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?

vicious

MP3: You Really Piss Me Off (2.9 mb)

There's a great series of videos called something like "Classic Albums," and the one about Lou Reed's Transformer album is particularly good. Mauricio suggested it to me and I will in turn suggest it to you. [Here it is at Amazon]

The mp3 for this entry is from a few years back and well you can guess who inspired it....

baby's on fire

MP3: To the Lake (4.5 mb)

I've got a thing for Brian Eno.

It began several years ago when a fellow high school stoner brought over his vinyl copy of Here Come the Warm Jets, a record that - though having been released four years prior - was a new discovery in our endless search for music that "did it" for us, music that rose above the dreadful clatter of disco and the sensitive MOR that dominated mid-70s radio in central Alabama.

A million groups fit this bill at the time, one of them being King Crimson, and it was through reading about them (Robert Fripp, specifically) that my friend had happened upon Mr. Eno. So we put the record on and became infatuated with the strange sounds and rhythms. But even though "Baby's On Fire" became something of a weekend battle cry for us, we perceived Eno as little more than the jester in the court of the Crimson King, not realizing he was actually more a Merlin whose sonic magic would prep our ears for the music in our future. He was duly noted, but not further pursued.

Throughout the years his name would appear again and again on the backs of interesting albums, and a worn cassette copy I had of ...Warm Jets returned to my playlist less a curiosa than it had been before. The music was really beginning to make sense, and so I began paying more attention. And I liked it. A lot.

Fast forward to now and I'll tell you that I recently finished reading Brian Eno's Diary: A Year with Swollen Appendices (a Christmas gift from Cliff) and am currently making my way through Brian Eno: His Music and the Vertical Color of Sound (a gift from Kate...I am a lucky man). Both are fascinating reads, and have even further enhanced my appreciation of not just his music, but his whole way of thinking.

Well, getting to the point. A few months ago I had an idea for a song that felt to me like one of Eno's layered vocal type songs (as opposed to the ambient or "idiot energy" ones). Naturally, it didn't turn out exactly as I had envisioned, but I hope you will enjoy it nonetheless.

TO THE LAKE

She sits in her chair
While the old man has his paper and coffee
Her knees bent, feet on the seat
With a glare that could topple Qadhafi
The walls oh the wooden walls
How she wants to tear them down
With a cry to the glistening sky
To the lake without a sound

She waits for the rolling of shoulders
Revealing a subtle benigning
Half-dressed in her favorite suit
When she sees me at the window signing
So we go down, so we go down
So we go down to the lake
Through the brush and the brambles and such
That get tangled in my cape

To the lake, to the lake

We stand at the edge of the lake
Like content little conquering warriors
Our screams as we dive in delight
Surely fade into neighboring foyers
Mary Mae, Mary Mae, Mary Mae
Won't you take me in your fort
In the light till the coming of night
Till the autumn ships de-port...