course it just had to appear on the sodomite's blog)

7:07 pm  

Post a Comment

<< Home