12 Plays
Funeral Dirge - A.K.A. Dixie Wallin
When my daughter was born my wife and I decided that when it came time for her to start watching TV shows, we wanted to encourage her to watch some of the shows that we had grown up with. One of the shows that I thought was so cool as a kid was Fraggle Rock. For those of you unfamiliar with the masterpiece click here.
So one day, I was watching an episode with my daughter. It was Episode 14 in Season 1. The name of this episode was called “The Challenge”. In this particular show, there was a scene in which Gobo, Boober and Red needed to get past Junior Gorg and in order to do so, they were able to convince him that he had died and could not move, that way they were able to pass. Well, Boober did not take this lightly and found it fitting to sing a Funeral Dirge that he had composed himself, for himself in the event of his own death.
“Boober, where did you learn a funeral dirge?” -Red
“I composed it in honor of my own departure.” -Boober
Well, needless to say, the first time I had ever heard this song, I was floored by it. It had that Dixie Land Jazz feel to it that I love and I knew that I must learn that track. So, I ran and grabbed my pen and pad and must had watched and listened to that scene about 6 times before I was able to figure out the lyrics and chords needed to play it. From there, I took my own minor liberties with it not knowing the title at the time, called it “Funeral Dirge” Hell, up until this post I had never really bothered to look up the real title of the song, which is “Dixie Wallin”
I have performed this song many times and to this day, it is one of my favorite songs to play. My kids love it and everybody who I have every played it for has enjoyed it. It’s such a dark song for such a light hearted show as Fraggle Rock and the fact the Jim Henson put it in the episode is awesome.
In this version of the song, I had recorded and played all the parts myself. It was recorded in the basement of the house we were renting in North East Minneapolis. This is just a rough demo of the song but it gets the point across very well I think.
I have another version of this song that I have been working on with my friend Chris who I colobrate with. All the work we do is titled under “The Bingemoe 5”. Tomorrow, I will post a jam that we had recorded of us playing this song.
Here is a link to the Fraggle Rock version of Dixie Wallin
I would like to mention that I had created this blog as an outlet for me to share the works that I have been recording through out my life as well as share my current thoughts on things I feel like sharing with the world. Many of the music that I post will be music that I have recorded and never really shared with anyone other than a small hand full of people. I figured, what’s the point of having this if no one other myself will ever hear it. Some of these songs are on my Myspace page, but most are old relics that need to be heard.
They are not perfect recordings. Sometimes they are poor quality, other times, my pitch may be off or a wrong note might be played, but that’s life. Things aren’t always perfect and if we only shared the perfect things with one another, the world would be full of a lot more selfish thoughts and some of the best ideas may never have been discovered. So, you don’t need to tell me about any imperfections you may hear, trust me, I know they are there and I know where they are. Just take things for what they are and listen to the art that lies in there somewhere.
I will be posting new tracks as well as I create them, I just have a lot of old stuff that I feel I need to share. So, I hope you keep coming back and listening to what I have and let me know if you hear something you like. Maybe I will go back and record something again with better production if I know someone will want to hear it.
Enjoy
M@
