“169 Annotated TLG Songs:Listener Notes on the Tea Leaf Green Songbook”

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169 Annotated TLG Songs:Listener Notes on the Tea Leaf Green Songbook Posted: 28 Jul 2010 01:32 AM PDT _This month Daniel Gold writes about his site, '169 Annotated TLG Songs: Listener Notes on the Tea Leaf Green Songbook' 'I like a lyric to have a sense of mystery, some things that make you wonder,' said Trevor Garrod, piano/harmonica – singer/songwriter from Tea Leaf Green. 'I get off on double meanings in songs. I don't like to divulge what I'm going for. I like that to be people's journey in the music, where they find their own meaning and maybe they'll find something about themselves.' '169 Annotated TLG Songs: Listener Notes on the Tea Leaf Green Songbook' is the title of the Jambands.com Fan Site Of The Month. At the top of the page, Trevor is pictured in the header graphic, alongside band mates Josh Clark, Scotty Rager, and Ben Chambers, accepting the Jammy award for Song Of The Year: Tea Leaf Green's 'Taught To Be Proud' title-track. The latest annotations – called Recent Comments – tabs, and song lyrics are highlighted on the homepage. The Annotated Tea Leaf Green Songbook is an unofficial fan site for audience interpretations of songs, illustrations, references, quotes, and transcriptions. The website was created by fans for fans of Tea Leaf Green, purely as a discussion about songs (not a portal or forum type of site). To annotate or make annotations is, by definition: to furnish a literary work (song) with critical commentary or explanatory notes; to write notes about a song or poem to explain or interpret what it means. The Annotated Tea Leaf Green Songbook is a highly interactive Lyrics database. Registered users can post Comments on any song, including tablature or graphics. Do you know a song that isn't on the site?Log-in and post your transcription. Is there a rare song you've never heard? Listen to an mp3 streaming on the site, while you read the lyrics. Then post your interpretation of the meaning of the song, your reaction, or something cool that happened to you at a show while they were playing your favorite tune. If you have an outstanding or unusual live version of the song that isn't linked yet on the site, upload an mp3 to share it with everyone. A live mp3 sample of every song in circulation from Tea Leaf Green's prolific live repertoire is included on the A-To-Z page for instant-audio-streaming while you read the words. TLG is generously available on the Live Music Archive. The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics site was the fore-runner and original inspiration for Dgold and fellow forum friends (like Muck, Sparkle, Phoreal, Biscuits, Leafaholic, and others) to create this website for Tea Leaf Green listeners. As the older GD site makes clear, not every annotation accurately represents the authorial intent. Maybe the songwriter wasn't thinking of the reference to 'Zoom Zoom' that a fan found in real life, but the fan's comment is still welcome as a personal reaction to the song. DETAILED LOOK AT THE FEATURES The title of the website, currently '169 Annotated TLG Songs', automatically updates to keep track of the total number of songs. Currently 128 songs are original lyrics by members of Tea Leaf Green. The principal songwriter is Trevor Garrod, while Josh Clark and Ben Chambers have also written songs. There are 21 instrumental songs. 27 cover songs were written by other bands and artists. These numbers don't total up to 163 because some songs are in more than one category, explained below. The tabs are the main navigation areas: Lyrics Instrumentals Covers A-to-Z The sidebar offers a few more specialized pages: About This Site Listed by Singer and Album Quotes and Podcasts Site Staff and Credits Tablature Uncirculated / Unreleased Songs What's in The Garden? Everytime Played You can find out how many words are in each song (157 words to 'Country Seduction'), and how many words in all the songs (32,332 words). Guitar sligners and musician-fans can post tablatureon each song and banter about how to play 'em, occasionally getting tips from Josh Clark. Everytime Played is a drop-down menu in the sidebar that links to Tea Leaf Green's official setlist database. It gives the researcher an estimate of the total number of times any song has been played, and in which setlists. 'Pretty Jane,' a beautiful song from TLG's fourth studio album Taught To Be Proud, is surprisingly listed as both an Original song and a Cover song, as implied in the CD's liner notes, which said: 'Music by Trevor Garrod, Lyrics by Edward Fitzball (1792-1873)'. Fans researched the background of this song and paid attention to Trevor's brief spoken introductions to write up a short history as an ideal kind of annotation for the site. The song was first published in 1832; it has connections to author James Joyce; and Trevor's grandma's name is Jane. There is more to the story in the comments section of the song entry. There are three versions of 'Deep River' on the site. The earlier version of the lyrics is labeled 'Deep River (1)' from 2002 and the rarest 'Deep River (2)', then the Cleopatra revision of the lyrics, which completely changes the verses, is labeled 'Deep River (3)' from 2003. Sometime after the launch of the lyrics site, Tea Leaf Green brought back the 2002 lyrics (Lawrence, KS 1-23-06), apparently in response to the banter on the site and on the band's official online forum. To this day they still occasionally play either version of 'Deep River.' A few songs are listed under both Instrumentals and Lyrics, which seems odd. How can a song have lyrics, and be an instrumental? A few songs started life as an instrumental jam, and later had lyrics added, such as 'Jezebel,' and 'Los Lonely' which became 'Bouncin' Betty' with words. Also, mostly-instrumental songs that have a few chanted lyrics serving a rhythmic function include transliterations like 'rip-a-toc rip-a-toc rip-a tiggy-tiggy ta-boom' to approximate what Josh shouts in 'Hot Dog'. We also decided to include 'Panspermic De-evolution' and 'Sex In the 70's' among both the Instrumentals category, and the Lyrics, because they have the overall form of a composed instrumental with improvisational jam segments built-in; yet 5% of these songs include a repeated lyric. 'Asphalt Funk' is an instrumental from TLG's first album in 1999, but the live version typically includes a quote from 'Easy Wind' that Pigpen sang in the Grateful Dead. In earlier years Josh quoted just the one liner, 'Try to find a woman be good to me, won't hide my liquor try to serve me TEA.' In 2005 Josh and some fans consulted the Annotated Grateful Dead lyrics site and came up with Pig's follow-up couplet, which Josh began to include: 'Cause I'm a stone-jack baller and my heart is true, gonna give everything that I got to you.' The vocabulary of TLG is featured on the sidebar of the home-page. Vocabulary includes a randomized sampling of words that are used more than 5 times in TLG's songwriting. It's fun to make poems and spot random connections among the mixed up words that seem so recognizable, and then try to think of what songs use the words. For example, a section of the vocab reads like this: 'girl come across time knew meet road thought alone travelin light heavy deep inside wanted kiss wrong believe thinking gone eyes feel groove guess done side keep fixed stars walk planet window watching next play sleep beneath coffee table drink dream gave street once give home treat cowboy music baby please friend hill money friends keeps gets mind sound fine glass sunshine cloud myself wine bottle floor tired takes goes sitting waiting dollar bill spend line ease weary beauty miles earth love favorite creature wide died ties years matter riding highway darkness preserve days passing dreaming summer daughter dance round fire talking everyday naked eating weed city pick started ready shine vine sometimes bout times trouble fool bright acres california'. Some of the future features planned for the site include tagging of songs by theme, such as 'water songs' and 'California songs.' We're also working on upgrading the Mycroft search plugin for Firefox browsers. General improvements to the layout, design, readability, and accessibility of the website are top priorities, and areas where the site staff would welcome professional and volunteer help. Of course, the main focus for The Annotated Tea Leaf Green Songbook site is to keep up with transcribing new songs played by TLG, and to maintain an easy place for fans to comment about each song. Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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