It's 12-13. Do you know where your congressman is?

This post is a little different.

This week the House Judiciary Committee will vote on the passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill which could result in mandatory jail time for the youtube users whose videos have allowed me to show you some songs worth knowing about.

Now you can make a huge difference by calling your congressmen and letting them know you're opposed to the bill. Follow this link to a handy widget that will give you some talking points and connect you to the correct congressman with whom to share your concerns.

EDIT: The bill will go to a vote in the House Judiciary Committee on 12-15.

Uh-Huh, Man: Even Fake Bands Sing Real Songs

Sometimes songs are written as themes for movies, or to be sung by a character for plot development purposes. Songs written for films can live an interesting sort of half life: writers may pen one verse or chorus to be shown in the film, or they may compose an entire song, even though less than a minute of it may appear on screen.

In Yes Man, a romantic comedy starring Jim Carrey as a depressed loner who learns to open himself up to new experiences, the on-screen band Munchausen by Proxy plays a brief concert montage. Despite the band's brief appearance, four of the 13 songs on the soundtrack are original pieces by the fictional group.

While the song "Yes Man" is played over the movie's end credits, the other three songs barely feature in the film. Nevertheless, they're some delightful synth-rock numbers that tell some interesting stories--including the story of a bad break-up the romantic interest references obliquely in the film.

"Uh-Huh," sung by actress Zooey Deschanel--who in real life forms half of the musical duo She and Him--forms a little appendix to Yes Man. It tells you exactly what happened in Allison's (Deschanel) love-life before Carl (Carrey) showed up.

There isn't enough of a story to justify another movie, but the song's ironic observations about cyber-fighting and stealing the noodles when you're moving out more than justifies the song's existence. It creates a life of its own.

If you came across "Uh-Huh," or any of Munchausen's songs, on the internet, you wouldn't necessarily know they were written for a movie. Let's just hope no one's stuck out there trying to buy tickets to see Munchausen by Proxy.

Hey You: Pink Floyd Rides the Whale

While "Dream a Little Dream of Me" used a sequence of songs to set a mood in the story, The Squid and the Whale uses the repetition of a single song to explore a theme.

The Squid and the Whale deals with the divorce of Bernard and Joan Berkman and its effects on their sons Walt and Frank. Walt, a highschooler starstruck by his author father, decides to assert his own genius by writing a song.

The problem is that the song he wants to write has already been written by Pink Floyd: it's "Hey You."

The song is introduced as Walt practices it in his room, played again when he shows his "composition" to his parents, and takes center stage when he "debuts" it at his school's talent show.

The lyrics--"Hey you, out there in the cold...can you feel me?"--seem to start as Walt's triumphal offer of hope to the people feeling lost around him, but after he is exposed as a fraud the nature of the song changes as he himself becomes lost.

The tonal shift which the movie's circumstances give the songs is dramatic, but what is most interesting is to see how one song can represent both sides of Walt so well. On the one hand, it allows him to present a facade of confidence, but on the other it represents his deepest insecurities--his uncertainty that anyone is listening to him.

Things to do with Music, Part Three: Writing "Spasticus Autisticus"

With big budget musical biopics like Ray and Walk the Line the formula is clear: tell a life story and occasionally break for music. Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, the story of British singer and seminal punk artist Ian Dury takes a twist and tells you a life-long story about the composition of a specific song.

Ravaged by polio in his childhood, Dury suffered from limited use of visibly weakened left limbs. In 1981 he wrote a song about how that made him feel.

That feeling wasn't sad.

Also based on the scene from the movie Spartacus where all the rebelling slaves claim to be Kirk Douglas, "Spasticus Autisticus" is a song about demanding to be taken seriously. Pop music scholar George McKay calls it "one of the outstanding protest songs about the place of disabled people in what [Ian Dury] called 'normal land.'"

The non-linear structure of the film cleverly gathers together the important experiences of a rock and roll life that resulted in the composition of this song. It's a fascinating journey.

It's a song that made many people uncomfortable, and consequently it was banned from the BBC. It's still an uncomfortable song, but that's what it's meant to be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6isXNVdguI8

Dream Songs: Sandman Through the Radio

I'd bet you've seen at least one film that uses this trick: the protagonist turns on the radio for a little light distraction, and every song seems to be trying to tell him something about his situation. It's usually used for comic effect--a classic "Why me?!" moment--but Neil Gaiman's comic book The Sandman uses the inescapable radio to a very different effect.

To be clear, Sandman is a horror series, focused around the titular Sandman--Morpheus, the Dream King. Some issues are more horrifying than others, and it's the slow-burning psychological piece "Dream a Little Dream of Me" that finds itself driven by this musical device.

It starts off with the song in the title, a sweet love song from the 1930s that helps to set a dreamy mood. The effect is echoed by similar songs from the 50s and 60s: "Mr. Sandman," Bobby Darin's "Dream Lover," Patsy Cline's "Sweet Dreams," and Roy Orbison's "In Dreams."

A little sweet. A little wistful.

Still, it's strange music to be taking over the airwaves around you, and it lets John Constantine know that something weird is on the way. Possibly something quite dark, the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" suggests.

Eventually Constantine confronts the darkness, and a resolution is reached. He wanders off to a reprise of the upbeat "Mr. Sandman," letting the Chordettes sing away all the tension.

Wuthering Heights: Bronte and Bush

Wuthering Heights is a title that should sound familiar to most English-speakers--it's a highschool lit class favorite. Written by Emily Bronte, the tragic novel chronicles the lives of Catherine and Heathcliff and their passionate affair.

Set in the strict British society of the 1800s, the first things the story brings to mind are hardly interpretive modern dance and pop songs, but in 1978 singer-songwriter Kate Bush proved she saw the story differently. She wrote a song as the ghost Catherine, who, she told Profiles in Rock in 1980, reminded her of herself. Her Cathy shrieks in a shrill soprano at her lover Heathcliffe over a bouncing melody which she accompanies with high kicks, arm waving, and avante-garde posturing.

While Kate's ghost might not mesh entirely with the spirit of the novel, Bush told Self Portrait in 1978 that the story "just struck me very strongly because it shows a lot about human beings and how if they can't get what they want, they will go to such extremes in order to do it." Evidently, her interpretation of this theme struck many people strongly: the single held the number one spot on the UK Singles Chart for four weeks.

Here's a look at the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1pMMIe4hb4