I will just go ahead and assume that Jonathan and I will be two of the only people who think this is funny. I challenge you! I asked Jonathan, yet again, to save the day and suggest something for the song of the day.
LORD OF THE DANCE!
Here is his description of where this song came from. This is a true story that happened to him on a trip with several of his friends. It became a memory that we relived today in a dramatization:
There I am, driving through Yellowstone at night. The car approaches a looming silhouette that looks uncannily like a full-grown grizzly bear standing up on its hind legs. Just as I am taking in this shocking discovery, a flashing hazard light on the side of the road flashes and illuminates the figure that now appears to be nothing but a spruce tree. Feeling comforted by the new revelation, I continue in the car toward the figure and the light turns off. Is that a bear? The car gets closer. Tree. Closer. Bear. Closer. Bear! Tree? Bear? Tree! Bear!
Midi: Several tracks of treated beats and one track of treated grand piano
Vocals: treated (vocal transformer)
Finished track: slowed down 10 BPMs from original recording tempo.
Lyrics: Inspired from old set lists from other bands found at Hog Farm Annex when Pearl and the Beard played there last night. Jocelyn found three different set lists from nameless bands to use as scrap paper for our set, and, as we read through them, she mentioned they might work well as a 365 song. So, here it is an old set list put to good 365 use. The only rule was that I couldn’t change any of the words to fit the tense. I had to use what was there though I could combine them or split them up. In my original versions of this exercise (I did several), I used all the words, but for this song, I decided to cut a bunch out of it to simplify the piece as a whole.
This is how the set list I ended up using read… (if this is your band, or if you know who this might be: thanks!)
Label pills
El Gusano
Show Me
Ol Texas
Slow Shards
Super Vision
Acreless
Shot n Shot
Throw duck
Jet Fighter
Outside
Show Me Ole Texas
Show me ole Texas
The one we knew when we were younger
An acreless vision
Send me to El Gusano
A shot in the dark
I have super vision
She will see through me
She will see through me
Like your favorite dress
Show me ole Texas
Throw me a label of pills
We’ll drive through the night
Texas.
Pearl and the Beard is goin’ home tomorrow! It’s been a fun mini tour, and it’s been very relaxing. Thanks to all who made it out to the shows! See you soon!
Pearl and the Beard is leaving for tour TODAY (Monday, that is…) Philadelphia show tonight! Leaving Jonathan lots of food in the freezer… oatmeal cookies, and Green Tea Ice Cream (don’t know why, but he likes it… bleck…)
Title: I am not clumsy. I am “careless”. Or so Jonathan says. Or so Jeremy and Jocelyn from Pearl and the Beard say. I take things apart or they just magically break. And why not, I say?
Recording: My parents are funny and buy me funny awesome things. For Christmas, my mom bought me an Edward Cullenlunch box. It came with a thermos! (It leaks.) Tonight, I found some rubber bands hanging around the house. I took my lunch box apart and strung rubber bands on it. You can hear them break and snap and fly off in this song.
Do you remember Olive’s bells from a few days ago? They take a prominent role in this song. Olive’s bells are super cool because they are just colored bars on a wooden frame that aren’t held down by anything, so you can pick them up and put them in any order or whatever. You can hear me pick them up and put them down again, then pick them up into a little bundle and then put them down again. You can also hear me rub my hands in circles on them. I like this sound.
My bells: I first recorded them clean, but after listening a few times, I tried some effects and loved it. They have amp simulation and vocal transformer on them.
Vocals were a choice I wasn’t sure I should make actually, but I put them in any way. Since this was a deconstruction, I bent over, squished my diaphragm, crooked my neck up and shut off my throat for the first half. I used the vocal transformer on a second vocal track. I have been using this on my vocals lately, and I’m finding I really like the ease of this tool and what it allows me to do… though I feel it’s a little bit of a cop-out. In the last few seconds there is a tiny melody the vocals take on. I wonder why it’s there when this is a deconstruction? Maybe there is some light at the end of the rubble? I don’t know.
I recorded this song at 120 bpm and after all the tracks were recorded I raised it to 150. I did this because it was 1) getting too long and I was afraid you wouldn’t make it to the end of the song – maybe you still won’t, but I hope you do. 2) It needed that special something. It always freaks with the sound to try this. I’ve done it on one other song: I like it.
The frequencies were screwing with the mic, and it was peaking: both problems of which I am extremely annoyed, but it’s totally my own fault, but I didn’t want to go back and re-record stuff, so I’m going to deal with it.
You doing alright today? I hope so. If green tea ice cream isn’t your thing (which I totally understand), might I suggest a dreamcicle?
This is a dedication piece. I didn’t intend it to be. I started playing around on my loop pedal and brought what I had found to garageband and recorded it all there.
As I started creating it very quickly, not being too picky or redoing a lot of tracks, I found myself playing around with sound effects, as Guy Capecelatro tends to do. I like this… it makes me think of Laurie Anderson’s (sound artist) work I heard once that had a bunch of foot steps in it. I love the sound of footsteps.
Before I knew it, I was putting together a piece where I wasn’t sure if the person was leaving from one place and going to another or returning to the same place. The clock suggests the latter, but because the door sounds are different, it makes me think they left a friend’s house and walked home… I’m not sure. It took only a few hours to complete. I am slowly changing my perfectionist ways.
In any case, as I devised the song, someone kept popping into my mind for some strange reason (it must have been the nature sounds). I have befriended a bird lover who lives in the middle of the mountains (or so I’ve been told) of California, plays the cello and is a great musician. This song, even in all its imperfections, is dedicated to him: all the way into the top of the trees.
Taking A Light To Where There Is None (A Dedication)
(Announcing the Debut of Synthetic Strings! Dreams DO come true! Yessss!)
Here’s the story:
I played a show at The Knitting Factory in Brooklyn a few weeks ago. I met this really cool, tall red-headed guy named Christopher Faroe (sweet name, right?!). After I played he walked up to me and handed me a note with my name on it (it kind of awesomely reminded me of passing notes at lunch). On this note read, and I wish my scanner was working so I could just show you how cool this note is:
Dear Songwriting Person, If (when) you become (more) desperate for song topics, perhaps the following will prove helpful? -the possibility of airships in the Byzantine empire-the silk road-ancient sawdust-contemporary sawdust-Lord Byron, himself!-Sea creatures in precarious situations (especially seahorses, starfish, Jellyfish & Narwalls)-falconry (a noble, ancient art)-cumulonimbus-outer reaches of outer space-moi Good luck, if you run out/need more, email me – Christopher
This was so cool. I wish more people were this forthcoming with notes at shows about “Falconry, a noble and ancient art” (probably my favorite one)… I mean, have you ever done this? I certainly haven’t, and I really appreciated it. The other day in the car, with my new uke and a road trip a head of me, I started singing, “Sea creatures in perilous situations”. I didn’t have the list with me so I thought it was “perilous” not “precarious”, and I recorded the vocals before I got home to check the list. But I think it works well as it afforded me the opportunity to use SYNTHETIC STRINGS FROM GARAGE BAND…. YESSSSS! As a string player, nothing beats synth strings. NOTHING. So, curl up with your favorite used copy of Moby Dick and some popcorn shrimp from Popeye’s and push play. You deserve it.
Writing: Jonathan, my lovely companion, was very helpful with the writing on this song. He suggested I relate the perilous situation to something random… like love?! So, I blame that “random” perilous situation choice on him. But, I would struggle with a line and he’d shout out something super weird from the couch like “mollusks in public fornication”. Also, did you know that extroversion means the act, state, or habit of being predominantly concerned with and obtaining gratification from what is outside the self. This will come in handy later I think. I also wanted to use at least one scientific animal name in this song, so I used the name for sting rays: Dasyatidae.
There is another aspect of this song. I love the sea. I love the sea. I wanted to be a marine biologist for a really long time. When I was little, my family would road trip to the Oregon coast every summer for a week or so. We’d go see the glass blowers, fly kites, and stand in the rain. It would rain and rain. I love the rain. One cloudy day we were on the beach. I was flying a kite and running backwards. Not paying attention, I ran backwards right into a huge boulder covered with BARNACLES and slid down it. Wearing shorts, this caused, as you can imagine, some pretty nasty cuts down the back of my legs. Ever since then I’ve had this totally weird, weird, weird fear of little things clumped together. This is a real fear! It has been only in the past few years that I have run into other people with this same fear, which makes me feel a little less strange. The thing about the fear for me is that it doesn’t apply to every single little thing clumped together like raisins, peas or stuff like that… but stuff like: spores on the back of fern leaves, clumps of warts (ahh!!!), ant piles, ahhh… I can’t list them anymore… but you can google this: trypophobia. I attempted to google it for you and link it but couldn’t deal with it. Needless to say, barnacles are at the height of intensity in this song! Funny enough, though they totally freak me out, if I see barnacles in person, they are so fascinating, and I can’t look away and end up grossed out but staring at them. I tried to get you a picture but, again, wussed out… so, there you go.
Recording: I think sound effects are pretty awesome, though I wish I had actual field recordings to use, garageband will have to suffice. Everything was tracked separately. I recorded everything from Sam Stolpe’s apartment yesterday morning (see song no. 43 The Wreck of the Hesperus), got home, felt totally dizzy from sleep deprivation and totally knocked out, so this morning cleaned everything up and have added, synth strings, organ and THUNDER! And TOTALLY messed up and said “Behoveth” instead of “Behemoth” on the lower voice… sigh… oh well. You do a few songs about the bible and it infiltrates everything else…
May your Sea Creatures remain safe this morning…
EHP
Sea Creatures in Perilous Situations
Sea creatures in perilous situations
Sea creatures in perilous situations
Like love is
A lot like love is
Sea creatures in perilous situations
Sweaty Sea snakes in compromising positions
Giant mollusks in public fornication
Like love is
A lot like love is
Pretty mermaids and their topless salutations
Tiny Lobsters in scandalous conversations
Cagey Clownfish with insidious affectations
Like love is
A lot like love is
Narwhals delighting in extroversion
Dasyatidae! Dasyatidae!
Barnacles!
Monstrous Barnacles!
Behemoth barnacles!
Sea creatures in perilous situations
