So, obviously, I was unable to keep up with my perhaps overly ambitious song-a-day project. Many nights I ended up just wanting to take it easy or have fun, and as rewarding as bringing some new creation into the world can be, I find creating and recording a song in a single night requires being more alert and "with it" than I can be on a nightly basis. And I think it was making me stressed out and crazy a little bit.
But still I think the basic idea is good, to give myself writing assignments in order to inspire actually getting songs finished and published to an audience, however small. I think one song a week is perhaps more reasonable than daily, and hopefully the song quality will be consistently higher. (Toward the end of the last project, as I was losing steam, I was making only 15-30 second instrumental loops, none of which I felt were good enough or finished enough to post here.)
My plan is to use this project to force myself to finish some of the songs I've abandoned halfway through and also hopefully fight off writer's block in order to eventually write new material each week.
The time limit makes Brian Wilson or Axl Rose-type perfectionism/madness impossible, which is good, but a week may still be too little time to routinely turn out good quality songs. I do want to approach this more like a Brill Building songwriter in the 1960s, though, and less like the aloof genius artist painting his masterpiece.
So I'll post something new every Sunday at 7:30 PM Eastern if all goes according to plan.
***
***
We were the ones who did everything right
We worked hard to get those grades
We came out of school ready for what was promised
I guess we all assumed we had it made
We're filled with the golden dream they taught us
Hard work will ensure success
That's the unifying lie of our fractured nation
And the foundation of my own private mess
Tossed unawares into cruel games
Of musical chairs even more challenging
Than the ones our parents played
Back when the money was made
Some may say we have no right to whine
And that we should see the sunny side
But with all the optimism we've internalized
We won't end up with satisfied minds
Tossed unawares into cruel games
Of musical chairs even more challenging
Than the ones our parents played
Back when the money was made
***
Today's featured song is one that has been finished and mostly unused for over a year, which is also the case with many of the songs I'll be posting here, at least at first. I kind of went a little crazy with perfectionism in Titans, which I know was frustrating to my bandmates, because often we would have arrangements worked out and I would throw away the song entirely because I felt there were unresolvable problems in the lyrics or structure.
This one, like "Sympathetic Mind" from
Feats Of Strength, was written along with Nate Mitchell of
Cars Can Be Blue (and at that time the drummer for Titans Of Filth). Like "Sympathetic Mind," but even more so, this song is straightforward and overtly topical and political, which makes me a bit uncomfortable with it, since political art of this sort seems to often be sneered upon by those who know better. But maybe those who are critical of works such as this are just enforcers for the repressive society holding us down, man. I could maybe admit to being sort of borderline sincere about that. Anyway, I think there are probably those who like this more direct style of writing more than the sometimes cryptic "Ode To Billie Joe" type songs I usually make.
***
Anyway, it is in the key of C, which is my key of choice for more straight-forward moralizing songs, as opposed to what I think of as the ambiguous literary fiction type songs (which tend to be in the key of B).
As you can hear, this is only my voice and guitar at this time, which I think will be the norm for these Sunday posts. If you would like to try arranging other instrumental parts for any of the song demos I post, please go ahead and let me hear how it turns out. Let me know too if you need a chord progression also.
Also! I should have mentioned before now that this song was written right after I'd read Barbara Ehrenreich's book
Bait And Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit Of The American Dream. I wanted to do a pop song adaptation of the book. It is a follow-up to her famous
Nickel And Dimed, only this time instead of focusing on working class Americans, she writes about those in the middle class (if such a thing exists) who expect to land good business-type jobs, which is almost a mathematical impossibility at this point.
And I was certainly feeling a lot of this pressure to get a good job and be real rich, there was nothing seeming to hold me back really, a white male with an expensive education and good academic records, yet still failure is right there waiting for me. Reading this book helped me a lot to frame things in terms of social forces beyond my control, which is probably the most valuable left-wing strategy. I think here in the south in particular, there is the idea that you should be able to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and through sheer grit and determination amount to something. But I think this is ignoring the fact that there simply aren't good jobs for everyone who is qualified for one.
Barbara Ehrenreich pretty much rules.
Here is her blog.
PS. If you would like to hear a direct political song that is totally awesome and in my opinion puts this one to shame, go to Cars Can Be Blue's Myspace page (linked above) and listen to their song "Doctor." This song should have been on the
Sicko soundtrack, I think it just didn't make it into the hands of the right people in time.
