The Newts Of Night

Here's a fun little experiment!! I have friends who are talented in the Electronica music scene, but I'm not terribly well versed in it myself...I find that I keep hearing things in a more concise, song-formed structure. So this was me just fooling around with MIDI and loop collage, but I like the way it turned out. Recorded, as you might imagine, very late at night. I think the textures are hypnotic and pleasing, but I'm biased. And anytime I can get a digeridoo happening in a song, it makes my day better!! Anyhow, hope you enjoy it.

Another Fool

Jumping slightly out of the sequence of YouTube postings for this one, just because it felt like the right song for the day!! I wrote this song while on the road touring with Michael Katon, on a borrowed guitar in someone's basement apartment we were staying at between shows. I like the way the lyrics turned out, and I'm pretty happy with the overall recording! I did this one quickly for my Song-A-Week challenge, so I didn't think too hard about things, which was really helpful. Keys and Percussion are done with loop generation software, and Bass, Guitar and Vocals are all me. I double-tracked the Vocals in parts of the chorus. On the guitar solo I think I was aiming for a Carlos Santana sound, but sort of wound up in Earnie Isley's "Who's That Lady?" territory. Of course the aforementioned are geniuses, and there are so many of my friends who are brilliant guitarists who can play rings around me! But I feel that I can pull out a nice melodic solo now and then, and this one was pleasing to me, and a first take, too, which was nice.

The song itself came from a conversation with a friend of mine who was waxing cynical about the nature of love, saying that it was all just chemical in nature and really just an illusion. I kind of though he was protesting a bit too much, and that there was some back story that might explain his opinion. And, actually, there was. We all get hurt at some time in our lives, we all get our hearts broken, but I still think that love is real, and worth it.  

Lyrics:

ANOTHER FOOL

He says, “Love is a lie of nature, sent here to wreck your mind

A genetic time bomb, it sets you up and then it leaves you blind”

He’s talking like he’s so immune, like he’s already seen it all

But I’m thinking that pretty soon another fool is gonna have to fall

He says, “Yeah, it’s just a fact of science, man, all the proof is strong

It's just a chemical stimulus, and it doesn't last all that long"

He likes to think that he's so in tune that he'll never ever hear the call

But I'm thinking that pretty soon another fool is gonna have to fall 

Gonna have to fall, gonna have to fall

Gonna have to fall, gonna have to fall

You can hide in your own cathedral,

You can lock the doors to your keep

And you can bury yourself in your guitar -

Love it knows your scent and sound

And it's gonna track you down

Doesn't matter who or where you are

In a secret room where he never goes, there's her picture there

There's a secret part of himself, whispers out that it's still not fair

But time's gonna heal his wounds and it's gonna break down his walls

And I'm thinking that pretty soon, another fool is gonna have to fall

 

The Strange Parade

I do like this one!! This is a song I wrote some time ago, partially inspired by the Anime movie Paprika by Satoshi Kon, the brilliant director who also created Millennium Actress & the wonderful Tokyo Godfathers. I highly recommend his work, which really stretched both the field of Anime and the art of storytelling in major ways. He sadly passed away in 2010, but he leaves a fascinating and moving legacy.

When I wrote and recorded this I originally did it just on the acoustic guitar, tuned in an open tuning (I think DGDGAD), and with a shaker loop to keep my timing honest in case I wanted to add something later. MUCH later, I added a percussion track. Later still, when I was working on my Crazy Project (I was challenging myself to finish a song a week), I contacted my old friend Paul Vornhagen to help with a flute track. Paul is a wonderful guy and a fantastic multi-instrumentalist, an accomplished Jazz musician and very knowledgeable about Latin music, and Cuban music in particular. He agreed to come in and laid down two takes of flute, both of which were great. I took a bit from one and a bit from another, edited that just a little, but very little.  I re-recorded my vocal (I'd had a scratch track I put up just before Paul got there), and added a bass part, and that was that!! A little mixing and mastering stuff and I was finished.

The theme of this song is something that I feel more and more as time goes on...we're all haunted. If you live long enough, you will be. Time presents us with ghosts, in the form of memories, of old feelings that appear in the middle of the night to surprise, scare or delight you. I think the best thing we can do is to be aware of their presence, because then you can try to deal with them accordingly. Either embrace them, fight them or let them go, but don't ignore them. That's the dangerous option!!!