"Signal to Noise"

Ende der 80er Jahre gründeten Steven Brust, Emma Bull, Bill Colsher, Lojo Russo und Adam Stemple {Sohn von Jane Yolen} in Minneapolis die kurzlebige Folk Jazz - Band Cats Laughing. Auf ihrer ersten LP The Bootleg Issue findet sich u.a. eine Vertonung von

Signal to Noise

aus Emma Bulls wunderbarem Roman War for the Oaks (1987), einem der Gründungswerke der Urban Fantasy, die damals noch nichts mit schmachtenden Teengirls und glitzernden Vampiren zu tun hatte.

Drinking coffee,

Have to stay awake and think of you.
Aching awfully,
Knowing my perceptions aren’t true.
If you were what I’ve made you
Not as your acts betrayed you
How could I keep away?
But things still lead me on,
A word, and then it’s gone.
What lives here, and what’s stray?
Tell me, please, what’s signal and what’s noise?

Interference
Or is that the broadcast that I’ve got?
Your appearance
Renders me incapable of thought.
Here’s your voice on the phone.
Your sweet and sullen tone,
What am I to believe?
Did you blow me a kiss
Or was that just tape hiss?
When I hang up, will you grieve?
Have pity, now, what’s signal and what’s noise?

Here’s your photo,
I found it cleaning out my bottom drawer.
When you wrote, oh,
I couldn’t keep from wondering what for.
Through the gray, through the grain,
A picture taken in the rain,
That doesn’t show your face.
Connected dots don’t make a line,
You confuse me every time,
Confusion has its place,
But just this once, what’s signal and what’s noise?

Als Flash Girls präsentierten Emma Bull und Lorraine Garland später noch einmal eine andere Version desselben Songs.