I liked it the best because it focuses on the music theory of hit country, rock, R&B, and pop songs rather than on how to security a copyright in the digital age. Not quite ready for the latter. I read through about half the book and learned how infrequently diminished chords are used in country music (except the Edim in the second line of the verse in "Friends in Low Places (under, inter alia, "I showed up in boots")). Did you know that "prosody" in music theory means singing a word like it's spoken? So "TEST-icles," not "tes-TICKLES." I'm very excited to get to the subchapter entitled "Variations on Secondary Dominants"! Abm6/Cb, I'm coming for you!!
Anyway, I decided to abandon my former get-rich schemes - write a screenplay for the Rock (my 2002-2005 plan) and winning the Illinois MegaMillions lottery (my December 12, 2008* plan) - for a better one: write and sell a crossover Nashville/pop song for Luke Bryan that will feature prominently on the soundtrack of a rom com set in the cornfields of east Iowa. This plan will secure me royalties for the rest of my life. Luke Bryan is the up-and-coming Nashville star I saw at the Chicago Country Music Festival a few months back; he was the one with the alarmingly powerful thighs who kept flinging picks into the crowd like they were compressed t-shirts at a minor league baseball game. (* I played MegaMillions on Friday because after half an hour of wrangling with WordPerfect, the worst goddamn program ever created, trying to insert page numbers on a set of jury instructions, I ended up with page numbers only on pages 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 26, 27, 28, and 29, which I took to be a sign from God that it was my time to leave the legal profession via a $207m jackpot. I did not win, and I still have to use WordPerfect.)
I turn to you, reader, for suggestions for themes. I am not joking! Long ago my parodic interest in country music turned into a real interest! The songs with the best potential for royalties, other than the generic smashers like "Livin' on a Prayer" and "I Will Always Love You," are songs with very, very specific themes. "Wake Me Up When September Ends" has the market cornered for sad songs about September. Ditto "Last Christmas" and '80s romantic holiday triumphs. "Friday I'm In Love": TGIF. "Umbrella": umbrellas. So the key is to find some universal event (everyone experiences a Friday once a week, good job Robert Smith) that hasn't been written to death.
What topics are left unsung? Arbor Day? Trampling a worker on Black Friday? Daydreaming about stuffing a University of Chicago doctoral student's face with cottonballs while he monopolizes conversation with his research on alternative German social movements, 1871-1933? Your dad bringing you a plate of peeled clementines accidentally catching you watching porn when you're 22 years old and home from Harvard for the holidays? Give me your suggestions, and I'll give you .0000001% of whatever proceeds come from your idea.
Incidentally, I just jabbed myself in the throat with my toothbrush. My dad is always warning me not to jab myself in the throat with my toothbrush, but I've never paid attention because it's too abstract of a panicked warning to comprehend without some triggering event. But now I known not to jab myself in the throat with my toothbrush again. Or look through peepholes because I might get stabbed in the eye with a chopstick. Or run while eating tapioca balls. Or break a thermometer and pour the mercury into a scalp wound. Etc. All very real dangers to avoid, apparently.
OMFG "HOLD ONTO YOUR TOOTHBRUSH WHILST BRUSHING" IS GOING TO BE MY COUNTRY HIT!!!!!
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