Let’s Not Settle Down, Together

During an otherwise unremarkable set last night at Rockwood Music Hall, something strange and flattering did occur. I had gotten through all the songs I’d planned with fifteen minutes to spare in the allotted 45 minute period, and began taking requests. Several came in rapid succession from a young man, K, in the corner, who at the very end, requested a song called “Let’s Not Settle Down, Together”, an ersatz Cole Porter ditty I’d written a few years ago in a somewhat cheeky but misguided attempt to woo a charming young woman.

Things proceeded thus:

K: Can you play Let’s Not Settle Down, Together?

ME: Aww, dude, I don’t think I remember it.

K: (Slightly sheepish pause) Well, I think I know how it goes.

ME: Really?

K: Yeah, I think so.

— now, it bears noting that I have never recorded this song, and the only version of it that exists in the world is a crappy YouTube video that I think I am responsible for, in which I play several wrong chords in the intro —

ME: Well, okay, you wanna come play it?

K: Um, you’ll sing?

ME: Sure.

— So K comes up on stage, and proceeds to accompany me in this totally obscure song of mine, in a performance notable primarily for 1. my considerable struggle to remember the words and 2. the accuracy of K’s rendition, down to the same wrong chords I had played in the YouTube version, thus tipping me off to his autodidactic tactic. He had learned the song from Al Gore’s The Internet.

And thus concluded the evening.