Boston Cream Pie

Boston Cream Pie
(w/ Ray N)
June 23, 2003
[1:00]


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Instruments: Dean Exotica QSE Acoustic/Electric Guitar.

Inspired by a Peanuts comic which I had recently scanned for my brother, Greg, this is one of many recordings in which Ray and I practiced "reverse backmasking", a process in which we would listen to a phrase that had been turned backwards, write down how it was pronounced, say the backwards phrase into the microphone and then reverse that. The end result was usually a strange, retarded sounding version of the original forward phrase, with ambient backwards noises in the background.

At the beginning of this track, Ray is demonstrating a phonetic palindrome with the phrase "Oh yeah, aye wah", which sounds roughly the same forwards and backwards. In the middle, Ray is noodling some slide guitar and reciting the comic strip forwards, starting at the rightmost frame and moving leftward.

Demo: Windy Night (Demo 2)

Windy Night
Demo 2
June 10, 2003
[5:02]


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Lyrics:

Windy night, stars and the sky
Moon is bright, look up and cry
Eyes are grey
Await the day

Shadows move behind the trees
As the ground begins to freeze
Auburn hair
Floats through the air

Drifting down among the leaves
Gazing there, back to the breeze
Stand for a while
Tender a crimson smile

Turn around and let it pass
To the yard, lay on the grass
Shades are drawn
Sleep till the wild red dawn

Instruments: Dean Exotica QSE Acoustic/Electric Guitar.

This one's still pretty rough. First demo with the completed lyrics.  The last verse introduces a temporary key change, and the ending leaves off the wild strumming that was in the previous demo.  Vocals are still kind of shoddy.

Demo: Windy Night (Demo 1)

Windy Night
Demo 1
May 31, 2003
[3:00]


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Lyrics:

Alright. Here's a little demo, show you what's going on.

Ferry night, stel—
Oops, wrong song, try that again.

Windy night, stars and the sky
Moon is bright, look up and cry
Eyes are grey
Await the day

Shadows move behind the trees...

Instruments: Martin Backpacker.

This is my third songwriting attempt, after Everytime and Because. I had a cold when I recorded this, which doesn't necessarily excuse my utterly untrained voice...

The first thing I have to point out about this song is that my original plan was to write it in a constructed language — one which I was sort of designing on the fly, with vocabulary extrapolated from common Indo-European roots, and intended to look/sound a lot like English (note that, stunningly, the word for "night" is night). I eventually ran out of patience and just wrote the lyrics in English — but, having just switched over, I was confused enough to start singing the wrong words before correcting myself.

So, now that we've established that this song is not about fairies, what else can we glean from this demo? I actually just recorded this so I wouldn't forget what I was doing, and so I could let my friend Ray take a listen (which is why I'm talking to the microphone — I don't usually do that... much).

The last half minute of jumbled strumming actually represents the original source of the music — a little two-chord strumming jam I made up while I was still taking my beginning guitar class a couple years earlier.

Demo: Because (Demo 2)

Because
Demo 2
May 19, 2003
[2:22]


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Lyrics:

If the light from the window is making you weep,
The sidewalks are bare and you're struggling to sleep,
Then why is it some people smile at the dawn?
It's all clear to me but I'm not letting on.

The world's turning east but the wind's to the west,
And in all of your time here you couldn't have guessed
If the sun is so bright why the sky is still blue;
Well, I know the answer but I'm not telling you.

If you feel like you're wasting the time of your life,
You tally your days in the wall with a knife,
Then how come the good times are fresh in your brain?
Don't ask me to say when the cause is so plain.

When a girl and her man fall in love and take flight,
And her friends left behind think it couldn't be right,
If you feel so deserted, why care for them still?
I know the reason, and someday you will.

And why is it everyone acts as they do?
I'd tell you why but I haven't a clue.

Influences: Syd Barrett.
Instruments: Martin Backpacker.

The day after recording the first demo, I made a few changes — I inserted the third verse, and made a slight change to the wording of the last. The third verse fits well with the first two, and helps establish a more solid theme, which is apparently about living with depression — although I wasn't really feeling depressed when I wrote it.

As should be apparent, my vocals at this point are neither pretty nor very well settled. So, if it hurts too bad, you can always stop the audio. This holds true for most of my early demos :)

Demo: Because (Demo 1)

Because
Demo 1
May 18, 2003
[1:52]


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Lyrics:

If the light from the window is making you weep,
The sidewalks are bare and you're struggling to sleep,
Then why is it some people smile at the dawn?
It's all clear to me but I'm not letting on.

The world's turning east but the wind's to the west,
And in all of your time here you couldn't have guessed
If the sun is so bright why the sky is still blue;
Well, I know the answer but I'm not telling you.

Well, a girl and her man fell in love and took flight;
Her friends left behind thought it couldn't be right.
If you feel so deserted, why care for them still?
I know the reason, and someday you will.

And why is it everyone acts as they do?
I'd tell you why but I haven't a clue.

Influences: Syd Barrett.
Instruments: Martin Backpacker.

I started writing this not too long after recording my first song, Everytime (incidentally, quelling my initial concern that I might actually never write more than one song). I sort of started out with the idea that there were already enough songs asking questions... So I wanted to put the singer in charge of the answers — except that the closing line actually pretty much betrays that whole concept...

I at first pictured this being in the vein of some of Syd Barrett's trite and sardonic jams. I can't really say for sure where I came up with the ridiculous accent I'm singing in, though.

The last verse is a reference to a shakeup among some of my high school friends, and it was eventually removed in a later version, as the theme of the song evolved.

Demo: Everytime (Demo 1 Remix)

Everytime
Demo 1 Remix
Recorded May 14/19, 2003; Remixed August 28, 2003
[1:34]


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Lyrics:

Everytime you go walking by,
It's like I just get crushed,
I find it hard to think
About anything else around me;
My heart is light and my temples pounding..

Everytime that I look at you,
I start to brush with feelings that I
Never knew that I had before;
My tongue is tied and my eyes are sore,
But I had to say that I just adore you..

Everytime that I see you now,
It all comes rushing back to me again;
Always wanna be at your side,
My head is high and the thoughts collide;
Always gotta be there with you,
My mind's made up and the doubts are few,
And whatever time may put me through,
I'll always feel the same for you..

Influences: Weezer.
Instruments: Martin Backpacker.

Keep Fishin' (Vocal Harmony Practice)

Keep Fishin'
Vocal Harmony Practice
by Weezer; © Interscope Records
May 14, 2003
[16 sec]


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... thought of you in love with someone else
It breaks my heart to see you hanging from your shelf

Influences: Weezer.
Instruments: Martin Backpacker.

I recorded this little snippet shortly before getting to work on my first demo of Everytime. Weezer's album Maladroit had come out about a year before, and I had probably just taught myself how to play this song, so it was a natural choice to test my recording setup and even practice harmonizing with myself. However, it was another six or seven months before I actually did some self-harmonizing in one of my own songs (Above The Water).