STUMBLR - USE YR CONFUSION
Here’s a lo-fi strum with some brio, recorded spontaneously and quickly dissected and strengthened architecturally by Courtney, who has a fine ear and excels at producing music. She knows what sounds good and what doesn’t and she helped me turn an old song that had been kicking around for eighteen months into a real song, lo-fi as it is. This isn’t the final mix, as I think I’m still going to edit some of the vocals (I have two takes to choose from on top of the guitar, of which I have just the one take): https://soundcloud.com/user-895154951/sir-surrenderz
This record was initially going to be 15 songs, taken from a batch I wrote in May during a difficult period of depression and anxiety and insomnia. But since last week, which is when I get Joe’s amp and Telecaster into my room, the record has ballooned care of some spur-of-the-moment recordings, ironically using old songs. “Sir Surrender” was a demo recorded in autumn 2013 when I was living in Guelph. It lived on my iPod (not iPhone, kids...iPod) for a few years until I started digging through the old demos one night last summer. I was homeless last August (and last November...and this past February) and sleeping at Stone’s Place, a bar I worked at on weekends and on Thursdays for a full day maintenance shift. I slept there at least twenty times, on one of the ratty old couches that have been there since the place opened in 2000. Thankfully I didn’t pick up scabies or bed bugs, but I did pick up some new song ideas from a trash heap of old forgotten tunes.
So I’m pleased that one of them has made this imminent Stumblr record, under the silly title “Sir Surrender.” Another old one is “Engine Adored,” recorded just yesterday but written at my friend Tanya’s house in April 2016 while I was staying there for the month. I paid rent, but it was cheap, and I spent a lot of time busking and hustling (I watched My Own Private Idaho twice that month, though I should make it clear that there is nothing romantic about sex work. The first woman I had to kiss was so unbelievably disgusting that I almost didn’t think she was real. I thought maybe she’d staggered out of a Roald Dahl book, one of his matronly lumpy villainettes, like the angry principal in Matilda, one of the Witches, the grumpy grandmother in George’s Marvelous Medicine, or maybe even that hateful hag from The Twits:
I don’t mean to sound like a shallow motherfucker, but it was difficult for me to perform my duty that night. The woman had been drinking and tasted like rotten whiskey and regaled me with long boring stories about her time as a meth addict. Well, hustlers can’t be choosers, I figured, so I went with it and earned my money. You gotta do whatcha gotta do. After all, a woman who has to pay for sex is not going to be pretty. Indeed, my client was about as far from that sexy vixen from Seinfeld and Twin Peaks who picks up River Phoenix as one can get. But hey, I got a song out of it. “Engine Adored,” that is, a lightning-quick, get-in-and-get-out strummer, reminiscent of a record I made with my other (old?) band called Might Minutes, a long one that went wherever it wanted to, sometimes heading to the shores to surf, other times cruising a poppy melody down the middle of the road.
Might Minutes has 19 songs on it, falling just shy of seeming like a mammoth record. An album with 20 songs seems like a serious commitment. One can get cold feet well before pressing play, whilst blowing bubbles and scanning the track listing. And I knew MM was a special record, the last great record of our early era, the first five years (like Stalin’s infamous Five Year Plans, I measure my other (old?) band in five year increments. We are currently in our third five year segment, having started as a band on July 1 2005, and have little to show for it but a few wretched albums that I would never have lent my name to in the old days. In the old days, very few of those songs would have made it past quality control. But now, distracted by life, distracted by love and the lack thereof, I’ve been releasing records like High Hopes and Almost Awake, hoping vainly that titular alliteration might distract our few faithful listeners from the banality of the music. Comfortable or no, a rut is a rut.
So here’s hoping that this project lights a fire under my ass. I’m not just using Stumblr as a way of kickstarting the zeal I once burned with for my other (old?) band. No, this is a project I take very seriously. But it doesn’t have the freight of history barreling behind it like my other group. And something about that rushing freight comforts me. I was more comfortable releasing somewhat half-assed records like High Hopes and Almost Awake because I knew there was a solid foundation of great releases for those lesser albums to stand on, like a great stone mansion garnished with garish, birdshit green vinyl shutters purchased hurriedly at Home Depot under bad lighting, so that purple looked blue and green looked grey. Valor Specialty Products supplies Home Depot with vinyl shutters nationwide. Valor also serves Lowes, Home Depot’s direct competitor. If HD ever found out that Valor was supplying Lowes as well, they would shitcan Valor so fast you’d hear the bang from here (Valor is located in the barrens between Brampton and Missisauga, Courtneypark and some other bullshit boulevard). I know this because I worked at Valor for a few miserable years. Back then I’d race home to Orangeville in my white van and record music until night fell, tracking old songs like “Waiting” and “Bicycle Man” and “Tell Me His Name” and “I’m Home” and a long-lost b-side called “November Man” that I burned onto CD directly after mixing and speed off to James’ house to play it for him (this was the era of MSN Messenger though, so I easily could have just saved the song as an mp3 rather than a wav and sent it to James online rather than burning it to CD and driving down to deliver it, like an old man printing off chain letter email jokes and handing them, like delicate prizes, to his kids during the Christmas holidays.
I ran, sweating, to James’ bedroom, dragging his tortoise-like torso along with me, for James was a slow moving vehicle in those days, not like now with his careful, mechanical discipline evidenced by his weary, resigned devotion to his job. I put the CD into his computer’s drive and found WinAmp (I miss WinAmp almost as much as I miss MSN Messenger...alas, when I first saw that Facebook chat window back in January 2009, I knew MSN was doomed) and played James the song at a deafening loud decibel level. He nodded carefully, digging it, snickering a bit at the excessive feedback I’d gone into for the outro.
“Well?” I panted, eager for praise. “Whaddaya think?”
A measured pause. “Sounds like Collective Soul.”
I was preparing myself for a long, bitter argument in which past instances of bonding and friendship were revealed fraudulent when I realized something important: He was dead right. I’d taken the vocal melody from a Collective Soul song. And not just a few syllables, no. I’d taken the entire phrase, note for note.
There went “November Man,” into the shitcan so loud that people in Mississauga, especially ones working in warehouses in and around Valor Specialty Products on Courtneypark and Whateverthefuckitscalled, heard it and nodded their heads, order having been restored to the universe. You don’t rip off 90s rock bands, especially Xtian ones.
But hey, I always liked the title. So now, twelve years later, ladies and gentlemen and those who identify otherwise, I give you “November Man.” You’ll hear it when it’s done, hopefully before August.
There’s also a track called “Never An Unkind Forever,” a homage in name only, not sound, as my sonic garden lacks the bulldozers to make such noise as the man who hung himself in a Detroit hotel room once did. Detroit Suicide City is a title I was mulling over for a while too. So we’ll see.
David is coming to do vocals tomorrow at 430PM. I’ve got a work function to attend from 1PM to 4PM, meaning I should be up and at ‘em by 11AM, since I’ve got to get to the clinic first and I don’t have transit money right now (broke til Friday...story of my life). After work I’m going to race home and lock Contin in my bedroom until at least midnight, hoping to get him to do a few rounds of almost every song on this record. A few of them don’t even have lyrics or an established melody yet, so I’m thinking tomorrow will be rich in collaboration. Wednesday morning will be spent mixing, and Thursday through the weekend will be spent tracking piano and keyboards and, finally, mixing. I hope to have a fairly solid batch of close-to-final mixes by this time next week. I just have to remember to edit the drums in some of the songs. “Minerals” has a pre-chorus I need to pay more attention to, and “Lemonade V Gatorade” has some fills I need to fix.
Stumblr. Use Yr Confusion. LG61
Side Eh
01 Bloviator
02 Lemonade V Gatorade
03 Demons & Dolls
04 Black Tie Affair
05 Sincerely
06 Stadium Room Only
07 Engine Adored
08 Kings of Queendom
09 I Threw It All Away
Side Be
10 Kill Yr Parents
11 November Man
12 Me Online
13 Come What May
14 The Air Up There
15 Long Way Back
16 Sir Surrender
17 Minerals
18 Never An Unkind Forever
19 One Straight Line
Might add one more, we’ll see, make ‘er a 20er.
Using Audacity this time around has proved very fruitful and fun. Last December I couldn’t be bothered to learn how to use it properly, so I tried to track vox into Audacity, then transfer the takes into Cool Edit on a different laptop via flashdrive. All that instead of just learn the (extremely user friendly) audio software. I remained faithful to Cool Edit for a good ten years, but all good things must come to an end. Having finally learned how to use this program, I feel confident that I will be finally able to finish the BCN record I’ve been unable to finish for the past year and a half. So, while I have Joe’s amazing amplifier in my possession, and once I get a bass to borrow, I will be tracking bass for all the BCN songs that have not yet been completed for our long awaited, mammoth double album, whose title I’ve been welching on for some time now. It was Keep It Beautiful for a long time until I jettisoned that one for Better Days Are A Toenail Away, a great title but also the title of a song, and while it would be very BCN (not to mention GBV) of me to name an album after a song and then not put that song on the album but a subsequent album, I still feel weird about it.
Anyway, here’s the track listing for my other (old? former?) band’s upcoming double album, which will be finished and released regardless of our status as an active working unit.
Cocations (or Cocaine Locations)
How To Build A House You Won’t Hate
Sad Shitty Supermarket Holds Senior Citizen Day
Ocean City (Bistro Abortion Version)
Basement Nights Again (Sans Brocals)
