Baby Give Me One More Chance

Baby Give Me One More Chance

The song is about a trip to Las Vegas. I wrote a letter to the mayor that Vegas needs a casinohotel Vienna with waltz and violins, with Strauss, Mozart, Beethoven and Sissi. I never received a reply, maybe the letter gone lost.

Here is the story of the song:

In the first verse I do what most people do in Vegas: I gamble. First I win, but with a final bid I loose all my money. I say to the croupier: "Baby give me one more chance!"

In the second verse I move to a bar where I chat up a lady. But as I whisper some crazy words into her ear, too crazy for her, she wants to move. I say: "Baby give me one more chance!"

In verse three we are together and have a lot of fun. Too much fun it seems and I finish up too fast and so I say again: "Baby give me one more chance!"

That's the story. Is it a tragedy or comedy? I don't know. It is a story, not a description of a feeling or impressions.

All three verses are short stories themselves, I put them together to a bigger story. You can also say: the story has three episodes.

The rhyme form is changing during the song. Sometimes a-a, b-b then a-b-a-b. The first verse is one line longer than the others, because it is a introduction to the story. The first two lines rhyme on -in - sin and violin. But then the next five lines rhyme on the same ending. I wanted to express that I was so excited living this story, my words came out like a waterfall, I simply had to write them down. And it ends with the words "and the fortune was gone". No more rhyme on this ending, not only my money also the rhyme on this is gone. When I wrote this I found out that I had made it too long, one line longer than planned. But it fits and I adapted the music to these lyrics.

In the second verse there is a change in rhyme form. I rhyme a-a-b-c-b-c to express that I am a little confused. No wonder by this red dressed lady.

In verse three there is another speciality. The rhyme form is a-a-b-b-c-c, but the last rhyme is only a near rhyme. Rhyming "hard" on "up" sounds near - some may say "far" -, it isn't a clean rhyme, it is a break. I wanted to express that "finished up" breaks the story, the episode. "finished up" is short and a sudden, let's say unexpected, end of this episode is also expressed in words.

I like to play with words and that's what I also did in these lyrics.
"Fortune favors fools" is an aliteration, all words start with "f". I don't like repetitions, but with "I played on and on and on" I wanted to express the long time sitting doing nothing but gambling, a monotone pastime. And so it is ok for me to rhyme this line with the previous line on the word "on".

In verse three I do an inline rhyme: "She was soft, she was SMART, she was a class APART" with the following line ending on "heart". With "SWEAT on my HEAD" there is another inline rhyme in this verse. It sounds a little stressy, doesn't it. "The GAMes we PLAYed were WAY too hard" also sounds like an inline rhyme ending hard with the word "hard". I think that fits well. "The GAMes we PLAYed were WAY too hard", so "hard" is a hard stop.

"I was feeling on TOP from the BOTTOM of my heart" is a nice combination of opposites: Feeling on TOP from the BOTTOM of my heart.

So far about the lyrics.

Now to the music. I want to have a groovy music. Before I made up the sound I heard music from the south states, I call it Mississippi-sound, on the radio and I think you can hear that influence. Always that accentuation on syncopes. A nearly monotone background band in the first lines. But as the story progresses and gets a twist I want to express that in the music by accentuating the drums in the last two lines of the verse.

I have a little variation in the refrains sung. In the first refrain I have this "Ah ah" after line 2, in verse 2 I have it after line 1. And in verse 3 I have this "Ah-ah" in both lines. A little detail, a gag I put in the song when mixing.

The refrain "Baby give me one more chance" should contrast to the verse. The voice is singing a melody in the refrain while the verse is dominated by the rhythm and storytelling vocals.

There is another detail: In the verse and the refrain I sing a line, then there is a instrumental part except the last lines of the verse, where I continuously tell my story. That is because the episode of the verse comes to an end concluded by the refrain "Baby give me one more chance".

But I not always sing. The line "Sorry, it was only a smutty joke" is stressy spoken. That's what I would do in this situation when trying to hold back the lady from moving away.

I like the solo guitar playing a short intro at the beginning and returning in line 3 in the background by the words "Paint the town red, the croupier said" and then playing short solo parts between the lines. There is no guitarsolo instead of a sung verse in this song, that would have been too much guitar I think. The guitar is very shrill. In german the word also is "schrill". Is this a German based word or did the Germans take it from English?

But during production I found something missing. I played around with synthesizers and effects. Then I found a nice sound with echo-effects on it and so I put it in the song. Doesn't it sound great? A little like "Stop it, man!!!!"

There is a gag in the song: With the line "A number ringing in my head" I put a ringing bell in the background to express that ringing. First I took a telephone ringing, but that did not fit well. It should be a big bell clanging in my head like I had headache.

Now to the musicvideo.
I thought if this is a story I tell, I simply sit down in a drinking place and tell the story to a friend or to the audience. Now it is a little boring just sitting there three minutes and sing the song. So I put in scenes supporting the story in wads of smoke. In Europe in many places smokers are banned, but in some drinking places there still are wads of smoke. Is this my thoughts or projections of words turned into pictures? I don't know. On the bottom line the story is also told by these movieclips and pictures.

And just like telling the story to a friend it is nearly a one-shot-video.

By the way, look at these many bottles in the background. I did not drink that all for the videoshot, but it's real wine- and liqueur bottles.

Baby Give Me One More Chance

Das Lied handelt von einer wahren Begebenheit in Las Vegas. Ich besuchte Las Vegas und schrieb einen Brief an den Bürgermeister (Mayor), dass Vegas ein Kasinohotel VIENNA braucht, mit Walzer und Geigen. Ich erhielt nie eine Antwort, vielleicht ging der Brief verloren. Die Story des Songs besteht aus drei Episoden. Erst tat ich, was die meisten dort tun: Spielen. Doch ich verlor all mein Geld. Dann schleppte ich mich in eine Bar und knüpfte Kontakt zu einer Frau in einem roten Kleid. In Episode drei geht es um intime Zweisamkeit auf dem Zimmer.

Music&Text: Henk Freytag

ISRC: ATI241200002