56. You Broke Me In: Ninety-Six Seconds (RPM)

DAY FIFTY-SIX

Commercial interruption:

EHP has an early Mercury Lounge show, TOMORROW NIGHT! Monday, March 1 at 7 pm!  With Dan Torres.  She starts at 7 pm and is doing some 365′s with special guest Abbie Gardner from day 36!  Get more info here.

I know what you need: A random picture of the kissing scene from The Godfather. Yes. Exactly.

The past week has been a whirlwind. The second I get home, I’m off again.  Yesterday was a crapshoot: lost the charger, computer died, and drove from Maine back home all day yesterday.  The snow in New York has been piling up, and it’s making everything take a little more time than usual.  Pearl and the Beard played an awesome show at Hog Farm in Biddeford, ME (my favorite venue so far!), and we leave again in just short of a week for our tour to Austin.  I’m tired already.

The RPM Challenge is ending TODAY, and I’m rushing to finish tracks… here is a finished track I’ve done for the RPM Challenge with Guy and Mike.  (For more information on the RPM Challenge, see day 46.)

I love electronic, experimental, indie-bandish, dance, etc. music.  I write acoustic ballads sometimes, but in my heart I love this stuff and wish I could put out stuff like it.  Broken Social Scene uses a weird sound-catalogue song, and I like their impressions and quirks.  Animal Collective is another band with a cool indie-electronic sound collection that has gotten a lot of press lately.  (There are more, but it’s already 9 am.  Let’s post already.)

Anyway, for the RPM I put together beats and a bass track from Garageband and sent it to Mike Wolstat and Guy Capecelatro. We are, each of us, at the mercy of the others to put whatever they want onto our original tracks.  It’s been so interesting to see what the others have come up with this.  I worked on this yesterday and today.  It’s been hard to know what to pull out and back and find clarity and a focus, but it is what it is, and it’s groovy, which I like most of all.  What you’re hearing here is a collaboration of two tracks from each of us to create:

You Broke Me In: Ninety-Six Seconds

35. Two Out of Three Dinosaur Feathers (A 5 Minute Group Effort)

DAY THIRTY-FIVE

Weird.  I totally posted this last night before I went to bed, and I wake up at 7 to find that it is still a draft, waiting to be posted.  Oh, well.   Here you go!

Two Out of Three Dinosaur Feathers Agree: Watermelons are Best for a 5 minute song.

Thanks to Jocelyn for the lyrics!  yesss!

“Two Out of Three Dinosaur Feathers Agree: Watermelons are Best for a 5 minute song.”

1 2 3 4.

Verse 1
Oh, I got a watermelon and I’m walking from the store.
I got some little brussel sprouts and baby, I got veggies galore.
I got veggies galore!
I got a small banana and I got some Pikachu.
I got some big old noodles and I’m giving them to you,
Oh baby, I got vegetables for you!

Chous
Oh!

Unintentional Bridge
The Deliberation over how long to make the Chorus

1 2 3 4.

Verse 3
Got a watermelon and I’m walking from the store.
I got a bag of peaches and I’ve got veggies galore,
Oh baby, you know I got em galore!
I got a bag of noodles and I’ve got some pizza pie.
I got a little croissant, I got it in my eye,
Oh, got that croissant in my eye!

Chorus
Oh,
OH!

1 2 3 4.

Intentional Bridge
Watermelon Noises

1 2 3 4.

Verse 3
I got a little sister and she really is my friend.
She is a really great person, I’ll love her til the end.
Oh no, I got veggies for her!
I got a crazy diet when I eat my vegetables.
I got a crazy friend in me, and you know that I love you the most.
Oh, I love you the most!

Chorus
Oh,
OH
OH!
AAH!

Fin: “Okay, that was perfectly serviceable.”

This is what happens when two out of three members in Dinosaur Feathers and Pearl and the Beard have a show and write a song in 5 minutes in a tiny basement venue in Brooklyn.

Jocelyn Mackenzie: uke

EHP: Omnichord

Greg: Drums

Ryan: Electric Bass

Tonight we all had a show at a cool place in Brooklyn called Sycamore.  It was intimate, small, and sweaty.  Pearl and the Beard played almost all new songs, but specifically, we wrote this song in about 5 minutes: the fastest collaboration of the 365 yet.  Thanks to Jocelyn for her totally improvisational lyric skills, Greg and Ryan (the really loud one- sorry about that) for their magnificent drumming (a talent which I was clueless he had, in fact!) and bass talents (respectively).

This is a good learning experience for a number of reasons: I’m getting better at the omnichord and realizing I’m a horrible lyrical improviser.  I suppose the only way to improve is to just do it, but until then I’ll just let Jocelyn handle it…

I looked at Jocelyn, pointed at her and said, “Say the first thing that comes to your mind.”  After some hesitation (amazingly), she shouted out: Watermelon!  So, I suppose this is an ode, of sorts, to a watermelon.  The style chosen was: POLKA. The weird noises you hear us making are the sounds a watermelon might make… if it could make sounds…hmm.

Now that it is 2 am, I’m sleeping!

See you tomorrow!

EHP