A Treasury Of Song

Serf City EP

2011-12-31T09:51:00.003-05:00

A Treasury Of Song Vol. 5 Pt. 1 - Wake Me Up If You Can

2010-05-25T22:31:00.004-04:00

This is the first album by Titans of Filth, it's almost all from the summer of 2002, when I was 21 years old and between my third and fourth years at New College in Sarasota. I was at my parents' house in McCaysville GA, isolated from my college friends and (judging by the contents of this album) emotionally pretty miserable, although not without a slight sense of humor.

People kind of hate this album I think. I was experimenting a lot on it, making my voice do different things. The songs themselves seem very much unfinished, usually just one verse and no chorus, many clocking in well below the one-minute mark. Sometimes it's embarrassing if I'm copying this or that indie singer a little too closely. The messy or broken sounding production is probably an unconscious imitation of the Microphones, plus my four-track cassette recorder was truly about to cease all functioning at this point, and so if you hear weird noises and things dropping out, it's a combination of these two things.

Musically this is still fairly close to my original vision for Titans of Filth, which would just be multitracked instrumental recordings of a bunch of guitar overdubs all playing different interlocking melodies. I have about 30 minutes of instrumentals done in this style that I've never released but may post up here eventually. I was always frustrated by the four-track limitation, however it may have ended up saving me from piling up too many overdubs. It's funny that for the past six years or so I've had the ability to record a more or less infinite number of tracks on my computer using the Garageband program, potentially a whole orchestra of guitars, and I haven't tried to go back to this idea. Maybe because it's easy to assume that if I only had this or that tool at my disposal, then I'd create this genius masterpiece of art, but then when the tool actually becomes available I have to scramble to think of another excuse for not doing it.

But about six months after recording Wake Me Up If You Can, I made a conscious attempt to record something very normal and straightforward (although still I had no idea what a musical key was, so unintentionally kind of weird and artsy), resulting in the Our Coma Summer CDR, and I'm still playing at least versions of about half of those songs regularly with the Titans.

I posted the link to Wake Me Up If You Can at the bottom of titansoffilth.com's new archive page, along with some fresh links to material I've previously posted in this blog.

It's Record Store Day y'all!

2010-04-17T16:31:00.005-04:00

We're so honored to be included on the album Wuxtry has produced for Record Store Day. We're in good company, and as I mentioned before among a group of bands very representative of my experience of the Athens music scene, far moreso I think than the line-ups appearing on the annual Athfest compilations: Casper & the Cookies, Cars Can Be Blue, Werewolves, Witches, the Arcs, Quiet Hooves, Tunabunny, American Cheeseburger, Dead Confederate, Twin Tigers, the Humms, Dead Dog, and Supercluster! Very limited quantity of these, so go buy at Wuxtry soon if you want one. Our song is "August Comes Again" which is a very different (and I hope much-improved) version of a song originally appearing on our 2003 Our Coma Summer CDR. We're planning to record still another version of this for our HHBTM full-length (hopefully out sometime this year) but this probably will be the only release for this particular version of the song.

CORRECTION! Hey I totally forgot to give Amy credit for playing keyboards in the Wuxtry comp liner notes! She plays the melody at the end of the song, the instrumental section, I think it is her playing electric piano and Ryan playing the same thing on guitar at the same time. So, unfortunately the insert does not say: "Amy Whisenhunt - vocals, keyboard." But it should. Sorry!

Show tomorrow!

2010-04-07T15:20:00.005-04:00

Hey everybody, we'll be playing with our friends Gemini Cricket tomorrow, come see us if you like our songs and music. We'll be performing with this combination of folks for the first time: Amy (keyboards/vocals), Jeff (bass guitar), Mercer (drums), Ryan (lead guitar), and yours truly.

Also Record Store Day is right around the corner and you will be able to hear our song "August Comes Again" on the special compilation LP Wuxtry has put together for the occasion -- quite a line-up too, and I think very representative of the Athens music scene, at least the bits of it I've experienced.

Hope all is well and please enjoy this awesome video (not us) --

I can't stop watching it!

This Saturday at 40 Watt

2010-03-16T14:57:00.001-04:00

Flier by Ryan Lewis from Grape Soda/Buddy System/etc.

Titans will be playing at 40 Watt Saturday night. The show starts at 10pm: Grape Soda, then us, then Eureka California, and finally Werewolves. This will be a new line-up of Titans, well super new actually considering our former new bass guitarist Mary was bitten in the hand by a dog (for real!) and had to be replaced at the last moment by our friend Jeff, and our drummer Mercer is on tour with Quiet Hooves and will be replaced by our buddy Wyatt from Werewolves. We'll hopefully have our new song "Race To The Bottom For The Prize" ready to go by Saturday. Pay attention, though, or you might miss it because it's so short, less than a minute I think.

My bandmate/roommate Ryan Wilson just came in and told me about a dream he had that we were trying to find a new bass player and so had a contest in which the prospective player had to be able to defeat Ryan in a "bass-off." Ryan usually plays lead guitar parts but has been learning Motown basslines such as "Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)" and "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and at my request has written some Motown-style bass parts for new Titans songs "The Fight" and "Bongos On The Beach," which we still need to work out for live performance.

A Treasury Of Song Vol. 4 Pt 3 -- Spring

2010-03-04T12:50:00.005-05:00

These are the final Levittowners recordings, from Spring 2003, shortly before John and I graduated from New College. "The Social Construction Of Bedtime" was recorded on four-track (I think) in the garage of the house where I was living at this time. All the rest were recorded in the ballroom of College Hall, a mansion formerly belonging to one of the Ringling brothers. We got special permission from the school to do a couple of all-night recording sessions there. It sounded great for our songs, like reverb on everything. Our friend David Jacco plays bass guitar where there is bass guitar. We used a pirated copy of the professional audio program Logic which we could just barely figure out how to use and which I'm sure ran painfully slowly on my laptop computer.

Unfortunately we broke up near the end of the recording session. When it came time to record the vocals, John and I were having a long argument about the lyrics to the song "Process, Or Politics" aka "Our Hero Is Here" and that was the last straw for Annie. I regret not finishing the vocals on these songs.

Also recorded in the ballroom around this same time was the version of "This Humdrum Town" on Our Coma Summer by Titans of Filth and the Brian Hughes song "Mary Anne," which is the most elaborate production I think I've ever been involved in even to this date, our attempt to do a big Phil Spector sound.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/tm350twnqbz/Spring.zip

A Treasury Of Song Vol. 3 Pt 2 -- Songs Of South Florida

2009-12-31T14:06:00.003-05:00

Here's an EP John and I wrote and recorded very quickly during a break from school in late 2002. The story of our trip to his parents' house in Fort Lauderdale is related in the first track.

The Class In General Vs. The Topic At Hand
Songs Of South Florida

http://www.mediafire.com/?0mhd2jltmnj

A Treasury Of Song Vol. 4 Pt. 2 -- The Levittowners -- Organized Music, 2002

2009-12-08T12:40:00.003-05:00

Here's the second batch of Levittowners songs, actually enough for an LP although these are very crude four-track demo recordings. At this point I had stopped singing and kind of just gave up writing lyrics to focus on playing guitar. Which was fine because John was writing a lot of very good stuff. John wrote all the lyrics here except "Would It Be Dishonest," which I wrote and sang, and "< < 0," Brian's one recorded contribution to Levittowners, although there is still a bit of his excellent solo material I hope to post eventually. The music here was for the most part developed in real collaborative fashion, jamming on our instruments at John's house.

Download Organized Music:

http://www.mediafire.com/?10jitfdymfh

A Treasury Of Song Vol. 4 Pt. 1 -- The Levittowners -- The Beginnings Of Group Life, 2001

2009-12-08T01:29:00.004-05:00

The Levittowners were a band composed at first of John D. and myself (we'd just recently been roommates recording as The Class In General Vs. The Topic At Hand) along with our new friend Annie who had recently transferred to our college.

In fall of 2001, John had moved to a house off-campus that he shared with two other students. Almost all Levittowners activity took place here in his tiny bedroom. John continued to play drums, at first using the same homemade drumkit from the Class V. Topic In All The Math album. He also purchased and made extensive use of an electric organ. Annie and I both sang and played guitar and during a short period our friend Brian sort of rotated in as a frontman, although his songs were very much fully formed when he introduced them. Our friend Ryne played bass guitar, except for the recording session where we finally broke up, where bass was played by our friend David.

Although we had I think only two shows (one a show Ryne organized, us opening for the Plastic Mastery at New College and the other a house show opening for who I cannot remember) we played together and wrote together often. Probably the truest collaboration I've ever had in a band, although that came with a lot of problems and may have led to us going nowhere in terms of worldly success and breaking up before we released anything. But we may have been doomed by being an indie pop act in Sarasota FL, where at least at that time there really seemed to be no venue for this kind of music. I think we were all super busy as students anyway, so probably we didn't really have time to think about trying to play shows or whatever.

We went through at least three different phases, and John put together three short collections of demos, each showcasing a very different era in the band's history. The first, available below, being this sort of shambling, precious, super lo-fi trio sound, long before we were a live band of any sort.

The Beginnings Of Group Life:

Download here

"Our Impending Announcement"

2009-11-27T16:57:00.002-05:00

Here is a video clip I edited together for a Titans song.

This song itself is a remake of a song from the 2003 CDR Our Coma Summer. This version has already appeared on the Athfest 2008 CD and will hopefully be featured on the upcoming Titans of Filth vinyl debut on HHBTM sometime in 2010. This song features Spencer on guitar, Ian on bass guitar, Emily on organ, and Nate on drums. Like our previous CDR EPs Best Behavior and Feats Of Strength, it was recorded by Jason from Casper and the Cookies.

The recordings we've made over the past several months (still not completely finished) feature Ian on bass guitar, Mercer on drums, Ryan on lead guitar, and Amy singing and playing organ, along with hopefully a couple of local surprise guests. These are recorded by Mercer on his cassette eight-track.

I'll announce more release details here in the hopefully not-too-distant future!

A Treasury Of Song Vol. 3: The Class In General Vs. The Topic At Hand (2000-2002)

2009-11-10T16:10:00.007-05:00

My second year at New College I shared a room with John Demartino, who I'd met early on during my first year. He'd been wearing a red Elephant 6 t-shirt, and although I'd never heard any Elephant 6 music, I had at least read a little bit about them in music magazines. John was my introduction to so much indie music, including Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records. I had discovered Lookout, K, and Kill Rock Stars by that point, but so much was new to me. I was mainly into 1960s era classic rock and punk/new wave.

Our first year we had played in a band with our friends Brian and "Tall" Hunter called the Imaginary Numbers that had no performances or recordings. Also John and I worked on an unrealistically ambitious sound collage thing that was never finished but which itself was very much an attempt to emulate the Olivia Tremor Control.

John took up the drums before owning any, assembling a kit out of whatever happened to be around: A lamp, cardboard boxes, a tambourine. This is what he played on the first release from our band together, which I'm presenting here for you to download. John named the band The Class In General Vs. The Topic At Hand, although I'm sure at least at the time he would have insisted I not use upper-case letters in the name. The photos above are of our friend Tim Cunnane recording us at New College's emusic lab, although the album I'm posting today was recorded entirely in our dorm room on my dying four-track recorder. Even the track that is sped up and manipulated by Tim was done so only by using the four-track itself.

Free download from Rapidshare

A Treasury Of Song Vol. 2: Teen Hygiene (1999-2000)

2009-06-22T16:54:00.003-04:00

Teen Hygiene began as an unnamed recording project in 1998, during the end of my days with the Flaming Wieners.

This collection contains the first Teen Hygiene cassette, Dance Dammit Dance!!, in its entirety (Tracks 1-21) along with highlights from next several releases. I do this because Dance Dammit Dance!! was a solid release, itself something of a compilation of material I piled up over a period of maybe eight months, while the following tapes were recorded much more quickly and carelessly.

Teen Hygiene was a solo project, just me along with whoever happened to be around. These recordings document the period in my life from the summer before my senior year in high school until the summer after my first year at New College in Sarasota, FL. When I turned 20, I decided to end the project because of the word "teen" in the name -- kind of arbitrary, I know, and I kind of wish I'd kept the name rather than the somewhat self-defeatingly misleading "Titans of Filth" name I adopted immediately after this.

But along with the change in the name, there was a change in the mood of the music to come. Teen Hygiene recordings are for the most part fun, catchy, and not too serious, while the earliest Titans of Filth recordings are coming from a somewhat scattered/depressed/exhausted place. But we'll come to that in due time. Next week I'll compile tracks from several different bands or side-projects I was involved in at the same time that I was recording the music that composes these first two Treasury volumes.

Free download from Rapidshare.

A Treasury Of Song Vol. 1: The Flaming Wieners At Fannin High

2009-06-14T23:15:00.011-04:00

So I think in honor of Neil Young finally getting around to releasing his Archives Vol. 1 box set, I'll release a little something of my own that might be of interest to Titans fans. This will be the first of several compilations covering material from my younger days. The songs present in this first volume are highlights from the career of my first band, the Flaming Wieners, recorded between when I was 15 until I was 17, or from 1996 until 1998.

I'm trying to write a little history of the band here, which I will continue to update with photos and flyers and things if I find them.

Above: Stephen Miller & your friend Sam

Plastic Robot
Confessions Of A Teenage Suicide Dropout (Kelly Tipton, words/Stephen, music)
Plastic Machine, Beauty Queen
Mad At The World
I Lost A Girl I Never Had (Music by Stephen)
I'm A Loser
Steve's Instrumental (Music by Stephen obviously)
Teenage Suicide Dropout
Untitled
Groovy Day (Music by Stephen)
Mom And Dad (Music by Stephen)
The Escape (Music by Stephen)
Lily Doesn't Like The Overly Excited Girl
Deenie
The Invisible Man Is On My Mind Again
I Don't Know, But I'm Feeling Good
Fake Plastic Gun
Genital Herpes
I'm Walking Through The Halls

Tracks 1-3 from High School (1996)
Tracks 4-9 from Cosmic Folk Destruction (1996)
Track 10 from Sneakyfoot (1996)
Tracks 11-12 from Son Of Sneakyfoot EP (1996)
Track 13 from Palmer Express (1997)
Track 14 from Lonesome Songs For Lonesome Folks (1997)
Tracks 15-19 from Here's Something Fun For You To Do! (1998)

Sam - Voice, guitar chords, bass guitar
Stephen - Fingerpicking guitar, lead guitar
Ben - Drums
Shannon - bass guitar sometimes?

Because this is a big file and my bandwidth is limited, please download from Rapidshare:

http://rapidshare.com/files/244665654/treasury1.zip.html

Let me know if you experience problems with this, I can repost.

2009-06-07T19:47:00.001-04:00

I had plenty of downtime today while my grandfather dozed in his recliner, but I assure you that my Garageband creation is not worth the time spent listening. I think for the purpose of the Sunday Songs series, I should abandon Garageband and use my guitar for writing songs.

My trouble with writing songs on Garageband is that although I find it easy to use the program to stack up tracks for an individual section of a song, it is difficult to try out different ways of going from section 1 to section 2, if that makes any sense. While using guitar, it's very easy to just play through different song changes to try and figure out what to do.

Anyway, we did have our first live band practice in about a month (we're getting ready for the show on the 25th) and I thought it sounded good. We're planning to practice quite a bit over the summer and hopefully record as well. There will be some changes in lineup, though, most likely. I'm in Blue Ridge right now but heading back toward Athens momentarily, hoping I can catch Circulatory System tonight.

Sunday Song # 8, "Lil' Cowboy Tune"

2009-05-31T18:37:00.003-04:00

This melody has been stuck in my head for approximately ten years now. I think I first sang it in the shower when John Demartino and I were sharing a dorm room our second year at New College, which was late 2000 and early 2001. I never bothered recording even a demo of it because I always assumed chords and words to it were right around the corner, but they never came. I also think it sounds so much like some other song out there already, but I can't put my finger on what exactly. I played it for some of my old high school buddies and they started singing "P.O.W., M.I.A., M.I.A," but that is a song I have as far as I know never heard.

But so this week I spent a little while trying to put chords to it, which ended up being trickier than I predicted, and I'm still not entirely happy with the chord progression I ended up with. I don't think I've ever started with a melody before, although this is the way that some of my very favorite songwriters go about it -- Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian for example, and I think Dan Bejar from Destroyer as well.

And as for the effects I put on here, I'd initially had very tasteful snare drum, viola, and piano combination but it sounded so much like what you'd hear in the Ken Burns Civil War documentary.

Sunday Songs # 7 - "A Kickin Bod"

2009-05-24T23:56:00.008-04:00

You heard right, friends. We have returned.

Coming to you now once again from my parents' house, where I have moved from Athens (hopefully temporarily). My job had to cut my hours down to just one shift per week, and instead of looking around Athens for additional work (almost certainly of the minimum wage variety), I decided to take a break from Athens entirely and move back in with my parents. Again.

The good news is my mother's family is paying me relatively well to look after my grandparents on weekends, so I plan to remain here in the Blue Ridge area at least until I am able to save up a bit of money. I guess there is a big future in looking after old people? I'm not too terribly far from Athens (a 2 1/2 hour car trip), so I plan to keep visiting every couple of weeks to keep the band going and see my friends. I still want to record very soon and I am still planning on playing Athfest, Thursday June 25 at Cine.

Blue Ridge is isolated enough that hopefully I will be more productive with making songs and maybe other things too, but I am pretty ingenious at figuring out ways to procrastinate. I've read interviews with novelists talking about this and apparently this is always a problem, that it is always so easy to put off actually sitting there and writing. I tend to wait for a feeling of inspiration, but these feelings are few, far-between, and short-lived -- and I'm not sure if the thoughts or ideas I have at these times are that much better than those I have when I am just churning things out in very workmanlike fashion. I hope that by setting aside time to actually sit there and work on stuff, I will be providing a space or outlet for the inspiration to come.

But, PS, I think some of the best melodies come just when I am driving or walking around or waiting somewhere. And that is wonderful, but I never remember. So I plan to soon carry around a recording device, singing into it like a maniac. But I worry that it's one of those things that when you have the tape recorder and are ready for it, it scares the songs away. They're shy little animals!

2009-04-19T21:34:00.004-04:00

Tonight at Secret Squirrel we are playing a show with our old friends Mouser and our new friends the Art Department from Baltimore, who spent this past weekend recording an LP with Mercer. I did a guest appearance on two songs, keep an ear out! Hope to see you there tonight? Party starts in one hour.

Happy Easter!

2009-04-12T16:36:00.008-04:00

2009-02-01T22:10:00.002-05:00

Hey, sorry! Totally slipped my mind this week. I've been busy practicing with Lindsay and Ryan, working out parts for a live performance. Ryan figured out the notes Ann was playing on violin during the chorus of "Lynn Learns All About Sin," for example, and was able to play that part on guitar. Lindsay and Ryan are going to switch off a bit on the keyboard at this next show.

Which, btw, we have a next show scheduled! February 14 at Farm 255, for free. I'm excited that it's on a Saturday and excited that it's on Valentine's Day, which is kind of my own personal holiday arch-enemy, if that makes sense. I'm excited but nervous. Tuesday we'll all be getting together as a group for the first time, I'm hoping it goes well.

By this time next week, hopefully I will have a flyer to share with you. This means hooking up my scanner from eight years ago and seeing if it works, then also finding a copy of Photoshop or preferably a free graphics program, etc etc. This is the kind of stuff I've been meaning to get around to doing for a very long time now. Hope all is well with you!

Sunday Song # 6 - "Coach Caught Me Cryin'"

2009-01-25T15:36:00.002-05:00

We lost our lead after my clumsy fumble
I couldn't shake the sadness and the shame
I know they say that winning doesn't matter
But what about when it's a play-off game?

People want to see you at the top
They crowd around to watch you shine
But every winning streak will someday stop
And that sure changes peoples' minds

A big success knows many skillful lovers
The lucky few may always get to choose
No winners lay alone beneath their covers
But True Loves sleep beside the ones who lose

People want to see you at the top
They crowd around to watch you shine
But every winning streak will someday stop
And that sure changes peoples' minds

For every winner, there's a loser left behind

For every winner, there's a loser left behind

***

This song is yet another collaboration with Nate Mitchell of Cars Can Be Blue from his Titans days, a set of lyrics half-finished and abandoned more than two years ago. It's funny, I have a much easier time working with Nate when he himself is not in the picture to disagree with my decisions -- I think the problem with the two of us together is that each of us is determined to have final say about what stays or goes. 90% of the time we are in agreement but that other 10% of the time things can get so ugly!

But this time we were listening to some kind of corny 60s or 70s country hits and were kind of admiring the craft or use of metaphor or something. I can't really remember. Maybe it was a case of "Oh, that's easy, I bet we could write a hit country tune, no sweat," and I think maybe we went for the corniest possible scenario, starting as a joke but then getting more and more serious the longer we worked on it, so that by this finished version it is unusually heartfelt.

***

This is another key of C tune, this time with not a single minor chord, the whole thing is C, F, and G -- I'm beginning to put together a track list for an EP with all the key of C outgoing topical songs, to be released simultaneously with the EP in the key of B, which will be the more cryptic art/literature songs. I'm curious to see which one people prefer and also just if anyone notices the difference.

This week (maybe because of the strange warm weather, maybe because Mercer offered me a February 14 show) I've felt excited about music again. I'm going to be trying out at least two potential bandmates this week. I'm determined to get back up to at least a five-piece band to do the more elaborate arrangements. Let me know if you're interested in trying out. I try to be pretty open-minded about finding a role for anyone interested, no matter what your individual talents may be. Visual art, choreography, lights, costumes! I just watched a DVD of Temptations performances, I was so blown way. Let's all get rich together!

Sunday Song # 5 - "Sympathetic Mind"

2009-01-18T17:47:00.003-05:00

Inside a classroom, we get lectures
And then we go through metal detectors
They turn the lights out and show a movie
How to identify our latest enemy

Everybody's talkin' 'bout terrorists
But I don't even know if they exist
Sometimes I think I hide a sympathetic mind

I think too much, my friends dismiss me
Say I should shut up, no one will kiss me
I wish they'd understand, they mean so much to me
I wish they'd care about the things that I can see

Everybody's talkin' 'bout terrorists
But I don't even know if they exist
Sometimes I think I hide a sympathetic mind

They search our lockers, they search our backpacks
And what they take out, they never give back
They call it safety, I don't feel safer
They make a rule book and change it later

Everybody's talkin' 'bout terrorists
But I don't even know if they exist
Sometimes I think I hide a sympathetic mind

***

So at this point this song has been finished, recorded, and released on Feats Of Strength for over a year and a half, and only this week did I finally figure out how to fix it. I'd always been troubled by the first line of the chourus, "Everyone I know is a terrorist, but I don't even know if they exist" because to me it just didn't make sense unless you really really wanted it to, and that the "they" at the end of the line could well be referring to "everyone I know" rather than "terrorist(s)". But then I realized a change that is so much simpler, so much more to the point: "Everybody's talking about terrorists, but I don't even know if they exist." Why it took two years for this to occur to me, I have no idea. There is a phrase in French that translates to "wit of the staircase," which is the clever retort you think of just as you are leaving the party or laying in bed that night, and I suppose this is sort of a case of that.

Also changed from the version appearing on Feats Of Strength is the ending of a line, "they turn the lights out" in place of "they turn out the lights" which doesn't really seem to matter at all until you hear which syllables have to be emphasized, so that the released version goes, "they turn out the lights," which, again, doesn't make any sense. This was pointed out by Jason NeSmith as he was recording us but it was too late in the process to go back and change it.

And of course this song should be sung by Becky Brooks of Cars Can Be Blue, not me. Just consider this posted version a demo. I'm currently scheming about a new super commercial pop project (inspired by reading about Motown) to be done in collaboration with Becky (I haven't discussed this with her yet), ideally creating an Avril Lavigne style mainstream mall pop album, or even better something like Lily Allen. This song would very much be a part of that project. At this point I would love so much to be involved in something that actually makes money/has an appeal to more people.

This too is the result of playing a surprise show by myself upstairs at Tasty World the other night and seeing how completely disinterested in my songs most of the people were. It reminded me of playing at DTs Down Under open-mics back in the day, just trying to sing lyrics shocking enough that people would pay attention. I guess this may be why rock bands tend to turn up so loud? To prevent the audience from talking? I went straight home afterward feeling like I had to reevaluate my whole course in life, to think up a new strategy.

Sunday Song # 4 - "A Home For Aging Hipsters"

2009-01-11T19:26:00.005-05:00

You spent your younger years
Running all around
Boyfriends and beers
Familiar faces in this town
As time goes by
Maybe you and I can settle down

In a home for aging hipsters
We can sit together by the window playing checkers
I'd like to live by your side

When hospital bills
Have taken the money
And I can't recall your name
And I can't control my body
Please be the kind face by my side

In a home for aging hipsters
We can sit together by the window playing checkers
I'd like to live by your side

***

Key of C, recorded with midi instruments in Garageband in June 2008 except for vocals, which were accidentally erased and rerecorded today.

This was one of the songs I didn't post during my previous music blog project (check older entries here for what I did end up posting) -- I didn't feel like the lyrics were finished, and I liked the song enough that I really wanted it to be perfect. So this week I picked it up again, determined to make that second verse more in line with the first as far as rhythm or rhyme scheme or what have you. So I spent a couple of days going over it and over it and at last ended up with this (compare with original 2nd verse above):

While hospital bills
Take all that we have saved
We take so many pills
But still our bodies won't behave
As death draws near
May our smart-ass sneers keep us brave . . .

And then it goes into the final chorus, same as above. I felt so good finishing this, so clever. But then today when I recorded the vocal track, I felt like these lyrics destroyed any feelings or sincerity that the song had, so I ended up hastily switching back to the original lyrics as the deadline approached.

I guess with a song like this, a song with the title, you could go in at least these two different directions -- you could kind of play the scenario for laughs, like for example above talking about the "smart-ass sneers" of the aging hipster couple, perhaps also talk about the hipsters at the home for aging hipsters still consider themselves too cool to associate with the aging goths or punks on the other floors. The idea of the title occurred to me when I was joking around with Pierre one night, and we kind of thought it would be like a comedy skit or story, so we came up with different jokes having to do with people of different subcultures reaching elderly status.

But I like the effect of having a novelty song title for a sincere and sad song. Maybe it is a tiresome little trick to pull on my audience, I don't know. I think I've done it before, often, trying to make things somehow both funny and sad. I think a lot of my favorite movies go for that, like Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums.

I would like to arrange this song for a full band and have someone who can actually play piano do the solo part in the middle -- Pierre and Ian and others have told me that all my piano melodies sound the same, so I went back and changed the ending of this one, but now I don't like the way it sounds! Maybe I could study the instrumental passages on some of my favorite songs to see how they end -- It's always been tricky for me, I always end up playing the not just above the initial note, and then the initial note itself. It turns out very pop, very catchy, but very bubblegum in a way. And it does kind of make it all sound the same.

***

I'm in the middle of what is supposed to be the best book about Motown, Where Did Our Love Go? by Nelson George, which I am enjoying so far although it's talking more about the business side of things than I expected and less about the songs themselves, but at least in the case of Motown the business side of things is fascinating and inspiring (although they didn't pay musicians well at all). I bought this because I recently acquired all of those complete Motown singles collections (which is a truly huge amount of music, about 50 CDs worth) and I wanted some background info.

I like how Motown functioned as this single unit during its peak years, a music machine, like one band but better than just one band, it was so well-organized and efficient. I know the artists weren't always happy with that, but I personally love the songs of the mid-60s more than the more personally expressive albums Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder made in the 70s (theirs are the only ones I've heard), but I think the thing about the mid-60s Motown hits is that they are so calculatingly designed to be easy to love and to be commercially successful, to put people in a good mood where they're played, to get stuck in your head. It's great to listen to at work. And I feel like the lyrics are very good, very sad and touching at times. But I don't know, maybe as I get older I'll be more into the later-era stuff. I like the up-tempo stuff from that era, but I don't care for the ballads at all.

But I thought about trying to put together a music factory here in Athens, but one that is maybe a bit better for the artists financially/creatively. I'd like to make very outlandish and political productions with costumes and scripts, kind of like a low-budget MGM musical except about class differences. But I'm bad about getting in over my head and not finishing things, so I need for the time being to just keep at this song a week pace, which should keep me busy enough.

Sunday Song # 3 - "The Fight"

2009-01-04T19:15:00.006-05:00

***

Adulterous embraces and murderous rage
are promised by a poster as she waits in line to pay
She's out alone tonight, patient and polite
here to escape her dreary day

It's taken from the life of a famous libertine
She read all about it in a glossy magazine
She sits and stares as light cuts the air
and faces so familiar appear on the screen

She sees the fight and hears the swelling violins
She's not too sure how this will end
But what a nice surprise
Force finally decides the best man wins

Underpaid employees impatiently wait
Everyone else is gone but still she hesitates
The story's reached its end, life begins again
but what's a few minutes more if she's already late

He's watching television and acting upset
She speaks to him softly, wraps her arms around his neck
She doesn't want to fight, she just turns out the light
and imagines a man she has never met

She sees the fight and hears the swelling violins
She's not too sure how this will end
But what a nice surprise
Force finally decides the best man wins

***

Key of B, although not a part of the small town north GA songs. No minor chords. An earlier version of this has been performed live by the full-band Titans many times, and an even earlier version appeared on the one EP (unreleased) that John Demartino and I recorded in early 2005 in Durham NC under the band name the Stops and Starts.

I spent the past week doing yet another substantial revision of the lyrics of the verses of this song, this time making them fit a much stricter rhyme pattern than before, and still I'm not 100% happy with it. This song is set primarily at a movie theater, and while it would be reasonable to assume it is inspired by my experiences working in a theater here in Athens, it actually goes back to when I was working at Burns Court Cinemas in Sarasota, Florida, in 2003 and 2004, although it has been altered continuously since then, always failing to reach whatever it is I want it to become.

I have always been happy with the structure and particularly the use of the chorus here, that it is not just being repeated, but that this repetition actually plays a part in the plot of the song's story, and is in fact the whole point of the song, that the main character is repeating the events of the film to herself in her mind later on, that the escapism of the film is something she can carry with her out of the theater.

Like I said, I like this, but I have never been quite able to get words, a melody, and chords that seem good enough. A lot of times I'll spend months laboring on the lyrics of a song but make up the music in about fifteen minutes, and I think that is the case here, although the chorus came later and is the one part of the song I am most satisfied with, musically, although I think the whole thing may fall apart if it is fact-checked and it turns out that there is for example only one violin used in a Hollywood string section.

***

I think I had the initial idea for this song some time after Brian Hughes and his father took me to see the film Training Day, which I remember as being exceptionally dark and brutal for a mainstream Hollywood film, but the scene in particular that I remember (possibly incorrectly) was that there was this very violent fight scene in slow motion with really dramatic classical-style music playing in the background, which got me thinking about music and how it could manipulate an audience's emotions to the point that they might accept actions on-screen as morally/ethically good that they otherwise would not. Or that a scene like this might program into audience members the idea that desirable heroic masculinity requires brutally beating or even mercilessly killing your opponent. Also the lines at the end of the chorus, "what a nice surprise -- force finally decides the best man wins," is my attack on the convention of films in which Good triumphs over Evil in some kind of climactic violent confrontation -- this to me seems to risk indoctrinating the audience with the idea that in the real world, the winners (big business, countries with strong militaries, big tough dudes who kick sand in the faces of scrawny bookworms and walk away with their girlfriends) are also necessarily morally superior/virtuous to the losers -- Like, how convienient is it that we do not have to feel any sympathy at all for the losers who got smashed to pieces? I think much moreso than Training Day, films like Star Wars and Lord Of The Rings are guilty of this. Someone (I think on Salon.com) wrote about how Star Wars is much more interesting if you are watching it as a propaganda film of a fascist state who is retelling their own history after winning a war.

But I don't know, this song is also very much about someone who watches a lot of movies and in a way prefers watching movies to existing outside in the real world. Which is very much like me, the author. But I do want it to also be about at least one of the dangers of this, which is being disappointed in your actual life because it does not measure up in whatever way to the fantasy. So that the fantasy of the Hollywood film, while we are loving it while it happens on-screen, serves actually to drain some measure of happiness from our life in the long run. But I think there are movies that have just the opposite effect, although good luck finding even a politically/ethically smart film with actors who are not unrealistically good-looking.

Sunday Song # 2 - "Pride"

2008-12-28T19:34:00.006-05:00

***

Pride is fine and fancy, a shiny Cadillac
The seats are soft and spacious but there's no sex in the back
You can drive out to the drive-in, sit there and get stoned
You can go to any show you want, but you'll always ride alone

Pride, one last ride
Take me away where I can hide

You can drive away from lovers, drive away from friends
But their voices travel with you on a road that never ends
Idling in an alley, feeling pretty fucked
With a hose taped to the exhaust pipe, your car is filling up

Pride, one last ride
Take me away where I can hide

***

This is one written a couple of years ago, after the Titans as a band had formed in Athens and we were playing shows regularly. This is one of the first responses to a demand for new material, and we played this at our shows for a while, but then I became embarrassed with it and demanded that we stop playing it.

I'm not sure if I can put into words why I stopped liking it. I picked it up again recently when I was looking for a song I could perform with Emily at our show with Sea Of Dogs and I was surprised to find I kind of liked it. So I guess I have to keep in mind that the way I feel about songs changes over time.

I was trying to write a Rolling Stones country ballad in the style of "Sweet Virginia." And I think I was wanting to just have fun and to create the absurdest metaphor possible and to see how far I could carry it.

***

This is in C and I think some of the other Titans deserve credit for input in the lyrics -- I think it was Nate in particular who came up with the idea of the narrator not being able to escape voices of the past in the third verse, which I think is one of the best parts of the song. Nevertheless, I claim full official composer credit on this one, although as usual, people made up their own parts for their instruments/vocal harmonies.

Also I recorded this in a rush to meet the 7:30 deadline and I think it shows in the quality of some of the singing. I may keep practicing the song (one of the few songs I've written that really demands singing different notes and kind of belting it out) and quietly post a new recording in place of this one later on.

Also, can anyone suggest a replacement/alteration for the line "with a hose taped to the exhaust"* so that the accented syllable would fall on the beat at the end? To make this line fit in the song, I have to pronounce it "EX-haust" which is to be sure quite bothersome to me. I've thought about "with a hose taped to the gas pipe," although I don't even know if that is an accurate way of describing an exhaust pipe?

*EDIT January 4 2009. I changed it in the lyrics above but have not yet fixed the recording.

Sunday Song # 1 - "Cruel Games"

2008-12-21T19:27:00.002-05:00

So, obviously, I was unable to keep up with my perhaps overly ambitious song-a-day project. Many nights I ended up just wanting to take it easy or have fun, and as rewarding as bringing some new creation into the world can be, I find creating and recording a song in a single night requires being more alert and "with it" than I can be on a nightly basis. And I think it was making me stressed out and crazy a little bit.

But still I think the basic idea is good, to give myself writing assignments in order to inspire actually getting songs finished and published to an audience, however small. I think one song a week is perhaps more reasonable than daily, and hopefully the song quality will be consistently higher. (Toward the end of the last project, as I was losing steam, I was making only 15-30 second instrumental loops, none of which I felt were good enough or finished enough to post here.)

My plan is to use this project to force myself to finish some of the songs I've abandoned halfway through and also hopefully fight off writer's block in order to eventually write new material each week.

The time limit makes Brian Wilson or Axl Rose-type perfectionism/madness impossible, which is good, but a week may still be too little time to routinely turn out good quality songs. I do want to approach this more like a Brill Building songwriter in the 1960s, though, and less like the aloof genius artist painting his masterpiece.

So I'll post something new every Sunday at 7:30 PM Eastern if all goes according to plan.

***

***

We were the ones who did everything right
We worked hard to get those grades
We came out of school ready for what was promised
I guess we all assumed we had it made

We're filled with the golden dream they taught us
Hard work will ensure success
That's the unifying lie of our fractured nation
And the foundation of my own private mess

Tossed unawares into cruel games
Of musical chairs even more challenging
Than the ones our parents played
Back when the money was made

Some may say we have no right to whine
And that we should see the sunny side
But with all the optimism we've internalized
We won't end up with satisfied minds

Tossed unawares into cruel games
Of musical chairs even more challenging
Than the ones our parents played
Back when the money was made

***

Today's featured song is one that has been finished and mostly unused for over a year, which is also the case with many of the songs I'll be posting here, at least at first. I kind of went a little crazy with perfectionism in Titans, which I know was frustrating to my bandmates, because often we would have arrangements worked out and I would throw away the song entirely because I felt there were unresolvable problems in the lyrics or structure.

This one, like "Sympathetic Mind" from Feats Of Strength, was written along with Nate Mitchell of Cars Can Be Blue (and at that time the drummer for Titans Of Filth). Like "Sympathetic Mind," but even more so, this song is straightforward and overtly topical and political, which makes me a bit uncomfortable with it, since political art of this sort seems to often be sneered upon by those who know better. But maybe those who are critical of works such as this are just enforcers for the repressive society holding us down, man. I could maybe admit to being sort of borderline sincere about that. Anyway, I think there are probably those who like this more direct style of writing more than the sometimes cryptic "Ode To Billie Joe" type songs I usually make.

***

Anyway, it is in the key of C, which is my key of choice for more straight-forward moralizing songs, as opposed to what I think of as the ambiguous literary fiction type songs (which tend to be in the key of B).

As you can hear, this is only my voice and guitar at this time, which I think will be the norm for these Sunday posts. If you would like to try arranging other instrumental parts for any of the song demos I post, please go ahead and let me hear how it turns out. Let me know too if you need a chord progression also.

Also! I should have mentioned before now that this song was written right after I'd read Barbara Ehrenreich's book Bait And Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit Of The American Dream. I wanted to do a pop song adaptation of the book. It is a follow-up to her famous Nickel And Dimed, only this time instead of focusing on working class Americans, she writes about those in the middle class (if such a thing exists) who expect to land good business-type jobs, which is almost a mathematical impossibility at this point.

And I was certainly feeling a lot of this pressure to get a good job and be real rich, there was nothing seeming to hold me back really, a white male with an expensive education and good academic records, yet still failure is right there waiting for me. Reading this book helped me a lot to frame things in terms of social forces beyond my control, which is probably the most valuable left-wing strategy. I think here in the south in particular, there is the idea that you should be able to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and through sheer grit and determination amount to something. But I think this is ignoring the fact that there simply aren't good jobs for everyone who is qualified for one.

Barbara Ehrenreich pretty much rules. Here is her blog.

PS. If you would like to hear a direct political song that is totally awesome and in my opinion puts this one to shame, go to Cars Can Be Blue's Myspace page (linked above) and listen to their song "Doctor." This song should have been on the Sicko soundtrack, I think it just didn't make it into the hands of the right people in time.

Sad And Strange

2008-07-13T00:56:00.000-04:00

So when I go for the straightforward doo wop chord progression, singing lyrics from the perspective of a narrator laying about feeling sorry for himself, you know I must be in a bit of a rut, songwriting-wise. That said, I do like this recording, the first time Spencer has recorded us on his four-track at our house.

Website Song #16, "Sad And Strange."

Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!)

2008-06-16T19:06:00.000-04:00

Here is a track featuring the last couple of minutes of yesterday's rather spirited Titans practice. This is the line-up we will be playing our next group of shows with, me on guitar, Ian on bass guitar, and Spencer on drums, with me singing and Ian is working on singing some vocal parts as well.

Website Song #15: "Are The Boys All Right? Are The Girls All Right?"

The sound on this one is so regrettable as none of us were in any mood for setting up microphones. But I can see charm in the ugliness of the digital distortion resulting from recording high volumes into the built-in microphone on my computer. But we will rerecord this more carefully later on perhaps.

***

Some shows coming soon -- we're playing as part of Athfest this Friday -- Our show is 11 pm at Cine downtown. Then we're playing a show in Atlanta on Sunday, check our Myspace for details.

Tonight

2008-05-30T18:06:00.000-04:00

Hello friends. Not sure what the showtimes are going to be, although the Titans are going to be playing last, probably around midnight. Our lineup tonight will be me playing guitar, Ian playing bass, and Spencer playing drums. I would like to add at least one person to this for future shows, so please get in touch if you're interested. Particularly: Piano skills, female vocals. If one person can do both of these things, so much the better!

2008-05-28T17:19:00.001-04:00

So, hey. Sorry I've fallen off productivity-wise. But would you accept perhaps this jaw-dropping piece of rock'n'roll trivia?

Apparently Jonathan Richman and Gram Parsons were buddies??

"The band were also affected by the death during the sessions of their friend Gram Parsons; on the day before Parsons' death, he and Richman played miniature golf and discussed recording together"

-- from Wikipedia entry for the Modern Lovers debut LP.

Music Theory

2008-05-19T20:15:00.000-04:00

I work at the Cinema/Bar in downtown Athens. Today behind the bar we got to talking about some very basic music theory issues, and with access to Wikipedia I thought we surely could quickly resolve some basics. All we were talking about was this: As the comedian/TV actor Jerry Seinfeld might put it, What is the deal with having sharps AND flats? Why not just have one or the other? Or why not embrace a system of music notation that does away with them entirely?

But looking around on Wikipedia for answers, I only found more and more questions. Music theory seems so intimidatingly large, strange, and arbitrarily-defined. Also: In being this way, music theory seems very similar to political theory or pretty much any other body of knowledge you might care to name. I want things to keep the simple and graspable look they have from far away, but as I come closer I see it's not the case.

Drifters Dancing Under Streetlights

2008-05-19T04:32:00.000-04:00

A lot of times I don't really finish and I never know if I should set these aside for another day or just post what I have and forget. I think I'll post whatever progress I have now and then leave open the possibility of returning later to tinker.

I had a pretty vocal melody in mind when I got out of bed this afternoon (very high pitched for me) but I did not commit to any recording medium. Let this be a lesson!

Free "Website Songs" Track #14, right click to download

Another Cool Century Of Fakers

2008-05-14T03:15:00.000-04:00

Hello friends. Sorry for the songwriting delay, I've been in the process of moving and settling into a new place. Still in Athens, although a bit further from downtown. I'm living with Spencer (who is playing drums with Titans now) and Trey (Flowers of Evil). I'm excited to live with musicians: We have a music room, come visit if you like.

Let's Hear It For Another Decade Of All-Time Smash Hits

Brief Introduction + Back Issues

2008-05-08T19:51:00.000-04:00

Hi there. I'm trying to post songs very regularly, ideally one for each day that I have off of work, although sometimes I don't finish in time. Here are the songs I posted since the start of this project, before realizing this would all make more sense in blog format.

I Hardly Said A Word, March 31 2008

Rooftops, written with Emily Armond April 1 2008

There Is No One Better Than You, April 3 2008

Friends Helping Friends, April 5 2008

Lover, Lover, with Nate Mitchell, Ian Mittler, Spencer Rich April 6 2008

82 Degrees Fahrenheit, Partly Cloudy, lyrics written with Grant Stewart April 9 2008

Bongos On The Beach lead guitar/high pitched keyboard by Ian Mittler April 10 2008

Vicksburg, written by John Demartino, bass guitar & part of piano part by Ian Mittler April 15-16 2008

Shopping In Another City, April 21 2008

Rainy Days & Indoor Games, with Ian playing bass and Spencer playing drums April 22 2008

177 BPM, April 27 2008

Rooftops (2nd Version), May 6 2008