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You’re Not Alone

~ tryingartist ~ Leave a comment

A band song, the chords written by the guitarist and bassist, the melody and words written by me. But that’s not important right now. What is important are the lines in the second verse:

‘Now I know that you say you’re right
But let me tell you,
I’ve seen fakers lie better
Than you could tell the truth.

I know what it’s like to be alone
And I’m not going back.’

Everything about those lyrics grates on me, right down to the ‘but let me tell you’. The most immediately annoying thing is obviously the naivety/authenticity issue. Some 15 year old moaning about how he has plumbed the depths of loneliness and despair doesn’t suggest the emotional impact of Juliette waking up to find Romeo dead beside her. Let’s also not forget that the singer sings these lines to someone he is clearly in a serious relationship with now. So the loneliness could be assumed to have happened 2/3 years earlier. The memory he is alluding to might well have been when he lost his mum in the supermarket for ten minutes and was trapped in a dark forest of striding strangers’ legs.

But maybe you’re a postmodern reader and you subscribe to the Death of the Author. Maybe you don’t think the age of the writer makes any difference – it’s the words themselves that matter. Well, I mean first up, there isn’t really anything poetic about those lines is there? But no matter, lyrics don’t have to be abstract or complex, or even rhyme. Take Lorraine Ellison’s chorus:

‘Stay with me baby
Please stay with me baby
Oh, stay with me baby
I can’t go on’

These lyrics make up one of the most powerful choruses of all time, because the music and the vocal performance lifts them. This is the difference between lyrics and poetry – music has the ability to transform phrases we might class as cliché into powerful, profound statements. But I’m not fully, or even at all, convinced that the musical performance of my lyrics in ‘You’re Not Alone’ has done anything except make them just slightly worse.

Then there’s a predictable consistency issue, as with pretty much every song I’ve written about so far. On first listen, it’s easy to be fooled into thinking that ‘You’re Not Alone’ contains a series of well-matched verses that all relate to a central, consolatory message.

In fact, listen again (if you can manage it), and you’ll find that there are three distinct shades to the ‘You’re Not Alone’ message, none of which makes sense together.

  1. (a) Your basic, ‘you’re not alone, I’m here with you’ message. This narrative arc features the song’s best line: ‘Turn the light on inside, you can’t see in the dark’, and it’s basically what you think the song is about if you aren’t concentrating, mainly because of its title.

(b) But even within this first narrative, there is a second strain which succinctly discredits part 1 with a couple of choice phrases:

‘I know that you aren’t used
To this kind of advice
From someone on the street’

Actually coming in the first verse, those lines tell us that the singer is a stranger to the addressee of the song, which is completely at odds with the tone of the rest of the lyrics, in particular with narrative 2:

2. These are the lyrics quoted at the top of this post. They essentially read ‘You are lying. Please don’t leave me.’ Suddenly the situation is reversed in two ways: the characters do know each other very well, and it’s actually the singer who might be alone.

3. Finally, we have a resigned message about consolatory messages in general.

‘Well you’re not what you wanted to be,
But let’s just leave that all behind.
When there’s nothing left to shout for,
People tell you: ‘At least you’ve got your health’

So, it’s a song about a person consoling someone else or being consoled or being dumped or not liking being consoled or consoling in the first place.

We in the band liked this song a lot, once upon a time. We never played it live much because we thought it was too slow/ we couldn’t play it very well. But we’d show it to people. ‘Listen to this, what do you think? It’s a song we wrote about taxis and leading a healthy lifestyle’

RABBITS IN THE RAIN

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My sister’s friend heard me playing guitar once and asked me to write her a song. I said ok give me a minute, and walked off. She laughed, I laughed, we all laughed. 2 days later I came back to her with RABBITS IN THE RAIN. Title in capitals, presumably to add a bit of gravitas to a theme I was worried people might treat with too much levity.

A tragedy in bunny’s clothing, this is a song about the voracious and perverse appetite of consumerism, the desperate struggle of the oppressed against systemic oppressive forces, and rabbits dancing around having a lovely time when it’s a bit wet.

That last part of the theme is covered succinctly but repeatedly in the choruses. I obviously deemed ‘rabbits in the rain’ description enough to translate the complex, multi-layered visions I’m sure I was having at the time. And I was right. Rabbits are so heavily connotative in our society that merely mentioning them over a couple of happy chords is enough to suggest a cute scene, maybe springtime, bucolic splendour, nature running its course, a world untouched by evil. The rain is a slight spanner though. Are they happy in the rain? Is it Bambi Little April Showers, or is it a darkening foreboding storm?

Regardless, we all know what happens in Bambi.

Boom, enter the minor chord, and the verse begins. It starts off harmlessly enough:

‘The rabbit has got his lettuce
And no one will take it from him
You don’t want to fight a rabbit
When it’s got its lettuce’

But in here are the corrosive seeds of greed, the same greed that will lead to Billy the Rabbit stealing from Old Farmer Jack. The same greed that will cause Billy’s death.

What can a rabbit do? His land encroached on by the constantly increasing consumption of humanity, a modern day rabbit is forced to steal in order to survive. Do you think Billy was raised to be a thief? No, Sofia the Rabbit was a rabbit of principle and dignity. But she too had to steal, eventually. And Billy sees no moral dilemma in taking back from those who ruined his last 4 homes, killed half of his friends, and left many more starving. Old Farmer Jack deserves what he’s got coming to him, Billy believes.

Trouble:

‘Old Farmer Jack
Has come out with his gun.
Run, Rabbits, run,
You don’t want Farmer Jack to get you’

And here we get the unstoppable force of the system crashing against those who would attempt to disrupt it. What is a warren of rabbits to a single human with a gun? Lettuce crumbs dropping from their panicked hungry mouths, they scatter. What started off as an act of conscious collective rebellion, a small victory in a world of grinding losses, becomes a free-for-all of selfish chaos, as rabbits clamber over each other to save their own skin. This is how the system wins. It breaks spirits. It reduces oppressed beings to their most basic and dangerous drive: to survive. In this state, even a generous, compassionate, and cute rabbit like Billy begins to display the same pernicious qualities found in the oppressors he so loathes.

Today, Billy doesn’t even get the chance to save himself. Perhaps served on a plate, with a side of the lettuce he had wanted. Maybe just discarded with the disdain Farmer Jack reserves for beings he decides are worth less than himself.

‘The rabbits were so afraid
Nowhere to go
And Billy was taken down
He was too slow’

 

 

 

Sit Back And Relax

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Ergh, it’s just so dreary. The tune, I mean. ‘All the things you saiiiiiiiddddd’. The rest of the song is very upbeat and enthusiastic. We played it in the band, and it was maybe my first experience of exterior pressures dictating music choices, in that we kept playing it for ages. Teenager audiences love that bounce. Teenager audiences love that pause and then the sarcastic ‘honey’. At least we thought they did. Listening to it now it’s just so drab, I think. Drab and dreary.

I hate the sound of the guitar, it’s too shiny clean. But not like a brand new car, more like a clean tin. Imagine you’ve washed out the baked beans, and you’re just gazing into that tin.

The bridge, perhaps the best part, is stolen from an earlier song. I’m not judging, I mean if you think this one is bad try that one. Thank god the section was rescued from the wreckage. But it’s a bit like being rescued from your ruined house, and then being blamed for it having burned down, and then being left in the street, and you don’t like the street anymore, it being the blackened site of your ex-house.

It makes me feel weird, remembering myself turn my head to the left, sat at the drum kit in some pub, to drawl out the word ‘honey’. I think I used to think I was cool when I did that. I probably was, I guess. People in bands are cool. People in audiences don’t always judge as harshly as your future patronising self. Sometimes I would get compliments, having stepped down from the stage.

I just don’t like this song. I also think I can remember my bandmates not really liking it either. Like they knew my songwriting wasn’t really up to scratch, like they were plotting secretly. Do I remember some dispirited bass playing coming from the corner during rehearsals? I might do. The guitarist probably liked it. He liked playing bouncy guitar. He would bounce a bit on stage, with an extremely affable wide smile across his face at all times.

Anyway, I chose that picture because behind the lazy-teenager veneer of these lyrics is this strange paranoia, and the ominous spectre of capitalism:

“What’s wrong with my life?
I keep on counting all the days ahead”

This could be the lament of an office drone, tired of his daily grind. You might expect some lyrics about breaking free and focusing on real happiness, not ambition. But no! Actually he turns out to be a reluctant layabout, who gets nothing but snide judgment from his listener:

“What’s wrong with your life?
Well, you don’t have any money.
Maybe that’s because you made the decision
Not to work, honey.”

Such a prick! Why was I on the wrong side??

We’re On Your Side

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I had many of these as my standards changed from year to year, but this was definitely, at one point, ‘my first good song’. It was also my first song to properly use electric guitar, to properly use distortion, to properly try to ‘rock’, as it were.

And let’s be completely frank, it doesn’t sound great, does it? You wouldn’t hear it on the radio and turn to your friend and go, ‘ey, Sophie, this is pretty good isn’t it? We should look up who this band is and then buy their music in order to download it legally and then perhaps catch them at a summer festival, shouldn’t we? I might even fancy a t shirt.’

The singing is awful in places, and things go out of time, as is their wont. The guitar solo at the end attempts to use very few notes to disguise the fact that I can’t quite play the guitar, and ends up audibly confirming the fact that I can’t quite play the guitar. What else? Oh, AGAIN we have a song starting with almost nonsensical lyrics, a product of my technique of improvising words as I strummed the chord sequence the first few times.

But

Get to the second half of the first verse, and you might start liking the song just a little bit. Of all the recorded moments of my teenager-with-attitude mode of singing, the lines:

“Look at my picture, I drew it for you in my spare time,
It’s yours if you want it, but it’s fine”

Just work, I think. They sound knowing and sarcastic even as they admit immaturity. Maybe I’m giving them too much credit, I mean they essentially have nothing, tone-wise, to do with many of the other lines, which seem to be offering much more genuine attempts at comfort to the listener in question. But they click for me.

Then we have the chorus, which is catchy. Sometimes I like to look down on music for being merely ‘catchy’, a lot of us do, don’t we? It’s catchy, so it sold out. It’s catchy, so they can’t sing, so they didn’t actually write it you know, oh verse chorus verse chorus bridge chorus how dull.

Well, in this case, I had nowhere to sell out, having not sold at all, and yes I can’t sing but give me a break will you, and I did actually write it, not that I’m necessarily hugely proud of that. And yeah ok that structure does perfectly describe this song, but give me just one break please, will you?

The thing is, I’m not sure any piece of music I had written up until this point was catchy at all really. Oh, actually. But apart from that, and we should probably discount that one, I recognised after having produced this that it was a bit catchy. And I liked that. When you hear the bridge build, you do actually want to hear the chorus again. It sets you up nicely. Sure, the ensuing chorus is then ruined by the guitar solo, but in this life, we can’t have everything we want.

Also:

“Out of the screen and into the light”

What about that line these days. What with the youth? And the telephones?

The Christmas Song

~ tryingartist ~ 1 Comment

The Christmas Song. Neither about, nor written around the time of, Christmas. A song designed to make young teenager friends jump up and down at underage venues, featuring lyrics suggesting mild disdain without saying much of anything, serious indie rock drumming, and the vigorous strumming of three chords.

The cornerstone of my first band’s repertoire up until the point we had songs that were any good, The Christmas Song sticks out in my memory like a sore nostalgic thumb. It is, and always was, terrible, but it had a bouncy energy that guaranteed it its coveted last place in the setlist for a year or so, and when I listen to it I can’t help but remember a few friends half-ironically going MadForIt, or my sister turning up to our empty gig venue with a huge brigade of 13 year olds and saving the day, or our girlfriends turning up to our first gig, at school Battle of the Bands, holding a banner with our name above them, and generally making so much noise that the judges had to give us 1st place.

These memories give the song a meaning that it rightfully shouldn’t have, being so shit. But what can you do?

The guitar solo is an extremely rare feature in any of my music, and exists here only because it isn’t me on guitar (my guitar skills were not really ‘solo’ grade – I provided the three bar chords and then got on with hitting the drums quite hard).

The guitarist was one of those musicians who loves to learn. He would practise sequences of blues licks to be incorporated into solos. He would focus on technique a lot. Are you getting my disparaging tone? I remember when we were working on the solo, he was going through his list of little flourishes that he’d learnt in his lessons and I just couldn’t understand why he was approaching improvising in that way. I felt too awkward to tell him he wasn’t channeling the spirit of blues. But then again, musicians like that often end up actually becoming good at things. My laissez-faire attitude was fun but would sometimes lead to three-chord compositions featuring first lines that I know for a fact had no meaning whatsoever.

The second version on the playlist (‘The Christmas Song 1’) is actually the original, and I include it only to demonstrate how much worse it could have been.

And below is a song by now-extinct The Fratellis, a key component of indie rock for two years. They used a very similar chord progression (did I steal it? I honestly can’t remember) before wisely switching to something more melodic for most of the song. I actually liked that album a lot.

 

 

Like Knots On A Rope

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In the summer of 2007 I went to Greece, and just before I got in the car, I ran upstairs, found all of my dad’s CDs, and picked one for the journey to the airport. That CD was Kid A, and it was the first time I had properly listened to Radiohead. The initial descending keyboard riff came in, that soft kick drum beating beneath the pulsing chords, Everything In Its Right Place driving ominously onwards, and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I hated the rest of the album, but when my dad stopped the car, I told him I needed to take the CD with me to show my friend that first track.

Several hours later, I was in his apartment, shrugging off his attempt to give me a tour of the place, and putting the CD on. His reaction was the same. Over the course of that week, I stopped hating the rest of the album. I started liking it. One month later, I was still listening to it everyday. My friend, meanwhile, had discovered OK Computer and told me to try that one. I dismissed it in that way you do when someone shows you something you wanted to discover yourself. But I did secretly listen to it on my own, judging it to be inferior initially, then slowly absorbing all of it – taking in its tone first, and then the resigned passion of its lyrics.

In a matter of weeks, Radiohead were my favourite band. I went through every album, always disappointed at first that each one didn’t replicate the sound of the one I had listened to previously, then growing to love them all.

Eventually, I wrote this song. My first Radiohead impression. I remember sitting at my window, looking out at a view blank enough to stimulate any kind of thought process, and attempting to channel the mood of Radiohead. It was my first song written as lyrics before the chords existed, chords which were half improvised a few days later on an out of tune guitar, thereby essentially ruining the song.

The lyrics and accompanying melody do quite well at capturing the mood of Radiohead actually, if not the meaning:

“Today I’ll try and reach it,
Quick wash it away,
I’ll try and make it.

From a friend, like knots on a rope
Fix the problem

I can’t want the picture,
The side of views.

Today I’ll try and reach it,
Quick wash it away,
I’ll try and make it.

From a friend, like knots on a rope
Fix the problem.”

An analysis of those words would just as likely suggest masturbation as a theme than anything else. But they seem to carry a bit of gravity in the song, which is more than I can say about almost any other lyrics I wrote in the year surrounding Like Knots On A Rope.

In 2007 I was so, so far from being able to emulate Radiohead in any way. But as the years have passed I would have to name them as my foremost influence, in the way their worldview is reflected in music, and especially in their transition to electronic music.

This will in no way be reflected by any other song on The Trying Artist for a long time. Goodbye Radiohead pastiches! Hello again badly executed bland indie rock/pop!

 

 

Never Leave

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I’ve attached a picture of a beautiful sunset so you’ll have something to distract you from this song. The only way Never Leave could be more boring is if it simply started over when it got to the end and played through once more. Rewind back to the beginning to see what I mean.

The picture, though! Gosh it’s beautiful. The way the golden-hour sunbeams wriggle out from behind the surprisingly dense, dark clouds, thereby transforming them, removing any sense of foreboding they might otherwise evoke, and imbuing them instead with the lazy contentment of a late-summer’s evening, all silver linings and open blues. Beneath, you might imagine the sea teeming with hidden life, a world of plenty, all things in their right place, chaotically vivacious but perfectly formed. Or maybe not, maybe for you it is an infinitely deep blank space, the sort of space we hope to find inside our minds when too many things are pressing into our consciousness. I guess for me it’s both, a blank slate which promises endless potential, a site of calm positivity.

To be frank, this stock ‘beautiful sunset’ image brings more romance to Never Leave than anything in the recording, but it is also completely in keeping with the disgustingly bland brand of romance that the song promotes, and which should never be accompanied by anything except a melody so undeniable that we forgive (or forget) the lyrics (video at bottom).

Never Leave was a band song, which is why the bass playing is quite good, and why we get a little burst of backing harmonies during the trudging reprise of ‘what you make me feel’ towards the end.

I believe this song was promoted only in a very limited way at the time. We certainly never played it live at any gigs, thank god.

All in all, a song that makes you wish the sun would just bloody set already.

 

 

 

 

When The Music Plays Too Loud

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Trying desperately to think of interesting things to say about this song, I grasped at the idea that it might have the longest song title I’d written. A few seconds later I realised it doesn’t even have the longest song title so far on the Trying Artist blog (Pain Keeps The Pleasure Fresh just pips it with 25 characters to 24, and don’t even get me started on THE SONG THAT CHANGED THE WORLD). Right now I’m working on a song titled All Me And Everyone Else One Line Forever, for god’s sake.

Still, there’s always the tactic of talking about not talking about anything…

 

Don’t be fooled by the image or the name, this song is far more likely to send you to sleep than cause damage to your ears. And not just because it’s dreary, although of course that is a factor. It’s just a mellow song, one of the first sung by what I might call my Drifter persona- someone who, at the climactic moment of the song in the second chorus, sings the vague, non-assertive assertion: ‘I’ll be somewhere tonight, ahhh’. The vocals are mixed so far back it almost feels like an instrumental track. It seems to lurch from bar to bar like a drunk – ‘And I’m faaallling’ being perhaps more literal than it might normally be. In fact, I’m tempted to believe that the song was conceived as a ‘drunk song’ right from the start, although my dating would put its composition maybe between the 3rd and 4th time I ever tried alcohol.

The combined effect of these characteristics is that it’s quite hard to concentrate when listening to it, your attention drifts to more interesting things – the colour of the wallpaper in front of you, the thing you forgot to buy at the supermarket, are lower clouds actually moving faster than higher clouds or is it just a perspective thing? – before being wrenched back to the music whenever one of the quite irritating rhythmic mistakes happens.

When The Music Plays Too Loud definitely has a ‘feel’ to it though, in production terms. Recording my drum kit with only one mic meant that the quality/tone of the sound depended hugely on where I put the mic in the room. And not ever, in the 7 or so years it took me to stop recording my drum kit in this way, did I decide to properly work out where it sounded best. I’d do a bit of half-hearted shifting about, sure, but mainly I just wanted to get the song done. So, you’ll find across all of my early music, the drums are a lottery. Here though, they kind of work. There’s a dusty vintage sound to them, the kick drum cuts through quite well, there’s a good mix between the different drums and cymbals. I also like the way the kick drum and bass guitar play on the same beats through most of the song (when they’re not out of time.) And the chord sequence is interesting. If you wrote it down it would have numbers after the letters! In fact I just picked up my guitar and found that I can still play the whole thing, which means I must have liked it for a long time.

Ultimately, a song that is let down by the vocals (how many times will I have to write that), and, if we’re nitpicking, by my complete lack of professionalism. Will the next song also start and end with random noises? Find out later!

Bullets And Guns

~ tryingartist ~ 1 Comment

A very early band song that I suspect came earlier than this list suggests, and was probably overlooked initially because god it is quite boring. Bullets And Guns is, however, notable for a few things:

  1.  The lyrics are one of the shiniest shining examples of the let’s-just-throw-words-together-in-a-row tradition of songwriting in my catalogue of music. I’m going to have to write them out in full to illustrate this:

“Wait until I’m done, don’t you know it’s fun?
Not today, it’s a yes by the way
I came undone with the bullets and guns
But now I can’t see what’s left of me

Don’t feel you have to agree
You will not fly down easily
When it’s hard you talk to me
Don’t keep on pedalling down

Experiments for the ones who have the laws
You want it, not today, but do you have your way?
Can they see? it seems unlikely
That they have dreams with black and white themes.

CHORUS

And when you feel like you’re standing on the edge
Don’t fall down
And when you feel like you’re standing on the edge
Don’t keep on pedalling down”

Now clearly there is a theme here. The choruses and the bridge seem to be offering pearls of wisdom (if you feel depressed, don’t) to someone else. But the verses are just completely inexplicable. The first verse reads like schizophrenia and the second is some sort of anti-system riff. I really can’t comprehend why I didn’t hesitate before writing lyrics like this, unless it was simply that I knew the vocals were the weakest part of the songs and so I didn’t put as much effort into their creation.

 

2. The bridge is by far the best bit of the song. I liked it so much at the time that I stole it and recycled it in a later band song, which also turned out to be quite bad.

 

3. I actually have a specific memory about the recording of this song. A clash of egos occurred between me and one of my bandmates. He complained that he didn’t get to sing enough. Now this was tricky because he was, without doubt, technically a better singer than me. But when I thought about other people singing MY SONGS I got really angry and defensive (especially because I knew I would be seriously under threat, given how shit I was), so I sulkily said ‘ok we’ll do two versions then, one with me singing and one with you, and then we’ll decide which one is better’. Of course, this put a huge amount of pressure on him – pressure which he was not able to overcome. His version is second on the playlist, and given the mistakes he makes with the lyrics, I probably only gave him one attempt. It all feels very Machiavellian. There’s no doubt that my version was better, probably because I had practised it more, had written it myself, and stood there glaring at him while he recorded his own. He ended up making do with a few harmonies. But the truth is that despite his superior technique, I probably was a better fit for our music, and after this little skirmish I was able to hold onto my seat of power for a few more years, even after the band expanded to include yet another person who could probably sing more skilfully than me.

The key to my getting my own way, as demonstrated by this blog, was in the sheer number of songs that I was producing. Knowledge of music theory, ability to play instruments or sing, all these things were secondary when every week or two I had another song to bring to the table. And so we trundled on, kind of without problems.

 

Gettin’ Out Of This Cave

~ tryingartist ~ 1 Comment

Let’s be straight. Gettin’ Out Of This Cave isn’t the best song of all time. But many of those who have heard my music over the years would argue passionately that it is the best song I have ever written.

Which I can react to in two ways: the first is to stop writing, turn around, smash up all my instruments, delete every music file on my computer, apologise to anyone I’ve ever sent music to in the past, and begin to rebrand myself completely – perhaps I’ll be a juggler! Or a jockey! Or a pastry chef! Or, I can join the chorus of praise: Gettin’ Out Of This Cave is a masterpiece. Gettin’ Out Of This Cave is the sum of my worth.

So, here we go…

What is there not to like about this song? Ok, apart from the guitar chords that come in at the second chorus, yes if we’re being pedantic, they are about a quarter tone out of tune, and this does unhinge the song a tiny bit. But this is all part of its charm. Originally conceived on a hotel toilet in Belgium, sung out to a friend sitting in the next room, the verse and chorus were improvised, inspired by immediate context, and sung without accompaniment. When I decided to preserve it in a recording a week later, I sung the vocals before playing any chords, and so the the G# key I later assigned to them could only ever be an approximation. Could I have just tuned the guitar to suit the vocals? I’m going to say no I couldn’t have.

This is the purest creative output of a 14 year old mind, with a melody that can’t be forgotten, words that can’t be unspoken, harmonies that almost work, most of the time, and a theme that never strays from its central point. The song was, at least at the time, the best song I had written, although I didn’t know it then/ would never admit it.

And, looking back on it, I know why. I’ve realised over the years that I’m at my best when I work with a quick rush of inspiration (however ‘shit’ it is), constrained by time, motivated by a joke. Gettin’ Out Of This Cave probably took a third of the amount of time to record as some of those that came before it. And in much later recording sessions, with the same motivation I have made a dance track in two hours, created eleven minutes worth of joke poetry set to music, written an entire album of short funny songs, all for birthday presents. They always turn out pretty good. Because they don’t need to be that good. I’m not a natural perfectionist (which is what I am now attempting to become – more on that in several blogyears’ time). But I am a natural bullshitter. And that’s what Gettin’ Out Of This Cave is all about – improvisation, and shitting.