Pleasantly Surprised

I didn't realize it, but as far as I can tell, 14 years later, Pleasantly Surprised was our hit album. I have had several people tell me--people that I really don't know very well--that they had the tape and it was one of their favorites growing up in Tucson (and by several, I mean like three!).

Speaking for the band (or at least speaking for myself), I think that we view Pleasantly Surprised as a precious first effort. We labored meticulously over it. We were very excited when it was released: the process of buying the blank tapes, dubbing each of them and packaging them in those white jackets with Jon Thwaits's artwork--it was all a labor of love that we all had some part in, small or large.

And the songs on Pleasantly Surprised are literally snapshots of our 16 and 17 year- old lives. Hopefully, Jon will tell you here about the Snowman Ring--it's real. Footsteps to a Castle? There's a story there too. There was green carpet and sofa sitting and Hunt on the Moon was about our best friends Andy and Steve Hunt who had moved and left us sad. And of course, the Polish Tavern has a wonderful history attached to it too, one going back several centuries.

Pleasantly Surprised was the story of our lives put to music.

I am happy to announce that it is now available as a complete download in the album/song listing to the left.

Raspberry Happiness lyrics

Raspberry Happiness

Yesterday glimmers the sun fades away
fades into something real
But still I can't find a way to express,
express the way I feel.

It's been so long
and now all my thoughts are on some dumb, stupid song

I scream your name
It's not the same
Why won't it rain?
I'm sad again.

Well my room is a mess
and my eyes need to rest
so I play my enchanted blue
I don't want to think but I do
and I'm sad 'cause I can only think of you

Why does my head feel like it's breaking apart again
You talk of the sky, but it's my blood-blue heart

And so I cry again
And so I die again
Oh I can't breathe
But you, tonight, please don't leave

Don't leave.

Raspberry Happiness

From my fifteenth to seventeenth year I loved to lament. I even loved the word lament (which was the name of a song by the Cure, and the Cure are pretty much the epitome of lamentation). One of my favorite subjects to lament over was girls--with whom I was always having a bit of trouble. I can't blame the girls--many of whom didn't respond when my crush was on or, more likely, never even knew. Those that did respond had the fortune (or misfortune) of dealing with me in such a state.

I would usually attempt some kind of song to handle the difficulty of these circumstances, most of which didn't ever actually become songs (see the poetaster archive to the right). The few that become songs are really quite special to me as artifacts of those emotions and the circumstances that surrounded them.

Raspberry Happiness is one such tune. Written over several drafts (again, see the poetaster file), "Raspberry" (as I believe it appears on the album insert) is about a week long summer romance of sorts that I had with a girl at a summer church conference called EFY (Especially For Youth) in 1994. You may have had one of these summer camp experiences--if you have, you'll know how horrible/wonderful they can be. She was perfect because I didn't really know her. We met, fell head over heals and after five days never saw each other again.*

Of course, I'm being dramatic here--but that was how it felt at the time! Adolescent emotions can be so totally overblown. I ached for weeks afterward. My family went on a trip to northern Utah in the weeks following and the raspberry milkshake shop that we would traditionally go to--that bastion of childhood happiness and comfort--had lost its appeal.

Beyond that, the only other specific thing I remember about the history of the song is the line "you talk of the sky, well it's my blood blue heart." It is in reference to a poem that she wrote in a letter with the line "blood blue sky."

*We actually did see each other again very briefly later that summer, but didn't you like the dramatic effect?

Raspberry Happiness

Special Announcement

Jon Thwaits and Jon Stone are planning a special Only Anything project to begin next month when we are together over the Thanksgiving break and continuing until completion.

The project will entail work on six songs:

• First, we will each select a song from the catalog to revisit and rerecord.
• Second, we each will select lyrics or poetry from our personal archives and attempt to bring those lyrics back from the dead in the form of a new song.
• Finally, we will each write and present a new song for the project.

It has yet to be determined how time together will be spent on these songs, but we are in talks with musicians in the Tucson vicinity about providing some beats, equipment, collaboration and space for the project.

Stay tuned!

The 6th Anything

Early on, Kelby helped us out on the drums. After learning the ways of drum machines, synthesizers and midi programming, he saw the band who I believe was known as "Footcheese" at a party and was awestruck at the raw and rude acoustic drum sounds. Kelby hooked up with Jared Peterson, the Footcheese drummer, to get a few pointers on the drums. Then came a very serendipitous moment: Kelby was house-sitting for the family Hartnett over Christmas 1993 and it turns out that he did some drum-sitting also. Jared set up his drums at the house and left them there for Kelby to go primal with. Then enters the newly electrified Only Anything, wanting nothing more than to turn the dream into a real rock and roll experience.
We pulled ourselves away from watching Cure Show and drinking egg nog to go do our own version of Cure Show. We jammed like we never had before; Forest, End, Disintegration, Lullaby. We blew a speaker, we roused the neighbors, we made merry the day after Christmas.
Kelby played with us at a few of our first shows and by the time he got the mission call, Joe was ready to step in permanantly. It all came together so perfectly. Coincidentally there was another house-sitting rock and roll experience, but this time the Richins were out of town. Jon, Kelby and I had a recording session at the house and we did a bunch of covers; Violent Femmes, The Cure, The Smiths. This time (unlike the Hartnett situation) the vacationing family was well aware that rock and roll was going on while they were away, and no neighbors complained.
Growing up with Kelby gave me musical advantages: I learned to play on his guitar, we used his mixer for all the Only Anything recordings, he stepped in on the drums when needed and I'm sure there was some constructive sibling rivalry between us which pushed me to rise to his standard. So here's to you Kelby, and your part in the OA legacy.

J. Thwaits
aka DangerBoy

Starmaster's Window (UPDATED!)

Song writing was, at first, an aspiration in Only Anything and not really a reality. Our first few public performances consisted of us playing covers of our favorite songs with no original material whatsoever.

When we decided collectively to begin writing, it seemed that we were all on similar creative levels and would produce songs--some of which never really became songs that we performed or recorded--with relative frequency. Most of these songs were kind of silly, though: "Life is a Circle," & "Cornflakes" are the two that come to mind here (I'll work on getting the original lyric sheet for "Life is a Circle" up here too-- I just found it. Update: Either John H. or I should do "Life is a Circle" the honor of its own post.)

By the time we got more serious about the business of writing the songs that we would record on our first album (Pleasantly Surprised), it was clear that Jon Thwaits was the standout creative force in the band. Not only were his melodies complex (and would grow increasingly more complex over the years), his lyrics had a narrative completeness to them that brought polish to our otherwise (at first) sketchy playing.

Jon's creative success affected me in conflicting ways. On one hand, the Thwaits tunes are the bedrock of the band and they gave us something real to play. And I loved playing them--we all did--because they are great songs. And Jon inspired me to take my own writing more seriously. But, and this is the other side, I wasn't nearly as successful as a songwriter, and I felt a bit defeated because of my struggle. I tried really hard to develop this talent, though, the results of which are pages and pages of lyrics/poems. Pieces of these poems, as I read back through them, could have turned out to be decent song lyrics, but much of them, as you will see, kind of capture my frustration at the time as a teenager trying, quite inadequately, to express himself.

Later, in the year before I went to San Francisco in '97, the process finally began to gel when I wrote Starmaster and Knight (which I feel were my most successful compositions in OA). These songs, as I now think of them, were written as appropriations of Jon's narrative stylings. In effect, Jon taught me how to write a song.

I have begun to collect these old, failed lyrics/now-poetry in a web space that can be viewed here.

I am only a tenth of the way through my stack, and will continue to update it as time allows. They are interesting to me not only as OA artifacts, but as windows into my mind as a 15 to 18-year-old. They, in many ways, represent my attempts to process the experience of adolescence and present them, in the bite-size package of a song, to the world. (And some of them are pretty hilarious.)

Update: I have completed the transcription of all (or most) of the old poetry that I have dating between 1993-1997.

There's more though. I have several poems that I wrote while in San Francisco, and more still that I wrote in the few years after my return. I will continue to add to the compilation and will give a head's up when they are up. I have also added a direct link to the "window" in the sidebar.