Archive for the ‘oldies’ Category

Oldies: Chinese Drop

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

So I wrote this song probably in 1996 or 1997, in my living room. I recall coming up with the chord progression while sitting on my couch, my bong on the coffee table, skipping class from college. The first time I recorded it was with planet zorn, tho I played it for many years prior to this recording with several bands.

The lyrics are a play on rhyming schemes. I wanted to have an artificial AAAAA BBBBB CCCCC rhyme scheme, where for each verse, there is only one repeating rhyme. The subject is a general paranoia song about fear of the Chinese and their nuclear missiles, their suppression of the Falun Gong, and their menacing of Taiwan. Next I move to the police and their fun practices with mace and smashing faces. Then I move on to the hypocrisy of America’s obsession with fame and giving passes to famous and/or powerful people.

The chorus was written as a separate song, which I cut up and inserted into the middle of this song. The song that the chorus comes from was a silly tuning song that was literally following the progression of the strings, which we played so everyone could tune without the normal choatic, boring tuning that most people do. The lyrics in the chorus refer to how hard it will be for us to get to the ideal, an impossibility.

I have played many, many roles in bands throughout my ‘career’: Keyboardist in my first band, and from there, bass player, singer/bass player, guitarist, singer/guitarist, singer, singer/keyboardist. I’ve played drums, as well as singer/drummer. One time I was a singer/guitarist/bassist, but we won’t get into that.

In this first track, it’s all guitars. I don’t like the production, but that is merely amateur work - and who plays the guitar solo? me, that’s who:

The next recording is from a live show:

You can hear me talking like the fool I normally am on stage at the beginning.

And finally, the latest version, recorded with a beautiful Wurlitzer organ for the main track:

This last track is definitely my favorite version. The third time is a charm, as they say.

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Oldies: Solarx, Tomorrow

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

So I formed a band called Solar X (yes, I have abysmal taste in band names.  so sue me.  you come up with a good band name), and we had a female singer, who goes by the name of Rola, a 19 year old Lebanese (I think) girl with a really nice voice.  The recording was made out at the bassist’s, (Brandon Simpson) house, which was out in the Hill Country southwest of Austin, recorded and produced by yours truly.  Which would explain the terrible production quality.  I learned not to produce my own music with this experience.  I still like the way the song turned out, nonetheless.  Chris McNelis, guitar, me, keys and backing vocals.

The chord progression for this song was written by Chris McNelis, and I wrote the vocal melody and lyrics.  It was the first really successful collaboration that I had done with any other musician up to that point.

Wear your heart upon your sleeve
Show the world what you believe

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Some nice French reviews of my album with Major Major

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

A while ago, we posted our album on the internets in many various places. One of these places is Jamendo.com

(here)

We have had two really nice reviews from two French folks with extremely good taste in music. :)

Purely from a selfish, egotistical standpoint, I will post their terrible google translations here:

Review #1

That some albums on Jamendo unnoticed when they are simply great.
A lot of listening, but very little attraction for this album that deserve a visit.
So I’ll try to correct what seems to be an anomaly.
Do not turn around the bush, this album is one of the biggest success that you can find on Jamendo. The style does plaira perhaps not to some, but for the lover of pop rock, soft as well as more remuante, this album will be happy.
Want to gently let yourself be soothed by “Chinese” want to move, dance on “Satellite”. Every desire, Major Major proposes a solution. And the title “Satellite” really seems to be one of the best pieces of this style on Jamendo.
And then what else? That the singer is good? The recording is perfect? Instrumentation that is roaring, the effects impeccable, electronic sounds adequate interpretation brilliant?
Well … yes … let’s dare to say … this album is the bomb.
If you are skeptical about the quality of the albums on Jamendo, therefore listen this album and you will see, rather hear, that the best artists Jamendo worth the best commercial artists.
Indeed I would not be surprised if the majors are up to the Major Major. At least a foot from the nose, we should soon hear about it.
On this direction favorites …
On this night right direction …
Review #2
“You have a new message.”
I want Francis recommends an album, let’s listen.
I must say that this music is not necessarily my cup of tea, but I listen a little bit and I let me take this pop-rock sometimes a little soft, sometimes stirring but still excellently performed and sung all focused by a flawless production.
Voila I finally caught in the nets this artist wielding sounds right from the 80’s or other more contemporary electro or even a Hispanic atmosphere on “Party Till It Hurts” (Bravo the plow).

Conclusion: A good album, the superb job zikos, and a place in my favorites.

Respect.

Ras-Kal.

(Thanks Francis for sharing.)

So there you have it. Even people that don’t like our kind of music like this CD. What more needs to be said than that?

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Oldies: Party Till it Hurts

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

majormajor_itunesOldies: Party Till it Hurts from self titled by Major Major

This song took about a year to write from start to finish.  When I came up with the basic idea for this song, I was playing guitar on my son’s tiny little acoustic guitar that I bought at Walmart for $20.  It was so cheap that only the top two strings would stay in tune, and only to the 5th fret, at which point it became unbearable to play.

Anyways, I was having conversation with my wife about something, and I started subconsciously picking out a guitar tune that instantly caught my ear.  I had half a conversation with my wife (meaning half of my brain was involved), while at the same time I reveled in how cool this lick sounded.  When the conversation ended, here is what I recorded at that moment:

1st take of guitar line for verse from Party Till it Hurts, recorded by me:

Not a bad little start. Then, while my son beat on my guitar, I came up with the chorus chord progression, which walks up the Bmin scale with an interesting syncopation:

guitar line for chorus from Party Till it Hurts:

and finally, a bridge, as all good songs need a bridge. It is essentially the chorus, but cut to half time and spiced up a little bit:

guitar line for bridge of Party Till it Hurts

and, after about 6 months of on and off work between the hours of 10pm and 2am when the kid and wife was asleep, I finished the general idea of the song, complete with vocals, backing instruments and tone-deaf mixing (by me - I can not mix songs, as I destroyed my hearing playing in rock bands for 20 years).  The lyrics were written at the beginning of the second term of the Commander in Thieves, Bush, so I was compelled to write about that bastard.  The first lines of the song really sum up my feelings for the man and his ilk:

I’m rich, but I live the life of a thief,
I steal your stuff for relief
It makes me feel good in the night
To hold your things so tight

and the chorus:

I’m going to keep it for myself
Don’t want to share with nobody else
I’m going to party till it hurts, and then I’ll do it again

and the bridge, with the grand slam:

Ask me, beg me on your knees,
Tell me you can’t take anymore
I will put you where there’s
no one who will ever hear your pleas
Like a shadow in the night
Like a blinding flash of light
I will take it all and
You won’t even ever know it’s gone.

At the time, I had just found out about Abu Ghraib, and I was vehemently against everything the criminal stood for.  This was 2005, and not many people felt this way.  Almost this entire album is about the destruction of my country.

Now, stop thinking about that, and let’s get cheery again!

here is the full mp3 that I recorded in the process of writing the song:

Then, I included this song in the full album I was writing at the time to lure musicians into my project and form Major Major. Through the year of playing the song with a live band, it morphed into a very Spanish feeling song, complete with salsa piano.

I’ve noticed that some songs really don’t get written until they are played live by a band. It can start out well by itself, and stand by itself in a recording, but the natural feel of a really good song doesn’t come until it has been played and altered by a live band many times. So, in the process of teaching this song to many different musicians, who had their own interpretations of the music, this version of Party Till it Hurts came about.

Plus, the fact that it was produced by Lars Goransson makes it golden:

And that ends our trip down nostalgia lane for today.

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I am personally responsible for the success of Spoon

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

200px-nefariousepYes, it does sound stupid, doesn’t it. But it’s true. At least in a slightly warped sense (do you detect a twinge of jealousy? cause it can’t be that hard to see!).

In 1992, I started a power trio band called Mr. Happy with J.R. Cope on drums and Rob Greenfield on guitar, me on bass and singing. We played for about a year in Austin, and signed up for the KVRX UT student radio station’s battle of the bands. It just so happened that Spoon formed around that time, and they too joined this battle of the bands.

Well, it came down to two bands in the finals: Mr Happy versus Spoon. Mr Happy won. I personally beat Spoon in a battle of the bands. But, unfortunately, there is a curse at KVRX. Any band that ever won the the battle ended up dying in obscurity, while the band that comes in second place seems to do pretty well. And I guess you could say that Spoon has “done pretty well”.

As opposed to me, who sits in his basement at night and writes songs for himself after his kids go to bed.

Here’s a little proof, which a nice little google search brought me (via: here ):

Taking a more rock-oriented approach, the pair next enlisted guitarist Greg Wilson and a female bass guitarist named Andy McGuire, then hurriedly adopted the Spoon moniker, the title of a song by the German band Can, to participate in a 1993 competition sponsored by KVRX. Unfortunately, Spoon lost the “battle of the bands” to a group called Mr. Happy and afterwards did not receive an invitation to perform at the 1994 South By Southwest conference. Thus, in protest, the trio staged a show at a nearby punk club, the Pink Flamingo, where Matador Records co-owner Gerard Cosloy happened to be in attendance.

Which brings me to my next post about my music. The song that won the contest for us was a little ditty called Kissing Jane.

Mark this one under:

Oldies: Kissing Jane from the self titled album by Mr. Happy, and Planet Zorn

I wrote this song when I was 18. I had just broken off a long distance relationship with my first girlfriend. Well, broke it off after I caught her cheating on me with some guy that she met at sxsw. I was walking back from her house to the car, when the melody and words for this song just popped into my head. I frantically got a pen out, wrote the words down, then also transcribed what I heard in my head to paper. It turned out that the song only had 3 very simple chords, but the melody was very catchy. The lyrics are about a love/hate great/abusive relationship with a girl and/or marijuana. Take your pick.

I’ve recorded this song more than 3 times, but here are the only copies I could find.

The first, a recording made in 1992, my second studio experience, when I was 18, with Mr. Happy.

Now, I kept this song in my lexicon and pulled it out whenever whichever band I was in needed a good tune to flesh out the set. So, fast forward 5 years, and I recorded it again with Planet Zorn. You can tell by this time I had figured out how to rock. It is actually very easy to write a nice, slow song. But writing a rocking hard tune is very difficult to accomplish if you’ve never done it, or, like me, were classically trained to play like a pansy all your life.

Recorded by Paul Soroski (of the band Podunk) with Planet Zorn, ~1997:

and, for some added adrenaline, a live recording about a year later:

and, that’s probably the closest I ever came to fame.

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1st music post - Dethroned

Monday, February 9th, 2009

Oldies: Dethroned, from the album, The Freak

Dethroned, the subject of my first post, is a song I wrote when I think I was 19. The lyrics were based on a poem I had written in high school, about a scenario wherein the position of “God” is filled by humans, and is something sought after until it is attained, at which point it loses its luster, the person falls from grace, and is thrown into a sea of fire with the rest of the previous applicants.

I recorded this song, I believe, with two different bands (could have been more, but alot of my studio dat tapes broke with age). Here is the first incarnation:

Dethroned, Version 1

This was recorded in, I believe, 1996 at Star Dog Studios, by the guitarist for a band that did lounge-style covers of songs like Smells Like Teen Spirit - the Austin Lounge Lizards. He was a pretty good producer, and the product would have turned out much better if we had had any money. But we didn’t, so we recorded the entire album live. That’s right, live. Which explains the mistakes everywhere and the extremely rushed feeling. Plus, you can only mix with the sounds you record, and, as such, this sounds pretty bad. But my backing band was sure well practiced.  Tim Trentham on guitar, Ted Vanscoy on bass, me on guitar and vocals.

and, the final version:

Dethroned, Version 2

Here, we were produced by the marvelous Lars Goransson in 1997, whom I continue to have the pleasure to record with to this day. As you can see, this is a much more professional sounding track. We had more money (bankrolled by the wonderful Tom Palmer on guitar), and thus more time. I added a backing track of piano to the mix, and generally, this is my favorite song off the album.

The music was recorded one day, with extra tracks recorded the next, including a good 6 hours for vocal tracks.  Lars was a very good producer, and pushed me to my limit on this recording (my limits weren’t all that hot a the time, but I did reach them, nonetheless).  Phil Hampsten on drums, Ted Vanscoy on bass, Tom Palmer on lead guitar, me on vocals, keys and guitar.

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