Not for Want of Trying (5:32)

Not For Want Of Trying is an energetic and edgy post-rock piece by Leicester’s Maybeshewill that features large portions of a brilliantly extensive monologue from the movie Network, delivered by Peter Finch, who went to (posthumously) win an Academy Award for his portrayal of the film’s main character Howard Beale. The special thing about this song is that it not only incorporates a movie quote, like many other songs do. It also tries to set the spoken lines to a tune, through a distinct way to structure the song and the heavy use of (de)crescendos. Thus, it creates the impression of providing a belated soundtrack for what is said, not to say breathing new life into it.

Here’s what’s used in the song:

“Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms.