songs:365

Month: May 2021

  • day 151: Purple Rain

    Purple Rain, by Prince.

    There is nothing I can write about Prince or this song that will do it justice.

    Suffice it to say I did not “get” Prince as a kid — although when Cream and Get Off came out in my teenage years, I, uh, got Prince.

    Everything I have read about Purple Rain, including its recording, is jaw dropping — then again, everything I’ve ever read about Prince recording anything is jaw dropping.

    //

    I am not worthy.

    Trying to play a Prince song is an exercise in humility, like on every track, every sound says “I am making an effort but obviously doing this wrong.”

    So there aren’t enough voices on the chorus, which might’ve been nice, and the organ is a little over the top. I tried to make the drums a little gated-reverby, but I think they just came out reverby. The closing solo is just not enough (and like three minutes short of outro “whooooooo-hoooo-hooooo-oooos” and strings and whatnot), but I made some attempt to play a few of the same notes, a couple times.

    This song was on the list from the start, so I’m glad to have it in the can. 151 days is starting to feel like something!

    Oh, and I added tags for all the original artists in the project and put them on the index. Johnny Cash and Wilco are tied for the living-in-my-head-rent-free lead with four songs each.

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  • day 150: Divorce Song

    Divorce Song, by Liz Phair.

    It almost feels like cheating to do a song I’ve heard deconstructed and put back together again on the Song Exploder podcast…. but then again, I completely screwed up the vocal on the first try, kinda had to turn it into a round, and added some extra heavy chords in that one part where the chords are maybe different? The internet’s copy of the chords to this one is a little inconclusive, but I went with it.

    There’s definitely going to be a lack of fidelity to the video in this one where I’m singing the “wrong” part.

    This song hits way harder after you’ve, like, been in a relationship! Dear teenage self: Enjoy these songs, have your fun, but they will mean different things later.

    //

    Uh, so there are a bunch of tracks. Started with drum loops, and tried to be smarter about it today, leaving them short and looping the bass and guitar and other bits against those, before recording the vocal video with the short loop of everything else in the headphones.

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  • day 149: New York, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down

    New York, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down, by LCD Soundsystem.

    There are a lot of songs about New York City. There are not a lot of songs that manage to encapsulate a certain period of change in New York City as clearly or precisely as this song. To be clear, it’s not even about the period when I lived in New York City (peak Giuliani years) and it still hits hard.

    I think this is the song that finally got me into LCD Soundsystem, way after their run, maybe even after the famous final MSG show. And I’m pretty sure it was the Kermit the Frog video that sealed it for me. And that even came with the Miles Davis mashup, which, whoa, what? Yes.

    Anyway, I love this song. A lot. It still hurts a little. A lot.

    //

    Made a project out of it today, starting with the electric rhythm guitar (and I kinda whisper sung a demo vocal there that you can’t really hear, but was helpful for the rest.) Miked it too hot, but whatever. Added a bassline from the acoustic transposed down an octave, then MIDI organ, flute, drums, before getting to the solo vocal (wayyy too hot, Ryan, back off the dang mic please), a little doubling with effects there, and then a guitar solo that’s not terribly off, but is off, and I have to say, I aimed for a good freakout at the end, but listening to the original now, I missed the BAM BAM BAM chords there, and I thought about adding something just like that before I processed the video, but I didn’t, so we’ll leave it at that.

    The closing lyrics of this one have always confused me a little. I sang “here’s this song” tonight, because that’s what was written down on the internet, but I like it better if it switches to “maybe I’m wrong” at the end and then it’s a question at the end: “and if so, is there [somebody there for me]?” But who am I to argue with what is written down on the internet.

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  • day 148: Yer So Bad

    Yer So Bad, by Tom Petty.

    Drove through Chapel Hill last weekend, and it reminded me of Gainesville. Or maybe I just don’t have a good point of reference for what a University is supposed to look like outside a city. My cassette tape of Full Moon Fever? Probably gone after the last few storage closet clean-outs, but I kept it around for long enough. Free Fallin’ was so stupidly pure, a weird counterpoint to just about everything that was around at the same time. Not sure how it would be received now. It probably sounds like an actual Oldie.

    This song was always fun to play and sing and goof on, so here we are. “Oh you want me to solo on the Am pentatonic scale? 13-year-old Ryan here, ready to do some business.”

    //

    Second guitar track for that solo, and one backing vocal. And that’s all.

    I have a lot of “hard” songs building up for longer weekend projects, but I probably need to change my routine if I’m going to pull some of those off, layering in tracks earlier in the day so there’s not so much to do late at night, alone in the basement. Or is that how this is supposed to work? 😉

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  • day 147: Oom Sha La La

    Oom Sha La La, by Haley Heynderickx.

    I really love this song.

    What can I say, it was my 2019 Jam of the Yearâ„¢ for sure, even though it came out in 2018, and I’ve probably listened to it more in the past couple years than anything else except that Fleet Foxes album last year.

    To be fair, I’ve had a garden in the backyard for years, and yes, it’s quite therapeutic to work on, and yes, I was out there clipping some cute little microgreens today. (This just means I plant too late for anything to be useful when it starts getting hot, so we always have “microgreens” instead of full-size kale, spinach, and chard.)

    //

    Lots of extra vocals on the Oom Sha La Las, and even though I know the chords online are wrong for the bridge-ish part, and even though I knew the right way to play them, I still mucked it up horribly. And some MIDI piano and percussion, because it can’t hurt. Much.

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  • day 146: Landslide

    Landslide, by Fleetwood Mac.

    I mean, if it’s going to be Vulnerable Week, might as well go all in, right?

    I’m sure I heard this one thousands of times growing up, but for some reason the image that pops into my head when I hear this somehow involves a pizza parlor in New Jersey (or Pennsylvania??) where it came on while we were eating during a film job (??!?!) — none of that makes a lot of sense, and chances are good if that memory is accurate, I was vegan at the time, but idk, for whatever reason I am transported to that long-tabled pizza place now when I hear this song.

    //

    Two guitars, two vocals. I’ve been messing around with adjusted Echo effects on the main vocal/guitar track a lot lately. There’s a phrase an adult cousin of mine used sometime in the early 2000s when my wife and I were staying with her a couple nights in New York… she was talking about “music today” and I think the phrase was “an echo chamber to disguise their lack of talent” and I mean, she’s not wrong, but also, I have no shame, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

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  • day 145: Lua

    Lua, by Bright Eyes.

    Feeling vulnerable this week, y’all… did you notice? This song is one of seven or eight on this album that break my heart every time. I think I wrote about this earlier in the year when I did a more upbeat Conor Oberst song, to be fair, so you were warned.

    //

    Used the MIDI keyboard for the first time in a bit and tried out some little underlying synth thing, but it wasn’t really coming off, and the vocal was too quiet to really layer in much of anything, so I switched it to a drippy little piano and called it a night.

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  • day 144: Strong Enough

    Strong Enough, by Sheryl Crow.

    That Sheryl Crow record was the sort of thing that was fun until that one song was absolutely everywhere — kinda like when Mr. Fortgang printed the songsheets for Livin’ On A Prayer, and suddenly it was everyone’s song? When you’re a kid, and you don’t realize what you like is popular, and then, like you see your nemesis(es) singing your song and it’s so unfair.

    This song has some deadly lines, but also sounds like it belongs in the “giving up a vice to become a better person for my new significant other” montage of a 1990s dark romantic dry comedy, I guess?

    //

    But I don’t get to poke any fun at it all, because I mucked up the chorus like eight of nine times across three takes. A little tired over here tonight, on the 144th day of 2021.

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  • day 143: Swingin’ Party

    Swingin’ Party, by the Replacements.

    I have a few potential Replacements tracks on the list, but this song is one that always hit me as vulnerable as it gets. Paul Westerberg is always kinda “here’s my soul and I’m bearing it so transparently that I have to get really drunk to sing these songs” which isn’t necessarily productive, per se.

    That time I saw Paul Westerberg live, touring behind 14 Songs, which itself was almost like touring behind the Singles soundtrack, as far as I was concerned… I half-joke that’s the show where I picked up a rock and roll ear — as in, the hearing in my left ear was affected by standing too close on the left side of the stage during a very loud show at The Edge in Fort Lauderdale. I think I drove myself to that one alone, and felt lonely, and other than the guy at the record store (who was there that night!) who provided me with instructions regarding this band, I had no one to listen to this music with, really, so it was just mine, Hold My Life and and Achin’ To Be, and all the angst and waiting and patience and awkward romance of teenagedom, just aspiring to the freedom of twentiesdom, with no real end in sight.

    //

    Probably the last hotel number for a while!

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  • day 142: Raining Tacos

    Raining Tacos, by Parry Gripp.

    When in Rome…*

    *where Rome = traveling with a ten-year-old boy.

    I have heard this song sung by my child far more often than the original, but tbqh, it kinda slaps? Stay away from the sequels if you can help it, but I assure you, there is definitely a market for simple electronic music aimed at 7-11 year-old children.

    //

    Hmm, my ice bucket tripod rig seems to be less stable as the humidity level in the room decreases…

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