At our album release party, last month, I introduced this song by saying, "I had a dream I was David Johansen as an anchor man, reading the evening news...and that includes the sports and weather, motherfuckers!!!"
It's total bullshit, but it explains the song pretty well, if you ask me.
This is an example of a song, that, lyric-wise, was a complete stream-of-consciousness explosion, aided by sleep-deprivation, and media over-exposure. That's a mouthful, isn't it?
It was late Summer, 2016. Dim Donnie Trump had just clinched the Republican nomination for....(gulp)...the....presidency. I mean, it was unTHINKable! One couldn't take it seriously, almost. It just felt like a big fucking joke - one that stood out, significantly, in a world that's FULL of bad jokes.
It was one of those nights in which I stayed up all night at my girl's house, watching crappy shows on Netflix, and dicking around, playing Words With Friends, etc, until 6:30 in the morning, when one (usually) has no choice but to pass out.
That was when it hit me: "Armageddon won't be televised, Pull the silver screens over your eyes...." Again, this ultimate fruition of what they called "Trumpism"....it COULDN'T be real. It HAD to be a fucking JOKE. It will PASS, and SOON, right? He can't possibly, WIN, right? RIGHT?!!! Something in the back of my mind probably was probably a little nervous, even if I wouldn't admit it to myself or take it seriously. So I got back up, and wrote the ENTIRE lyric of this song, pretty much verbatim with how we recorded it. I then immediately texted it to Lase, who asked me why the fuck I was still up!
What's weird about it is, that third verse: "The nightmare, Baby, has come true, The shallow end is deeper than you..." Again, I was pretty-much kidding. I mean, I thought it was..."apocalyptic" enough, if you will, that this fucking moron got the NOMINATION. I'm not pretentious or full-of-shit enough to say that I was being prophetic or some shit - I had NO fucking idea what was going to happen. What I did think was that maybe this was, in some sick way, a way to a path forward - one that would possibly scare us into some good sense (and, hell, maybe it still is, but I have my doubts). That's what I think I meant by, "You can fucking keep yesterday..." The last I heard, looking back never got anyone anywhere. I have always felt that nostalgia, more often than not, holds us back from becoming what we should be...you know, that kind of shit. Before long, you start telling kids to get off your lawn! What I guess I'm getting at is, if we can survive and get through this dark fucking mess, maybe we can can come out of it better than we were somehow. That's probably a big "IF" I don't know what choice we have but to try.
[There's also an excellent chance that this is all a big CON JOB, but....that's another discussion.]
This shit sure took on new meaning for me after the election results came in, almost a year ago. But, if you're reading this, you already know all about that, so...we'll leave that there.
The point of this? Well...some people are calling it the end of the world. I am not - at least not yet. But if it is, there's really not a lot that any of us can do about it except educate ourselves and be the best that we can be, in spite of it. "If tomorrow never come, When the lights go out, we'll have our day in the sun." (That's probably a nod to PRINCE, too).
As far as the actually writing of the song itself, I just sang the lyrics over Lase's riffs that he came up with on the fly. What we came up with really plays to my (admittedly limited) strengths as a singer. I'm sort of imitating an imaginary hybrid of David Johansen (again) & Lux Interior having the misfortune of selling used cars, or some shit. For that reason, it's probably my favorite song in the set to sing.
What do YOU think?
Thanks for reading & listening. Song #4 one week from now.
Marty E.
"Don't be afraid, Baby, to take that dive, 'cause it's the only way you'll ever know you're alive...."
LAST WEEK's ENTRY: Songs: #2 - Midnight Crisis - "Midnight Somewhere"
THE WEEK BEFORE THAT: Songs #1 - Midnight Crisis - "Take Control"
Stream/Download "Kiss My Apocalipps" on BandCamp
Download "Kiss My Apocalipps" on CD Baby (or buy Heart Beatings CD)
Download "Kiss My Apocalipps" on Apple iTunes
Download "Kiss My Apocalipps" on Amazon
"Kiss My Apocalipps" on Spotify
Showing posts with label new music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new music. Show all posts
Sunday, November 5, 2017
Sunday, October 22, 2017
SONGS: #1 - Midnight Crisis - "Take Control"
"Take Control" is the first song on Heart Beatings, my first album with Midnight Crisis, which is my first album as a lead singer & songwriter, (along with LASE, of course)....and furthermore, it's the first complete-incomplete song idea I've every put together on my own (which LASE added to later).
So, there are a lot of firsts, there.
Oddly enough, that song came spontaneously, out of cluttered air, about four years ago. It was one of those rare nights (at the time) when I stayed in & chilled after at least a week of going out every night. I was sitting with my acoustic bass guitar, which I'd had for the better part of ten years, but had done nothing short of jack shit with...and I thought: let's try something this rhythmic riff idea that I got from the Sisters of Mercy's song "Ribbons" - really simple, but quite deliberate, and easy to put a melody and an attitude over. So I fucked around with it, rolled it, poled it, and marked it with an E...but then I had to go to the other part of this idea...which was to take the main riff to Janes Addiction's "Ain't No Right", and put THAT through the same battering process to change it JUST enough to sound like it might resemble something of its own. (I also wanted all of this this contextualized by some sort of Guns n' Roses "Rocket Queen" or Motley Crue "Too Young To Fall In Love" sort of feel and swagger, if you will). Then, somehow, I came up with the bridge part, too, just via trial and error.
It's not as if I was or am ANY kind of bass player, or guitar player, but I am able to teach myself how to play what I have on my head and show it to someone else...who can then take the main idea and add the punctuation - dot the Ts and cross the Is - make this bold, and italicize this, and add lots of colors & shades & cool shit to it, and make it a fucking SONG, ya know?
I digress...
Another really funny thing I did when I did the original demo of the song (which, like all of my song ideas, I made using GarageBand on my phone, and doing a LOT of swearing in the process) was....I banged out a sort of "machine-shop" percussion track on this metal stool of mine, kind-of like I'd imagine Cop Shoot Cop probably did once upon a time, and it gave it this really cool, unique special percussion effect. It's for the reason that I banged out a similar pattern on an iron skillet when we recorded the song for real, at LASE's house, and if you listen really closely, you can start hearing it, I think, after the chorus kicks in.
Lyrics? Hell, I don't know. I came up with the entire thing on the fly, lyric-wise, and kept 95% of it the way I wrote it that night. It was just something that took shape, in that spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness kind of way that songs (sometimes the best ones) often do. I after I'd gotten the musical skeleton down, I just listened to it, and, without thinking about it, started with, "Sometimes I think about you when I'm lost into the night...." (a little PJ Harvey and a little Only Ones - right in the first line, huh?). I mean, ANYONE from your girlfriend to your grandma wants to hear that, you know what I mean? But you have to say these things within the rhythmic context of the song, and hopefully wrap enough of a melody around it to make it palatable for anyone besides yourself, HAHAHAHAHA!!! It can be a bitch....but when it works, it works.
My favorite lyric? The last line in verse 1: "...every tear you cry paints a picture of my heartbreak."
The chorus? "Take control"...of what, exactly? Hell....I think I was just really singing about what the fuck I was doing, now that I think about it. I'd had a lot of song ideas in my head for years, some being better than others, and was frustrated that none of them were coming into fruition. So, without giving it a lot of thought, I finally grabbed myself by the breaches and got to work....and now, we finally have an album of it.
I digress....
Anyway, the lyrics took about 5 minutes to write, and I finished the demo around 6am or so, or in my world, bed time!
It's the coolest thing in the world for me to have made this a real, recorded song, with LASE's killer guitar madness, not to mention his top-fucking-notch production/engineering work, + Mike's brutal warrior drums whipping it mercilessly into shape.
Anyway, download a copy....or at LEAST stream it.
And thank you for listening.
Next song, next week.
Marty E.
"Nothin' matters but tonight and you and me..."
Stream/download "Take Control" on BandCamp
Download "Take Control" on CD Baby (or buy Heart Beatings CD)
Download "Take Control" on Apple iTunes
Download "Take Control" on Amazon
"Take Control" on Spotify
So, there are a lot of firsts, there.
Oddly enough, that song came spontaneously, out of cluttered air, about four years ago. It was one of those rare nights (at the time) when I stayed in & chilled after at least a week of going out every night. I was sitting with my acoustic bass guitar, which I'd had for the better part of ten years, but had done nothing short of jack shit with...and I thought: let's try something this rhythmic riff idea that I got from the Sisters of Mercy's song "Ribbons" - really simple, but quite deliberate, and easy to put a melody and an attitude over. So I fucked around with it, rolled it, poled it, and marked it with an E...but then I had to go to the other part of this idea...which was to take the main riff to Janes Addiction's "Ain't No Right", and put THAT through the same battering process to change it JUST enough to sound like it might resemble something of its own. (I also wanted all of this this contextualized by some sort of Guns n' Roses "Rocket Queen" or Motley Crue "Too Young To Fall In Love" sort of feel and swagger, if you will). Then, somehow, I came up with the bridge part, too, just via trial and error.
It's not as if I was or am ANY kind of bass player, or guitar player, but I am able to teach myself how to play what I have on my head and show it to someone else...who can then take the main idea and add the punctuation - dot the Ts and cross the Is - make this bold, and italicize this, and add lots of colors & shades & cool shit to it, and make it a fucking SONG, ya know?
I digress...
Another really funny thing I did when I did the original demo of the song (which, like all of my song ideas, I made using GarageBand on my phone, and doing a LOT of swearing in the process) was....I banged out a sort of "machine-shop" percussion track on this metal stool of mine, kind-of like I'd imagine Cop Shoot Cop probably did once upon a time, and it gave it this really cool, unique special percussion effect. It's for the reason that I banged out a similar pattern on an iron skillet when we recorded the song for real, at LASE's house, and if you listen really closely, you can start hearing it, I think, after the chorus kicks in.
Lyrics? Hell, I don't know. I came up with the entire thing on the fly, lyric-wise, and kept 95% of it the way I wrote it that night. It was just something that took shape, in that spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness kind of way that songs (sometimes the best ones) often do. I after I'd gotten the musical skeleton down, I just listened to it, and, without thinking about it, started with, "Sometimes I think about you when I'm lost into the night...." (a little PJ Harvey and a little Only Ones - right in the first line, huh?). I mean, ANYONE from your girlfriend to your grandma wants to hear that, you know what I mean? But you have to say these things within the rhythmic context of the song, and hopefully wrap enough of a melody around it to make it palatable for anyone besides yourself, HAHAHAHAHA!!! It can be a bitch....but when it works, it works.
My favorite lyric? The last line in verse 1: "...every tear you cry paints a picture of my heartbreak."
The chorus? "Take control"...of what, exactly? Hell....I think I was just really singing about what the fuck I was doing, now that I think about it. I'd had a lot of song ideas in my head for years, some being better than others, and was frustrated that none of them were coming into fruition. So, without giving it a lot of thought, I finally grabbed myself by the breaches and got to work....and now, we finally have an album of it.
I digress....
Anyway, the lyrics took about 5 minutes to write, and I finished the demo around 6am or so, or in my world, bed time!
It's the coolest thing in the world for me to have made this a real, recorded song, with LASE's killer guitar madness, not to mention his top-fucking-notch production/engineering work, + Mike's brutal warrior drums whipping it mercilessly into shape.
Anyway, download a copy....or at LEAST stream it.
And thank you for listening.
Next song, next week.
Marty E.
"Nothin' matters but tonight and you and me..."
Stream/download "Take Control" on BandCamp
Download "Take Control" on CD Baby (or buy Heart Beatings CD)
Download "Take Control" on Apple iTunes
Download "Take Control" on Amazon
"Take Control" on Spotify
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