This song means well. This song is like the pilot episode of TV show that looked really cool or seemed like it would do well, but was canceled after it aired. I laid down the instrumental one day after making the choice to pay “homage”/straight up steal a couple parts of Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane” and Black Crows “Wiser for the Time” I had no lyrics, only the melody for the chorus and a clever agenda. Me and Alex met at a La Quinta near the Airport, and before we started writing lyrics I told him my plan: Make the song about a relationship conflict, where all the lyrics (except for the last line) come out very vague, non-abrasive, maybe even forgettable. My plan was to write lines that didn’t much imagery, leaving any active listener totally comfortable for the duration of the song. Hell, they might even say the interaction between the male and female in this song is kinda sweet: Until the very last line. On the last line, I insisted we finish it by planting an image in the listener that was raw and violent--perhaps as a satire of some of the darker undertones a lot of my songs have, or just to get any kind of rise out of the listener. I wanted to M. Night Shamyalan their asses, and clever as I thought it was, the lyrics we wrote through out the verses ended up to bland, and we might of held on to this one if we had worked at the verses and revised it a bit. So here’s a lo-fi recording of a song that was meant to wither away in a computer recycle bin.
I will say, with our first days in the studio coming up on the 29th of May, our album may borrow a bit from this tune during a break down or interlude. The chorus (which is my favorite part) is redeemable if sang with fuller harmonies, and if I can get AG on board with it, this isn’t the last of “Put Down the Knife”
