Lose My Head

Here’s “Lose My Head,” a slice of purely disposable pop for all you now people out there. While I was intending this track to welcome in the season of top-down joyriding, I conveniently forgot that I live in Chicago. So, even though this weekend’s temperatures hung slump-shouldered in the rainy thirties, we move ahead with our program.

The first eight seconds (wasn’t that a movie?) constitute a “psych-out,” if you will: a red herring of psychedelia, predisposing the listener to expect heartier fare. What follows, however, is strictly bubblegum (wasn’t that a movie?). The song’s strength, if it has one, is its giddy disposability… as it roller-skates by, it waves to Redd Kross, the Archies, and the Nuggets compilation, stopping just long enough to rip off a piece of “Take on Me” and the “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” sample from Kanye West’s “Good Morning.” Other than those errands, its main mission is to get to the Seven Eleven to get a King Size Snickers and an orange soda.

I was inspired to write this song via a music-industry pal who told me that, if I really wanted my music to get licensed for commercials and movies, then I should make music that makes people feel good, and preferably that even describes people feeling good. “Oh, I can do that,” I thought, “that’s easy!” Uhh…. well, I made it through most of the tune without any downer lyrics, but then I couldn’t resist inserting the words, “Somedays I don’t wanna get out of bed,” just to break things up and make myself laugh. That’s why I live in Chicago, after all…. sunshine and bubblegum can be so terribly monotonous.

I Wanna Marry You

Consider this week’s post, “I Wanna Marry You,” part two of my E Street Band study project, part one being last week’s track, “Big Schools.” While “Big Schools” was an original in the style of Springsteen, this song is fully a cover, one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite albums, The River.

I loaded the original version onto ProTools as its own track, and then I set about trying to make as close to a note-for-note cover as possible, time and budget permitting. (Clarence Clemons not being available, the saxophone was spelled by an organ.) One illuminating exercise was making a tempo grid that followed the tempo of Max Weinberg’s drum take. Now here’s Max Weinberg, the ultimate pro. You listen to the original and you think, “That Max Weinberg, he never misses a beat… he’s a machine.” But when you set out to map the tempo of the entire song, it turns out that he’s making subtle changes all the time — from verse to chorus, from before a break to after a break, etc. — and surely in the end it sounds better than it would have had he been truly “perfect.” Something to keep in mind in our age of digital perfection.

Other than that, I just really appreciated the pianistics of Roy Bittan as always, and how amazingly the arrangement works as a whole, with the notes of one instrument lending complexity to the chords of another. Indie rock is all well and good, but sometimes the big boys get big for a reason (see also: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers). Finally, it’s fun hearing Springsteen lift from the Phil Spector girl-group sensibility (by chance, I was listening to “Little Boy” by the Crystals earlier today, and I’d swear that song was at least subconsciously running through the Boss’s head while he penned this one). As I was doing my vocal take, I noticed that my Ronnie Spector imitation is strikingly similar to my Springsteen imitation, which must mean that he got his sense of epic drama straight from the source!

I’m going on and on here, but in closing I wanted to quote from a Springsteen profile that ran in the late great Creem magazine in January 1981, the month that The River was released. He was responding to criticism that he had taken too long to record the album (never mind that is now regarded as one of the greatest albums in the history of rock and roll!!!):

“I don’t want to just take up space on the shelf, ya know? Or worry that if you don’t have something out every six months, or even a year, that people are going to forget about you. I was never interested in approaching it that way. I’ve never been, from the beginning. I just have a feeling about the best I can do at a particular time, ya know? And that’s what I wanted to do. And I don’t come out until I feel that that’s what I’ve done. Becasuse there’s so many records coming out, and there’s so much stuff on the shelves. Why put out something that you don’t feel is what it should be? And I don’t believe in tomorrows, that ‘Oh, I’ll put the other half out six months from now.’ You may be dead, you just don’t know. You make your record like it’s the last record you’ll ever make.”

Preach it, Boss.

Big Schools

Depending on which generation you more strongly identify with, you’ll consider “Big Schools” a colossal rip-off of either Bruce Springsteen or the Hold Steady. Where do I stand? Well, as much as I love the Boss, I think this song bites the Hold Steady (particularly last year’s phenomenal “Stuck Between Stations”) even harder. That being said, Roy Bittan of the E-Street Band remains one of my all-time rock piano heroes… just a few notes from him, and my eyes are filled with tears. The intro and bridge sections are a sincere tribute to him.

For you statistics nuts out there, this track is the largest file ever uploaded to this blog — a whopping six point seven megabytes, and clocking in at almost six minutes in length. Overall, I think the song structure justifies its big waistband; it doesn’t feel particularly long to me. Is it too ambitious lyrically? Well… is it too much for a verse-chorus-verse pop song to follow its hero from his collegiate bliss to his suburban victory lap, through his tempestuous relationship with his three unappreciative, Atlantic Monthly-reading children, all the way to his eventual concession that his college days really were the best years of his life? I’m gonna say maybe so.

But enough with the caveats… overall, I consider this one of the better songs I’ve posted here, and worthy of your six minutes. This song is dedicated to my favorite big school, the University of Louisville, as the Cardinals steamroll their way into the NCAA Sweet Sixteen. Can they keep the dream alive this week?

Alison Lay Down

This week’s post, “Alison Lay Down,” was lots of fun to make. Whether it’s any good is up to you to report. (And I’m not fishing for compliments, incidentally… honesty will do just fine!) It’s basically just a tribute to all of my old soul heroes, whom you could list off as well as I, so I won’t bother. Concerning less obvious influences… I would say that there’s a touch of “Sweet Sweet” by the Smashing Pumpkins in there too. It’s another song in 6/8, which you already know I have hang-ups about. Then again, you liked the last one (“I Hope She Won’t Let Me”), so it’s worth spinning the wheel again I guess.

I’m on a bit of cold medicine right now, so I’ll keep this short and just say, this post is brought to you by pink unicorns and piping-hot Pop Tarts. Cherries, everyone!

I Need Love

As my regular readers are well aware, I have spent the last few weeks attempting to gravitate closer and closer toward the world of mainstream top-40 radio in my own work. This week, I take that experience to its logical extreme, directly covering a smash hit, albeit a smash hit from 1987 — L.L. Cool J’s “I Need Love,” widely considered the first rap ballad.

Many books about making it in the “industry” alert you to the necessity of enlisting the best talent your budget can afford. In the case of this week’s product, I decided to bet the farm. I simulated the original track as well as I could, and then I took out a $20,000 small-business loan from Chase Bank and sought out the most ubiquitous MC in Chicagoland: MC Beth Simpson of Naperville. MC Beth was the runner-up in the 1998 Schaumburg District 12 Rap-Off, as well as the official planner of the 2005 Wal-Mart Midwestern Rap Emporium.

In this case, I must say, I made out like a bandit. I gave MC Beth a flat fee of $20,000, and then I had her sign a contract that waived all rights to future royalties! I was surprised that an industry insider like MC Beth would go for such a deal, but hey, I wasn’t complaining. Since this track will surely generate millions in receipts, I will probably see MC Beth in court someday. Luckily, she does not know about this blog. (Please don’t tell her.) As the song says, “This whole experience has been such a revelation!”

Twisted

As some of you may know, Chicago has been assaulted by potholes this winter. They’ve hit me pretty hard — not too long ago, Lara and I drove over one and instantly got a flat tire, and then, a week later, I drove over another one that simultaneously knocked my rear-view mirror out of its socket and killed my tape player. Since then, it’s been all radio, a great proportion of which has been top-forty radio. I find that top-forty stations, sonically speaking, are much more avant-garde than adult alternative stations or indie-rock stations. Songs like “Calabria,” “No One” by Alicia Keys, or even “See You Again” by Miley Cyrus, are fairly adventurous productions. With this week’s track, “Twisted,” I’m aiming for that general football field…. a paranoid-yet-club-friendly obsession song that Kelly Clarkson or Britney Spears might sing.

Partially in response to last week’s comments, I wanted to write something with a bridge section that really delivered the goods. For inspiration I looked to “Since U Been Gone,” as that much-beloved track packs a lot of power-chord goodness into a pop format.

The lyrics may sound fairly pedestrian, but believe me when I tell you that I wrote five pages worth of lyrics and trimmed and edited until I was left with what you now hear. I know I’ve said it before, but it’s damn hard to tell a straight story.

Finally, I tried to leave more space in this arrangement, due in part to my feelings after the Baby Teeth show Friday night at the Empty Bottle. I felt like there was not quite enough breathing room in some of the new tunes… the arrangements felt over-eager. So this one is trying to be ever so slightly more in the cut.

Shrine

Last weekend, Lara awoke with a melody in her head that would not leave her alone. It was very catchy… dangerously so. Too dangerous to reveal here. The words were, “I’m not crazy / something something something / I’m just obsessed with you.” Anyway, we were sitting around toying with that melody, stretching it out, throwing it against the wall, and it eventually evolved into this week’s post, “Shrine,” a tale of obsessive love.

Lara ended up contributing several of the key lyrics, including the opening couplet — “Mama shuts me up and she locks the door / Daddy takes the knives from the kitchen drawer” — and the chorus’s thesis statement: “I’m out of my mind cause I want you.” (My original was the much more tortured epistemological tract, “I don’t know my mind but I want you.”)

I’m continuing to have fun with the good pop-rock sounds. I actually got a lot of inspiration from watching the new U2 concert film, “U2-3D,” over the weekend. This film has been flooded out of the popular consciousness by its more dominant colleague, “Hannah Montana in 3-D.” I think that there were a total of six people in the theatre. But despite the fact that Bono spent much of the film preening and prouncing around like he was an extra in Riverdance, I came away with a greater admiration for that band, mainly because of their extreme economy in writing hooks (both vocal and musical). The vocal lines that are known and loved the world over, like the “ooh ooh ooh ooh”s in “In the Name of Love,” or the “ho oh oh oh”s in “With or Without You,” are extremely simple. Three or four notes, tops.

Long story short, I came home and stripped down this arrangement considerably. I took my favorite two lines of the chorus and repeated them (rather than having four distinct lines), and I made the chord changes on the bridge the same as those of the verse section. Simplify, simplify. I’m basically trying to pare down these new arrangements until all that’s left is that which benefits the song itself, as opposed to that which exists only to cocoon my delicate ego. I don’t think this one turned out a home run… more like a long single. But sometimes ya gotta play small ball.

By the way, we are playing the Empty Bottle on Friday, and there will be lots and lots of new blog songs featured, including “Media Memory” and “Empty Frames.” All thanks to your magnificent feedback!

Empty Frames

Well, even though this is song #37 (I think) in this project, it’s week two as far as I’m concerned… my second week of trying to keep my songwriting straight down the middle. So far, it’s been a blast, even if it’s surprisingly hard work. Not that surprising, I guess — maybe it’s always easier to be an oddball.

This week’s track, “Empty Frames,” might be even more radio-oriented than “Media Memory” was. It’s a good old power-pop tune about lost love. The Cars, Guided by Voices, Cheap Trick, Weezer…. all your not-so-funky friends are here to share in this dance party. The rhythm section is fully quantized, in order to ensure maximum dancing enjoyment. Let’s party, fellow computers.

I really do feel like I’m learning how to write songs again for the first time. My first instinct, after setting out to write with more attention to “the rules” of songwriting, is to strip away all personality from the writing process. I think it’s only after one writes in that mode for a while that the personality — the style — starts to come back. Then again, maybe this song has some style to it… I’m too close to it to tell.

The song’s title comes from Lara’s artistic (and thrifty) instinct with the decor of our apartment — she hung empty frames all over the place. It occurred to me a couple weeks ago that “Empty Frames” would make a good title for a country song. This isn’t a country song. But, when I rediscovered an old tape that I kept next to my bed for the purpose of catching melodies that were in my head when I was drifting off to sleep, that title was still on my mind. And the melody that became the chorus was on that tape. So I slammed the melody and the title together in the old chemistry lab. That melody is probably about a year old… who knows, I was half-conscious. Much as I am now.

Thanks again everyone for all the great feedback on “Media Memory.” Hope you like this one too… the U.S.S. Mainstream sails again.

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.

Slave to Efficiency

Gentle reader, this post shall not tarry in any way, for I am fatigued. Here is a new song called “Slave to Efficiency“. It’s another “work song”, in the style of “Hustle Beach”, dealing with the chutes and ladders of the obsession with labor. I opted for an industrial-lite sound that I hope takes you back with fond memories to the heyday of Nine Inch Nails.

This song is warmly dedicated to Tom Brady and the New England Patriots.