 12 april 2000 it pays the rent speaking lyrical in syllables but not words who needs words these days?
SWM seeks soulmate of the opposite sex. Who the fuck am I kidding?
Had a few cocktails with Fritz tonight at the White Rock on Reseda in Tarzana. It's pretty amazing how he gets me to turn my train of thought around in an instant. I was telling him about my new song: "So yeah, it's way commerical, this is our hit single..."
And the conversation went on, and we started talking about my new job ...
"So how's the new office?" he asked.
"It's an office," I replied.
"And your boss?"
"Fine, just fine."
"The job?"
"It pays the rent."
At which point he gave me a funny look, the type of look that only a friend that knows you well will give you, and he said: "You don't care about the fucking job, do you? You just care about the band."
I nodded my head in affirmation.
"It pays the rent," he said, half mockingly, half serious.
And then he got back to my first comment, about my new song. He said the comment bothered him a bit, as it intimated that all I was interested in from my potential musical career was money, commercialism, writing songs for the public ... and it made me think.
I did a good five seconds of deep soul-searching, and I realized that the new song, while very commercial, actually came from another place....
"I was just trying to write a happy song..." I explained.
I've never written a happy song before. After our first gig, Band Management came to me and told me how much they liked my first song, which was a recycled ballad I had composed five years ago. I hadn't written a thing since. It's a psychosick horror movie parody tune, with lyrics like "her boyfriend's on her mind, her fingers just pretend" and "bang bang shoot shoot, throat slit she's mute." But they loved it, and wanted more, and suddenly I was forced to write a new song for the first time in a half-decade.
And I was scared shitless at the prospect.
So I decided to challenge myself and write a happy song for the first time in my life. I sat at the keyboard and pounded out major chords in the most cliched way. It didn't work.
And I told this all to Fritz...
One night in the studio, I was half-stoned and a melody just popped into my head. Out of nowhere. It went "bah, bah, bah-da, bah, bah bah bah, bah-da, bah, bah bah bah, bah-da, bah"
And I screamed for someone to get me a keyboard so I could get it down on paper. No lyrics, no "big idea" -- it just sounded happy to me.
And in the past few months, that little melody has turned into what I now consider a very commercial song, written for the masses, something that refuses to leave your head after you hear it. I hesitate to call it a good song, and that's why I probably only think of it in terms of its money-making potential. Fritz caught me on that. And he hadn't even heard it yet.
The most crazy thing is that I was able to write mostly happy lyrics for the tune, although I could never come up with anything decent for the original melody that popped into my head that night, so I did the only thing possible: I left it at "bah-bah". That said, here's the tune, only because Fritz wanted to see the lyrics, so I'll put them here, the usual copyright shit applicable (thank heavens for the band attorneys)....
(verse i)
(bridge)
(chorus)
(verse ii)
(bridge)(chorus)(bridge)(chorus)(end)
And that's it. Still needs work of course, but should be mostly finalized for the gig a week from saturday.
Besides, my niece really liked it. Never doubt the opinion of a one-year old.
Yes, it's very commercial, I admit it. But I cannot honestly say that was my original intention.
The new song I'm working on now is much less poppy. It's a salsa, or maybe a bossanova, or somewhere in between. Much simpler. Much more groove-oriented. No "bah-bah's" either. Maybe some "la-la's" or "o-lah-lah-lah-lay's" but no "bah-bah's"
Who the fuck needs lyrics anyway? It's all about the "catch." That's what's gonna pay the rent.
I can't believe I just said that.
one year ago: x-country ii: I'm alive, I'm airborne, and I'm feeling like I owe the world a favor because I was too selfish to give up my window seat.
two years ago: hi, my name is...: My life, and all that represents it, currently stands short of completion, like Gaudi's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, flying buttresses reaching toward the sky, stretching to support ... nothing.
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