This is a thing I started writing a while ago and finished today:
I would like to preface the following blurb by noting that if anything personally significant surfaces as a result of this writing, it will be entirely indebted to Ben Burnett and his impeccable blog. Well, perhaps not entirely, but mostly.
First of all I'd like to note that the drums in 'Oh, Sister,' are pretty much a blueprint for the drums in 'Come Pick Me Up,' and that is awesome. I'm working on an album right now, and it is almost entirely finished, save for some recording, some re-recording, and the submission of what will most certainly be some kick-ass album art, that I'm psyched as shit about. Now, I realize that in my mind, the three albums that I 'finished' over the last 6 or 7 months were never 'finished' in any tangible sense, in that they are not available for you in any way, aside from 'Blue & Grey,' which is available on myspace for free, so take it. I would really like to finish all of them, so that anyone who wishes to could own a copy of the Elvis EP, Tuesdays and Blue & Grey, but it hasn't happened, and I've become more distracted by the day, and to be perfectly honest, the motivation just isn't there. Sorry dawgs. This is not to say that I will never finish them, because it is my belief that they are all worth finishing (this includes Blue & Grey, which I don't consider finished on account of the fact that 'Snake Eyes' deserves a better quality recording, and 'Same Heart, New Winter' is played with awful tempo, and lackluster vocals). But it may be a while, is all I'm saying.
Now, I'm gonna go a little crazy here and completely blow the lid off of this whole mystery thing behind the new album, 'cause almost everyone knows what's up anyway, so fuck it, and also, it should be done in no time.
So that everyone knows, the official title for my upcoming release (which will be on cassette, btw) is This Gun
Okay, this is why:
You have probably noticed (and I'm assuming you know me, obviously) that I write songs about girls exclusively. This is because of two things: one is that all the best songs are about girls, and two is that I am fucking obsessed with them, I can't help it, it's just my steez. Now, because of this condition, the last two albums I made were 100% centered around a chick (that's one chick per album, sadly), and this isn't necessarily a bad thing, cause I always have a lot of shit to say to a chick that I will not, and if I can be cliche for a moment, it is through song that I express said 'shit.' So I wrote a few albums for some chicks and afterwards it struck me...'what next?'
This puzzled me for about a day, until I was riding the bus to work one morning, this would've been somewhere on the Martinon bus route at somewhere around 7 in the morning, and I most certainly would not have had no more than 2 hours of sleep the night before, and I was listening to Bruce Springsteen in my headphones, specifically, 'Dancing in the Dark.' Now, I am aware that Bun fucking loves that song, and I assume that is because it is stupidly good. This is part of the reason that I so specifically kept him in the dark about this title, cause I knew he would think it was a great reference, but my friends, it is no mere reference.
The line I'm referencing, of course, is 'this gun's for hire...even if we're just dancing in the dark.' Which is great lyricism, by the way. And while I was riding the bus and watching the sun rise and desperately trying to keep from falling asleep and spilling a cup of coffee on my crotch again, this line struck me in a panicky wave.
I decided, in that moment, that I would write an album centered around me and my relentless, desperate, awful, stupid, uselessly strategic pursuit of females, and that I would call it 'This Gun,' because that is the fucking perfect title. In that line, Springsteen is obviously using a metaphor, and that metaphor of 'this gun,' is obviously him, in pursuit of her, which is pretty much my whole steez wrapped up in one perfect lyric.
So, about three days after I came up with this idea, I was doing blades at JJ's with him and Al Pal and I could not contain my excitement about this idea that I had, despite the fact that I had no idea how I was going to approach it, and I didn't even have songs semi-written for it. I told them the idea, and although we were quite stoned, it was obvious immediately that this idea was the right one for various reasons. It was perfectly appropriate, clever enough, and most importantly, it looked and sounded good. Because of their reaction, it was no longer an idea, it was the title.
Some time after this I attempted to finally write a song for the album, but there arose many problems. Firstly, it sucked ass, and secondly, it was about two different girls, instead of none. I liked the guitar riff, and I said this sort of semi-clever mean thing about someone, but ultimately the song proved inconsequential. This was unfortunate, but not impossible or at all discouraging, as the song did sound different, and was thusly a move towards my goal.
All I knew at first, was that I wanted to sound more like early to mid-90's radio rock. I also wanted to write about myself, and therefore write about an assload of people. So I wrote that song, and scrapped it, concentrating instead on new and better lyrics and songs.
Then I had this great weekend, and it really kicked off the whole album. Bun, Al Pal and Arbro spent a weekend eating pancakes at my crib, and on Saturday morning, I believe, as Bun and Arbro were leaving to buy more pancake mix, Bun jokingly told me to write a song while he was gone, so I did. That song was All Those Adjectives, which was originally going to be the opening track. With this song I had found a 90’s aesthetic I felt comfortable with, as it didn’t seem trite and it addressed the subject of the album.
On the strength of that first song, I embarked on a 5-day songwriting streak; that is to say I wrote a song a day for about 5 days, which Al Pal predicted would happen. Unfortunately, I don’t think any of those songs proved worthy of the final product I had in mind. Unless ‘I’ll Be Online’ was one of them, which I’m not sure of. I wrote a few okay choruses n junk, but one of the songs reminded me of 4am by OLP, which is funny but not really a good thing, and the other one had a bad title and awkward verses, and both stuck to the 90’s thing far too much, and I didn’t want the album to be a shitty version of Rock N Roll.
One day though, and I don’t remember which or anything, I told Al Pal that I wanted to write our generations first official love song, which is obviously a pretty bold statement to make, but whatevs dawg. So I wrote a song called ‘I’ll Be Online,’ that I really liked, and I think that’s where the turn for the better happened.
Some time after this, I wrote I Am Your Gun, which I knew immediately would be the album closer (and is coincidentally a perfect counterpart to the album opener). So I had a tiny bit of a tracklist and I was happy about that, but this is where the shitty part happens. I hit this block, and fuck writer’s block dawg, I’m a song-a-day type a dawg. So I hit this wall. I was trying to write my way out of it by just writing all day everyday and trying everything. I even, and this is not a joke, got high and sat in the kitchen, because I don’t write songs whilst high, or in kitchens, and the song I wrote sucked ass. I also wrote this pretty song called ‘I Am Trying to Catch You,’ that I got bored of immediately. Plus I was specifically trying to write this one song, that I had a chord progression and lyrics to but no chorus at all, and obviously good pop songs hinge on an irresistible chorus. I did, though, eventually finish that song, and I’m gonna tell that story cause I like it.
So I’m waiting for Mike to pick me up so I can go up to his crib and smoke some dope and write raps, and I’m strumming my little brothers guitar and I hit this really easy like, A7 and D thing, and started singing over it, and it was rad. But like I said, no fucking chorus. So I spent the next two or three weeks working on this song, because it was really important to me. So after weeks of writing shit for it every day, I sit down at my desk with the guitar, and just play it, and I added this line from this awful poem I blogged, and it worked, but I still had no chorus, so I said fuck it, and took out all of the lyrics for the chorus I had, and replaced them with, ‘No arms will ever hold you like these arms of mine,’ cause I heard it on my crooners collection that day. But because I didn’t have a surefire chorus progression, I decided to just press record and wing it. So the chorus is just on the spot, and I really fucking like it, so it made the cut.
I also had this idea that I wanted to write a song with my electric organ, cause it kicks so much ass, and I never use it (except to play ‘These Eyes’ whilst stoned). So one night I moved the organ into my room and wrote this awful overdramatic love song that was trite and obvious. Some time after that,
I skipped ‘From Chivalry,’ which is fucking stupid. So JD and I are chillin, and we’re waiting to go get my tattoo, and I was probably bitching about something, and we started writing this song, but we had to leave. So we go get the tattoo, and we decide we should go get beer afterwards, but because I wanted to get real drunk, I suggested we skip the bar and just buy booze, then we decide to buy weed. So we get some weed, hit the crib and write this great song that is still my favourite cut on the album.
Earlier in that week was when I broke my writer’s block, with ‘Lackluster Penmanship.’ I was basically just in a shitty mood and wrote about it using Graham’s words. I can’t remember if I was drunk or not. I think I was. Then I decided I should add Quit Breakin My Heart to the list, because it’s still fresh, and the story behind it is the opposite of what everyone thinks.
So me, JD, Al Pal and
So at this point I think I thought that the album was finished, for the most part, but then on Sunday, I was chillin around the crib, planning on cleaning, but instead wrote a new song. I wrote it as a kind of ‘that‘s the end of that chapter‘ kinda thing because it‘s been one year this month since I kicked fuckface out the crib. I was pretty psyched about it as soon as I finished writing it so I called Josh and got him to come over and put harmonica on it, then we did like 20 takes of it to get it right, then we were good. A little time after we were listening to Elvis and I was telling JD why Are You Lonesome Tonight? Is such a kickass song, and I decided we should try to cover it, so I called Cam and got him to help me figure out the chords and we started playing it and I just kinda improvised this little guitar part and then we practiced it and recorded it, and that‘s pretty much the whole thing.
So it’s been good to have it pretty much finished. I got the album art from Kay-T and obviously (if you’ve seen it) was pumped as fuck, cause it kicked a bunch of ass, and then I designed the album case at cam’s and made some copies. I even got this cool pic on the inside behind where the tape goes that I really like. Also, I have three new songs for the next album that are really really good, and I’m pumped as such. Today I locked myself out of my apartment and spent the whole day smoking weed at JJ’s and put some lo-fo shit on the comp and made a ‘greatest hits’ kind of deal for myself, with the new songs and cuts from every album. I’m pretty happy about it, I just called it Alas! I Shall Prevail.
We played at SJHS’s coffee house the other day and it went really well. A few people really liked it, apparently. Chicks like the romantic angle, I bet, and my stage banter went over really well. Plus we were right high so our on-stage personas were quite funny. Anyway, I tried to put a thing on purevolume today but I don’t know if I did. I figured out how to put This Gun on the net though, so I’ll get on that pretty soon, and once everyone has already found a way to listen to their personalized cassette copies of the album I’ll think about making some CD’s.
