The World Over There

another Thomas Pynchon Fakebook song today!

the world over there

this is a song i put together near the end of our time at the Willis house, maybe the last thing we did there.. it clearly benefits from the live drums and loud guitars. i'm pretty sure i did everything on this one, but as i was working on it i had this vague idea about the horns coming in over the second half, making this big triumphant thing (maybe like William the Arsonist).. but emily and i could never really figure out what to do, so it stands as a sorta noisy guitar celebration.

despite all that, i really like this song.. it reminds me of the early Flaming Lips stuff I fell in love with back in the day, ala Clouds Taste Metallic and such. and it has that neat moment where it's in a big slow six for most of the song and then changes into a punk rock two-feel, sorta.. tough to describe, but i like the effect.

moving on - here in Portland, OR the weather has really taken a turn for the better.. high pressure moving in just in time for the weekend, gonna last all week it seems. i'm pretty happy about all that, no doubt. hooray! emily's been working hard in the lab down at PSU all week, this'll be the end of her first week working full-time, so that's a reason to celebrate. and i've been doing work for Ben, actually making money, so that's good news as well. maybe this weekend we'll go out for dinner or something.. ha!

aaron

vulgar song

Over these last two terms (fall 2008 & spring 2009, i guess) Daniel Couch put together the Thomas Pynchon Fakebook, a project to set the lyrics in Gravity's Rainbow to song.. being a big fan of Pynchon, I agreed to help pretty quickly. i should find the address and set up the links, but i gotta go to work in a bit here.. but i wanted to post a little something before i left, blah blah..

anyhow, it was experimental on a few different levels - obviously working with somebody else's lyrics can be odd, but there was also some collaboration (almost all of it through the internet).. anyhow, emily and i put together 5 songs (i think), and contributed to a few more, neat stuff.

a lot of the lyrics in the book are setup in a jazzy singalong context, and they often have an innate rhythm and form to 'em, we basically just added the most obvious music in most cases.. it was an opportunity to do more show-tunes/jazzy stuff, but this may not be the best example.. on the other hand, it's got Danni doing a lot of funny laugh noises all over it, which is pretty funny.. and emily did a lot of vocal pitch shifting stuff. good times.

Vulgar Song

hmm.. i should also find the lyrics and maybe page numbers (ha!).. . but i gotta run.

oh yeah, and i kinda bombed my japanese quiz yesterday, which made me pretty sad. i guess i was just caught off guard, the quiz was pretty easy (despite the fact that i failed it). oh well.

Saddest Songs

another song from the Black Mesa Songs album.. sorta gets me all choked up, sometimes. gorgeous little song with some excellent words, i wish i had written this. oh well, at least i get to listen to it. ha!

while we were working on the album, there were a couple of songs that seemed like little gems - maybe we shouldn't clutter them up with accordions and trumpets and noisy guitar solos and such.. and while we ended up doing that to most songs, this one was too nice to mess up.

on other notes, emily and i started a japanese conversation class last night, which was pretty cool.. i've been studying japanese for a few terms now, at PCC, but it's sorta exciting to have emily as a conversation partner.

ja mata

Hunger For Thirst

hunger for thirst

The New Mexican Revolution finally released a new album, Black Mesa Songs, and I think it turned out pretty darn good. It's got the reliable mix of americana/country/songwriter-stuff, as well as some Tom Waits-style gypsy punk (ala Gogal Bordello). ha!

that sounds funny to read over, like some mutant press release. it's also pretty early in the morning, 'cause i gotta go to work.. which is awesome, 'cause i need money. i've been reading the Grapes of Wrath lately, on account of all the plane-traveling i've been doing, and it's a bit depressing. apparently you gotta have money. hmmm..

anyways, hunger for thirst might be my favorite song on the album, but it's a tough pick.. it's a country tune with neat poetic lyrics, and it's got a nice solo section and bridge. good stuff. on other parts of the album, their is more noise, more instrumentation, more experimentation, but this one is beautifully basic, i think.

I swore today I’d bite everything I said
Half words full of broken letters
I couldn’t explain away the reasons that I stay
Half sounds are for all the better

And you were at your best when I was at my worst
But I could never remember exactly which came first
Even benign smiles could seem so cursed
As I traded in my hunger for my thirst

Words are like leaves that are free, you can’t put them back on a tree
Each one a life of its own.
They might try to fly, or maybe just fall and die
Or wait like a seed to be sown

Sometimes words move like snow or they’ll settle like broken glass
Sometimes they lie in waiting for the moment to pass
So I try to bite down on them break them into pieces,
Let them settle where they will.