Mr Wizard and I are both Star Trek fans, Original and Next Gen respectively, but like so many on planet earth right now, we're expressing sadness at the passing of Leonard Nimoy and giving thanks for his work.
Stories and Myths are as important to humans as language, and maybe as evolutionarily influential (citation required lol).
They give us Heroes to aspire to and the belief in things unseen (ok not always a good thing but in this case yeah).
I wonder how many humans now think of Logic and when they do, a little picture of Leonard Nimoy as Spock pops into their head.
Vale Leonard Nimoy, Accidental Ambassador for Logic, a kind of thinking we could use a great deal more of.
We've had some down time of late (yay), although it has been populated by rehearsal and Yet More Song Development.
Last night saw us working on Rosies new reggae type thing (previously mentioned under lyrical fail #23).
When we requested some nice light drumming for the song, Theo asked 'since when has this band all gone soft, let's give it some stick.'
However, for the purposes of recording the guide track onto a single microphone, we needed to drop the level of the bongo somewhat and were at a loss as to what to do until a solution presented itself.
Yesterday was Recording Vocals Day for DTISHOM (btw Rosie has requested that all future song names be 1 or two words max)
The song is more or less finished, sounds pretty much as we play it live. Good-o, finished.
Not quite.
Whilst doing the main Vocals, Michael McG decided we needed something through the breakdown section and encouraged me to do some James Brown stuff.
That occasioned my very best James Brown catchphrase attempts, but it wasnt quite right. What we needed was a Hype Man. A what?
A Hype Man. Someone who adds vocalisations during your song, such as the legendary Flavor Flav
YEAH BOYYY!!!
So what sort of vocalisations do I mean? Whoops, Get On Ups, Get Down, Yah, yeah, woot, etcetera.
Very kindly, Michael volunteered to have a go.
The funny thing was, that after thse vocalisations, I went back in to redo a phrase from the main Vocals that I wasn't happy with and wound up re-doing the main vocals completely - having the Hype in the background of the song made me smile a great deal and as a result, improved my singing tone and produced a better take. There ya go.
We won't get this one mixed for a week or so but it's a cracker.
Meanwhile, here's a song Michael turned me on to whilst we were talking about sampled vocalisations.
Rosie brought in a new piece of music the other day and I set myself the task of writing something lyrically appropriate.
It's got this bouncy kind of reggae feel so i have been all over youtube liberally applying Marley to myself. In fact I have had complaints from them-whats-shares-my-environment about repeating this song over and over. Not his most well known or arguably best writing but I still dig it. apologies for the Advert at the start..
In the Lyrics Department, a brightly lit corner of the Stormcellar with a window out over the back garden, Lyric Gnomes do battle for ideas - Rhyming Vs Prose, Traditional VS Weird, On the beat Vs Off The Beat, Over the Melody VS Alt Melody and so on and so forth.
For those that are into word games, this is all good stuff. (Mind you, there are those amongst us that think Words are the Squawks in between Clever Guitar Chords.)
Nonetheless, we have a very open and failure loving system, because it's only by embracing complete FAIL that you can luck out onto a great combination.
For both our amusement, here's a great moment of fail from yesterday's writing.
As it was a reggae-ish tune and most reggae stuff seems to be short two verse stanzas with rhyming endings such as:
'get up, stand up, stand up for your rights
get up stand up, don't give up the fight'
I thought I'd give it a shot. Ok Rhyming it is.
What about subject matter? Marley gave us more than a Sound, his music put forth short, well thought out, well encapsulated positive ideas.
Well, we kinda took that approach for Hard times (remember? if not here's the vid)
hmmm...well I guess that's still an option, but what about a Love Song instead? The world might already have a plethora of'em but we don't, so, okie doke, let's give it a shot.
My first verse was going ok, nothing too ridiculous.
Then I hit verse 2.
It all started when I tried using the word Lagoon.
Firstly, it's a ghastly mental image with potentially subconscious references to Female....err....you know. (blush)
But more problematic is that it gives rise to the dread OON ending.
OON
Before I knew it, the next line was ending in in MOON. (oh no)
As I realised what I'd done, frankly, I gave up and just went with it.
Kingly tide and Crimson Moon
Power of a great baboon
Lyrics written by a loon.
Spoon in june and spoon.
I added a second 'Spoon' there just because I could. Because: Transcendent Awfulness.
