We began on Sunday with
the strangest song of all times. It's somewhere between a white-boy-watered-down Meters meets Serge Gainsbourg meets side B of David Bowie's "Low." I raise my eyebrow to it.
Next came this fast little ultra power pop song that, for the moment, is called "Reeperbahn." Verse - chorus - verse - chorus - bridge (perhaps it's a Coda?). That's it. You're done.
Then we scratched our heads for a while on an older song called "Crying For Phantoms." I think after watching a bit too much Yacht Rock, we attempted to emulate the genre in earnest. While that blood most definitely flows in my veins, we weren't able to get the song in a form that fit the style. The jury is still out, and may remain there.
I strapped on the guitar and we did a version of a song called "Tickle." While steeped very heavily in the rock tradition, it feels fresh and earnest. I really love the fact that you can take this form - a rock song, and mold and guide it into a familiar, yet unique sounding "thing" that at once sounds vibrant and timeless.
So we kept on the Rock track and pretty much came up with a latent doozy. It's in extremely rough form at the moment, but it has that ultra-exciting spark of "the sound of inspiration" caught on tape. Had I some thoughtful yet extra simple lyrics, we might have finished it. I have some work to do for sure in the next few weeks.
We called it a night and went home in the stupid freezing cold of February in Chicago. It was -5°F on Saturday night which made today's 25°F feel like springtime. The only thing this weather does that is positive is it makes you feel like a survivor. Perhaps it also kills molds, fungi and maggots... hell if I know.
This morning we came in and worked some more on what came to be known as The Yacht Rock Song. While we played our parts correctly and in time, the end result was more of a whimper than a wallop. It's ditched for now.
Then I presented this song idea that Greg and I had recorded waaay back in the summer of 1998, just before I moved out to Chicago. It was a tricky little number with showy time signatures like 7/8, 5/8 and 9/8. We started out with this fancy re-interpretation only to simplify it greatly - only dropping beats here and there, instead of everywhere. Situations like this really defy intuition at times. Here we are with a much simpler song to work with, after all the retardo-metrics were surgically removed, only to find that it was now even more challenging to pull off in a way that everyone felt satisfied with. I throw my hands in the air to this.
We took a break for dinner, watched some of
The Old Grey Whistle Test, Volume 2 and swooned at Judee Sill, laughed at Argent, felt confounded by OMD, and moaned about all the band-syncing.
We reconvened at our instruments and gave this song, which is called "Three Doors," another go. I have sketches of lyrics for it at the moment and didn't sing during this last go round of takes. Silly mistakes and too much thinking really began to bog me down. We finally finished a version, but I wasn't completely happy with it. I was wrestling with how "perfect" it should be. Will the singing and the overall feeling of the song trump any technical playing issues? Will the technical playing issues detract from the feeling of the whole song? I am just unsure. So with that, we put it away.
Matt had to leave, so Greg and I decided to try "Tickle" again.
It rocked.
Simple, efficient, loud, and fun. A great contrast to the friggin rock we were trying to roll up the hill that kept rolling back down whenever we thought we were near the top. This, dear reader, is what I've come to learn as the real power of Rock and Roll.
We would go on to record two more in this vein. They're just sketches to play for Matt tomorrow morning so we can all get straight to business. Lots of unfinished lyrics to flesh out, but the inspiration is there because hot-damn are they fun to play.
That's all for now.
Hope to see some of you on Wednesday at
The Hideout.
Keep the fire,
MJ
