![\"Fell\"](\"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/ayearofsongs\/images\/blogimages\/Fell.jpg\")
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F<\/span>irst up… the lyrics for this song expose one of the dangers of writing a ‘serious’ song in colloquial idiom. The lyrics, on the page, look… how shall I put this to spare my delicate feelings… stupid<\/span>.<\/p>\n Sure… I grew up saying<\/span> things like “he might ‘a fell” instead of the proper “he might have fallen” and it does<\/span> sound completely natural to my ear. But, dang, it looks stupid when you write it out. I look like a gol dang illiterate, I do. Yup.<\/p>\n Anyhow, <\/span><\/span>I never really felt like I finished this song (weak second verse… some too obvious phrasing… whaddya know, everyone is<\/span><\/span> a critic) — but that never stopped me from performing it frequently back in the 90’s. I suppose it fit my mood at the time, which was to the dark side of melancholy.<\/p>\n When I performed it back then, I often mentioned that it was my understanding that there was a Jewish tradition (probably picked up from friends, books, or movies, since I, myself, am not Jewish) suggesting that, without proof otherwise, a possible suicide should be considered an accident — so as not to send a message of despair and futility to the community, particularly young people.<\/p>\n That was the context in which I conceived this song, building what little development there is around that central ambiguity.<\/p>\n Several years ago I became acquainted with an Americana band that I discovered on the web, The Pernice Brothers. (They were a Subpop band, so it wasn’t like they were deep underground, or anything.) I liked them enough to buy the 1998 album, Overcome by Happiness<\/span>.<\/p>\n On that album, I discovered a song about suicide that had a line strikingly like the opening line of this song (“They found his car” in my song, “Her” car in the Pernice Brothers tune) with a melody nearly identical to the melody I used to use. (On this version I somewhat unconsciously changed the melody and decided to leave it.)<\/p>\n From there, the songs deviate quite a bit and, entres nous<\/span>, I believe the Pernice Brothers song is a decidedly <\/span>superior song (and has a very pretty string arrangement, to boot).<\/p>\n Still, I thought it might be worth noting, should any fellow Pernice Brothers fans stumble on my song here and note the (to me) small but striking similarity: my song was written in 1991 and performed frequently in public in the next few years — often at the Long Beach club Bogart’s, host to many a touring band over the years.<\/p>\n But, hey, great minds think alike (ahem) and I have no doubt that if you put 10,000 moody songwriters in a room and turn them loose at least a couple of them will come up with the intro lines to the song below…<\/p>\n\n