Zoë

First off, many apologies for being upwards of 12 hours late on this week’s post. I was overwhelmed by a surge of tryptophan that sent me bedwards last night, even as I was struggling towards my beloved computer terminal, BW12-87. Good ol’ BW12-87, she waited for me all night and is still in a charitable mood right now. Onward, then.

There are old songs and then there are old songs. This week’s dust-bunny, “Zoe“, has been kicking around for almost ten years; I used to hum it to myself in my college days. I originally envisioned it as a piano ballad, like my earlier post “Hard to Find a Friend”, but when I finally got around to recording it in the summer of 2005, it became a product of the digital age, using excessive drum-machine reverb to summon up a feeling of isolation and uncertainty. It lurches drunkenly from section to section. Phrases like “methodical continuity” or “rational development” would not apply here. Nor does the string arrangement obey the laws of any known nation-state. But it’s a groovy late-autumn ride all the same.

Lyrically, it tells the story of two ex-lovers who meet after years apart (yawn). Unlike that other song about the elderly couple (“Kathleen”), these two are in that cruel phase of life known as the mid-twenties, during which worry and self-doubt come as naturally as refusing to bathe. The narrator has held stubbornly to his dream of being a musician, while his erstwhile paramour has chosen to enter a program of graduate study. The narrator uses this information to enjoy a fleeting moment of superiority (he has, after all, preserved his “authenticity”) before tumbling back down into the deep, dark prison of artistic freedom.

Happy holidays everyone!

Fool for You

OK, by popular demand, I am posting a cover this week: my version of “Fool for You“, by Chicago’s own Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions. I whipped this up in October of last year in advance of the wedding of our friends Jocelyn and Erik, who were kind enough to fly Baby Teeth out to San Francisco just so we could be their wedding band. They wanted something for their wedding mix, and this was my contribution.

Just about every musician I know in this town is a big Curtis fan, and I’m no exception. I’ve been obsessed with this song in particular for years. First of all, there’s that bizarre 9/8 time signature, which is absolutely relentless. Second, there’s the desperately persistent horn figure, which I couldn’t really replicate in my cover because MIDI horns tend to sound fairly wack. I opted instead for a Spinners-style soul-strings line (since MIDI strings sound ever-so-slightly better). And third, there’s that killer opening lyric, full of disarming — yet menacing — straight talk: “Never liked nobody / That’s been mean to me.” Who is this person? A man-child who can’t process the complexities of the world, or an outlaw about to blow your head off? (Not that those two archetypes are mutually exclusive…. far from it.) Then, the next line reveals the wrinkle: “I got a heart full of stone / And I can’t take the misery.” Ah: it’s someone who’s spent their whole life avoiding heartbreak via the sheer strength of their rationality… until now. Someone finally punctured the shell, and now all hell is breaking loose. I could go on and on about this song, but music criticism is a highly controversial profession, and the Internet is hardly a forum for controversy of any kind. So I’ll leave it at this: it’s a BRILLIANT recording that everyone should own!

That said, the one thing that always bothered me about the song was its tempo, which struck me as too fast. Why let an epic tale like this one languish in midtempo limbo, when everything about the song calls for it to be a ballad? Covering it gave me the chance to make this case, aided on the chorus by a string motif nicked from my favorite slow jam of 1988, “Never Tear Us Apart” by INXS. I drowned the vocals and keys in reverb and wah-wah effects because… computers are fun!

The Last One

No, come on now, don’t get upset. Just because I post a song called “The Last One” doesn’t mean I’m actually hanging up this whole blog thing. It’s just a song title, that’s all. I should say this, though: I’m hereby officially abandoning even the thought that there will be a freshly-created song each week. I mean, it’s definitely something cool to shoot for, but I’ve started feeling like a heel each week if I don’t have time to create a new song, like I’m letting society down or something. But then I remembered…. it’s the Bush administration that does that, not me. So, even if I’m the only one that needs to see this in print, here it is: from now on, let’s expect an old song from the vault, and be surprised if it’s a brand-new one, rather than the other way around. Because otherwise my inherent Jewish guilt gets nourished with Miracle-Gro, and plenty of fresh water.

Onward, then. This song is a Baby Teeth demo from about eight or nine months ago. We wrestled with it for a while and then kind of gave up the fight. Listening to it again though, it’s not without merit, and I think it’s actually one of the better-mixed songs out of my home recordings. Musically, I was trying to strike a balance between the Stones and the Velvets, with maybe some Replacements thrown in there too. Sort of offhandedly rocking, if you will.

The lyrics are about one of my recurring delusions… the notion that I’ve always been one great change, or one self-discovery, or one self-help book, away from becoming the perfect version of myself. “I’m the last one / I’m all done changing now.” As if life is not a journey of learning…. as if it’s something you can conquer! To me, it’s always been a distinctly American pathology, the idea that if you work hard enough, you can remake yourself into a creature that never feels doubt or pain. After all, “it’s a free country”… so go right ahead and perfect yourself! Come on, what’s stopping you? Surely not millions of years of human history demonstrating that it’s an impossible task…. after all, you’re an American… you’re exempt from history! (You get the idea.)

I must admit that I felt weird, having written that long post last week about Content-Based Males, to read in yesterday’s paper of the death of one of the genre’s all-time greats, Norman Mailer. May you rest easy, Stormy Normy. Your work, as well as your compelling-if-flawed version of masculinity, meant a lot to me when I was twenty years old, and still gives me a kick today, 75 years later.

One of a Kind

“One of a Kind” was recorded about a year ago. I note this for a couple reasons: first, as a confession that I didn’t generate any new product this week, and second, as a matter of self-defense; while I am certainly a dork in many ways, I actually wrote the lyric “I write in my blog” before going and starting my own blog.

I’m posting it this week because I’m feeling sort of gloomy and November-esque, and this song suits my mood. And also because, a year later, the lyrics strike me as a pretty frank critique of one of contemporary hipster society’s most persistent archetypes: the Content-Based Male (CBM). CBMs hide huge helpings of solipsism and narcissism behind their mastery of culture. While CBMs in caveman times may have boasted directly of their personal attributes, a contemporary CBM instead snows his nearest and dearest with a deluge of music, film, and literature arcana. While keeping his vulnerability (and personality, for that matter) under lock-and-key, he substitutes a solar system of cultural references, from which the adoring listener (and you’d better be ready to listen!) divines the contours of a cultural superman.

After a couple beers, I often can’t resist bemoaning the extent to which the internet has given everyone the opportunity to create his own perfectly-manicured personal space, to which the real world could never measure up. Amazon recommends books based on what you’ve already consumed and rated, just as eMusic and Pandora will do for music, just as Netflix will do for films. So now, you can assemble your media dream team without even involving another human being! I won’t even get into the effects of MySpace, Facebook, and blogs here, but I’m scared of the cumulative fallout. What will this do to the human capacity for compromise, or the ability to coexist in a loving relationship with another person? With each passing year, will we retreat deeper and deeper into our perfect Cave of Good Taste, surrounded only by what our robot tastemakers tell us is the best of everything?

As you’ve probably guessed, I consider myself a member of the CBM Club. It’s something I wrestle with, something that kind of grosses me out. At the same time, I love Netflix, and I love eMusic. (And, lest we forget, I have my own blog.) On a good day, I love people, too.