Now that I’ve given away my music for the RPM Challenge to friends and many people have had time to hear it and react, I wanted a chance to explain some of the creative process that went into making each track. This post will be the first of several which will go into some detail on my thoughts during the songwriting process.
To keep me motivated during the process, I kept reinforcing that I couldn’t really name more than 3-4 songs off of U2’s Joshua Tree – one of the greatest albums of all time. Or any other truly great album. So, I figured, as long as people liked maybe 3-4 of my songs (and didn’t hit the ’skip’ button on every track), it’d be okay. That, and maybe a hope that no one laughed out loud at me for doing it.
Track One – Fairy Godawful:
I don’t think I intended to channel Nirvana, at least until I got to the screaming part, but my older brother said, “Whoever this guy is, he *really* likes the old Nirvana unplugged stuff!” Which, I guess, I have to take as a compliment. I like this song a lot. The guys tend to like it. Girls, not so much maybe.
I normally have pretty good endurance, but this chord progression makes my hand seriously hurt to play. I’m honestly never sure I can play it all the way through without cramping up enough to hinder the performance. It’s all tight barre chords. But I was kind of proud, somehow, that it uses every major chord between A-flat through B major and then D-flat through E major. Which I’d think would sound “crunchier” than it does. Instead, I think it makes for a pretty good pop progression. The rhythm of this one is also difficult to strum along with the vocals. I’ll need to practice.
The term “Fairy Godawful” occurred to me as if out of the blue, and I loved it and ran with it. It’s almost like saying something is “fairy godawful” – a bad thing – and almost like the term “fairy godmother” – a good thing. But it evokes something completely different – maybe somewhere in the middle. I’ve had a few friends, maybe, that are a little like this. People I like a lot, but who might not could take the full light of day in mixed, muggle company.
I like the lyrical shift that goes from him being “sweet and shy” in the first verse to the narrator maybe admitting that he’s “not so shy” later in the song. When I sing, “He’s not a lady,” I worry that it sounds like, “He’s no lady.” Which really might be okay. I like the transitions, too, between, “He’s not a drag,” and “He’s not in drag,” and then between “He feels so high,” and “His heels so high.” These shifts, I think, paint a different picture both of the person being described and the person doing the describing. I like this shifty kind of vocals, where you’re not entirely sure what a singer is saying and can make it up yourself – Rorschach style – on the fly.
Track Two – Probably Orange
The initial riff to this one is fun to play, but fairly basic. I think I’m imagineering it to eventually be done by a bass guitar, if I had a full band. But I don’t. So it works out okay as it is. It’s a little hard to sing and play this at the same time, but I’ve been practicing. The first two songs on the album are, I think, the hardest two to play.
As long as ONE person commented on the Ray Kinsella/PacMan Jones/Astrodome trifecta of sports references, I was going to be happy. And at least one person has. Now, I am happy. I think all of them are sports “dreamers”. I started off with the phrase “Bentley Clerihew” which came right out of my rhyming dictionary. I remember playing around with it for a long while in the first chorus. This was, of course, after I’d written the first verse, but before I really knew what the song was about. When I changed Bentley Clerihew to Ray Kinsella, everything fell into line. PacMan Jones is just so much fun to say – it had to stay. Along with me, now: PacMan Jones, PacMan Jones, PacMan Jones.
The outro just came around while I was tinkering with the guitar at some point in the recording process. If I had originally voiced the chords like that, it might have become a whole different song. Much sweeter.