Next up, an attempt at a vaguely Brian Wilson (Van Dyke Parks-era) kind of song, though I wasn’t conscious of it at the time. “I Feel It Coming” was another huge production effort - bigger, really, than the recording set-up could justify. For example, near the beginning you’ll hear something that sounds like electronic percussion just before the bass comes in. It’s actually just an ordinary bean-pod shaker, but after being bounced back and forth from machine to machine god-knows-how-many times as the layers were built up the original sound had decayed considerably. It gets worse in other sections where the layering is deeper, as do the tambourine, bongos, and handclaps, for the same reason.
Then there’s electric piano (which I had to layer on a second time in the denser sections near the end of the recording process, organ and organ-bass...and a lot of vocal tracks. I’m very pleased with the lead vocal - very Wilson-esque -and the Beach Boys harmonies, ragged though they are in spots. Here it is:
I Feel It Coming
Who stole the time? Whose pockets have been lined with my share of the days?
I’m not the one with clear eyes, in love with every face that came dancing my way,
who could live for today. But that’s okay.
I don’t really mind, I don’t really mind.
‘Cause time is only passing through my eyes.
And everything that common sense denies
is waiting for the day when all these waves shall pass away.
But I don’t mind waiting, and I’m happy with nothin’ to do,
‘cause I can feel it coming. It’s got to be, got to be true.
The day is coming for turning the old into new.
I can feel it coming. Yeah...
The things that tear me apart get deeper in my heart every time that I breathe.
I run away from Loneliness and turn around to find that he’s clutching my sleeve,
and saying he’ll never leave. But I’m not deceived.
It’s all in my mind. I’ll leave it behind
with all the things that hold me by my need
and all the things I thought I should believe.
I’m waiting for the day when all these waves shall pass away.
But I don’t mind waiting, and I’m happy with nothin’ to do,
‘cause I can feel it coming. It’s got to be, got to be true.
The day is coming for turning the old into new.
Oh, I can feel it coming. Yeah...
It’s coming. I know I don’t know how I know. No, I don’t know how I know, but I know.
But sometimes I feel that I’m the Fool’s Mate,
too blind with dreams to tell they’re dead weight.
And I start to wonder what I’m after -
can it be just a heart full of laughter?
Am I just waiting for these waves to pass away?
Do life and death revolve? Or do we just dissolve into dark when we die?
Well, I think that I recall. And I’m not afraid at all to fall right into the sky.
But that’s for tomorrow, or maybe the day after that.
‘Cause I’m so busy trying to get rich and get laid and get fat
that I keep forgetting, and losing myself in the play.
I’m so tired of waiting, waiting for these waves to pass away...
...And they will someday.
If life is what I think it is, then what will be will be.
And if it turns out that it’s not, then what a joke on me.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There were a couple of effects boxes lying around in the recording room and one day I tried running the electric piano through the flanger. After a little bit of fooling around I came up with a bell-like sound that seemed very magical to me. So I used it as inspiration to write a love song called “Shine,” about a girl I had just met a few days before. “By this River,” by Brian Eno, may have been an influence.
I really like this song a lot, though one or two of my chord choices seem somewhat odd to me now. There a lovely serene quality to the verses, the chorus is fairly catchy, and the instrumental section still knocks me out. I have no idea what possessed me to take the piano track from the middle part and run it backwards and out-of-phase before segueing into the actual fully-produced middle section* - though I remember it took forever to get the different parts to line up properly, using a borrowed third tape deck - but the effect is really special.
*(The inspiration may have been “Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road” from Robert Wyatt’s Rock Bottom album, since part-way through that song the entire track suddenly begins to go backwards.)
Very simple instrumentation: two tracks of flanged electric piano (one is the bass), tambourine and three vocal tracks. Here it is:
Shine
Funny how a moment can last forever.
Met just now...have we always been together?
Things I thought I had to do
were just time spent waiting for you, waiting for you.
But we shine on each other, we glow.
We shine on each other, we’re fine for each other.
We shine.
Peaceful world of brown eyes searching blue ones.
Boy meets girl...it’s the same old song, and a new one.
Words sometimes spoken aloud
just drift between us like clouds, far away.
But we shine on each other, we glow.
We shine on each other, we’re fine for each other.
We shine.
Couldn’t see I was missing pieces of me.
Then suddenly you say you love me...
And we shine on each other, we glow.
We shine on each other, we’re fine for each other.
We shine.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“The Dull Tide” gets my vote for Most Depressing Song Ever Written, even though I don’t remember being particularly depressed when I wrote it.
I had just taken a job in a nearby bookstore, which I liked just fine, but the bookstore was in a strip mall and every day I would stand at the cash register, looking out the storefront window and watching endless crowds of what seemed like consumer-zombies - blank-eyed sleepwalkers drifting aimlessly through life. Hardly an original perception, I’ll grant you. But on some level it frightened me, I think, and “The Dull Tide” got written as a kind of horror story.
The music was composed on and recorded with the ridiculously-tuned upright piano described above. I’m very proud of the scary, lurching rhythm of the verses - that rushed fourth beat followed by a ‘missing’ fifth beat always makes me think of the heart-stopping feeling you get when you’re running up stairs in the dark and take one step too many.
Also used was an organ-bass with a nasty fuzz-tone effect added (half a step down from the actual key in order to be in tune with the piano, of course. To these were added pod-shakers, hi-hat (actually me trying to sound like a hi-hat), bongos, sandpaper, a cardboard box bass drum and several tracks of vocals. The middle section (which owes something to “The Moonlight Sonata”) has piano, organ string-bass and regular organ with the Leslie on.
The density of the layers meant that the original piano gets kind of buried in places and the sound quality gets a little blurry in places, but I kind of like the overall effect. And speaking of effects: the siren at the end was from an actual ambulance which passed by at the exact moment that I was recording the final word of the song, and got picked up by the microphone. I couldn’t believe how perfect that was.
The Dull Tide
You can try, but you’re fighting the odds -
opened eyes is tempting the gods.
Let it slide, let it run aground.
The dull tide will wear you down.
Wear you down ‘til you’re nothing but sand
in someone’s hand.
Shadows fall, you don’t know what they mean -
strangers all with their faces unseen.
Let them by and don’t look around.
Their dull eyes will wear you down.
Wear you down with the weight of the lives
that they’ve only survived.
Or so I’m told, but it couldn’t be right.
Is this sameness of life
what the people who only watch call sane?
Float me down September days,
let me rest in the grays
of a feeling that falls down with the rain.
You can sing, but all melodies end -
days do bring what’s around the bend.
In the line of a smile or frown
the dull time will wear you down.
Wear...you...down.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Hopes and Fears” was written for a friend of mine who was going through a bad period in her life. She was a dancer and was making some wrong personal choices in her pursuit of success. She knew this, at least on some level, and it was making her very unhappy.
Musically I think it works very well. Two tracks of electric piano, one vocal.
Hopes and Fears
Reaching out with all of your heart -
and always in vain,
without knowing why.
And still you keep trying.
You tell yourself that this is your part -
that it’s worth the pain
of seeing your friends
feel used for your ends.
But then, do you remember why?
Chances do come -
you dance or you run.
People you care for tear you apart -
they all seem to say
that you have to choose
which part of you loses.
Hopes and fears are driving your heart,
but don’t show the way.
And though you don’t say,
you know how to pray.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here’s a real pinnacle in my recording career: actually playing piano and singing at the same time. I’m impressed. I always remember that I was wearing overalls at the time because I can hear the buckles jingle a little bit in certain places.
I love the simplicity of “Autumn Song (Day is Over).” It might even be my favorite of everything I’ve ever written. Just me and the piano.
Autumn (especially in New England) is my favorite time of year - I love the peacefulness of it, the sense of the world settling down for a long nap. This song is about that feeling of letting go and drifting away into sleep - not just with regard to the seasons, but also within the shorter span of a day and, on a subtler level, the longer span of a life.
Autumn Song (Day is Over)
Slow down, fall down, tumble down.
Red and brown. The sun is down.
Rest your bones, tired bones, weary bones.
Ease them down. The sun is down.
Day is over now.
Point your feet, poor old feet, along the street
through blue and gray - they know their way.
Going home, heading home, welcome home.
Blue and gray, fading day.
Day is over now.
Oh, the night, starry night, gentle light -
silver, blue - shines down on you.
Close your eyes, sleepy eyes, upon the skies.
Silver, blue, watch over you.
Day is over.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Next up, a preachy song about preachy Christians - you know, the ones who are glad that they’re going to heaven but really happy that everyone else is going to hell. More specifically, “Open Letter” is about all the Christian cults of the time and a reaction to the Jonestown Massacre in particular. It’s not intended as a condemnation of Christianity, or Christians in general - just the ones who think that dogma is more important than what’s in the heart.
“Open Letter” begins with an audio montage created from snippets taken mostly off LP’s borrowed from the local library, which is why they’re so scratchy. The reading of the Lord’s Prayer was, I think, taken from the album Love Serve Remember by Baba Ram Dass. This is interrupted by a cheesy thunderclap, which was achieved by switching on the Lesley speaker suddenly with the organ off or something like that. Then we hear God Himself, as portrayed by Charlton Heston, reading from Genesis 3:17 and being generally cranky with Adam and Eve. That original recording segued into “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”, which plays very nicely against the reading from Finnegan’s Wake in the other channel. Then the song proper begins.
The lyrics, as mentioned above, are every bit as preachy as the subjects they refer to, and in retrospect I wish I’d done the entire song in a lower key, as the vocals sound very strained in places and the harmonies don’t quite harmonize or do so somewhat raggedly.
Musically though, I kind of like it. The verses are in a 10/8 rhythm that I swiped from King Crimson’s “Lark Tongues in Aspic, Pt. 2” and I’m not at all sure what’s going on in the intro/chorus - I think it’s a fast 4/4 with one bar of 6/8, or maybe I was just going by feel, I don’t remember.
Two tracks of electric piano, two tracks of tambourine, two tracks of shakers, toy cymbal (once), organ-bass, half-speed flanged organ and two separate vocal tracks that overlap (a la The Beatles’ “Julia”) in the verses and come together in the chorus and middle. (A third harmony is added near the end.). The organ solo sounds amazing to me - recorded at half-speed, obviously, and the result of the best bits of many, many takes painfully edited together. I love the way it sounds with the flanging.
So, though I’m not thrilled with the song as a whole, I think it’s worth a listen. Here it is:
Open Letter
You say that you know the way to be free.
You say that yours is the way to be.
You say that I really don’t have a choice.
You say that I don’t really need a voice
in running my life -
with prayer I can stifle the temptations of thought.
Is that what you bought?
I don’t believe you
when you say I’m living this life for the next one.
And the next one’s for the chosen few
that you help to choose.
And I don’t care
what you say God expects done,
or what things you say your God will do
to those that you lose.
You say that the proof is all in your book.
You say it would do me good to take a look.
Then you say the devil’s got a hold of my wits
because I don’t want to benefit
from your Savior’s death.
You can just save your breath, ‘cause I’ve got blood of my own -
why don’t you leave His alone?
I don’t believe you
when you tell me His was a death that will free us,
if we’d only take your word it’s true,
oh, then we would know.
You say
that you’ve been talking to Jesus,
but I think it’s someone closer to you -
doesn’t it show?
With your love, talk to me.
Show me your love.
Your real love - not your god-damned good intentions.
I don’t believe you
when you tell me lovin’ the world is where your at.
And that you don’t think that it’s too late
to show me the way.
Oh, tell me,
am I supposed to believe that,
when your words say love and your voice says hate
- and your eyes say you’re afraid?
With your love, talk to me.
Show me your love.
Your real love - not your god-damned good intentions.
You say that you know the way to be free.
You say that yours is the way to be.
You say that to live in Christ is to rejoice,
but I don’t see that’s what you got for your choice.
Look at yourself. Look at yourself.
Look at yourself. For God’s sake, look at yourself!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And now for something completely different: my one and only cover version.
I was exposed to the poetic lunacy of Ivor Cutler in college and have been a rabid fan ever since. You can read about him here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Cutler
and there’s lots of his work on YouTube as well:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ivor+cutler&aq=0&oq=ivor+cut
One of my favorite pieces of his is “I Got No Common Sense” from his Velvet Donkey album. On this track he is accompanied by the might Fred Frith on viola. Here’s his version”:
I Got No Common Sense
My version is a tiny bit more elaborate, though it’s mostly just vocal and piano. It opens with a bit stolen from the soundtrack of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and includes a bit of classical music you might recognize. The sound effect at the very end is from an album by a group called Egg. I used the flanger on the piano mike for the second half of the song. Here’s my version:
I Got No Common Sense
I got no common sense,
and neither has nobody else.
I spread my brains out on the table
and stir them around with a fork.
So I got no common sense,
and neither has nobody esle.
I spread my brains out on the table
and stir them around with a fork.
So I got no common sense,
and neither has nobody else.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There were, of course a number of songs that never got finished for one reason or another, and there are at least a couple that I would like to get done one of these days if I can manage to remember the music.
Here’s one song for which I at least recorded the piano part, and you can hear me muttering some of the lyrics, off-mike, as I play. It was intended to be a Tom Waits-influenced spoken-word piece, and I still think I have the unfinished lyrics around somewhere. I’ll spare you from having to listen to the whole track, the main part of which is fairly repetitive and not very interesting without the vocal (as you can tell from the edited version here), but I do like the opening:
Untitled Instrumental (1980)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You know you’re running low on creative juice when you start writing songs about writing songs. “Andrew’s Odd Songs” was, however, intended as a marketing strategy - I think. For some reason I had gotten it into my head that some bold and free-thinking record label would give me a contract based on these home-made masterpieces of mine, and that the perfect name to market myself with would be Andrew Odd.
I think this was actually an attempt to write an Ivor Cutler sort of song - his “Rubber Toy”, in particular, was a musical inspiration. A bit of Bach harpsichord to open, followed by me on piano and vocal (again recorded simultaneously - another technical triumph), with a bit of kazoo at the end. Here it is:
Andrew’s Odd Songs
Andrew’s odd songs just lumber and plod along,
and still they manage to go wrong, sometimes.
‘Cause he doesn’t know how to play.
His words stand in line all day,
waiting to get to the place where they
can rhyme.
And he does seem to dote
on each and every last note
until he remembers what he wrote
next.
(He’s probably just under-sexed.)
Andrew’s odd songs just lumber and plod along.
They’re easy to take,
‘cause they won’t keep you awake too long.
This song
has an end and I should be pursuing it.
I know what I’m doing, except when I’m doing it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And just to clinch the deal, another inspired piece of marketing, somewhat in the style of Philip Glass:
Sign Me Up
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I can’t imagine how any record label, after hearing that, could possibly turn me down, but astonishingly, a dozen or two actually did - mostly with standard form letters, although one A&R person did suggest that I listen to the radio occasionally to hear what listeners were actually buying.
Then there’s electric piano (which I had to layer on a second time in the denser sections near the end of the recording process, organ and organ-bass...and a lot of vocal tracks. I’m very pleased with the lead vocal - very Wilson-esque -and the Beach Boys harmonies, ragged though they are in spots. Here it is:
I Feel It Coming
Who stole the time? Whose pockets have been lined with my share of the days?
I’m not the one with clear eyes, in love with every face that came dancing my way,
who could live for today. But that’s okay.
I don’t really mind, I don’t really mind.
‘Cause time is only passing through my eyes.
And everything that common sense denies
is waiting for the day when all these waves shall pass away.
But I don’t mind waiting, and I’m happy with nothin’ to do,
‘cause I can feel it coming. It’s got to be, got to be true.
The day is coming for turning the old into new.
I can feel it coming. Yeah...
The things that tear me apart get deeper in my heart every time that I breathe.
I run away from Loneliness and turn around to find that he’s clutching my sleeve,
and saying he’ll never leave. But I’m not deceived.
It’s all in my mind. I’ll leave it behind
with all the things that hold me by my need
and all the things I thought I should believe.
I’m waiting for the day when all these waves shall pass away.
But I don’t mind waiting, and I’m happy with nothin’ to do,
‘cause I can feel it coming. It’s got to be, got to be true.
The day is coming for turning the old into new.
Oh, I can feel it coming. Yeah...
It’s coming. I know I don’t know how I know. No, I don’t know how I know, but I know.
But sometimes I feel that I’m the Fool’s Mate,
too blind with dreams to tell they’re dead weight.
And I start to wonder what I’m after -
can it be just a heart full of laughter?
Am I just waiting for these waves to pass away?
Do life and death revolve? Or do we just dissolve into dark when we die?
Well, I think that I recall. And I’m not afraid at all to fall right into the sky.
But that’s for tomorrow, or maybe the day after that.
‘Cause I’m so busy trying to get rich and get laid and get fat
that I keep forgetting, and losing myself in the play.
I’m so tired of waiting, waiting for these waves to pass away...
...And they will someday.
If life is what I think it is, then what will be will be.
And if it turns out that it’s not, then what a joke on me.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There were a couple of effects boxes lying around in the recording room and one day I tried running the electric piano through the flanger. After a little bit of fooling around I came up with a bell-like sound that seemed very magical to me. So I used it as inspiration to write a love song called “Shine,” about a girl I had just met a few days before. “By this River,” by Brian Eno, may have been an influence.
I really like this song a lot, though one or two of my chord choices seem somewhat odd to me now. There a lovely serene quality to the verses, the chorus is fairly catchy, and the instrumental section still knocks me out. I have no idea what possessed me to take the piano track from the middle part and run it backwards and out-of-phase before segueing into the actual fully-produced middle section* - though I remember it took forever to get the different parts to line up properly, using a borrowed third tape deck - but the effect is really special.
*(The inspiration may have been “Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road” from Robert Wyatt’s Rock Bottom album, since part-way through that song the entire track suddenly begins to go backwards.)
Very simple instrumentation: two tracks of flanged electric piano (one is the bass), tambourine and three vocal tracks. Here it is:
Shine
Funny how a moment can last forever.
Met just now...have we always been together?
Things I thought I had to do
were just time spent waiting for you, waiting for you.
But we shine on each other, we glow.
We shine on each other, we’re fine for each other.
We shine.
Peaceful world of brown eyes searching blue ones.
Boy meets girl...it’s the same old song, and a new one.
Words sometimes spoken aloud
just drift between us like clouds, far away.
But we shine on each other, we glow.
We shine on each other, we’re fine for each other.
We shine.
Couldn’t see I was missing pieces of me.
Then suddenly you say you love me...
And we shine on each other, we glow.
We shine on each other, we’re fine for each other.
We shine.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“The Dull Tide” gets my vote for Most Depressing Song Ever Written, even though I don’t remember being particularly depressed when I wrote it.
I had just taken a job in a nearby bookstore, which I liked just fine, but the bookstore was in a strip mall and every day I would stand at the cash register, looking out the storefront window and watching endless crowds of what seemed like consumer-zombies - blank-eyed sleepwalkers drifting aimlessly through life. Hardly an original perception, I’ll grant you. But on some level it frightened me, I think, and “The Dull Tide” got written as a kind of horror story.
The music was composed on and recorded with the ridiculously-tuned upright piano described above. I’m very proud of the scary, lurching rhythm of the verses - that rushed fourth beat followed by a ‘missing’ fifth beat always makes me think of the heart-stopping feeling you get when you’re running up stairs in the dark and take one step too many.
Also used was an organ-bass with a nasty fuzz-tone effect added (half a step down from the actual key in order to be in tune with the piano, of course. To these were added pod-shakers, hi-hat (actually me trying to sound like a hi-hat), bongos, sandpaper, a cardboard box bass drum and several tracks of vocals. The middle section (which owes something to “The Moonlight Sonata”) has piano, organ string-bass and regular organ with the Leslie on.
The density of the layers meant that the original piano gets kind of buried in places and the sound quality gets a little blurry in places, but I kind of like the overall effect. And speaking of effects: the siren at the end was from an actual ambulance which passed by at the exact moment that I was recording the final word of the song, and got picked up by the microphone. I couldn’t believe how perfect that was.
The Dull Tide
You can try, but you’re fighting the odds -
opened eyes is tempting the gods.
Let it slide, let it run aground.
The dull tide will wear you down.
Wear you down ‘til you’re nothing but sand
in someone’s hand.
Shadows fall, you don’t know what they mean -
strangers all with their faces unseen.
Let them by and don’t look around.
Their dull eyes will wear you down.
Wear you down with the weight of the lives
that they’ve only survived.
Or so I’m told, but it couldn’t be right.
Is this sameness of life
what the people who only watch call sane?
Float me down September days,
let me rest in the grays
of a feeling that falls down with the rain.
You can sing, but all melodies end -
days do bring what’s around the bend.
In the line of a smile or frown
the dull time will wear you down.
Wear...you...down.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Hopes and Fears” was written for a friend of mine who was going through a bad period in her life. She was a dancer and was making some wrong personal choices in her pursuit of success. She knew this, at least on some level, and it was making her very unhappy.
Musically I think it works very well. Two tracks of electric piano, one vocal.
Hopes and Fears
Reaching out with all of your heart -
and always in vain,
without knowing why.
And still you keep trying.
You tell yourself that this is your part -
that it’s worth the pain
of seeing your friends
feel used for your ends.
But then, do you remember why?
Chances do come -
you dance or you run.
People you care for tear you apart -
they all seem to say
that you have to choose
which part of you loses.
Hopes and fears are driving your heart,
but don’t show the way.
And though you don’t say,
you know how to pray.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here’s a real pinnacle in my recording career: actually playing piano and singing at the same time. I’m impressed. I always remember that I was wearing overalls at the time because I can hear the buckles jingle a little bit in certain places.
I love the simplicity of “Autumn Song (Day is Over).” It might even be my favorite of everything I’ve ever written. Just me and the piano.
Autumn (especially in New England) is my favorite time of year - I love the peacefulness of it, the sense of the world settling down for a long nap. This song is about that feeling of letting go and drifting away into sleep - not just with regard to the seasons, but also within the shorter span of a day and, on a subtler level, the longer span of a life.
Autumn Song (Day is Over)
Slow down, fall down, tumble down.
Red and brown. The sun is down.
Rest your bones, tired bones, weary bones.
Ease them down. The sun is down.
Day is over now.
Point your feet, poor old feet, along the street
through blue and gray - they know their way.
Going home, heading home, welcome home.
Blue and gray, fading day.
Day is over now.
Oh, the night, starry night, gentle light -
silver, blue - shines down on you.
Close your eyes, sleepy eyes, upon the skies.
Silver, blue, watch over you.
Day is over.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Next up, a preachy song about preachy Christians - you know, the ones who are glad that they’re going to heaven but really happy that everyone else is going to hell. More specifically, “Open Letter” is about all the Christian cults of the time and a reaction to the Jonestown Massacre in particular. It’s not intended as a condemnation of Christianity, or Christians in general - just the ones who think that dogma is more important than what’s in the heart.
“Open Letter” begins with an audio montage created from snippets taken mostly off LP’s borrowed from the local library, which is why they’re so scratchy. The reading of the Lord’s Prayer was, I think, taken from the album Love Serve Remember by Baba Ram Dass. This is interrupted by a cheesy thunderclap, which was achieved by switching on the Lesley speaker suddenly with the organ off or something like that. Then we hear God Himself, as portrayed by Charlton Heston, reading from Genesis 3:17 and being generally cranky with Adam and Eve. That original recording segued into “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”, which plays very nicely against the reading from Finnegan’s Wake in the other channel. Then the song proper begins.
The lyrics, as mentioned above, are every bit as preachy as the subjects they refer to, and in retrospect I wish I’d done the entire song in a lower key, as the vocals sound very strained in places and the harmonies don’t quite harmonize or do so somewhat raggedly.
Musically though, I kind of like it. The verses are in a 10/8 rhythm that I swiped from King Crimson’s “Lark Tongues in Aspic, Pt. 2” and I’m not at all sure what’s going on in the intro/chorus - I think it’s a fast 4/4 with one bar of 6/8, or maybe I was just going by feel, I don’t remember.
Two tracks of electric piano, two tracks of tambourine, two tracks of shakers, toy cymbal (once), organ-bass, half-speed flanged organ and two separate vocal tracks that overlap (a la The Beatles’ “Julia”) in the verses and come together in the chorus and middle. (A third harmony is added near the end.). The organ solo sounds amazing to me - recorded at half-speed, obviously, and the result of the best bits of many, many takes painfully edited together. I love the way it sounds with the flanging.
So, though I’m not thrilled with the song as a whole, I think it’s worth a listen. Here it is:
Open Letter
You say that you know the way to be free.
You say that yours is the way to be.
You say that I really don’t have a choice.
You say that I don’t really need a voice
in running my life -
with prayer I can stifle the temptations of thought.
Is that what you bought?
I don’t believe you
when you say I’m living this life for the next one.
And the next one’s for the chosen few
that you help to choose.
And I don’t care
what you say God expects done,
or what things you say your God will do
to those that you lose.
You say that the proof is all in your book.
You say it would do me good to take a look.
Then you say the devil’s got a hold of my wits
because I don’t want to benefit
from your Savior’s death.
You can just save your breath, ‘cause I’ve got blood of my own -
why don’t you leave His alone?
I don’t believe you
when you tell me His was a death that will free us,
if we’d only take your word it’s true,
oh, then we would know.
You say
that you’ve been talking to Jesus,
but I think it’s someone closer to you -
doesn’t it show?
With your love, talk to me.
Show me your love.
Your real love - not your god-damned good intentions.
I don’t believe you
when you tell me lovin’ the world is where your at.
And that you don’t think that it’s too late
to show me the way.
Oh, tell me,
am I supposed to believe that,
when your words say love and your voice says hate
- and your eyes say you’re afraid?
With your love, talk to me.
Show me your love.
Your real love - not your god-damned good intentions.
You say that you know the way to be free.
You say that yours is the way to be.
You say that to live in Christ is to rejoice,
but I don’t see that’s what you got for your choice.
Look at yourself. Look at yourself.
Look at yourself. For God’s sake, look at yourself!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And now for something completely different: my one and only cover version.
I was exposed to the poetic lunacy of Ivor Cutler in college and have been a rabid fan ever since. You can read about him here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Cutler
and there’s lots of his work on YouTube as well:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ivor+cutler&aq=0&oq=ivor+cut
One of my favorite pieces of his is “I Got No Common Sense” from his Velvet Donkey album. On this track he is accompanied by the might Fred Frith on viola. Here’s his version”:
I Got No Common Sense
My version is a tiny bit more elaborate, though it’s mostly just vocal and piano. It opens with a bit stolen from the soundtrack of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and includes a bit of classical music you might recognize. The sound effect at the very end is from an album by a group called Egg. I used the flanger on the piano mike for the second half of the song. Here’s my version:
I Got No Common Sense
I got no common sense,
and neither has nobody else.
I spread my brains out on the table
and stir them around with a fork.
So I got no common sense,
and neither has nobody esle.
I spread my brains out on the table
and stir them around with a fork.
So I got no common sense,
and neither has nobody else.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There were, of course a number of songs that never got finished for one reason or another, and there are at least a couple that I would like to get done one of these days if I can manage to remember the music.
Here’s one song for which I at least recorded the piano part, and you can hear me muttering some of the lyrics, off-mike, as I play. It was intended to be a Tom Waits-influenced spoken-word piece, and I still think I have the unfinished lyrics around somewhere. I’ll spare you from having to listen to the whole track, the main part of which is fairly repetitive and not very interesting without the vocal (as you can tell from the edited version here), but I do like the opening:
Untitled Instrumental (1980)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You know you’re running low on creative juice when you start writing songs about writing songs. “Andrew’s Odd Songs” was, however, intended as a marketing strategy - I think. For some reason I had gotten it into my head that some bold and free-thinking record label would give me a contract based on these home-made masterpieces of mine, and that the perfect name to market myself with would be Andrew Odd.
I think this was actually an attempt to write an Ivor Cutler sort of song - his “Rubber Toy”, in particular, was a musical inspiration. A bit of Bach harpsichord to open, followed by me on piano and vocal (again recorded simultaneously - another technical triumph), with a bit of kazoo at the end. Here it is:
Andrew’s Odd Songs
Andrew’s odd songs just lumber and plod along,
and still they manage to go wrong, sometimes.
‘Cause he doesn’t know how to play.
His words stand in line all day,
waiting to get to the place where they
can rhyme.
And he does seem to dote
on each and every last note
until he remembers what he wrote
next.
(He’s probably just under-sexed.)
Andrew’s odd songs just lumber and plod along.
They’re easy to take,
‘cause they won’t keep you awake too long.
This song
has an end and I should be pursuing it.
I know what I’m doing, except when I’m doing it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And just to clinch the deal, another inspired piece of marketing, somewhat in the style of Philip Glass:
Sign Me Up
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I can’t imagine how any record label, after hearing that, could possibly turn me down, but astonishingly, a dozen or two actually did - mostly with standard form letters, although one A&R person did suggest that I listen to the radio occasionally to hear what listeners were actually buying.
No comments:
Post a Comment