'Lectric Chair

This video was from another song on the Arphus album that I released in 2008. I like this one a lot, and I think it still holds up pretty well with the stuff I'm doing now. I started it a good while before 2008 though, and I was using a drum loop facility that was VERY difficult to use, although the sounds and performance were excellent. I got into loop manipulation, something I use quite a lot of now, originally just to build up drum parts, mostly because getting drummers into my home studio on time and sober was so hard to do!! To give my drummer friends some credit though, I lived way out in the boondocks back then, and I had very little money to recompense anyone with, and their time was limited too.

 So I started working with loops, because I really disliked drum machines. A loop is a small unit of a recorded performance of a real musician playing (originally these referred to actual loops of magnetic tape, back in the misty past, as used by The Beatles and others), and by arranging a bunch of these 1 to 4 bar phrases, you can build and entire drum part, complete with stops, builds, fills and hits. It does take time, and this one certainly did!! I played Synth Bass and Keys, and did all the guitars. The Sax parts were my first attempt at loop manipulation of something that wasn't a drum part, and I thought it worked well, although, again, it took a while. The guitar solo was done in one take on the spot, very quickly, I believe directly through a Vox Tonelab LE. Vocals are all mine.

At the time I was doing this, the video editing programs I had (again, for free, since I was as usual broke) left something to be desired!! In one, the audio would wind up distorted when I uploaded to YouTube...another would crash over and over, taking any unsaved work with it. I had to learn a lot of patience, but I did get it done, and I still like the way the photo montage worked!! One of these days I'll get a real camera, then watch out.

This was one of my Dad's favorite of my lyrics, which pleased me at the time and says something of his dark side I think!! Then again, his poetry, while brilliant (it won a Hopkins Award, among other things) was not all butterflies and light either. I think the fact he liked it makes me like it even more. And while the song is full of sturm and drang and argument and misunderstanding, it isn't without a little hope at the end, I think!! "Talk it over, if you dare". Anyway, please don't fry me over this one.

                                            ‘LECTRIC CHAIR

Sittin’ in the ‘Lectric Chair, hopin’ you won’t pull that switch

One of us is guilty here, but I’m not sure of what or which

Seems like we were only talkin’ when the lightning filled the air

I can hear the thunder rumble

Sittin’ in the ‘Lectric Chair

Something that I said or did or maybe looked a certain way

You’re staring at me like I know, but from this seat it’s hard to say

Now it’s like a Kafka novel, or that old Bob Dylan song

Sittin’ in the ‘Lectric Chair

And I don’t know what I’ve done wrong

Too late for a court appeal, or the Governor’s reprieve

You have got the power to fry me if you think that’s what you need

Maybe you could show me mercy, talk it over if you dare

‘Cause it doesn’t feel so groovy

Sittin’ in the ‘Lectric Chair