songs:365

Month: April 2021

  • day 120: One

    One, by U2.

    First appearance here of one of my favorite bands as a teenager. Somehow, it is an understatement to say the live U2 show I went to changed my life. (It was the second night of the Zoo TV tour, which was to promote Achtung Baby, and not Zooropa, for the record.) It’s also not an understatement to say 90% of it was spectacle and maybe 10% substance, but, still, life changing.

    I’m pretty sure I started keeping a journal, like, the next day? And those notebooks got me through high school on terrible poetry and highbrow aphorisms.

    This song was a runaway hit on MTV, and wasn’t personal for me then, although the words hit a lot harder as an adult. Oh, and I wasn’t trying to cover the Johnny Cash cover on this occasion.

    //

    Had to add a guitar to do a little bit of the riff and had a good time jamming on the two scales this moves between anyway. Speaking of moving between things, I need to learn how to position the mic so you don’t have to hear all the sliding around the frets I’m doing quite so loud.

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  • day 119: Big River

    Big River, by Johnny Cash.

    Look, I know I’m going to have to look up the origin story of this one, but it’s a Johnny Cash song! How can it not be a Johnny Cash song??

    [looks it up]

    It IS a Johnny Cash song, thank goodness!!!

    I know I watched the Johnny Cash show with my dad when I was little but… [looks it up] uhhh it last aired a solid five years before I was born, so maybe we were watching reruns on like PBS or something? Or we just watched the same Johnny Cash special over and over? Or this all happened one night and made up a whole series? Or my dad would leave Johnny Cash on the TV any time he was on? Or it was that one episode of the Muppet Show?

    I literally have no idea which of these is true.

    //

    Added a bass-via-guitar-transposed-an-octave-down line, and that’s all. Would consider a brushy drum track if I had the patience tonight.

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  • day 118: No Depression

    No Depression, by Uncle Tupelo*.

    Would you believe I didn’t remember this would be another cover of a cover before I did it? Singing the lyrics, I was a little like “Hmmmmm… this song is a wee bit evangelical and sounds a little more like an actual Americana song from the 1930s than a simulacrum of one from 1990.”

    Turns out, it’s a Carter Family number, which I probably knew somewhere in the deep recesses of my Doc Watson listening ears.

    Got annoyed with an “indie rock road trip” playlist in the car coming back from soccer with the 10yo and put on that Uncle Tupelo album instead; he goofed “toil and trouble” as “toilet trouble” and now I can’t unhear it.

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  • day 117: Don’t Fence Me In

    Don’t Fence Me In, by Roy Rogers*.

    I knew this first as a Riders in the Sky song, but I’m starting to wonder if Riders in the Sky might be the Jan & Dean to Sons of the Pioneers’ Beach Boys? If you get all of those references, our dads might have the same taste in music.

    [checks Wikipedia once]

    So, funny story, it turns out Cole Porter put this song together for a Roy Rogers movie, but the lyrics were very much by some cowboy poet out of Montana, and the studio et al screwed him out of a writing credit, because every stereotype about 1930s Hollywood is true.

    And then they used it in like three more Roy Rogers movies. I looked up one after reading the words “Trigger’s dance ends” in the stage direction for the chords and lyrics to this.

    [resists urge to look up how many horses really played Trigger]

    Oh, and more recently, Willie Nelson recorded it, too.

    //

    I’m probably singing it in the Riders style, but I added the silly Wildcat Kelly intro, which honestly doesn’t hold up too well, but when I looked it up to check if Wildcat Kelly happens to be some real person, I found Ella Fitzgerald singing this part, so it’s probably OK.

    Added a cheeky cowboy solo, but I’m tired.

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  • day 116: Sunblind

    Sunblind, by Fleet Foxes.

    Broke this streak when I turned in my homework late last night:

    If I had been smarter, I would’ve posted a placeholder and then filled in the video a little later, but it was… a busy night.

    Keeping it simple and quiet tonight, ready to rest, choosing to sing this song about just trying to honor your idols and mentors and feeling like you’re failing all along the way (while sounding fragile and exhausted, perhaps), but the second vocal saved it.

    Apparently this is only the second Fleet Foxes song I’ve completed during this project, which feels low, but I have plenty of aspirations. This album was (somewhat hilariously, according to Spotify) pretty much the only thing I listened to between the moment it dropped last September and the inauguration in January. Because of that, some of the words and songs leave me a little scarred now, like how If You Need To Keep Time On Me, all the way at the other end of the term, for me is a piece of punctuation in a long drive to DC for an event, where I was stuck for what seemed like an hour making the turn from the GW Parkway onto the Key Bridge.

    Riveting traffic content. [Ooooh! Adding a Traffic song to the list.]

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  • day 115: Farewell Transmission

    Farewell Transmission, by Songs: Ohia.

    It didn’t take that many days, after all. But, I’m late, by about 100 minutes for the first time in the project on day 115, for a good reason.

    the real truth about it is

    no one gets it right

    the real truth about it is

    we’re all supposed to try

    This song is in part yet another cover of a cover, because I heard it first by Waxahatchee & Kevin Morby, and it blew me away, and it came with a story about Jason Molina and Songs: Ohia, which I had never heard, and then I did, and man oh man, either version of this song gives me chills every damn time.

    I spent… a lot of time on this one today, and the edit is still a mess, including a “crap the computer went to sleep and this is the third different way I’m supposed to sing this part” video edit. And I REALLY need to learn how to splice loops properly so they don’t slip out of sync HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE idk idk idk.

    But I love it anyway.

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  • day 114: Serenade

    Serenade, by the Steve Miller Band.

    How important should the Fly Like An Eagle album be to the average ’80s kid? Like, on a scale of 1-10? Should it loom large in your memory? Should you immediately be transported to your Dad’s 1979 280ZX, with the louvers on the rear window, and the stick shift, and the heavy rotation of Steve Miller, the Coasters, and the Big Chill soundtrack? It seems like it should be pretty important. And I’m not talking about The Joker, I’m talking about an album that starts with something called “SPACE INTRO” then gets to its first proper song, which ends with something that sounds like satellite blips directly into a song about living off the land, and then drops this song which I once attempted to talk a hardcore band into playing (well, two members of it that had kinda accidentally invited me to rehearse with them when one of their moms suggested it).

    //

    So, uh, yeah. This went poorly! Too much, too wrong, tried to record in the morning because I knew it would be a long day, and then it was a long day, and then I did the rest of it, and now I am exhausted.

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  • day 113: Graceland

    Graceland, by Paul Simon.

    Paul Simon, gaining ground on Fleet Foxes, Wilco, and Johnny Cash on the (not actually data yet) frequency chart, making this song I think his third appearance?

    One of those other times, I think I mentioned the importance of the Graceland cassette tape in my Dad’s car for a number of years, Ladysmith Black Mambazo all over it, my confusion that anyone else knew any of the music from it (except for the Chevy Chase number, which still annoys the heck out of me).

    Fun fact: I have never been to Graceland, but was supposed to go, as part of a famously canceled trip to Memphis. I went to New Mexico instead and met my wife.

    It was worth adding a little flavor of the backup vocal here. If I were willing to stay up later, bass guitar would be next, then maybe some attempts to add more harmonies to the backups that would sound either bad or obviously digital.

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  • day 112: Basket Case

    Basket Case, by Green Day.

    Turns out, this is actually an old George Jones numbe— just kidding.

    Yes, it’s another song from the ’90s playlist. I could not resist Billie Joe’s charms. Hmm, on googling him just now it turns out he is… in the news… today? I guess he has a book out? I’m not going to look into that any further. I’ve already learned too much.

    I was also not a Green Day fan the first time around, but I probably didn’t have a good reason. This song is fun! I played it morose, because that’s also fun! If Morrissey wasn’t fully showing his rear these days, I might do a miserable Morrissey song, because it’s fun!

    There was a work event tonight, and I didn’t get to this until after the kids went to bed a little late, so I tried to keep it quiet.

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  • day 111: Undone (The Sweater Song)

    Undone (The Sweater Song), by Weezer.

    I am not a Weezer fan. Not really a fan of this song. Didn’t really feel anything about it the first time around. Frankly, it’s kinda dumb? I think it’s supposed to be? But I was in the mood for something dumb, and this came on a “Best of ’90s Rock” playlist I was torturing the 10-year-old with in the car on the way back from soccer practice.

    As evidenced by the intentionally extra dumb dialogue bits in this one, there was a distinct point in my youth (uh, maybe puberty when my voice dropped I guess) where I became a better actor than a singer.

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