List Songs, #6: What's Your Movie?

Shakespeare contended, or at least had a character contend, that all the world's a stage, and all of us just players in it. Further, the lines we spout on stage amount to sound and fury signifying nothing. And when we leave the stage, oblivion. I think, however, that death means not oblivion but that we finally get to go backstage, where we compare notes on how well we played our parts. And of course there are the cast parties. And then the desire to get back on stage and do it again, perhaps this time switching roles so as to develop a greater sense of justice. As for the sound and the fury? I think our lines signify everything and nothing simultaneously.

All of this by way of introducing our latest list song: Mose Allison's "What's Your Movie?," from his 1997 album, Ever Since the World Ended. Mose was known as the existential blues man, and there is no better example of his craft than this one. A quick musicological note. I once read that Mose had one rule for his compositions and his band, which is that there will never be a back beat, you know, the accent on the 2 and the 4. That would make him sound like every other blues and boogie band on the planet. Instead he tumbles and skips forward with a slight emphasis on every beat, or maybe two per beat, just like what guitarist Freddie Green did for Count Basie. Oh, and my movie? The writer and blogger who is unjustifiably obscure and unknown.