songs:365

  • day 47: The State I Am In

    The State I Am In by Belle and Sebastian.

    The first song off Belle and Sebastian’s first record. According to the sticker on it, I purchased my vinyl copy at Etherea on Avenue A for $14.98. Looks like the 1999 pressing, so I wasn’t that far behind when I bought this, no later than 2001. Not sure where I first heard it, or if I just tried it out in the store.

    These songs have stuck with me, all clever turns of phrase and chords. Other than some mistakes, confusion, or preferring to sing certain lyrics as I remember them rather than what I see written down on the websites where I look for chords, I haven’t changed the words of these songs much. (Kinda sounds like I did when I read that sentence back, but work with me here…) But the “crippled friend” lyric here is a little cringe in 2021. I sang it anyway.

    So the new MIDI keyboard is a lot of fun, as you can tell. One live guitar and vocal today, with the rest all software instruments obviously mashed live to go with my faulty rhythm and flubs.

    Oh, and I think I’m playing this a full step lower than the record, because I am not going to pretend I can do it the other way.

    Tags:

  • day 46: I Ride An Old Paint

    I Ride An Old Paint, Traditional, as by Riders In The Sky.

    I don’t know this one as a Johnny Cash song, or a Linda Rondstadt song; I just know it as a cowboy song recorded by the silliest western group this side of Sesame Street: Riders In The Sky.

    I’ve been nursing the same poor Riders CD for more than 20 years, I am sure of it, but I first heard them on public radio — WLRN 91.3 in Miami, after my parents split up and my dad didn’t get a television.

    Public radio was the soundtrack of the every other weekend I spent with him, in his apartment, in his car (when it wasn’t Paul Simon or Steve Miller — but those tapes peaked before those years, I think), in thunderstorms on the Intracoastal, or on perfect days driving down to Miami Beach and back along A1A because it was easier than thinking of something else to do.

    Our local NPR station was the place I heard real live blues — Ruth Brown — and the place I heard “country” music I didn’t hate — Riders Radio Theater. The goofy mystery segment was always appealing (with far, far less cynicism than Garrison Keillor, who I didn’t like until I was very much an adult, and then not for long, because ask not for whom the milkshake duck quacks…)

    That radio was also the place I really heard (and felt) jazz for the first time, Miles Davis’s Nefertiti on one of those car rides south, but that’s not this story.

    ~~~

    Oh, so, I got that little MIDI keyboard in the mail today, and after a little bit of frustration (the real cause of the delay was the Bluetooth headphones, natch), I enjoyed the heck out of playing the software drums, bass, and piano on it.

    Tags: ,

  • day 45: Night Comes In

    Night Comes In, by Richard and Linda Thompson.

    A love song for Valentine’s Day.

    This song still give me chills, even if it takes me back to the most cliché teenage relationships and pay phones and even to the extra bedroom at my grandparents’ house where we lived for the first couple months of my senior year of high school, toward the tail end of a teenage relationship, and I was teaching myself this song, probably off of the tape made for me by the guy at the first record store I worked at who insisted I listen to Pour Down Like Silver and I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight and here it is 28 years later, and well over 40 years since this music was written, and goodness it’s powerful stuff.

    One take, a second vocal, and a software keyboard, but this deserves an electric guitar track if I come back to it.

    Tags: ,

  • day 44: Silence Kid

    Silence Kid, by Pavement.

    Saturday afternoon project…

    Back around 2014 when I bought myself an electric guitar for the first time in a decade or two, I always almost entirely driven by trying to get some approximation of Pavement’s sound. The (Squire) Jazzmaster, the Orange amp, a pedal or two, all helped, but the real leap of progress came when I found someone had bothered to transcribe all their songs (and lots of the available Malkmus solo stuff at the time) with all the correct tunings and tablature. Slay Tracks person, if you’re out there somewhere, thank you, and please do the past five years of Malkmus records, too. And thank you.

    I wasn’t really sure how to get a decent video without lip syncing, and I didn’t want to do that for this project if I can help it, so all you get is video of me vibing to the first 70 seconds or whatever before the vocal comes in, and then it’s full on lounge singer moves with the mic in my hand.

    There are three different guitar tracks and three vocals and some software stuff. The drums are silly, but when they work, it’s really helpful. There are also some terrible edits, because the electric guitar part is a lot to get right.

    This song is called Silence Kid, no matter what it says on the back of the record, and the original slaps.

    Tags:

  • day 43: Off You

    Off You, by the Breeders.

    I spent all my Breeders time as a teenager with Last Splash, but heard this song in the movie Her, of course, and it opened my ears up to more glorious Deal sister work.

    This song is laden with meaning, but not for me.

    I’m thinking of buying a cheap MIDI keyboard, because the whole “type letters to play software instruments” is getting silly. We’ll see if my timing gets any better.

    Tags:

  • day 42: Lovesong

    Lovesong, by The Cure.

    I can’t think about The Cure without thinking about kids at summer camp putting eggs in their hair to make it stand up for a costume party dance.

    I can’t think about The Cure without thinking about Pictures of You playing on a cassette tape in the boom box I kept on the seat of my high school car that had no tape player of its own. Parking across the street from school in the mall lot because… why? Was I late? Or planning to leave early? Maybe both.

    I can’t think about The Cure without thinking about how my wife likes certain songs.

    I can’t think about The Cure without feeling nostalgic for all these things and more.

    This song is just the one that came out tonight, and I’ve always loved it. 😉

    Some fun silly software keyboards, no extra vocals, just the one guitar.

    Tags:

  • day 41: Hotline Bling

    Hotline Bling, by Drake.

    My favorite Drake video is the one where he’s in front of the synagogue I went to as a kid in Downtown Miami. (Just kidding, my favorite Drake video is Work, because it’s a Rihanna video.) My favorite Drake song is really an A$AP Rocky song. (But mostly Kendrick’s verse, but also the rest of it, including Drake’s verse.) My favorite Drake album is the one with future.

    But Hotline Bling is fun. And I love the full-on Erykah Badu mixtape that circles around this song. Oh and I have no idea what to do with the break on this song. Those are probably the wrong chords.

    Tags:

  • day 40: Walking With Jesus

    Walking With Jesus, by Spacemen 3.

    The first time I heard Spacemen 3, I was in a record store… somewhere. I can picture the place with some precision, but I have no idea where in the world it was. It wasn’t Amoeba in San Francisco. It’s possible it was Princeton Record Exchange? Ooh, looking at pictures and thinking about the timeline when I know I was there in junior year of college working on a movie, yeahhhh, it must’ve been there.*

    The first Spacemen 3 record I bought was called Dreamweapon and was mostly two long epic drone pieces, and it was wonderful. Sometime later I ended up with things like Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To on vinyl, and heard this song — listed now as Sound of Confusion.

    Didn’t have a chance to layer on some electric guitar, but that’s what it needs. Also didn’t listen to the song before recording, which seems like a fun game. It’s only two chords, so my memory of the melody is not too far off.

    *That can’t be right, because I already had a different Spacemen 3 album around sophomore year that I used in the closing credits of a video project, so… where did I hear Dreamweapon? Oh, wow, was this a Miami-summer-after-freshman-year thing? That’s when friends got me into Stereolab, The Sea And Cake, and this would have been a logical extension of that at the time… We made a few trips to this one used CD spot but heck if I can remember where.

    Tags:

  • day 39: Your Song

    Your Song, by Elton John.

    It seems like 100% of my experience of Elton John’s music has been through the radio. Never owned an Elton John record, never been to a show, never had it around the house, but I could probably sing parts of a good solid 40 Elton John songs if you made me.

    Please, don’t make me.

    There a few that I have some feelings about, though, like this one and Daniel, and maybe a couple more.

    Kept it simple tonight! One take, including some stumbles, one track only.

    Tags:

  • day 38: Late In The Evening

    Late In The Evening, by Paul Simon.

    I don’t know where to begin cataloging the history of my relationship with Paul Simon’s (and sometimes Garfunkel’s) music, so let’s do an old fashioned list.

    • The Concert In Central Park cassette (idk, 1983, maybe?) that ran on repeat one summer between me and a couple kids from North Carolina at camp. That’s the version of this song that runs in my head, I guess, though listening to the studio version, the live one was pretty much perfect.
    • Graceland in the car with my dad, seeing him play Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes with Ladysmith Black Mambazo on some awards show, listening to the tape in the car with my dad some more.
    • Rhythm of the Saints during junior high bus trips, and the Miami Arena concert where I sang along with Sound of Silence so loudly I embarrassed my mother which in hindsight seems really challenging.
    • Having songs like El Condor Pasa in common with my wife and her family.
    • That great passage in one of the Girl Talk records where he mashes up Cecelia with Get Low.

    Mashed everything so hard on this one it was all too loud and I had to mix it a second time and it’s still too loud. Didn’t get the whole trumpet line right, but not bad for a few minutes of tinkering!

    Tags: