Robert Ashley - Love is a Good Example (1987) | Текст песни

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• Robert Ashley
• Love is a Good Example (1987)

I remember touring with Bob Ashley in the Midwest. At parties after concerts we would often stand around listening to people speaking. If he listened attentively, he could hear the sing- songy inflections in ordinary folks’ speech. The more one lis- tens to everyday speech the more it sounds like melody. Simple phrases such as “Are you going to the movies tonight?” “Well, I don’t know, I guess so,” are inherently musical. There are wonder- ful melodies in everyday speech. “Love is a good example” is a mu- sical phrase by itself but it becomes more so because of the way Bob accentuates certain words and resonances.

There’s a fine line between speech and song. When did human beings begin singing? Chant is simply sustaining a pitch, or two or three pitches, and reciting a text before it gets more florid and melismatic (several notes sung on one syllable). Love Is a Good Ex- ample (1987) is an unaccompanied vocal solo that exhibits a very different way of thinking about words, song, and speech. I find myself having a problem figuring out where it lies. What name do I give it? Do I call it music? Do I call it song? Do I call it some sort of exaggerated speech? Then I think what a ridiculous task I’ve put on myself that I’ve got to give it a label. The more I listen to it the more it sounds like music. Its form even resembles a rondo; the refrain, “Love, sure, is a good example,” comes back and back again—twenty-six times, in fact. Think of refrains in poetry and music. But each time the word “sure” is repeated Bob says it in a different way to give it a different meaning. It may sound optimis- tic or sarcastic depending on how Bob enunciates it.

The words are in columns, and he indicates a metronome marking of 72 beats per minute. Each grouping is in a three-beat rhythm and follows it more or less accurately. The “sti” in the word “statistics” is a grace note.

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