imaginary break-ups

A few months back I tried to write an album in 30 days. It didn't happen, of course, but I did get several song ideas that have ended up working for summer.

Funny thing is, they are all wintery songs, and they're all about fading, troubled relationships. And though they are simple, 3 and 4 chord songs--I'm proud of them. I think the melodies are pretty strong, but mostly I'm proud of the stretch outside my own experience.

I'm a happily married man. But these songs--"My Last Mistake" "Old Psychosis," and "Don't Ask" (see below) are about people breaking up--or at least people who have encountered significant love-challenges. Tina and I are a normal couple--we have the occasional disagreement and even less occasional argument. I tried to take some of the feelings of those circumstances and put an exponent on them. The results were kind of sad songs (though "Old Psychosis" is actually more cynical and therefore kinda funny) about the prospect of going it alone.

When you listen to the song in this post and "My Last Mistake" of a few weeks ago try to think of the coldest February day you can summon up. You're in an empty house or a lonely cafe and you've just lost the love of your life.

Don't Ask from Only Anything on Vimeo.

For those of you with Vimeo problems, the video can be viewed on YouTube here.

I recorded this one in ONE take. Despite the few chord errors and words flubs, I decided to leave it. Tempo is also something that is in the air here--I tried to speed it up a bit, but maybe the tempo's a little too fast (I didn't want it to be a 6 minute song though). What do you think?

I should also say that when I first imagined these tunes, I was listening to a lot of Bon Iver.

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.

Revision (Vader revisited)

Only Anything was interested in improving itself. We recognized that we could be better and we wanted to be better. In fact, one of the most satisfying things of playing music is this steady creeping forward in skill and competence.

When we released Space Capers, I was excited about Vader--I thought it was the best song that I had had a hand in writing so far. But I was disappointed when one listener told me that they liked the song, but couldn't understand any of the lyrics. That concerned me--especially since I liked the sound of the vocal track so much.

The recording on Spacecapers was very studio-y: in addition to the funky vocal track, it had several overdubs that we couldn't reproduce live. (One of them I especially love: Jon added an acoustic guitar to the verse that you can hear well in the first minute or so of the song.) After playing the song several times live, we made up for these losses with other dynamic changes. We added a pause after the main guitar riff; we brought the tempo up slightly, and in playing it often--post recording--the song started to evolve and get more "tight." And people really responded to it. I remember playing it at a Battle of the Bands at Rincon High where we brought out a large cut out of Vader during the song. The crowd went wild and we won the battle.

So, when we were working on putting together a collection of songs to appear on our cd, we wanted to include Vader, but I was remiss to release the same song again with a vocal track (as much as I loved it) that others couldn't understand. So we rerecorded the song and brought to the recording the togetherness and polish of our live performance. I have am pleased with the results which met the need of making the song more accessible. I also really love listening to the band's improved musicianship from one recording to the next.

That said, my preference is for the original recording. I love those overdubs, the Vader sound bites, and the crazy vocal effects. While the second recording is a great from a technical perspective, I think that the original displays more creativity.

What do you think?

Vader II

--Stone

Song writing, collaboration, and Vader

Song writing in Only Anything was usually a personal endeavor. Jon or I would come up with a song--usually nearly complete--bring it to practice and teach it to each other and the other band members. Jon was exceptionally meticulous about this process and would often draw up music including tablature and chords for the different parts in the song. He would spend a lot of time teaching me these guitar parts and was always patient, as I was typically slow to pick them up. Usually he'd leave some section of the song open where I could rock a solo free-style. I always liked those parts.

My songwriting/sharing process was similar. Though, usually I would usually leave it up to Jon to come up with his own parts for my songs. They were always good and usually made the song all that much better.

We didn't often write songs together. But we probably should have. Our one true collaboration came on a song written and recorded for the Space Capers album called Vader.

Vader started out as two quite different sections, each with their own words, that we stuck together. My section was the first driving riff that runs through the first half of the song, and Jon's comes in near the end as a kind of reflective response to the first section.

Though, as I mention, each section originally had its own lyrics, my lyrics were explicitly about Darth Vader--written in the first person as if Vader were actually singing them. I don't think Jon's words were about Darth Vader, and were eventually dropped.

I remember recording the vocal track for the song. I used several guitar effects pedals to alter the sound of my voice--while I didn't want to sound like James Earl Jones's Vader, but I did want the vocal to sound machine-y. I used a a flange pedal to give it that other-worldliness, and then a delay pedal to give it a funky echo. I love how it turned out.

Check it: Vader (oh, and don't you love the sound clip from Empire? I love how the feedback starts right when ol' Darth says "But you're not a Jedi yet." Classic.)

--Stone