6 posts tagged “indie”
Still figuring out how I'm going to record the album, and still thinking I'll wind up doing it all myself. But at least you get a small idea of what the vocals will actually sound like on the album.
Lee.
The Dream Falls (original demo version)
© 2006 Lee Edward McIlmoyle
Etcetera Thesis Music
for the upcoming album 'Add Infant Item'
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'
Over the past few days, I've been trying to make myself finish sitting down and 'remaster' the old demo song compilation I finished up in 1998. It consists of a few Etcetera songs I felt particularly proud of, plus a whole bunch of basically finished songs, performed either by myself or with Gary Falkins,
that needed demo recording so I could eventually play them for a producer buddy of mine and see what he thought. In the end, I think I played some of it for a musician friend or two of mine, and then put it away. People heard more interesting material in the band recordings, which isn't such a bad thing, I suppose, except that I was never particularly happy with the band recordings either.So anyway, I had the option of pulling out all of the original 'master' tapes and pulling the tracks off one by one. I would if they were really worth all that much, but the truth is, most of them are pretty rough (hence the title), so there really didn't seem to be too much point in getting precious about the source, So I just loaded up my last compilation copy (actually a copy of the original; I have no idea where that got to), and started ripping it to my computer.
Now, the software I use to rip cassettes isn't particularly high tech; I can edit waveforms and save them as either wave or mp3. I have some noise filtering and some parametric EQ control, so while the tracks are impossible to separate, I can at least tweak the frequencies the separate instruments live on and try to make things sound more balanced and less muddy.
Anyway, the demo will never be fore sale, obviously, so I'm going to wind up doign with it what I did with And Sew Fourth. However, I have no idea if Vox will let me load any more music. It still has't loaded my previous edit of Here It Comes Again/One Up On You. So just as a test, I'm gonna load the first three tracks and see how it goes. If that works, I'll try loading the rest.
Creative Commons License: You can burn it to a personal disc, learn to play the songs and play them live inconcert. You can't rerecord them as your own and sell them without my permission, and you can't burn multiple discs and sell them, either. I will most likely rerecord them myself at some date and issue an official version of this album someday, though the next Thesis album I record is going to have a lot of newer music, if I have anything to do with it.
Lee Edward McIlmoyle
somewhere in Hamilton, ON
Thesis - Rough Work In The Margins
© 1998, 2006 L. McIlmoyle
Etcetera Thesis Music
ETA: Looks like it worked. But look at all this space!
Think I should write a little about the songs, huh?
Okay, first off, there's The Question, which was actually a completely unplanned improvisation that I recorded directly to the ghetto blaster I had my cheeseball board hooked into a tthe time. It's very church-like, true, but I guess I just always liked how spontaneous it was, and how interesting it was, for all of its flaws.
This is taken directly form my post about the next two songs:
Anyway, it was 1995 and I was on enforced
sabbatical from my band (girl trouble), and I was honing my song craft. I wrote
a great number of songs during that period, and even started talking with some
of my old band mates again, but I was still out on my own, working feverishly,
and trying to figure out what I was going to do next.
Here It Comes Again
Towards the end of my exile, I was working
around the Christmas season at a Toys R US, when all of that Beatle
indoctrination suddenly boiled over, and I started hearing a new song, complete
with the grooviest bassline I'd never heard before. I got the lyrics down in a
short period of time, but the rest of the song took a solid year of tinkering
before it came together for me. I recorded all of the parts myself, even though
I had begun working with my old band again in the interim. It was recorded late
at night while my not-yet-ex-girlfriend and her little boy slept. It remains one
of the smartest pop tunes I've ever turned out.
One Up On You
Afterwards, I spent a bit of time refining it
at my own place, and found myself pullingout another lyric that had gotten
written around the same time as the first, but had lain dormant. I demoed it on
drum machine and keys, and added vocals. Although it's not what I had heard, it
had its own interesting character, so I left it and faded in on the end of the
first.
Why Do I Do These Things?
This was a piece of guitar music I started composing shortly after I started my sabbatical. I can actually remember sitting in a certain young lady's bedroom while a very antagonistic Dave Beddard loomed outside the door as I worked on some of the parts. Admittedly, the fact that he was getting interested inher room mate at the time (and thought I might try to move in one her) might explain some of his anger. The fact that the gal in question had previously been dating Derrick before sidlign over to me, contributed to this, too. Interestingly enough, I wrote the lyrics with Derrick months later, after he and I had reconciled. It's really my lyric, but he and I traded ideas until I knew what I wanted, and I finishe dit up for him to hear. Frankly, I have rarely ever been able to play and sing this at the same time. I may have to remedy that.
As some of you who have listened to the Etcetera album And Sew Fourth will already know, this song appeared on there in almost the same form. However, while it wasn't really my song; Derrick's lyrics with a (slightly-more-complex-than-usual-for-Etcetera) melody I wrote on my own and then drilled the band on; poor Gary never mastered this tune during the year we rehearsed it; he plays it pretty good now though. Still, I felt a sense of proprietary ownership of it. Still, I really didn't like how muffled my vocals were, and had frankly really wanted some harmony vocals on there. So I took it home and tried desperately to come up with a harmonized vocal performance I liked. Didn't happen. Frankly, I will most likely rework the harmony vocal and get Gary to sing it when we rerecord it later this year.
Lady Penelope
First off, there's a little preview of The Brighter Side, sung in my very best George Harrison.
Then I go straight into the tune, which was done on drum machine and Gary's old Ibanez double neck, which I used for a number of demos all on the same night (I was very keen). This was actually my first deliberate attempt to write a Beatlesque tune (I beased the title on Penny Lane, for a start), but it's really only half there, Still, it's a good little pop tune, though it needs instrumentation to replace all of my caterwauling antics.
She
This was the first pop song I wrote all of the lyrics AND music to, expressly for the band after we actually came together. Gary was just coming into the band at the time, and I was trying to teach myself to write songs for the band to play, since we seriously couldn't play any of the prog-type songs I'd been trying to write up to that point. It's still a pretty primitive piece of pop song, considering I'd written lots of songs before that had much more conventional song structures. I never seem to do anything the easy way. I later did a recording of myself singing four part harmony for this, which is the wya I'd always intended the band to handle it. I'll have to dig that up sometime. It's funny to listen to me singing like Gary, Derrick and especially Dave.
Zoe
Ah, this was my first delberate attempt to write a slightly warped pop song about a fictitious girl obsession. I was a fan of Doctor Who at the time, and had discovered Patrick Troughton's plucky little brunette assistant, and fell in love. Zoe has since gone on to be a character in four stories of mine, one other pop sonf (later on that) a cartoon character, and the ghost in my machine. And she's still a little hellion.
Tonight
I had been thinking for a while that I wanted to write an interesting and vaguely prog sounding song called tonight, since about the time I got my first copy of Duke, by Genesis. Something about Rutherford's tune 'Alone Tonight' just stuck in my head, and when they later recorded Tonight Tonight Tonight, a decision was made. I took a long time coming up with that song, and I've never been completely happy with the lyrics, but I did see it through to demo, after messing around with it for a few years.
The Brighter Side
This was a lyric I wrote to accompany a song I arranged from a jam the guys and I did one day. Gary and I were both pushing keys and guitar out of the same amp, which got this oddly tweezed tone that somehow made the tune, aurally. We improvised a riff for several minutes, and I then spent several hours mapping it out amd rearranging it using two tape machines and careful attention to the tape meter. I never did manage to get the guys to actually play this song, but it's kinda neat, and I hit on the idea of doing a George Harrison thing with it, which I'm still fond of. So I included it on the album, and consider it something of a tribute to the man, who is one of my oldest influences.
Bleed Into One
This was a song lyric I started writing as the band was reconvening after a slow winter. By this time, I was starting to really feel my lyrical prowess returning, and was starting to feel some of that piss and vinegar that used to inform some of my older lyrics before the band. I pushed the band through a series of jams that day, and while I was messing about with a deep synth string bass motif, Gary created this incredible series of riffs using his guitar and new effects unit. The band did a series of jams on the same motif, one after another, until we had a good ten to fifteen minutes of the most incredible, moody noise ever, and as a four-piece, no less. I was in heaven.
After applying the lyrics I'd written the previous night to it, we did the rockiest version of the piece, and I later took the whole mess home with me and reconstructed it into my version of Synchronicity II, using two tape machines. It never really got performed and recorded well after that initial session, but I later used a number of strong sections from that first session to create this edit, which is the template for what I'd like to do with it this year. This edit is much tighter than the version heard on And Sew Fourth. (edits: 2006 09 20 ~L.Mc)
On My Mind
This is the instrumental version of a tune I've been meaning to rerecord for a while now. It was originally conceived from a few snippets of jam music Derrick, Dave and I improvised together haphazardly while Gary was away. I took the tape home, and found myself playing those three disparate fragments over and over. I tried to make a tape edit of it, but couldn't synch them up right. So inthe end, I wound up writing and recording all of the parts and arranging it into one of the strongest piece of keyboard music I've yet recorded. I also wrote an extremely strong and personal lyric, and later recorded the lyrical treatment, but I've never been happy with the way I handled the outro. When I finally rerecord it, the outro will be rewritten and the lyrics redone to suit.
Show Me Something
This was the first of the tunes I wrote in 1994 that actually got written, arranged and recorded as a full demo. It's a country rock number that Gary and I rehearsed and recorded while drinking American whisky, which he hoped would take my mind off of my relationship troubles. Bu the time I got to the slide guitar solo, I was in another realm, but it sounds pretty cool for a sloppy, Stonesy, Eagles/Black Crowes kind of number. We have never managed to get a good performance of this with the band;Dave couldn't handle my bass line at the time, and Derrick couldn't handle the 6/8 swing rhythm, though he keeps trying to get that groove. Derrick's just not a country rock guy, but I'm sure he'll get it someday.
Zoe Turns Another Face
This was actually a tune I wrote for a woman I was dating for a while, based on a lullabye I used to sing to her son to help him sleep. I fully expect to see him in a dark alley in ten years, pulling a knife on me for publishing this tune, witht eh melody that has probably been haunting him from childhood. It does need agood recording, which this is not )particularly the vocals), but it's a good little tune, if a bit long. Also, the mystery of Zoe returns, expanded upon by alluding that every woman I go out with has a little bit of Zoe in her.
Here We Go Again (Acoustic #2)
Etcetera had been working to get this song sorted and rehearsed for some time, and we kept fighting to get the arrangement stabilized and the vocal and instrumental parts coordinated. Most of the time, the lyrical arrangement never happened in the performance, but there remain one or two recordings of the band actually working on the four part harmony that was meant to go with the song. The version on And Sew Fourth has a further wrinkle in the arrangement which wasn't present during this recroding, although I did introduce it about a week later; Motown!
Waiting
This is a number I wrote on keyboard after arranging one of Derrick's cast off lyrics that needed some reworking. I then took it to Gary, and we started working on a guitar part for it that we thought would work with the keyboard part. We were wrong. so we used the parts separately and built the song out of both. This song is going to be rearranged for the next Etcetera album, with a more Pink Floyd feel, I think.
The Stand
Gary and I had been workign a few days earlier on a piec eof music called The Great Wall. We threw everythign including the kitchen sink into that song. So when I came to practice a little late and found Gary teaching Derrick this totally new riff, I went upstairs, finished my sub, started hearing a great bassline, and then crept down and started recording it with them (Dave was away that day). When Dave returned, it was Gary's turn to be away, so I taught Dave the bass line, taught myself Gary's guitar parts, and then sat with Dave and write and arranged the rest of the song. Derrick, Dave and I jammed it out five times, took the last recording s the final arrangement, and sent Gary a copy. We tried to have a band lyric writing session (Derrick's contribution included 'And Gary blew up the spaceship, the incompetent fuck >Star Wars RPG humour<), and I ended up writing a mini rock opera for it. However, the lyric is so pretentious and unwieldy, and our performance not inspired enough to warrant the long running time, so we're planning on reworking it in shorter form for the next album.
Songs From Heaven
This is the first song I started writing for Etetera, over a year before the band itself even came into being. I was heavily influenced by Yes at this time, and I still haven't really forced the issue of the band working on a recording of this, because th arrangement I hear for it in my head is a little above any of our playing abilities at this time. Maybe next year. At any rate, this recording wa sjust myself with a little nylon strung acoustic gutar played very poorly. Gary keeps dragging this tune out to play, so I know I'm going to have to finish it sooneror later.
Dinner Date
This was a song lyric I started wriiting the first night Dori (Etcetera's original keyboard player) and I started 'collaborating'. I didn't finish it until some time after she'd left the band, and then didn't get all fo the music written for it until Gary and I sat down and finshed banging it into shape. It became our first serious Thesis side project, a tune we knew the band woulnd't be able to play, so we would write and record it ourselves and find other people to play it. As it stands, the meaning of the lyric sort of changed from an innocuous bad relationship to represent our frustration with Etcetera at the time. This was a very flawed demo recording we did, first struggling to get the melody sorted out on guitars, and then overdubbing lyrics. Byt that time, the rhythm had faded into the background, so I later overdubbed myself pounding on a piece of livingroom furniture to approximate the drum performance I'd been searching for.
Thanks for reading this far. Hope you found the DVD commentary amusing.
Lee Edward McIlmoyle
2006 09 09 4:38 AM
Hamilton, Ontario
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'