Sunday Song # 2 - "Pride"

***

Pride is fine and fancy, a shiny Cadillac
The seats are soft and spacious but there's no sex in the back
You can drive out to the drive-in, sit there and get stoned
You can go to any show you want, but you'll always ride alone

Pride, one last ride
Take me away where I can hide

You can drive away from lovers, drive away from friends
But their voices travel with you on a road that never ends
Idling in an alley, feeling pretty fucked
With a hose taped to the exhaust pipe, your car is filling up

Pride, one last ride
Take me away where I can hide

***

This is one written a couple of years ago, after the Titans as a band had formed in Athens and we were playing shows regularly. This is one of the first responses to a demand for new material, and we played this at our shows for a while, but then I became embarrassed with it and demanded that we stop playing it.

I'm not sure if I can put into words why I stopped liking it. I picked it up again recently when I was looking for a song I could perform with Emily at our show with Sea Of Dogs and I was surprised to find I kind of liked it. So I guess I have to keep in mind that the way I feel about songs changes over time.

I was trying to write a Rolling Stones country ballad in the style of "Sweet Virginia." And I think I was wanting to just have fun and to create the absurdest metaphor possible and to see how far I could carry it.

***

This is in C and I think some of the other Titans deserve credit for input in the lyrics -- I think it was Nate in particular who came up with the idea of the narrator not being able to escape voices of the past in the third verse, which I think is one of the best parts of the song. Nevertheless, I claim full official composer credit on this one, although as usual, people made up their own parts for their instruments/vocal harmonies.

Also I recorded this in a rush to meet the 7:30 deadline and I think it shows in the quality of some of the singing. I may keep practicing the song (one of the few songs I've written that really demands singing different notes and kind of belting it out) and quietly post a new recording in place of this one later on.

Also, can anyone suggest a replacement/alteration for the line "with a hose taped to the exhaust"* so that the accented syllable would fall on the beat at the end? To make this line fit in the song, I have to pronounce it "EX-haust" which is to be sure quite bothersome to me. I've thought about "with a hose taped to the gas pipe," although I don't even know if that is an accurate way of describing an exhaust pipe?

*EDIT January 4 2009. I changed it in the lyrics above but have not yet fixed the recording.