|
[25 Oct 2003|03:23am] |
My friend Amanda got me to give a 'Storyteller' introduction to one of my songs tonight, and it got me to thinking. If I were asked to play a collection of my songs and tell the story of how they came to be before playing them, what would I say?
The following are the stories of eight songs. Four are from 'Fixate' and four are from my second album, which has yet to start the recording process, but is almost completely written. I think the new songs are far superior to the old, but you can't just disown yourself from your past, and none of the songs here are ones I would call bad.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DARKEST STAR - Sometimes, meaning is evolved, rather than intended.
A lot of my songs aren't about me, or people I know, or even real things. They're just a reflection of my thoughts at the time. Because I don't really think in words or images, I have a lot of trouble explaining the meanings of many of my songs to people.
Darkest Star was originally one of these songs. It had meaning that I understood, but was impossible to communicate to others. If especially pressed as to the song's meaning, I'd mutter "angst and alienation, something along those lines." There's no cohesive narrative because I hadn't developed that far as a songwriter - I was only 17.
I think I can articulate it better, now. The speaker is a person who is so cynical that he assumes knowledge of the future, and of the true nature of reality, and that that knowledge is bleak and despairing. He first rages against it - the loud part, where he denounces the cheery assumptions and willful ignorance of those around him - but then he accepts it, which is represented in the gentle, yet melancholy coda.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SNOW FALLS - I was standing in a parking lot in Mount Pearl Newfoundland, April 2001 - I was 18, and had just been picked up by my mom, following a music lesson. My school was on easter holiday.
We had stopped at a gas station to use the bathrooms, and thanks to the convenience of the urinals, I was finished way before mom. So I stood in the parking lot, by our locked car, waiting for mom to come open the car so we could start the 90 minute drive back to my home, in the bay.
The snow started to softly fall - snow in April - and I started to hear this pretty piano part in my head. All of the 90 minutes drive home were spent thinking about this, and jotting little lyrical ideas in my Harmony notebook. When I got back to Placentia, I was lucky enough to have the house to myself for a few hours after supper. I sat at the piano, and by the time my family returned - a matter of an hour, at the msot - this song had come to me, exactly as you are about to hear it.
I have yet to achieve a satisfactory recording of this song.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WINTER BABY - Despite loving confessional singer-songwriters, I never was one. There were parts of myself I felt compelled to hide, as a teenager, which bred in me a certain desire for secrecy. Up to a point, I am extremely open about my life - but if you attempt to pass that point, the door is firmly closed unless you are a very special person.
I was young, I was in University, I fancied I was in love, and because of that I fancied that I had been jilted. What was breaking apart was affecting my entire personality - when you build your life around someone who you've only known for a few months, you deserve a kick in the face, I suppose. My friendships were troubled, and in my despair I was messing with stuff - too much to drink, casual sex - that wasn't good for me - not good for my body or my heart.
So I was sitting on the bus contemplating how everything had soured all at once, so quickly. I wrote this song then, there on the bus, hunched over my little notebook. It was my first confessional song.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UNDONE - As a child my greatest fear (along with aliens) was the end of the world. It just so happens that I was a teenager during the millenial angst - still young enough for the fanciful fears and notions of the time to affect me. I didn't think the world would end at the stroke of midnight on new year's eve, but I was just a little afraid all the same.
Out of that fear this song came bounding like a strange sort of welcome nightmare.
I was visiting my friend Amanda a few days later. She's a musician too, and we were playing around on the piano, in turns. The final turn before I left, I started to play the main piano riff. I went home, sat down, and out came this song, wild as a tribe of post-apocalyptic tribesmen dancing around their fires.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE FOURTH WALL - This song was written just days before I did the final recordings for 'Fixate.' I wanted to include it - I wanted it to open the album. In a way, it's lucky that a lack of studio time made that impossible. I had only written the song literally three or four days prior - so it wasn't properly 'cooled.' I couldn't play it well, it hadn't settled, it might have needed re-writes - and if I had recorded it, it would have been a hurried, piano+one vocal track thing.
So I'm glad I held it back. It matured slowly, but it was worth it for its destiny - that of a finer end product kicking off a much superior CD.
I wrote it because I was getting into Kate Bush - you can probably guess 'Wow' was an influence here - and I said 'Michael, you have to improve your lyrics. You have to try and write songs as good as these.'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BLOOD ON THE PAVEMENT - I always wanted to invent piano-punk music. I'm forever angered at people who view the piano as some weak, prissy, faery ballerina princess of an instrument. That does a huge dis-service to the instrument. A piano has got more balls than a guitar ever could - because a guitar is all bravado. The emmasculation of the piano is a crime that I always wanted to reverse.
So while driving home on the highway I saw a huge bloodstain on the pavement. It was probably a moose accident - my uncle was killed in a moose accident so my family is very aware of how deadly these things can be. Anyway, the image of blood on the pavement stayed with me all the way home, and when I arrived, I went straight to the piano and penned this. It's my 'murder song' - everybody needs a murder song.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SKY SONG - My friends all know that I want to defy gravity. I want to levitate, to fly without effort or fear - to move through air as if it were water, and I a fish. Blasts of wind to my face excite me - as in, a physical, gut-reaction. One of the purest pleasures I know is sailing through the air on a swing-set.
I guess this is a song about my desire to fly. You know how I've already explained that sometimes songs are hard to describe because they go straight from my stream of thought to the sonics? This song is about a feeling more than it is about anything your intellect can understand. It's freedom, joy . . . flying through air,
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DO WHAT I CAN - During my time at University, my aunt, who lived in the same city - she was always very good to me - asked me to dogsit for them over a weekend. I was more than happy to oblige - a big, clean house with food, a puppy dog, a baby grand piano and high-speed internet connection? How could I not!
So this dog is neurotic. Bless her. She's my favourite dog that I've ever met. Sweet, cute - and completely devoted to her family, especially my uncle. So, of course, with Uncle Frank gone, she whines and cries almost constantly. If I was paying direct attention to her, she'd calm down a little - usually. Sometimes she'd be shaking and crying so bad I was almost afraid something was physically wrong with her.
So I sat at the computer and wrote her a silly little poem - then, since the piano was there, I set it to a happy little waltz ditty. It's one of my favourite things to play - just so happy and bright, yet quirky.
The dog was old and quite deaf at this point so I guess she never really heard her song. It doesn't matter I guess - this song is for Magic.
|
|
hungry
pleased
excited
contemplative
busy
bouncy