Janice and Bud,

It's taken me a long while to get back to this song. I don't know where time goes. When I checked out the document that I started typing up in relation to “Side Effects”, I discovered it was created on January 25! I thought it was only a couple of weeks ago!!!

From a 'whole package' perspective, this song shines brilliantly, dazzles even. From an individual component perspective, each contribution sparkles: Janice's vocals, Tom's guitar work, Bud's mix. Everything about “Side Effects” is top notch. Everything.

Regarding the lyrics, they really intrigued me and, believe it or not, took me on quite an academic journey as I tried make sense of their structure.

I'll explain …

It all began with the rhyme scheme. The first thing I noticed was that the AAXA rhyme pattern consistently used perfect rhyme; that is, do/you/blue, by/high/eye, etc. This instantly appealed to me because I'm finding myself leaning more and more to perfect rhyme as a starting place in my own lyrics these days. The reason for this is that the brain-cell weightlifting needed to find a perfect rhyme and then to get it to work lyrically in a conversational tone is, sometimes, quite a challenge and one that I really enjoy. This process also opens up many lyric possibilities that would never have occurred to me if I hadn't tried to find a perfect rhyme. I greatly admired your lyrics.

I asked Google to help me out with AAXA (and a little later, AABA) because I couldn't think of any poem that I knew that had this rhyme scheme. Google led me to this site and introduced me to the Rubai/Rubaiyat – a form called the Persian Quatrain. I'd never come across this before. Below is an example taken from that web-page.

Quote:
Free Agent 

Testosterone Tom was a monstrous man
raised in the Arctic where caribou ran.
When he ate there weren’t left-overs;  Tom had
never heard of baseball, bagels, or flan.

Like a fish to an aquarium  sent,
or a monkey to a zoo, our Tom spent
his first weeks in Maine looking for control.
Slowly festering smarts would now augment.

Tom learned of the NFL, why quibble.
For this quest he had no need to dribble.
For his size there was no counter-balance,
We’ll not divulge teams taking a nibble.

© Lawrencealot – December 29, 2012


I've discovered that to appreciate how a rhyme scheme flows, it's necessary for me to read the poem or lyrics aloud. It is only then that I can feel the journey of the rhyme and the effect that it creates.

When I read your lyrics and then the above poem aloud, I found that the AAXA rhyme scheme creates an interesting effect to my ears. At the end of the second line, when the rhyme is paired, there's the usual sense of completion that accompanies such a pairing. Line 3 came along and with its different ending, my brain anticipated that line 4 would create a rhyme pair with line 3. This is often used and would have produced an AABB series of couplets. It didn't happen, though. Instead, line 3 dangled rhymeless and line 4 swerved back to lines 1 and 2. The effect was one of pleasant surprise. Having 3 lines of rhyme interspersed with a non-rhyming line created a lyrical instability for me. What a wonderful way (alliteration intentional) to boost emotional intensity!

In addition, that fourth line, third rhyme, caused each stanza to float like in a dream. Perfect prosody for the concept of 'side effects'. That's clever writing! This fourth line also gave the song a 12-bar blues feel from a lyric perspective even though it's only 8-bars (compare 3 lines of AAA found in many 12-bar blues songs).

All in all … a terrific write!

Regards to everyone,
Noel

P.S. Because of "Side Effects", I've now discovered and like the concept of an interlocking Rubaiyat that uses the rhyme scheme AABA BBCB CCDC. I've made a note to write some lyrics that use this pattern! It could be interesting. Thank you for the journey you've taken me on smile



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