A Sample of Sammy Shortpants Singing! (Sorta')

Dear Reader,

Along with occasional pictures, drawings, images, maps, character record sheets and other multi-media files that are beginning to litter this site, it is my hope that if this project continues, music will play an important role in representing the lives of our characters. 

While songs and poems have often been a part of fantasy fiction, rarer have been efforts to offer up listenable rendition of the poetry authors have inserted into their tales.  And on those occasions where folks do try, it has often been some sort of re-visioning of medieval European music that tends to dominate these assays (Although when Wizards of the Coast authorized a D&D soundtrack, much to their credit they went in a more gothic and electronic direction, enlisting Midnight Syndicate to produce the album). 

Misfits does not take place in medieval Europe.  It does take place in a fantasy realm where much of the technology is not far advanced beyond that era of human history (but some is) and also in a realm where magic exists (or at least a form of science and power that is more easily described as magic).  Point is, the music of Gaearth need not be relegated to any stereotype and here I offer one possible vision of Sammy’s rendition of “A Chalice to Piss in.”  In my eyes, Sammy is a Bluesman who has lost family and friends to a multi-generation long civil war.  He has had to earn his way through the world begging, borrowing and mostly stealing.  He sings not of flowers and hills, sunsets and fairies, but of the hard-scrabble life that he and most common people in the Northlands confront and wrestle with every day.  He sings not to forget or to escape, but to recall, to communally celebrate little victories and criticize the status-quo.  Neither hopeless or hopeful, it is a fair bit of cynicism with a hint of optimism which dominates the music of this bard as he simply tries to provide a bit of respite for tavern denizens while sharing a drink or three and a bed or two.

Here I offer a sample of “A Chalice to Piss in” – a rough cut from a rough boy and who knows, If I can find a drummer and some time to jam with a few more friends, the whole song might get finished some day.

-JP

"A Chalice to Piss in"

(image found on several websites and is a rendition of a bard image from WotC PH 3.5 but I can not find the original source or artist to credit/seek permission)