Media Memory

Well, there were a lot of ideas running through the conception and recording of this week’s selection, “Media Memory.” I am a tired man, but I will try to do them justice.

Those of you who know me personally know that, in my heart, I am hardly an indie dude. I’ve always loved big, mainstream, pop music. Sure, it can be formulaic, but that particular approach to songwriting evolved into a formula because it works so well — because it’s a brutally efficient method for injecting a melody into the human brain. (Apologies for the fascist imagery.) My favorite practitioner of this kind of all-American hitmaking is Tom Petty. His songwriting is unadorned and effective, and the Heartbreakers (his band) exemplify L.A. session-man restraint at its finest. Allow me to overstay my welcome by adding that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all the songs I’ve heard from Sheryl Crow’s latest album, Detours. And I’ve already used this space to profess my attraction to the work of Aimee Mann. So you all know the drill: I’m a big dork.

It was only a matter of time before my love and respect for big mainstream pop found its way into my songwriting. In this week’s song, the arc from the verse to the chorus, and the placement of the choruses within the overall arrangement, is all exactly how Petty would do it. (Not that I’m claiming that my songwriting is as brilliant as his by half.) I also borrowed from two different Bowie songs — “Lady Stardust” and “Ziggy Stardust” — as well as countless other pop songs that are lodged in our Jungian collective unconsciousness.

On a related note, it’s been a long-term goal of mine to write more direct lyrics — another thing that Petty, along with lots of country-music writers, makes look easy. So this is my attempt to write a straightforward “story song”: a promising Hollywood actress is outed as a lesbian, and even in our enlightened modern age, it ruins her career (see: Lucy Liu, Anne Heche). Topically, I’m ripping Petty off yet again, via a little song of his called “Into the Great Wide Open.”

I always appreciate your feedback, but I’m especially curious to hear what you (yes, you) think of this one, since I consider it a pretty drastic departure from other stuff I’ve posted here.

Steve and George

This week’s song, “Steve and George“, has been running through my head for months now, and while this version is probably not definitive, it at least gets the song out in some form. I initially perceived it as a grand, hyper-produced affair, but due to time limitations, it became what we in the biz call a “pocket epic.” As Lou Reed once said, “Between thought and expression, there lies a lifetime.”

Lyrically, we are in classic Gemini territory: a split personality, a set of twins. Who are Steve and George? The song starts out with some praise of an imagined pop group called Steve and George, and then it sketches out the life of one of the group’s fans, a working stiff sucked into a job that’s taken his soul. Every time he gets too deep inside his work (wondering how the dollar went down — lifted from Bowie’s “African Night Flight”), he begins to dream of escape, living his romanticized ideal of the musician’s life (racing back home just to make his own sound). At every turn, he’s too consumed by self-doubt to act on his impulse: he slams on the brakes and turns around. By the end of the song, we’re wondering whether Steve and George even exist outside of the desk jobber’s own feverish imagination.

This song might strike some of you as very proggy, but I really don’t even like prog music. I guess the song does have lots of parts, slammed together with great force. I could see it being maybe twice as long, but then again, there’s something perverse about having each part come and go so quickly. Showcased prominently here is the Mellotron emulator that I got recently (part of the Reason 3.0 extravaganza). I love the tape noise that it makes…. very cool. I’m glad that I waited forever and a day to record this song, because I think it really benefits from the Mellotron.