"Great Lakes Blues"
Song by Scott Cooley from the album Used To Be Good Looking
Chronology
Reviews Amazon: Google: Notes This song was possibly released a little late to be relevant enough for maximum impact. In the 15 or more years prior to its release, the water levels in the great lakes had declined to the point where it was noticeable and causing problems and concern among lovers of the lakes like me. There were theories as to why this had occurred. My song explores some of them, and was written mainly to bring more attention to the problem with the hope of increased resulting action to help reverse the trend. Although it was written in 2013, the winter of 2013-2014 was one of the harshest on record, and resulted in a large amount of ice cover on the lakes. At the time I'm writing this (May, 2014), there is still a lot of ice floating in Huron and Superior in particular, which is unusual and may result in water levels increasing this spring and summer. Part of the inspiration behind the song, aside from my personal observations and a minor amount of personal internet research, was me watching a video online of a TV show episode by the former governor of Minnesota, who also happens be a former professional wrestler named Jesse Ventura, which I think was actually called Conspiracy Theory. It was sort of a documentary delivered in an aggressive, intentionally scary manner where they talked about the issues and theories related to the drop in great lakes water levels. If you google it, you'll probably find it on a site like YouTube. Anyway, I ran across it, and didn't necessarily believe all of it, but found it to be eye-opening and thought-provoking. I also was inspired by the unique brand of long blues songs by Bob Dylan, and wanted to have a song in that type of style because I thought it would be appropriate in form and structure to go well with the many verses I was writing, but also because of the fact that the blues genre generally lent itself well to a song with depressing subject matter. So, these were the things that served as the inspiration behind me writing this song. |
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