6 posts tagged “etcetera”
So I was going through my digitized music file collection and noticed that I hadn't finished converting Etcetera's original demo album to mp3 yet, and decided I'd do that and clear out the bulky old wave files. And that of course got me to thinking about posting them here.
They're pretty scratchy and not at all what I would class professional performances or recordings by any stretch of the imagination. they're just rough drafts of a number of pieces I was intent on getting polished up. Some of them made it to a more polished level of demo stage; others still need a lot of work. I may take one or two in hand in the next while. There are a lot of flaws in these recordings, but there are also some nice, magical moments hidden in them. Etcetera were never the finest musicians, but when they gelled, they could generate some really interesting musical moments
Top of Riff Jam Rock
This was an impromptu jam that I somehow instigated while showing Gary some moving chords and a respectable amount of distortion. I never made a name for myself as a guitarist, but in the words of John Lennon, I could occasionally 'really make the fucker howl'.
Here We Go Again (vox + acoustic)
While we were hammering away at getting the instrumentation nailed down for this tune, we every once in a while would get the urge to try and sort out the harmony vocals. This version was not based on the final arrangement but on the version of the tune we had lived with for about a year, and wanted to hear if our vocal arrangement worked. So we did it 'a cappella'. Later, I dubbed in some acoustic guitar and a little added vocal. It's an awkward mix, but it has some charm. This was a favourite of friends of the band for quite a while.
Here We Go Again
Show Me Something (trials)
This was a number that Gary had already helped me demo for our side project, but Gary was curious to hear whether the band could figure it out. Derrick was never comfortable with the 3/4 swing beat, and I'm not sure Dave ever came to grips with the bassline, although I suspect he did. This was a mishmash recording that wound up with some reversed spillage from the other side of the cassette, and for some time, I just thought it was amusing to listen to, even though it's really nothing close to how the song was meant to sound.
Show Me Something
Come Hither Eyes (pt 1)
Gary had started noodling with a riff that he was composing for his girlfriend at the time, and the guys liked it so much, they insisted on jamming on it with him.
Come Hither Eyes (pt 2)
This goes on record as being the first time we ever tried an overdub on a track. While we had been jamming on Gary's 'Getting Laid' riff *big grin*, I started hearing a low and dirty lead line in a Stonesy sort of vein. So I played back the tune on a cheesy little ghetto blaster of mine while working out the note melody. Dave thought I was writing a bassline, but I told him it wasn't really for him to play.
Thick and Thin (acoustic demo)
Gary had started jamming a crunchy latin-inspired riff at home that he had then left on my answer machine. I was eager to get in and get to work on it, so one afternoon at practice, he started hammering on it and the change ups, and then grabbed hold of some lyrics that Derrick had given him to work with. Gary and I quickly sorted out the vocal melodies and we recorded the demo right before their eyes. Compared to Etc, Thesis was fast. The guys were suitably impressed.
Thick & Thin
Conditions (YSMS demo jam)
Gary and I were pushing our guitar and keys through one amp, which created this tweezy sort of compression, which inspired us to jam out a tune with the guys. I ended up taking this home, dissecting it and strapping some reworked lyrics of Derrick's onto it, but this is the original jam, which I'd already named Conditions.
You Send Me Spinning
MONTE'S BIRTHDAY SUITE
Pt 1: The Wakening
A simple bit of note fluff I created at the end of a monumental jam, and then switched around with the first part, as it sounded more like a quirky intro to me than a coda.
Pt 2: The Hunting
This was actually played before the part I eventually put last in the lineup, but it had a certain mood and power all it's own, and goes down as one of my favourite musical moments with the band. It's chaotic and muddy, and a lot of time was spent trying to convert it into a song, which later became Breathe [1][2][3]. I'd still like to go back and figure out how to rearrange and recreate this as a full prog piece.
Pt 3: Monte's Arrival
I started the band practice off by programming Derrick and Dave (Gary couldn't make it) with a cocktail of Genesis, Yes, DreamTheater and especially King Crimson. Then we started up and created this beast of a triptych. This is one of the heaviest moments in the band's history, and though it's extremely unpolished, it has a lot of great little moments I'd love to arrange and recreate someday.
After the whole thing was done, we dreamed up a story of a Japanese Giant Rubber Monster making his way onto the shore of some unsuspecting city and tearing it up. We dubbed him Monte, and declared this his Birthday Suit(e).
Games/Goodbye
An early recording of the band rehearsing this hoary classic, complete with me counting the band in at the start and at the segue to the coda. It's far from there, but it's a pretty good tune, even in this early stage.
Games/Goodbye
Waiting For Sentence (take 6)
Dave started working on his famous untitled bass composition, and the band tried lamely to get in there and work with him. It didn't really happen, but at least you can hear what Dave was trying o do here.
Waiting For Sentence (take 7)
And finally, on another day, the band actually got in there and did a little more with the riff. It still didn't come off all that well, but it sounded pretty cool, and served as an early template for what I figured the band would eventually do with Dave's piece.
I may take a stab at arranging this into something cool for Dave sometime this year.
And there you have it. Another DRM-free demo album brought to you by Etcetera/Thesis music. Please feel free to do anything except sell the music yourselves. Creative Commons License applies. If you want to do something with anything you hear here, please drop me a note. I have plans for some of this stuff too, you know.
Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed it.
Well, Gold as in the gaming industry definition of gold, which means the Etcetera Thesis Music Blog is complete now. We are no longer in beta *grin*.
The demo tracks from two 'albums', plus a couple of new songs for the upcoming album, most of which feature me on assorted instruments (keys, guitars, bass, drum programming, lead and backing vocals -- of varying quality, depending mainly on my health and what take it was), with varying degrees of musicianship from myself, Gary Falkins (guitars, keys, bass, lead and backing vocals), Derrick Rose (drums, percussion, backing vocals), and our old friend, Big Dave Beddard (bass, backing vocals).
I still don't really like how Vox bastardizes my text edits, but nevertheless, I have completed posting virtually all of the lyrics, commentary notes and composition/performance credits on the Etcetera Thesis Music Blog. From here on out, I'll only be adding bits and bobs as they come along, including new demos and any bits of film and stuff the guys acquire. Hopefully we'll start writing about band-related news there, instead of it being a veritable museum.
Anyway, I'm supposed to be working on a vector file for the computer store signage printers, and emailing the latest revision of the tradeshow banner to my sister and the water people. I'd prefer to snuggle up and go to sleep with my wife, but duty calls. *sigh*
Have a nice day.
Okay, so I woke up today with a terrible hangover after drinking one whole finger of single malt scotch (WTF??) while I was making last night's post. So it's taken me a hand full of hours, two tylenol, one glass of water, one cup of tea, a peanut butter and jam sandwich and two chapters of The Beatles' Anthology (ch 5-6) to shake it off and get productive again.
After a couple of phone calls with the band to duly report about last night's blog, I decided to take a shower, reboot my computer, and 'remaster' the best take of The Dream Falls from last week (take 2, for those counting; there were five takes, but I flubbed the lyrics and bassline in all of the other takes, and the guys muffed the ending on teh first take, when my voice was still alright).
It's actually a song I started writing a few months ago to express my sympathy for Ragnar Tornquist, the writer and director of the 'Modern Adventure' game Dreamfall: The Longest Journey II. It's a brilliant game, but it's much shorter than the original, it ends with a huge cliffhanger (cliffhangers, actually), and had some fighting and stealth elements that pissed off a lot of fans (and detractors, who had clearly been waiting for a chance to piss on Ragnar, after all of the acclaim his first game got, much to their chagrin).
Personally, I was put off the action sequences at first, but eventually got the hang of it, and it now lives on my list of truly great video games. However, many, many people still bitch and whine about the frustratingly downbeat ending, so I found myself imagining Ragnar's position, and wrote this song for him.
If I ever get it recorded cleanly, I'll send him a copy for his personal amusement, even if he doesn't completely get it. The lyrics are just obtuse enough that you could take it to mean a number of things, including a sort of terse goodbye to a bad relationship if you wanted to, I'd imagine. It's not, but I like obtuse lyrics, so I rather enjoyed this piece. I posted the lyrics at the official Dreamfall forum, but I'm afraid nobody got it. There were one or two requests to hear the music though, so I'll probably go post a link over there for their edification.
Vital Stats: The Dream Falls comes in at exactly 2:00 mins; it's an 80's-style post-punk tune á là The Police, XTC, The Cure and maybe Split Enz; it actually sounds pretty good despite the raw recording technique; and it goes on record as being the shortest full pop song I've ever written and recorded, which I think is bloody brilliant for me. I'd say it's comparable to OK Go's Here It Goes Again, only not as cleanly recorded, sadly.
Anyway, I was on a roll again, so I decided to 'remaster' I Want Someone Close To Me while I was at it. So here you go.
© 2006 Lee Edward McIlmoyle
Etcetera Thesis Music
for the upcoming album 'Add Infant Item'
I suspect I should be calling the new album Tetris, because it really does feel like shuffling blocks into place as they fall from the sky.
I'd play you something from the latest band practice, but I can't seem to host any more songs at this time. No idea why. Anyway, I may host a track or two on the CvS website. I'm not 100% happy with any of the tracks, but we did get five complete takes of The Dream Falls, warts and all. So I'm actually looking forward to the next practice, whenever that will actually be.
We did manage to capture a couple of new song riff ideas of Gary's as well, so it seems pretty safe to assume that we'll be using lots of new music on the album. At the moment, it looks like most of the projected album is older material and a handful of originals This doesn't appeal to me nearly as much as an album of originals, but the band needed direction, so I provided it, by sitting with Gary and hashing out the entire rehearsal set list for the year.
So it's looking like this:
I Want Someone Close To Me [Police - Walking On The Moon, Roxanne, Can't Stand Losing You; white man reggae]
The Dream Falls [XTC - Making Plans For Nigel, This Is Pop; crunchy early post-punk New Wave][ETA: So far, really crunchy, but it's coming along]
The Dark Age [Thesis, really. I don't know what else this sounds like; I can't hear it properly yet][ETA: My wife says U2; we managed a fast take that sounded a bit like The Who during the early 70s. I don't like the way we hit the reprise, and I hate that I was out of tune for every take we did on Friday]
No One In The World [Matthew Good Band, with perhaps a dash of early REM to put it in 80s territory][ETA: Written for Gary to sing, though so far I'm the only one singing it. Go figure]
Lady In the Field [This also sounds like Thesis to me, but I think I'll find something soon][ETA: My wife says she hears a touch of Solisbury Hill, but Derrick says he hears Paul Simon]
Apoptosis [early Gregg Rolie/Steve Perry Journey - Majestic, Some Day Soon, Too Late, City of the Angels, Feeling That Way; rocks to a grinding halt like a Who song, and ends with a chorus]
Out Of Time [Billy Joel - Big Shot, Moving Out, All For Leyna, Pressure]
Older Thesis tunes redux:
Here It Comes Again [The Beatles by way of later XTC, Adrian Belew, Crowded House, King's X; Instant Karma, I Am The Walrus, Getting Better]
One Up On You [Split Enz - Hard Act To Follow, I Got You; early Squeeze - Another Nail For My Heart, Pulling Mussels From a Shell; light but dark and fast, had a P.Gabriel beat]
Waiting [Pink Floyd - Hey You, Run Like Hell; this used to be a Sound Garden riff over a Tony Banks/Stewart Copeland piano figure, but I'm hearing it diferently these days][ETA: Having a little trouble getting this to happen like that. Gonna go sort it out on my own]
I'm Gone Again [chirpy pop song, bit like a Paul McCartney solo number; might make this more as a Steve Winwood 'Arc of the Diver' - George Harrison thing]
Older Etcetera tunes due for an overhaul:
Breathe [Billy Joel - Big Shot, Moving Out, All For Leyna, Pressure; this used to be a more Yes-like number, but it never gelled, even though it's on the old album][ETA: Actually, this one is probably going to be more Thomas Dolby. Lyric's not right for a Billy Joel tune]
Bleed Into One [The Police - Omega Man, Rehumanize Yourself, Synchronicity II, King of Pain; didn't work on the album, but I still have my hopes]
How Can I Miss You (If You Won't Go Away)? [Phil Collins during his angry, angsty period; In The Air Tonight, I Don't Care Anymore; we did one version, but it's wrong]
The Stand (might change the title again) [Led Zeppelin by way of The Tea Party; closer to Carouselambra than Kashmir or Achilles Last Stand, which is what it sounds like now]
After that, I want to rerecord these old songs for an EP:
Here We Go Again [Wants desperately to be like Yes - I've Seen All Good People, Starship Trooper, And You And I; band lyric]
Through The Eyes of a Fool [Never figured out what this sounded like; Just Gary's take on a soft rock love song; Derrick lyric]
Thick & Thin [This is kind of like The Northern Pikes' Snow In June, only with a cruchy mexican rock riff at the core; Derrick lyric, weirdest tune we ever wrote]
You Send Me Spinning [I have no idea what this sounds like. I wrote the music, and i still haven't figured it out. It's just me writing a Gary tune for a Derrick love lyric]
Games [This song defies description for me too. Gary and Dave wrote it with Derrick to another of Derrick's lyrics, and I came back and fixed it]
Goodbye [This is used as a melodic finale to Games. I wrote it separate from the band, and Gary and I worked it in. Dunno what it sounds like either]
Still need to write/rewrite lyrics for Apoptosis, Out of Time, The Stand and How Can I Miss You. Still need music for Apoptosis, Out of Time, No One In The World and guitar keys for The Dream Falls, plus rearrangements for most of the tracks and full drum and basslines for several tracks. However, we actually have a (huge) album's worth of good songs lined up. It's great having a game plan again. This band was always great for creating odd new material, but it really only ever functioned well as a performing and recording band when it had specific marching orders. So now Gary and I have a direction to go in, and to drill each other and Derrick on. Things should start coming together now.
Lee
In the early months of 1998, Etcetera had been steadily rehearsing original material for uprwards of four years, although the majority of the work had taken place in the previous two. A collection of tunes had been forming into what eventually became the bonus disc, And Sew One, the name chosen as far back as 1994 to be the title of the first album. The second and third album names (All Our Twomorrows, Three At Last) were set aside for the numerous instrumental and improvised lyric demos that had not made it to a proper album recording, and so it was decided to jump straight into album four, and a return to the original title, both puns on the band's name.
The album And Sew Fourth was never made commercially available; the recording and performance levels were never what could be considered commercially viable. Certain friends were gifted with copies, though most copies exist strictly within the band itself. Since it was realized before the album had been completed that it would never be released commercially, the album was bookended with a track taken from an 80s TV commercial and a spontaneously improvised rendition of Henry The Eighth/It's The End of The World As We Know It, which marks the last time Etcetera has performed as a four piece to date.
After the album was recorded, sequenced and copied out, a set list was compiled from the most coherent songs, and the band continued to rehearse, with the plan to either start gigging in the summer, or if not ready, to go on hiatus. After losing a guitar player, two keyboards and a drum machine, the final three piece reached the end of the line; the bass player had decided that he would leave the band before his wedding, regardless of how the band sounded. The keyboardist/lead vocalist had all but burned out, and so the entire four piece reconvened for a final band meeting, and agreed (somewhat acrimoniously on the part of the drummer) to go on hiatus.
This is the first time the album has been released into the wild in digital format. This album is not to be sold or rerecorded in any fashion without the express permission of the composers. Beyond that, it is being released purely as free entertainment, most likely under the Creative Commons license, though I haven't read that document in a while. Essentially, that means I don't mind if you make CDs of it to share with friends, but under no cricumstances should they be sold or passed off as your own work. Just enjoy it for what it is, even as I cringe at all the things it isn't. Thank you.
ETCETERA
AND SEW FOURTH (1998)
© 1998, 2006 Etcetera Thesis Music
Okay, I did DVD commentary for Rough Work in the Margins, and there's space, so it's only appropriate that I go back and do the same for And Sew Fourth.
Ah, Music
Waiting For Sentence
A later recording had the guys joining in, but while it is more exciting than this version, it lacks the cohesion and mythical quality of this recording. I've been promising Dave I'd find a way to finish this riff up for him and turn it into a song he would enjoy. I think I may be doing just that for one number on the next album, with main music credit going to Dave (I'll steal a co-write and arrangement credit). After that, we introduce Dave to the wonderful world of royalty payments. I'm sure he'll appreciate a little extra money around the house.
Here We Go Again
It was late summer/early autumn of 1994 (sorry, can't find any dates on the oldest recording tapes; didn't know I'd need to be able to keep a clear record of it all for posterity, as I'd only started keeping a journal in the previous year or so, and not very well at that), we'd lost our original keyboard player and two songs she had been working on, and I ended up taking over on keys. After getting Gary in to play guitar, we banged around on a handful of song ideas until we hit on this one, and in a matter of weeks had the first incarnation of our first song. It was originally born from a series of jams, some with and some without Gary, but the germinal stuff was all in place before I left the band on a year long hiatus.
When I returned, this tune went through numerous changes, until it arrived at the state you hear in this recording. I started working it up with a bit of Yes in the chorus, which became more ornate when we rehearsed it acoustically. It later also received further embellishements with a crunchy intro, a motown bridge verse, and a reversed chorus chord structure for the outro. This is probably the trickiest song we played. That's probably why I pushed it to the front of the line, even after everyone was gettign tired of it.
It was also the first and perhaps the only true band composition, written by all four members from start to finish, lyrics included. This is also one of the tracks that will be revisited this year when we can get it recorded properly, perhaps as much for the therapy of hearing it done perfectly ourselves as anything else.
Bleed Into One
I've previously misremembered the history of these songs a little while describing this song's pedrigree in the Rough Work commentary; in truth, Bleed Into One was a lyric I wrote in the spring of 1997, whilst staying with a girlfriend and her little boy. I have to go back and figure out how, but there had been a hiatus of a couple of months where no band activity occurred, and when I got back, it was on the understanding that we'd spend some time coming up with new material, which I was getting anxious about, because I'd been growing unhappy with the band songs to date.
I'd recorded Here It Comes Again by this time, and was growing dissatisfied with my place in the band, though I tried not to let this affect things too much. I decided I was determined to get more of my material through the band process, as previous efforts to bring in songs had met with varying levels of interest, but ultimately, none of my songs made it through rehearsals. So I developed a new plan: I would write a lyric I felt very strongly about, and then go into practice and instigate a jam that I would immediately turn into my new song, come what may. Etcetera the Thesis way. Interestingly enough, that is exactly what happened, and I fell back in love with the band.
This song has undergone a number of remixes since we started jamming and rehearsing it. I finally remixed it in a form close to one I'm prepared to rehearse and record now, and included it on Rough Work in the Margins. This was one of the earliest remixes, and it fairly flawed, but contains most of what I considered to be the best elements of every take we'd done of the tune in our history as a band. I seriously can't wait to get this rerecorded. However, it does have a lot of interesting bits in there, and stands as one of my personal favourites, even if it was really only half way there. I still listen to Gary's raw guitar playing at the end and think fondly of how close we were to brilliance.
Through The Eyes of a Fool
This was probably Etcetera's first taste of the Thesis formula for songwriting. We had been rehearsing some other music (Thick & Thin, IIRC), and during a break, Gary started working on a new song riff during a break. When we were all ready to start again, Gary had a tune worked out, and requested some lyrics. I pulled out one of my obtuse numbers, but it lost the vote in favour of one Derrick had been stockpiling, which stands as the sole Derrick lyric from that time period that required absolutely no tweaking of the meter or sections. It benefitted greatly from a rather elegantly simple romantic guitar figure, which I then proceeded to work out the melody for very quickly, while Derrick and Dave got to witness how fast Gary and I work outside of the band format. In about a minute, we turned in a new song, something Etcetera hadn't witnessed before.
Gary turned in an arrangement for guitar, bass, keys and drums the very next week (which Dave and I then proceeded to change on the poor guy, but he didn't omplain too much), which we jammed out, rehearsed and recorded for the next two weeks, and wound up with perhaps our first solid band recording with all instruments and vocals in place. This number remains the most popular with our female friends, and Derrick has never gotten over himself since then. Gary has. He won't write any more nice songs. Life is cruel sometimes.
Thick & Thin
This song started as a riff I found on my answer machine while visiting with my girlfriend and her little boy in her rather ratty little house on Cannon and Kensington (where I recorded Here It Comes Again and wrote the music for You Send Me Spinning and the keys and vocal melody for Waiting, as well). Gary left the message on my phone, and it consisted of this rather brash little guitar riff with three chords, banging away in a flamenco rock rhythm and picking up tempo. Not long after, we got together and I pushed him through the first three parts, which were radically different from one another. He was using another of Derrick's love songs, (to which I later did some tweaking to get a song structure out of it, including writing a chorus for it), and then Dave and I proceeded to write the intro, chorus, middle eight and outro parts while Gary was away. When he got back, he hardly recognized the song, but it's still one of Etcetera's sturdiest, strongest numbers. We're going to give this one another go this year as well.
You Send Me Spinning
Now, Gary had started to get a reputation as Derrick's utility songwriter, and I was starting to get ambitious (some would say jealous), so I grabbed a few song lyrics of his that Gary hadn't procured yet, and had a go. I started with Waiting (which needed a bit of work lyrically, but had some great sections and put me in mind of a dark little piano tune), but wound up working on You Send Me Spinning, which I wrote and demoed based on a bit of jamming we'd done as a four piece the week before. I took the basic ideas from the tape and worked them into a song, which I then took many months to teach them, because I'd introduced too many chord changes *shrug*. Anyway, it's the only love song I've ever written for Etcetera to play, and I don't think it would have happened if Derrick hadn't written such a hopelessly romantic lyric, the little dickens.
Breathe
Once upon a time, there was a fantastical piece of power trio instrumental bombast that Derrick, Dave and I jammed out together, called Monte's Birthday Suite (aka Kick The Hell Out Of The Rubber Monster). This was recorded in the summer of 1996, with me playing keys and spurring Derrick and Dave on in a few time signatures and turning out a royally chaotic mess. Now, once we created this opus in three acts, I switched the third and first parts around to give it a wee bit more structure, but that was it. I made a copy for Gary and his fiancee (Gary liked it; Wendy not so much, IIRC), and then we all went up to see Franz and Maxine Nangle (our dear friends from Silent Revolution), to see what they thought. Franz kinda liked it, but said it didn't go anywhere. I was a little put out at the time, but I later had to agree.
Regardless, I kept bringing up the riffs at various times, trying to spur the guys to learn at least one of the pieces properly, and several takes of part two in particular (entitled The Hunting) were recorded over the next year. It changed dramatically in that time, but more than a kernel of its dark, brooding menace continued to permeate the piece. However, there was a problem; Derrick was getting tired of playing it, feeling it needed lyrics and a proper guitar part (Gary still hadn't come up with one that fit) before he would continue to work on it. As it was one of my favourite numbers at the time, I endeavoured to meet the demand, and started writing a lyric. I started with one verse and chorus that would get repeated endlessly while we worked it out, in the style of The Bears' Girl With Clouds In Her Hair. Oddly, the lyric lightened up the tune, and it started to move away from its brooding former self. I resolved that, someday, I would record it as part of the Monte's Birthday Suite redux, with the long instrumental sections being broken up with lyrical components (I also wrote a lyric called Up For Air, to accompany the heaviest part of the suite, called The Awakening, none of which has yet to see light of day).
Anyhow, this tune was recorded a number of times, but never made it into our repertoire (much to my chagrin), and I ended up taking bits from my favourite takes and bootstrapping them together into the clumsy mix we have here. I have great hopes of getting this one rearranged and rerecorded this year as well. Of Up For Air, I cannot say at this time. Perhaps Monte's Birthday Suite is destined to become our Metropolis or our Chapters.
Games
Now, THIS is the Derrick Rose I know and love like the deranged older brother he is to me. This was actually written for a gal we were all friends with, who sadly could not commit to Derrick, which naturally sent him round the bend. Myself, I wasn't in the band at the time they wrote and started writing this, but they got me back in soon afterwards to see if I could help them sort out the time signature and meter problems they were having. I'd spent the year studying pop song writing, so I was feeling terribly clever, and told them I'd do it. I'm not entirely sure they've forgiven me yet.
This song was a beast to learn to play, particularly because, after helping weld Gary's two disparate riffs together, giving it an instrumental section, and sorting out the arrangement and the curious metrical experiments* of Derrick's lyric, I then bestowed upon the monstrous piece a melodic little coda I had written while away from the band, which had been searching for a home, and just seemed to fit right in with the clumsy, lumbering behemoth it followed; a melancholy little number called...
Goodbye
As mentioned before. This little piece had been written by myself during my sabbatical (a nice way of saying banishment), although I'm not entirely sure which one of them I wrote it for. Perhaps all four of them (Wendy included), really. Anyway, I'd gotten the vocal melody and the chords down for it, but it just resolved too quickly, and didn't want to be part of anything else I was working on at the time. So I shelved it.
I ended up playing it later for Gary, and he thought it would be a great outro to Games as well. However, when we tried to put the two together, Games decided Goodbye was too sweet. So we took Goodbye out back, dolled her up in Gothic Lolita gear, brought her back, and Games sidled up to her and proceeded to make chit chat. We figured we'd pulled it off. Little did we know.
In band practices for the next three years, we were to learn that Games and Goodbye had a tempestuous relationship, which ruined virtually every take we ever did. I took to counting everyone through the bridge between the two pieces until they got used to the timing. By the time of this take, I was counting with my fingers in the air and conducting the band back in with gestures. I wrote myself a piano part for Games to get everyone through the instrumental, so I figured that for this take, why not improvise one for the coda as well, even though it had been written for guitar, and was usually handled by Gary.
Success, sort of. Derrick half-heartedly tapped a cymbal a few times, I started the vocal line, Gary hit the chord, and everyone came in, and when the outro riff came around, I fumbled at the keys, and it just rose up a level. So three years later, I found myself the pastor of the shotgun wedding of two of the most ornery pieces of music this band has ever fought with. Shame my voice was shredded by this point in the recording. The second runthrough was even rougher, IIRC (and I think it cut off accidentally part way through Goodbye, too).
If you listen long enough, you can just hear a final bass note get cut off at the end, as Dave started to go into a rocked up reprise of Goodbye that we had devised for the stage, which we agreed to do if and when we got through a take without stopping, as a reward for our hard work. I'll have to post a recording of that someday. It got quite raucous, if memory serves correctly.
Despite all of my frustrations with this number, I'm still rather proud of it, and look forward to giving it another shot when we rerecord these darlings some time this year.
Finally, Henry The Eighth/It's The End of The World As We Know It
I almost think this should be called something like Henry's World, or perhaps The End of Henry As We Know Him. Acapella, improvised at the end of a first run through of the set (but after the reprise jam, which you do not get to hear), which in those days consisted of Here We Go Again, Through The Eyes of a Fool, Thick & Thin, You Send Me Spinning, Games and Goodbye (and sometimes the reprise). We'd gotten into the habit of doing it twice per practice by that point (and then knocking off early for good behaviour), and I was drilling them not to rest too long before we started in again. So as we completed Goodbye, I held my breath, waited a few seconds, and then said 'Second verse, same as the first'. The looks on their faces said it all, so I immediately broke into song, with them quickly joining in and taking four part harmony, with Gary coming in from the rear with an equally impromptu rendition of REM's tune. Never duplicated, and we never did learn to play either song, not that we ever really intended to. Still, it made for a great album closer, wouldn't you agree?
Footnote: *Derrick Rose, back in the early days, was infamous for writing 'lover's lament' lyrics in a very accessible, prosaic style, but with poetic flourishes of meter that just wouldn't add up upon closer inspection. I'm famous for writing overly labourious rhymes in a mumber of my older songs, but Derrick always seeme dot hand us songs that were three quarters right, but always seemed to fall apart part way through, and were impossible to sing once Gary got the melody composed for it. We learned in later years to take the meter and structure as a suggestion, write the tune separtely, and then rework the lyric to fit. Games was not one of the songs we reworked. I sometimes think Gary regrets this tune, but some people seem to like it. I gather Sheri did.
© 2006 Lee Edward McIlmoyle
Somewhere in Hamilton, Ontari-ari-ari-oh
Hello and Welcome. My name is Lee, and I'm the principle singer, songwriter and lyricist for a couple of bands I started years ago and am tinkering with again today, called Etcetera and Thesis. I play guitars, keys and bass, and program drums because my drummer (Derrick) won't let me near his kit (possessiveness issues).
Etcetera is a band of buddies and I jamming out tunes and demoing them until we're strong enough to record and play live. We've been together off and on for over a decade, but sadly haven't gotten very far as of yet. Our musical influences are pretty varied, stretching all throughout the 20th Century, but centering mainly on our Power Pop, Prog Rock and Art Rock influences. We are currently a three-piece, but if my drummer has his way, I'll be festooned with so-called band members again before too long. Please send flowers. Or good single malt.
Thesis is more of a personal side project, mainly consisting of songs written and performed by myself, sometimes with Gary Falkins (guitarist for Etcetera), and an Alesis SR-16 drum machine that left me for a better band (I presume). As most of these tunes are multitrack studio efforts, there has been little effort to make this into a gigging band to date. That too may change
This first tune, I Want Someone Close To Me, is a sarcastic little ditty about a guy who ain't getting any. It's a very recent composition written and introduced to the band expressly for the purpose of building up a full album and set list of original material to go along with older originals we never got past the indie album (i.e. demo) stage back in the 90s. It's a white Reggae number in the vein of The Police and other popular rock musicians of the very late 70s and early 80s. I hope to include a final version on a commercially-available album and download site in the near future, once we have access to better recording equipment and a full album of material.
This was recorded in a small concrete and dry wall-filled basement room, using an old Fostex 4-track and a PZM mike with no close miking, mixing board or even EQ. Sounds like someone taped it using a microcasette recorder in a bar, minus the audience. So if Low-Fi is not your thing, this may be a hard listen. As well, the musicians are rusty and the performance is nothing like flawless, but the tune isn't too shabby, if derivative. All that said, I'm quite proud of it. It stands up to the best we've ever done as a band, and I think augers well for our reincarnated form, even though we have a ways to go yet before I declare us 'ready'.
I hope you enjoy the tune, and thank you for listening.
Lee Edward McIlmoyle
Etcetera -I Want Someone Close To Me
© 2006 Etcetera Thesis Music
from the upcoming album 'Add Infant Item'
