A Song For Every Story, A Story For Every Song

What started this music kick for me wasn't just The Ring Cycle, it was a simple, innocent tweet retweeted by someone I follow. The tweet simple said: "If you could adapt an album or song into a movie, which would you pick?" I tweeted two quick answers back, but thought about it for a little more and came up with a list of songs that might make good stories and the story I would tell.

1. Let Her Cry by Hootie & The Blowfish.

I love this song and think that Hootie is highly underrated. This is their best song and I could see me writing one of my melodramatic modern fiction attempts from my early 20s. I think I tried a story like it with a character named Finbar with a floozy-ish girlfriend that kept breaking his heart.

2. Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton

Fellas, we all know the frustration while we wait for our ladies to get ready that Eric was feeling in this song....but I once lived this song many, many moons ago and I still think that there's a short novel in it somewhere for me. A friend has a big party where big things happen (first kisses, admissions of love, infidelity, etc)....with big consequences.

3. All Along The Watchtower by...well various.

The very definition of epic-ness in rock music. Written by Bob Dylan but made famous by Jimi Hendrix, my favorite version is probably the live version as performed by the Dave Matthews Band. My second favorite? This version by Bear McCreary for the classic television show Battlestar: Galactica, mostly because it became a motif within the mytharc of the story:

The story I would tell? A big grand epic involving the siege of a great city and how two prisoners may be the key for the Princes of the realm to survive.

4. Two Step by The Dave Matthews Band

I am an unapologetic fan of DMB. I love this song and freak out when I hear it live. The version above is a classic version recorded live during a thunderstorm at Giants Stadium. I remember reading something about this song being about two people in love and one having to go to war. In my mind that's what it always was to me....and in my mind that became the story: a young man and girl are in love, courting one another. The boy is sent to a war in a faraway land while the girl is left to deal with loss and what is going on at home, meeting another boy along the way. It works right?

5. On The Turning Away by Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd is another one of those bands that are incredibly important to me in general, but for some reason this haunting song left a mark with me. The story I would tell is actually in the same world as my trunked novel THE FALLING DARK and the present rewrite SISTERS OF KHODA. It would be a NEW SPRING like prequel novella, but not even as recent in that world's history as NEW SPRING was in Randland's history. "By the Turning" is a curse in my world based on an event called "The GReat Turning Away," where a king turned away the refugees of a war that would eventually swallow that nation. I think it works more in my mind more than it does written out.

Would YOU buy these? DO they sound like good stories? If they do...don't steal them!