Jun. 08, 2003 - 7:02 p.m.
Dear Meghan:
The latest in the My Neighborhood is a David Lynch Film Waiting to Happen Story: there is a putz across the street, in the attic apartment of a three-flat building, who has discovered the marvel of electric guitar amplifiers. As I write this, he is going over tried-and-true chord sequences, which could either be “Wild Thing” or any of a hundred Grateful Dead songs. Every once in a while, when he finds he is able to keep time for more than eight bars, his confidence overwhelms him and he is drawn to bending one note on one string, like the beginning of a solo. However, as soon as he ventures into this realm, his backing – the tried-and-true chord sequences – is gone, and with it goes his confidence. The solo Yoko-Ono-worth squeal gives way and a chinga-chinga attempt to recapture a chord sequence then appears, which ends with contemplative silence. Repeat. His playing is the musical equivalent to a 14-year-old boy learning how to dry hump for the first time.
My friend Keith and I finally had brunch today. We have been friends for nearly a dozen years now, from our days taking classes at the Annoyance Theater (a rather progressive underground theater, which pushed the envelope in outrageousness – from their works “Co-Ed Prison Sluts”, “Manson the Musical” and an embryonic version of “The Brady Bunch Live” – in the 1990s). Our contact has dwindled in recent years as we attempted to machete our way through our 20s. From our respective paths, we can now look over at each other’s with a certain degree of friendly envy: he is the condo owner who would like to do stagework; I’m the stageworker who wouldn’t mind owning a condo. At this point in time, we see each other once to three times a year, during which we regale each other with tales of conquest, disappointment and material gain. And chicks. If two guys are together, they must discuss chickage. He’s thinking about getting a band together lately, which actually surprised me. He’s been the most adept predictor of trends and encylopedia of unsung groups and singers for so long; I’m actually very anxious to hear what he could come up with.
So, after brunch, we headed to a very frightening thing indeed: Guitar Center. For the most part, I lump musicians, actors and Star Trek fans into the same basket: all of them are infinitely proud of their own knowledge, and become somewhat aloof and nasty if you voice either ignorance of something they treasure or worse – if you think something else is better. Tell a Star Trek fan that ‘Babylon V’ or ‘Dr. Who’ was far more intelligent, and you’ll see what I mean. Keith didn’t know what MIDI was, and I believe he was going to ask someone, but I counseled him against it. Once it would be revealed that he didn’t know what MIDI stood for, he would branded the equivalent of a ‘chicken’ in the gay world – a newbie to be tampered with.
Instead, he and I bounded around the keyboard sections, playing vacuous rhythm loops and making up simple tunes on the spot. Being a little competitive with him (as he is with me), I naturally dug up from memory some piano-written melodies of mine, which I played with aplomb. He was overwhelmed – with the store, not my keyboard acumen. “Best thing to do is walk away,” I suggested (or prompted), “we’ll come back.” Baby steps are important – especially when considering joining the geek cult of desktop music making.
Meanwhile, at my own desktop, I finalized some mixes of two songs which were proving to be terribly troublesome: “Brand New Smile” (which I believe you are familiar with, at least on a lyrical level) and a piece of power pop trash called “I’m Floating Away.” The latter has been around for nearly a year, and is completely unremarkable! Actually, what I had a year ago – all of the instruments recorded – was fairly interesting, but absolutely no words volunteered themselves to go along. I had read of an old Williams Burroughs method of writing a poem: you put a series of disconnected lines on strips of paper in a bucket, then you pull them out one at a time. The end result is a seemingly random collection of words, which create – and sometimes decimate – images and concepts that would normally be overlooked. For “Floating”, I found I had four open tracks to record on, so each day, I switched on the recorder and filled up a track with various random feelings and phrases. At the end of four days, I randomly mixed the song, taking a line from one vocal track and a line from another, etc. Pretty creative, huh? The end result? Pretty shitty. So I scratched that and wrote out the lyrics in one go.
It took five mixes of “I’m Floating Away” – each time adding a bit of distortion to one vocal or another to cover up my inability to sing – to get it to the point of being satisfactory. For me, satisfactory is merely the point at which I could play the song in the car with the windows down without cringing.
I still think I’m missing a good closing song, and that is the only thing holding me back from finalizing the whole project. I’ve been making these sordid little personal albums for years, and closing songs have always come very easily to me – and I tend to dislike albums that don’t have a killer song as its finale (one of my main gripes in the tuff-girl-extra-sugar disc known as Pink’s “Misunderstood”). So, even though my audience is basically me for these things, I am still searching.
Prowlishly,
Vincent
what they said - what they will say
