April 30, 2006

somewhere apart

MP3: There's A Girl I Know (3.7 mb)

I'm in the process of ripping all of my CDs (and some vinyl and cassettes as well) into the computer since that seems to be the way I mostly listen to music these days. It's a never-ending task but I've got a dedicated hard drive, and iTunes makes it all streamlined and organized.

Last night was the night to tackle the Robyn Hitchcock discs, and there are quite a few of them. I've usually found that the music I like best, rather than being something just enjoyable to listen to, is the music that inspires me in my own attempts at writing. Robyn never fails there. His surrealistic tendencies, memorable melodies and explorations of both body and spirit (often in humorous and enlightening ways) are always a spark igniting the fuse to my muse.

Listening to his songs, the itch to do some recording landed on me hard, and I thought what a great exercise it would be to try recording one song every weekend and post the results here. A lofty goal I know, but I was doing something similar a few years ago - recording and uploading two songs a month to my website - and I found it an enjoyable and educational experience. Plus, working with that type of deadline/commitment helped lift a lot of the old songs off of the notebook paper and into their proper dimension in space...and it kept me focused (the bane of my existence being a lack thereof). The results may be predictably quick, rough & noisy, but modern technology makes it fairly easy to clean them up when there's time or a suitable reason to do so. No guarantees that I'll pursue that but I might, so check back and see, okay?

So - properly inspired, I sat down to write and record a new song last night. Unfortunately, it was becoming late and the few words and chords I had strung together weren't quite getting anywhere. Then I remembered a song I'd written several years ago and often played when sitting around with guitar in hand, but never recorded. I suppose still being shocked at the recent death of Nikki Sudden brought it to mind as I had been living with some records by Epic Soundtracks (Nikki's brother, who passed away in 1997) at the time I wrote it. "That's the one," I thought, and rolled the tape, as it were.

Not being a particular fan of "love songs" - I find my attempts at that horribly smaltzy and ridden with cliches - I would suggest to you that this one is less about unrequited love and more about a ghost or spirit of some sort who seems to be confused about the reality of his existence. But then, maybe I've been listening to too much Robyn Hitchcock again....

THERE'S A GIRL I KNOW

There's a girl I know
She lives right down the street
And every night I hear her
Talking in her sleep
But it's not ever me she's dreaming of

All the time I see her
Walking every day
But she just walks on by me
Never looks my way
So I just have to find a way to say:

Can you see me?
Am I really here?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

what a lovely, beautiful, sad and sweet song. it has been too long since i have heard music that reaches into my chest and grabs my heart. this song does it for me and it does it so well. thank you

KBJ said...

thanks for those kind words. you've made my day...