About Dad's Songs...
Just
in case anyone was wondering what's
going on in any of the tracks, Dad offers explanations and details for
selections from his two releases:
• Too much (EP) - (4 Tracks) - 2005
•
Dad's Noisy Basement - the first CD - 2002
Too
much (EP) - 2005
01. She's Too Much - My wife thinks this song is about her and I guess
it sort of is - but not the way she thinks. She's a really driven person
and is very successful in her business and in other aspects of her life.
I'm proud of what she does and of her accomplishments. Now, if you know
someone like this, you know that sometimes they can be, well, a bit too
much - hence this song. As usual, I started with a piece of reality as
inspiration and then went off on some tangents in the lyrics. I like the
way the song starts off sparsely, builds up to a peak, and then backs
off and starts all over again. All four songs on the EP (incidentally,
that stands for "extended play") utilize the drum sounds of
Virtual Drummer on my Mac.
02. Venture This - The title refers to the prototypical American instrumental rock combo, the Ventures. The tune is indeed an instrumental, and it's punctuated by the sounds of drag-racing cars from an old record I have. The highlight of the track, however, is the middle-eight section where I've inserted an actual voice-mail recording of my wife, in the middle of trying to drive up our steep driveway in the snow. You can't make up stuff like that - nobody would believe it! The arrangement features my Silvertone doing the lead work and the Magnatone on rhythm. This tune popped into my head one day long ago as I drove to work in downtown Hartford, CT.
03. Back When I Thought It Didn't Matter - This song was written in 1985, in an apartment on Evergreen Street in Hartford. I was in the Broken Hearts and Michael Mazzarella and I were roommates. We both wrote some cool tunes in that apartment. Anyway, I was pursuing this woman during an off-time for me and my future wife. This same other-woman is the subject of my songs "Trouble" (from the See Jane Run CD, Weird Reality), and "She Let Me Go" (on the first DNB CD and also on Weird Reality). I guess they form kind of a trilogy, beginning with "Trouble," moving on to "BWITIDM," and ending with "She Let Me Go." This was the first tune I completed on the Fostex digital deck and I like the way it sounds. I used my Morley wah-wah on the lead and tried real hard to make a cool build at the end of the track.
04. In A Pickle - This goofy tune came to me driving into the parking garage at work one morning a few years ago. My friend Jim often refers to a really dire, horrible situation as being "a bit of a pickle," which sort of mocks the weight of the bad situation. Anyway, I thought that would sound funny in a garage-psychadelic song, so I wrote it. Instrumentally, the song features rhythm guitar with heavy tremolo, an over-processed organ, and my vintage ukulele on the second lead part. I'm singing the lead vocal into a family walkie-talkie.
Dad's
Noisy Basement -the first CD
01. DNB Theme - That stands for "Dad's Noisy Basement."
This melody came to me while in the car coming home from the veterinarian
with the cat. I didn't have my trusty microcassette with me, so I hummed
the tune over and over and over while driving so I wouldn't forget it.
When I got home, I tore down the stairs to the basement, flicked on the
recorder, and whistled the melody into the recorder while strumming my
barely-in-tune unplugged electric guitar. That's the actual microcassette
snippet that opens the track. The drums on this track and four others
comes from a great freeware program called Virtual Drummer. It's a Mac
program that allows you to use the midi sounds in the Mac to create drum
tracks measure by measure. You can record it directly out of your computer
or export it to an AIFF file and burn it to a CD.
02. Groovy Thing - This is the newest tune in the collection. I was realizing that I'd written so many sarcastic and ironic love songs, that I'd better even things out a bit and write something nice. I wanted to give it an old Smithereens-style sound. I'm hoping to bring this tune into See Jane Run...we'll see.
03. Max’s Theme (Instrumental) - Steve Allen said something like: "...where melodies come from, heaven only knows." This was one of those "Where did THAT come from?!" kind of melodies. I named it for my son. I used my old Boss Dr. Rhythm DR-55 that was given to me by Jamie Beckett, a fellow member of the Broken Hearts, a not-quite-forgotten Indy-Pop band from the 80's. Our mutual friend, Mark Delorenzo, had given Jamie a nicer drum machine after getting an even better one, and Jamie continued the good will by passing on the DR-55 to me. Try to identify the workshop tool used as percussion on the left channel. I can imagine this playing in the background on the Weather Channel during the local forecast!
04. Do or Say - This tune goes back to my days with The Broken Hearts. We didn't do a lot of slow songs, and then only during a TWO-set night. I've pretty much duplicated the Broken Hearts arrangement, except for the recent addition of the answering vocals singing "That's it" and "I'll try." My friend Michael Mazzarella says this is his favorite track on the album (He was one of my bandmates in the Broken Hearts). I decided to mix it like an old Beatles track, with the drums, bass, and rhythm guitar all on the left side. Remember that the bulk of their output was recorded on 4-track equipment.
05. She Let Me Go - This one came out sounding very different from what I imagined. In my head, it originally had a much more mechanical feel, while ultimately, it sounds more acoustic and earthy. Sometimes you don't know how something is going to turn out. Another use of the old DR-55 rhythm box. We do this song in See Jane Run, and a band recording of it will be on our next release. This song relates another true story from my past - it's okay, it got better!
06. It’s No Joke - Another song that dates back to the days of the Broken Hearts. Everything in this song really happened in a restaurant in Hartford called the Reader's Feast. My buddy John from See Jane Run helped me to create the drum track for this one.
07. Fine Line - I wrote this song while working at a company that had been sold out from under me. I had originally worked as a graphic designer in the marketing department, but as people left, I eventually found myself in the human resources department running the payroll. Maybe I was writing this to myself. I like the background "Ahhhh's" during the verses. I ended up redoing the lead guitar over and over on this one before I got it right. I was going for a bare-bones early Chris Knox kind of sound on this one, although I think it turned out more like like Chris Knox-meets-Paul Revere and the Raiders.
08. In Between - This is a collaboration with my wife. I had the musical figure going and she started with the "In Between" kind of words. I don't think it shows, but I had to edit the crap out of this one to make it work. I had originally put way too much musical space between the various parts of the song, to the point where it became a little boring and really long. So I chopped it up to focus it better. I think I removed almost two minutes of it. I played real drums on this one, in addition to really bad accordion. This was yet another tune where I labored over the lead guitar part. I think I tried three or four versions before I had a part I thought sounded right.
09. Blue Without a Clue - This is where the album shifts to a more rootsy feel. I was going for a sound like this guy from the 50's called Robin Luke. He lived in Hawaii and had a hit record with a song he wrote called "Suzie Darlin'". The tune was recorded right in his living room and had a really unique rhythmic and acoustic sound for the time. As it often happens, my vision for the song evolved during the recording process. I think the finished product sounds somewhat reminiscent of Robin's sound, but it came out sounding more bluesey. This song has all real instruments on it.
10. George’s Theme (Instrumental) - I love all the cheesy instrumental records that came out between about 1956 and 1962. Some of them sounded surfy, some sounded New-Orleans-y, and others had almost a western-movie kind of sound. This one leans toward the western movie thing, I think. Or maybe a Duane Eddy outtake (or discard!). All "real" instruments on this one, including brush snare. I named this for my dad, who instilled in me a love for instrumental music early on. We heard a lot of this kind of thing growing up - Al Caiola, TV themes, etc.
11. Stupid Questions - Another song written while working for that failing company (see "Fine Line"). I was going for sort of a Robin-Hitchcock-meets-Steve-Miller kind of thing here. There's the DR-55 going in the background again - the crackly snare sound comes from combining the snare and rim-shot sounds. Here's another tune where I had to do the lead over and over before it was right.
12. Bad Punch-Ins (On Purpose) - An exercise in destroying a perfectly good rhythm track. I had this going through my mind for quite a while before I actually set it down on tape. For the lead guitar intro, I had to learn the melody backwards and play it with the tape also running backwards. That way, when you play the whole thing frontwards again, everything is playing frontwards, but the attack of the lead guitar is reversed. I's harder to do than it sounds. At the part of the song where I'm singing with the triangle and bongoes, I actually sang the part backwards, while taping backwards - I had to learn the syllables in reverse. My buddy John thinks I let the backwards thing at the end go on too long. See what you think and let me know.
13. DNB Theme Reprise (Demo with Self-Indulgent Chatter) - I carry a microcassette recorder almost all the time. Whenever I get a flash of inspiration for a melody or lyric, I just flick it on and record the idea. I've been doing this since 1986, so I've accumulated hours of little bits of song ideas. Often I add other thoughts I have at the time, in case it might help me with lyrics later. Sometimes I say really goofy stuff into the recorder. For this piece, I put together some of the doofiest things I've recorded, all repeating and playing at the same time, on top of the original idea for the DNB Theme. It's a new level of self-indulgence - this is what can happen when you make an album all by yourself...