Sunday Song # 6 - "Coach Caught Me Cryin'"

We lost our lead after my clumsy fumble
I couldn't shake the sadness and the shame
I know they say that winning doesn't matter
But what about when it's a play-off game?

People want to see you at the top
They crowd around to watch you shine
But every winning streak will someday stop
And that sure changes peoples' minds

A big success knows many skillful lovers
The lucky few may always get to choose
No winners lay alone beneath their covers
But True Loves sleep beside the ones who lose

People want to see you at the top
They crowd around to watch you shine
But every winning streak will someday stop
And that sure changes peoples' minds

For every winner, there's a loser left behind

For every winner, there's a loser left behind

***

This song is yet another collaboration with Nate Mitchell of Cars Can Be Blue from his Titans days, a set of lyrics half-finished and abandoned more than two years ago. It's funny, I have a much easier time working with Nate when he himself is not in the picture to disagree with my decisions -- I think the problem with the two of us together is that each of us is determined to have final say about what stays or goes. 90% of the time we are in agreement but that other 10% of the time things can get so ugly!

But this time we were listening to some kind of corny 60s or 70s country hits and were kind of admiring the craft or use of metaphor or something. I can't really remember. Maybe it was a case of "Oh, that's easy, I bet we could write a hit country tune, no sweat," and I think maybe we went for the corniest possible scenario, starting as a joke but then getting more and more serious the longer we worked on it, so that by this finished version it is unusually heartfelt.

***

This is another key of C tune, this time with not a single minor chord, the whole thing is C, F, and G -- I'm beginning to put together a track list for an EP with all the key of C outgoing topical songs, to be released simultaneously with the EP in the key of B, which will be the more cryptic art/literature songs. I'm curious to see which one people prefer and also just if anyone notices the difference.

This week (maybe because of the strange warm weather, maybe because Mercer offered me a February 14 show) I've felt excited about music again. I'm going to be trying out at least two potential bandmates this week. I'm determined to get back up to at least a five-piece band to do the more elaborate arrangements. Let me know if you're interested in trying out. I try to be pretty open-minded about finding a role for anyone interested, no matter what your individual talents may be. Visual art, choreography, lights, costumes! I just watched a DVD of Temptations performances, I was so blown way. Let's all get rich together!

Sunday Song # 5 - "Sympathetic Mind"

Inside a classroom, we get lectures
And then we go through metal detectors
They turn the lights out and show a movie
How to identify our latest enemy

Everybody's talkin' 'bout terrorists
But I don't even know if they exist
Sometimes I think I hide a sympathetic mind

I think too much, my friends dismiss me
Say I should shut up, no one will kiss me
I wish they'd understand, they mean so much to me
I wish they'd care about the things that I can see

Everybody's talkin' 'bout terrorists
But I don't even know if they exist
Sometimes I think I hide a sympathetic mind

They search our lockers, they search our backpacks
And what they take out, they never give back
They call it safety, I don't feel safer
They make a rule book and change it later

Everybody's talkin' 'bout terrorists
But I don't even know if they exist
Sometimes I think I hide a sympathetic mind

***

So at this point this song has been finished, recorded, and released on Feats Of Strength for over a year and a half, and only this week did I finally figure out how to fix it. I'd always been troubled by the first line of the chourus, "Everyone I know is a terrorist, but I don't even know if they exist" because to me it just didn't make sense unless you really really wanted it to, and that the "they" at the end of the line could well be referring to "everyone I know" rather than "terrorist(s)". But then I realized a change that is so much simpler, so much more to the point: "Everybody's talking about terrorists, but I don't even know if they exist." Why it took two years for this to occur to me, I have no idea. There is a phrase in French that translates to "wit of the staircase," which is the clever retort you think of just as you are leaving the party or laying in bed that night, and I suppose this is sort of a case of that.

Also changed from the version appearing on Feats Of Strength is the ending of a line, "they turn the lights out" in place of "they turn out the lights" which doesn't really seem to matter at all until you hear which syllables have to be emphasized, so that the released version goes, "they turn out the lights," which, again, doesn't make any sense. This was pointed out by Jason NeSmith as he was recording us but it was too late in the process to go back and change it.

And of course this song should be sung by Becky Brooks of Cars Can Be Blue, not me. Just consider this posted version a demo. I'm currently scheming about a new super commercial pop project (inspired by reading about Motown) to be done in collaboration with Becky (I haven't discussed this with her yet), ideally creating an Avril Lavigne style mainstream mall pop album, or even better something like Lily Allen. This song would very much be a part of that project. At this point I would love so much to be involved in something that actually makes money/has an appeal to more people.

This too is the result of playing a surprise show by myself upstairs at Tasty World the other night and seeing how completely disinterested in my songs most of the people were. It reminded me of playing at DTs Down Under open-mics back in the day, just trying to sing lyrics shocking enough that people would pay attention. I guess this may be why rock bands tend to turn up so loud? To prevent the audience from talking? I went straight home afterward feeling like I had to reevaluate my whole course in life, to think up a new strategy.

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.

Sunday Song # 3 - "The Fight"

***

Adulterous embraces and murderous rage
are promised by a poster as she waits in line to pay
She's out alone tonight, patient and polite
here to escape her dreary day

It's taken from the life of a famous libertine
She read all about it in a glossy magazine
She sits and stares as light cuts the air
and faces so familiar appear on the screen

She sees the fight and hears the swelling violins
She's not too sure how this will end
But what a nice surprise
Force finally decides the best man wins

Underpaid employees impatiently wait
Everyone else is gone but still she hesitates
The story's reached its end, life begins again
but what's a few minutes more if she's already late

He's watching television and acting upset
She speaks to him softly, wraps her arms around his neck
She doesn't want to fight, she just turns out the light
and imagines a man she has never met

She sees the fight and hears the swelling violins
She's not too sure how this will end
But what a nice surprise
Force finally decides the best man wins

***

Key of B, although not a part of the small town north GA songs. No minor chords. An earlier version of this has been performed live by the full-band Titans many times, and an even earlier version appeared on the one EP (unreleased) that John Demartino and I recorded in early 2005 in Durham NC under the band name the Stops and Starts.

I spent the past week doing yet another substantial revision of the lyrics of the verses of this song, this time making them fit a much stricter rhyme pattern than before, and still I'm not 100% happy with it. This song is set primarily at a movie theater, and while it would be reasonable to assume it is inspired by my experiences working in a theater here in Athens, it actually goes back to when I was working at Burns Court Cinemas in Sarasota, Florida, in 2003 and 2004, although it has been altered continuously since then, always failing to reach whatever it is I want it to become.

I have always been happy with the structure and particularly the use of the chorus here, that it is not just being repeated, but that this repetition actually plays a part in the plot of the song's story, and is in fact the whole point of the song, that the main character is repeating the events of the film to herself in her mind later on, that the escapism of the film is something she can carry with her out of the theater.

Like I said, I like this, but I have never been quite able to get words, a melody, and chords that seem good enough. A lot of times I'll spend months laboring on the lyrics of a song but make up the music in about fifteen minutes, and I think that is the case here, although the chorus came later and is the one part of the song I am most satisfied with, musically, although I think the whole thing may fall apart if it is fact-checked and it turns out that there is for example only one violin used in a Hollywood string section.

***

I think I had the initial idea for this song some time after Brian Hughes and his father took me to see the film Training Day, which I remember as being exceptionally dark and brutal for a mainstream Hollywood film, but the scene in particular that I remember (possibly incorrectly) was that there was this very violent fight scene in slow motion with really dramatic classical-style music playing in the background, which got me thinking about music and how it could manipulate an audience's emotions to the point that they might accept actions on-screen as morally/ethically good that they otherwise would not. Or that a scene like this might program into audience members the idea that desirable heroic masculinity requires brutally beating or even mercilessly killing your opponent. Also the lines at the end of the chorus, "what a nice surprise -- force finally decides the best man wins," is my attack on the convention of films in which Good triumphs over Evil in some kind of climactic violent confrontation -- this to me seems to risk indoctrinating the audience with the idea that in the real world, the winners (big business, countries with strong militaries, big tough dudes who kick sand in the faces of scrawny bookworms and walk away with their girlfriends) are also necessarily morally superior/virtuous to the losers -- Like, how convienient is it that we do not have to feel any sympathy at all for the losers who got smashed to pieces? I think much moreso than Training Day, films like Star Wars and Lord Of The Rings are guilty of this. Someone (I think on Salon.com) wrote about how Star Wars is much more interesting if you are watching it as a propaganda film of a fascist state who is retelling their own history after winning a war.

But I don't know, this song is also very much about someone who watches a lot of movies and in a way prefers watching movies to existing outside in the real world. Which is very much like me, the author. But I do want it to also be about at least one of the dangers of this, which is being disappointed in your actual life because it does not measure up in whatever way to the fantasy. So that the fantasy of the Hollywood film, while we are loving it while it happens on-screen, serves actually to drain some measure of happiness from our life in the long run. But I think there are movies that have just the opposite effect, although good luck finding even a politically/ethically smart film with actors who are not unrealistically good-looking.