On one hand, from a music perspective, I don't think it's any good. I don't recall anyone to whom I gave the cassette giving more than a polite positive response. To be fair, I don't recall anyone having the same music tastes as me, either, go fig.
And even though the results sound like a final product, the purpose of the recording was to shop it around through my network of friends to find other musicians to play with. I finally accepted my writing process was too excruciating and results too poor to want to be a primary songwriter, but I was hoping to find people interested in the sound and forming a band. I just wanted to be the bass player.
On the other hand, I am trying to wrap things up and wind things down, and this is a significant part of my past, albeit small and very private and at times embarrassing. This is part of my history and past expression.
I've said before I'm glad I have these recordings because no matter how embarrassing, they are a record of what was going on at the time (actually that was about a previous collection I had recorded during college; this collection I'm personally not so embarrassed about).
It's not out of ego, it's not that I want anyone listening to the stuff, but it's fact, it's record. It's confessional, and that's part of what this blog is supposed to be doing. I keep myself completely hidden from people who know me, but this is the place where it all comes out. Anything anyone ever wondered about me can probably be found somewhere in here.
And I think I'll go full-on confessional here. When someone creates something, they don't know how other people will take it or interpret it. I'm removing that by saying what everything was about. I'm not pretending this is art for a listener to enjoy or interpret or figure out. This is an artifact of expression that I'm explaining for the record.
As for manner, the track order matters to me, so I think I'll post track by track in sequence, but then I'll see about combining it all into one ridiculously long post so it's all in sequence for the archives once I'm done.
01. Son of Solomon
So this first song is obviously inspired by my parents who I hated at the time, putting it mildly. Who woulda thunk?, I just admitted my parents were an inspiration to me. I don't think most individual lyrics meant anything specific. It was just general anger upon which lines were built. Suicide is, of course, alluded to in the song, and I think it's alluded to in every song.
The title doesn't mean anything either. I realized as an afterthought that I had to coax out titles for these songs. This phrase came to me in a quick little flash and stuck.
There is a line referencing when I went to Japan after college to find my way and stayed with a great aunt in Osaka for some months. My parents did arrange that, but beyond that I think every effort was made to discourage anything I was attempting to do, certainly not encouraging or supporting it. In the end, it worked and it was like they scooped a wandering child off its feet and put it back where they wanted it to be.
The song idea started with the bass line which then defined the guitar chords, and probably after I established what the guitar was doing in the verse, that led to the chorus and break sections written on guitar. The bass, a Japanese-made Riverhead Unicorn headless design, sounds like it's going through a Boss Auto-Wah pedal with the lows boosted with a Bass EQ pedal.
I only had an acoustic guitar up to this point since I never took guitar seriously, but I think at this point I decided I needed to include guitar solos and bought a first generation Peavey Predator which was a strat-copy. Later models were a totally different design, but I love the strat-copy version and still have it.
No solos on this song, but I think I used it to get used to playing electric guitar, with two tracks of electric guitar, one clean, one distorted. I think any guitarist will tell you that acoustic and electric are totally different beasts.
All the drums on this collection were played on what was then a state-of-the-art, 2nd generation consumer electronic drumset, a Roland TD-7. Being a huge Phil Collins fan, I gravitated towards the sound that was closest to his sound – very big with lots of reverb.
I was doing the best I could on drums, having worked on keeping a groove while I was in a steel drum band in college. I had a horrible sense of rhythm until then and I spent hours on practicing "groove" with a metronome.
I didn't consider myself a drummer at this point. It wasn't until several years later when I heard Jimmy Chamberlin with the Smashing Pumpkins that I was really inspired about being able to express on drums. Bash the fuck out of those things, I mean.
(Can I ask you something personal?)
Mom and dad could never have a baby
Mom and dad they never had a chance
Though they only needed dope to save me
They traded the hope for circumstance
It was never my responsibility to live past 20
It was never my intention to live through them
The psycho path has been my way out of the halls of plenty
Took my hand to lead me back again
Being pushed was just my way of learning
Pushed to suicide don't make it a crime
Found the agents they were sent as earning
Made me hate and made me do the time, made me survive
It was never my intention to live past 30
It was never my responsibility to be fool-proof
And the only way to pave my grave was to make it dirty
Make it up and make it be the truth
In the guise of a friend she came as a complete surprise
Said there's no worse than the will to live, may it be your curse
In return I wished upon her a real long, long life . . .
Mom and dad were just imagination
Nothing they could do could make me real
Just as they could make their own creation
They could make their DNA congeal
The nightmare grows like ivy climbing up my body
Year by year I never even noticed it being there
It make me realize somewhere implied I should feel sorry
It's all been wrong and gotten me nowhere
