I’ve been working on my preshow pitches for Halloween. An artist friend at Rocky criticized my preshows as cliche, but wouldn’t say how except that we’d used their ingredients before. But I respect her opinion, so I tried to figure it out myself.

Preshows are a window into the soul. The range of possibilities that we can conceive of for a song reflect our own limitations. What we weave out of the songs– the emotional and contextual content that we “hear” tying the words together– invariably reflects our deepest fascinations.

Since I try to avoid orchestrating my known obsessions into preshows, it’s fun to try to figure out what’s left over (my unknown obsessions). And with three halloween pitches in evidence, I figured out a couple of my preshow-writing flaws. One, I have an addiction to sex and death, and yet the best preshows I’ve seen have neither. Two, I’m too concentrated on plot, but the best preshows rarely more than one “event”.

Preshow writing is an art, and I’m an engineer, not an artist. I’m used to making 30 different things happen at once, and considering sex and death as being as easy as character development. Anyway, I went through my preshows with these flakes of wisdom, reworking things as much as needed, and I think they’re much improved.

I’d love to hear your comments! Below are my old and new pitches. I’m dropping The Shame of Life preshow, for now (it needs a lot of work, and was designed to be too tied to my obsessions). Maybe that will leave me time to write a funny preshow.

• Korn – Freak on a Leash: MP3 Audio, Version 1, Version 2
  (I removed the judge scene, increased the profile of the prison leader, the breakout plot, and the girl)

• White Zombie – Grease Paint and Monkey Brains: MP3 Audio, Version 1, Version 2
  (Changed it into a Labyrinth inspired story with more pedophilia, as David Bowie and his sex goblins turn the child)

• We Are Scientists – Cash Cow: MP3 Audio, Version 1, Version 2
  (More details and less necrophilia; there’s time for the secretary to interact with the wife and for a angle/devil gunpoint stand-off)

luvrentboy and elctric_mayhem have been incredibly good with advice, much of which I still need to work in! I hope to get their blow-by-blow suggestions, if the preshows are chosen to go up.