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?
