Sunday Song # 4 - "A Home For Aging Hipsters"

You spent your younger years
Running all around
Boyfriends and beers
Familiar faces in this town
As time goes by
Maybe you and I can settle down

In a home for aging hipsters
We can sit together by the window playing checkers
I'd like to live by your side

When hospital bills
Have taken the money
And I can't recall your name
And I can't control my body
Please be the kind face by my side

In a home for aging hipsters
We can sit together by the window playing checkers
I'd like to live by your side

***

Key of C, recorded with midi instruments in Garageband in June 2008 except for vocals, which were accidentally erased and rerecorded today.

This was one of the songs I didn't post during my previous music blog project (check older entries here for what I did end up posting) -- I didn't feel like the lyrics were finished, and I liked the song enough that I really wanted it to be perfect. So this week I picked it up again, determined to make that second verse more in line with the first as far as rhythm or rhyme scheme or what have you. So I spent a couple of days going over it and over it and at last ended up with this (compare with original 2nd verse above):

While hospital bills
Take all that we have saved
We take so many pills
But still our bodies won't behave
As death draws near
May our smart-ass sneers keep us brave . . .

And then it goes into the final chorus, same as above. I felt so good finishing this, so clever. But then today when I recorded the vocal track, I felt like these lyrics destroyed any feelings or sincerity that the song had, so I ended up hastily switching back to the original lyrics as the deadline approached.

I guess with a song like this, a song with the title, you could go in at least these two different directions -- you could kind of play the scenario for laughs, like for example above talking about the "smart-ass sneers" of the aging hipster couple, perhaps also talk about the hipsters at the home for aging hipsters still consider themselves too cool to associate with the aging goths or punks on the other floors. The idea of the title occurred to me when I was joking around with Pierre one night, and we kind of thought it would be like a comedy skit or story, so we came up with different jokes having to do with people of different subcultures reaching elderly status.

But I like the effect of having a novelty song title for a sincere and sad song. Maybe it is a tiresome little trick to pull on my audience, I don't know. I think I've done it before, often, trying to make things somehow both funny and sad. I think a lot of my favorite movies go for that, like Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums.

I would like to arrange this song for a full band and have someone who can actually play piano do the solo part in the middle -- Pierre and Ian and others have told me that all my piano melodies sound the same, so I went back and changed the ending of this one, but now I don't like the way it sounds! Maybe I could study the instrumental passages on some of my favorite songs to see how they end -- It's always been tricky for me, I always end up playing the not just above the initial note, and then the initial note itself. It turns out very pop, very catchy, but very bubblegum in a way. And it does kind of make it all sound the same.

***

I'm in the middle of what is supposed to be the best book about Motown, Where Did Our Love Go? by Nelson George, which I am enjoying so far although it's talking more about the business side of things than I expected and less about the songs themselves, but at least in the case of Motown the business side of things is fascinating and inspiring (although they didn't pay musicians well at all). I bought this because I recently acquired all of those complete Motown singles collections (which is a truly huge amount of music, about 50 CDs worth) and I wanted some background info.

I like how Motown functioned as this single unit during its peak years, a music machine, like one band but better than just one band, it was so well-organized and efficient. I know the artists weren't always happy with that, but I personally love the songs of the mid-60s more than the more personally expressive albums Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder made in the 70s (theirs are the only ones I've heard), but I think the thing about the mid-60s Motown hits is that they are so calculatingly designed to be easy to love and to be commercially successful, to put people in a good mood where they're played, to get stuck in your head. It's great to listen to at work. And I feel like the lyrics are very good, very sad and touching at times. But I don't know, maybe as I get older I'll be more into the later-era stuff. I like the up-tempo stuff from that era, but I don't care for the ballads at all.

But I thought about trying to put together a music factory here in Athens, but one that is maybe a bit better for the artists financially/creatively. I'd like to make very outlandish and political productions with costumes and scripts, kind of like a low-budget MGM musical except about class differences. But I'm bad about getting in over my head and not finishing things, so I need for the time being to just keep at this song a week pace, which should keep me busy enough.