#12

Don’t be fooled by the misleading title of this week’s post, “#12.” It is no more and no less than the fifty-second song posted to this blog! School’s out for summer, my friends! As Kanye might say, “Welcome to graduation.”

As my loyal readers — both of you — probably know, my enthusiasm for this project has ebbed and flowed over the past year. There have been weeks during which I felt like I was undergoing some essential artistic metamorphosis, and other weeks (like this one) during which I felt like I was merely “filling the form,” i.e., providing the service that was required of me, without the aid of any additional artistic stimulation. Both such moods have their place, and I’m sure that will become increasingly clear with a little hindsight. If there’s any theme that’s emerged from this project, it’s the value of hindsight — be it a month, a year, or ten years. Everything always looks different in the ol’ rear-view mirror. Which, I guess, keeps you from getting too ecstatic or too depressed about whatever you’re currently working on.

By sheer coincidence, this is the very week that Baby Teeth are going up to Key Club, a recording studio in Michigan, to record the tracks for our next album, Hustle Beach. The songs we’ll be recording, with very few exceptions, comprise what we feel is the cream of the whole “52 Teeth” project. So in that sense, we can observe the phenomenon that life provides so precious little of in real time: resolution!

Ah, I’m starting to sound like the drunk at the end of the bar. So let’s get on with a bit of commentary. “#12″ was the final (and twelfth) track on my 1997 self-released cassette, That’s What All the Girls Say. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, it was a time in my life during which I was heavily under the spell of Randy Newman’s early solo work, and that influence definitely shows in the composition. I still like the lyrics a lot, and the piece as a whole was always intended as a “credits roll” kind of moment, so I think it works as the final post here. The vocals are pretty low in the mix, and I think that, somewhere in the mixing process, the MIDI piano track was moved a split-second apart from the vocal track, which is why all the vocals sound just a bit late. But hey, it worked for Billie Holiday.

Sincere and heartfelt thanks to everyone who’s read this blog over the past year, and particularly to everyone who’s chimed in along the way. Good night and good luck, and much love.

Your man in front of the eMac,

Abraham

Record Company Man

This week brings us Part Two of our Pearly Sweets and the Platonics retrospective. At this point, the band was relocated to Chicago, and the lineup now featured Lance “Chance” Fabuloso (né Carl Lowendorf) on guitar, Stave Davidson (né Ben Schultz) on bass, and the ever-steady Brian Bosworth (né Brian Bosworth) on drums. “Record Company Man” is one of the stronger tracks from our 2002 EP, ostentatiously titled The Hottest White Dance Band in America (a title lifted from Ken Burns’s Jazz documentary… I believe it was a tribute originally given to Benny Goodman’s band).

Listening to such things with a few years’ remove is, as always, enlightening. I do remember, in writing this tune, being reasonably cognizant of how much I was ripping off the old Springsteen classic “Kitty’s Back.” The whole E Street Band sound is very much present here, especially in the background vocals. It’s a song with a pretty strong form, but as usual, I have some quibbles with the rather over-cooked arrangement. Basically, there are too many ideas going on here. Going into the bridge, the tempo suddenly surges forward, only to be pulled right back eight bars later. Probably didn’t need to happen. Similarly, there’s a great background-vocal part that kicks in at the 4:08 mark (“The big talk never ever seemed to last…”). I now wish I had just let that be, rather than trying to layer an even more passionate lead-vocal line on top of it. But hey, if I really let things like that bother me, then I’d never release records at all. And then the world would have less digital content as a result. And where would that leave us?

My singing is done in an extremely “rock” style, with throw-ins like “brothah” and “baby” that I’ve since pulled back from a bit. Highlights include the characteristically awesome drumming of Brian Bosworth, and the group hand-claps, which sound quite powerful. Could that have been the work of engineer Peter Andreadis, whom I met during this session and who would go on to become Baby Teeth’s drummer? Most definitely!

Hot Potato Jr.

This week we hop back into the Delorean and travel to the year 1999, where we find my college band, Pearly Sweets and the Platonics, diligently recording our full-length album, Pick Yourself Up. In order to give the album a manly total of fifteen tracks, I supplement the full-band tracks with a few piano-and-vocal numbers. This is my favorite of the bunch, “Hot Potato Jr.”

It clocks in at less than a minute, marrying New Orleans-style piano playing with nonsensical lyrics. I was really into Randy Newman’s early solo records at the time, and I’m sure that contributed to the writing of this number. It also seems like I’m doing some kind of Fats Domino impression on the vocal.  Lyrically though, it’s pretty far out. Or maybe it’s just playful. Playful is good… listening to this one helps me remember that. Songs with ponderous lyrics can be eminently forgettable, while little baubles like this one seem to have a lot more staying power. I’m sure there’s a life lesson in there…. discuss.

The Part You Play

Greetings dudes, and sorry for the late post. Here’s a new song for you, tentatively titled “The Part You Play.” Lyrically, it falls well within my recurring motif of songs about showbiz/Hollywood/actresses (viz. “Celebrity Wedding,” “End of Actress,” “Bad Weather”). The opening couplet, a reworking of the opening line of “You’re So Vain,” was inspired by a recent Vanity Fair article on Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, and Carole King. The track was also inspired by {SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF WATCHING THE SOPRANOS} the song played as the credits roll on the Sopranos episode where Ade gets whacked. Something about “I loved the part you played.” I went back to listen to it, and it’s not even that great of a song, but it fit the moment well and had an impact on me. What can I say… I’m soft like Charmin. I should also give shout-outs to Spoon, from whom I ripped off the basic groove (see “I Turn My Camera On”) and Van Morrison, from whom I lifted some of the organ solo (see “Youth of 1,000 Summers”). Starbucks-rock… that’s my main influence.

As you can probably guess, the track was recorded in a state of great haste. No background vocals, minimal instrumentation, and a mix that is a bit amateurish. There are pros and cons to this approach, but what I enjoy about it is that the songwriting is forced to stand on its own, rather than hiding behind a slick arrangement. One reason why I laid it down extra-fast (aside from being pressed for time in general) is that, as of last week, it’s already part of the Baby Teeth repertoire. So for once I wasn’t jumping up and down and waving my arms at my bandmates. They already like this one.

Good Gravy!

Yah! I completely spaced on doing a post for this week. As Fishbone once mused, “Am I going crazy, or is it just the world around me?” Please forgive my lackluster performance…. I am currently a bit swamped, or as Jefferson Starship might remark, I’m knee deep in the hoopla. Regular service will resume next Monday.

In the meantime, seeing as we’re coming up on the one-year mark, let’s make this a career retrospective week. Comments are welcome on one or both of the following questions: Which is your favorite song posted on “52 Teeth” so far this year? Which is the biggest turkey?

99¢ Ice

For this special Memorial Day post, we are taking it way back to the winter of 1994, when a legendary blizzard resulted in two weeks off of school for the lucky teens of Louisville. My first band, Mayhem Maybe (previously mentioned in the “Indian River” post), used this blip of found time to record our magnum opus, “Master/Unfazable.” This track, “99¢ Ice,” is my favorite of my songwriting contributions to the album.

We were using pretty cut-rate recording equipment… an eight-track cassette-tape recorder, I think, and whatever mics were around. But it ended up really serving this song, enhancing the “found-recording” aesthetic copped from Dylan’s “Basement Tapes.” My “Sunday-casual” singing style here owes much to my worship of Pavement and Lou Reed (who also receives a lyrical tribute: “‘Take your time, Lou’/ But that wasn’t my name”). You also might notice that, whenever there’s any free space in the arrangement whatsoever, I attempt some New Orleans-style piano riffage, generally falling off the beat within approximately four seconds. Ah, some things never change.

Game Over

This track, “Game Over,” exemplifies a common trend in my creative process: intending something simple and ending up with something weird instead. I set out to do a few things here. First, I was inspired by an ominous bit of graffiti in the alley across from the Logan Square YMCA that read “GAME OVER” in black spray-paint, with no further explanation. From there, I tried to write an 80s, Eurythmics-style midtempo soft-rocker, ideally limiting myself to three chords (there is a fourth one that creeps up in the chorus, I’m ashamed to say). The “woo, ah-woo” vocals that open the song are my tribute to the Redwalls’ song “Deep in the Heart,” which contains a great “ah-woo woo” break of its own.

In any case, after not listening to it for 36 hours or so, it sounds much weirder and more gothic than I remember. As if it’s being sung by some lonely bureaucrat from 1970s East Germany on a slow night at the state-sponsored karaoke bar. (Yes, I am thinking of the great film “The Lives of Others” at the moment.) It also sounds a little slower than I intended it, but maybe that adds to its disorienting effect. Your thoughts?

Dripping Candle

Happy Cinco de Mayo one and all on a sterling spring day here in Chicago, U.S.A. Baby Teeth just got back yesterday from a super-fun romp through the East Coast, so we will be looking back into the vault for this week’s submission, “Dripping Candle,” a track that yet again shatters pre-existing 52 Teeth records for length and girth.

Many of you are likely already familiar with this song, which dates from 2005. It marks the beginning of my collaborations with the great Jonathan Messinger and his “Dollar Store” shows at the Hideout here in Chicago. The Dollar Store is primarily a literary series, wherein local writers receive an item from a real-life dollar store, write a story about the item, and present it to a very attentive audience. When Jonathan invited me to participate, asking me to submit a song instead of a story, it was this audience attentiveness, far outstripping that of a typical rock audience, that intimidated me — I knew that I couldn’t just throw something together about cars and girls like I usually do. I had to strive for a three-dimensional kaleidoscope. The item he gave me, by the way, was a candle in the shape of a grand monument, in front of which sat a tiny pharoah with his legs crossed. Thus, I decided to write a song about a pharoah new on the job and struggling with self-doubt, particularly in the face of the titanic legacy of his legendary father.

I began by ripping off one of the grandest guitar riffs I knew: that of Lou Reed’s “Dorita” (not a song about a snack chip) from the Magic and Loss album. What would happen if this riff were matched up with a beat from an 80s hair-metal ballad? I think I was subconsciously thinking of “Walk Like an Egyptian” also, on account of the Egyptian context of my dollar-store item. I don’t get around to dropping a chorus until the 2:24 mark — very bad form for a commercial-pop tune like this one. The chorus is accompanied by vintage “exotic” background chanting (“oh-whoa, oh-whoa oh-whoa”) that has no tie to any particular culture but rather exists as 80s shorthand for “outside of North America.” And then suddenly, the chorus closes with a bit of piano-and-vocal After-School-Special schlock, in which our pharoah expounds upon the paradox of being high-and-mighty, yet tiny inside: “Gonna settle disputes, build institutes / And be a great divinity / But next to you [dad] / I’ll just be little old me.”

At the 3:49 mark, the 80s ante gets upped further, when the morale-boosting moment begins. Think of any great cinematic training montage — from the Rocky movies maybe, or more to the point, the “Higher and Higher” montage from Wet Hot American Summer. At this point, the pharoah has transcended his self-doubt and now begins to assert his own legacy, sprinting across the launch pad before making his final leap at 6:00 sharp: “AAAAAAHHH!”

Enjoy!

Calculators

You would not be out of line in considering “Calculators” a loving tribute to the Brothers Gibb, mixed with a tablespoonful of Blackstreet. To me, it belongs to the same family as some older songs on this blog like “Kathleen” or “I Do Little Things,” i.e., genre exercises that allow for a lot of lyrical vulnerability. That being said, the aforementioned songs are far from the most popular songs I’ve posted, so perhaps this one will fall by the wayside as well.

It’s either very old or very new, depending on how you figure. I yanked the roots of it a couple days ago from a songwriting notebook I was keeping in mid-2001. I had lived in Chicago less than a year… can you imagine? When I revisited it this week, I remembered the melody right away, but I also felt like the original lyrics were sort of all over the place. For example, one line read, “Askin what’s your name to Mr. So-and-So.” What does that even mean?

So on Friday, I got out my hacksaw and forced a more linear story that tries to play on a “calculator”’s ability to be a person or a device. The lyrics reveal that, despite the narrator’s contempt for such calculators, he himself is the real numerologist… he just can’t stop quantifying everything.

As far as the arrangement goes, well, I just kinda ran outta time. So you get piano, bass, drums, and a lead vocal. It’s not bad. I figure that you’re gonna like it or you’re not, and a few extra layers of synths and voices wouldn’t really change things anyway. Pragmatism dressed up as stoicism. Classy!

A Weekend at Home

A busy weekend coming up for yours truly… most of it will be spent at a family wedding. So what better occasion to post one from the vault, specifically one that includes the lyrics, “There’s one more wedding to which you’re supposed to go”? This one, another refugee from the Speak, Memory sessions, is one of my favorite tracks in my whole oeuvre (French for “egg collection”). And now it is yours: “A Weekend at Home.”

Way, way back in 2004, there were few albums I listened to more, or with more relish, than Daft Punk’s Discovery. (Thanks to the great Brian Bosworth for turning me on to it.) The notion of making music that was club-friendly yet melodically complex was extremely attractive; it was likely the idea I was chasing in pursuing a solo album to begin with. This track, featuring some hot Afropop guitar-picking by “Hot” Carl Lowendorf, is what I’d consider my most successful realization of this idea. Interestingly, I wrote it with one finger. Hey, get your mind out of the gutter and give me a chance to explain. I allowed myself to play the keyboard with one finger only, simulating a crude synth-bass. If that bassline, plus a vocal melody, couldn’t carry the tune, then I wasn’t interested in it. It’s the kind of compositional limitation that always yields good results. (More recently, I’ve been composing all my songs a cappella — with no instrumental accompaniment whatsoever. I do love straitjackets.)

Lyrically, I was trying to convey a pretty universal feeling: returning to the home you grew up in, and trying to resolve the person you were with the person you’ve become. Despite the bravado of the lead vocal, there’s a lot of fear and anguish in trying to rectify all those identities. This clown is crying on the inside!

Finally, this track continues in the tradition of Speak, Memory songs that reference the oldies: the coda section quotes from “Walk Away Renee” by the Left Banke. I should also note here a correction to my “Bad Weather” post: my dad pointed out that the U.S. hit version of “I Will Follow Him” was performed by Little Peggy March, not Petula Clark, as I had erroneously stated. See what you can learn from a weekend at home?