Average Jane’s Brain Might Be Full

Last night I spent a couple of hours looking up song lyrics online for the cover band. Each band member came up with a list of suggested songs for us to learn and I wanted to be ready for tonight’s practice. My song selections were mainly ones I’ve done before because I still
remember the lyrics to many of the songs I sang with cover bands
in the ’80s and ’90s.

I remember having to figure out song lyrics on my own back then. You kids don’t know how good you have it with your Internet and your Google! Why, in my day we had to sit next to the turntable with a notepad and keep picking up and dropping the needle over and over until we figured out what the guy was singing. (And as it turns out, we were wrong much of the time.)

The thing is, the old method was a great way to ingrain the lyrics into your memory. By the time you’d puzzled out a phonetically plausible set of lyrics, there was really no way you were going to forget them – particularly if you printed them by hand rather than typing them up. The Google, Copy and Correct method is really not very helpful in the memorization process.

My fear is that I’ll be tethered to my notebook o’ lyrics on stage when the band performs. I’m doing my best to cram all the information into my brain, but somehow it doesn’t retain new stuff as well as it did when I was 17. Go figure.

I keep telling myself that the printed lyrics are just a crutch and that I should learn the basics of the songs and just wing it from there. I guess we’ll see what happens when the time comes. I’d feel a lot more optimistic about it if it weren’t for the fact that I can’t remember the lyrics I’ve written for my other band’s original songs. That’s not a good sign, is it?