Death City Pool Hall. (Song a Month: February)

(If you don't already know about my Song a Month project, you can read all the previous posts here.)

Yes, I'm a little late with this one. But this song turned out to be a perfect example of why this project could be both a blessing and a curse. This song was 90% done for most of the month, I just couldn't get the words. Even they were largely done, but come February 29th they still weren't finished. So with the deadline now passed, I gave myself the weekend to tweak what I had and fill in the blanks. There's still a few parts I think could be improved, but on the other hand if I wasn't setting myself deadlines for these songs then this whole thing would still be sitting in the back of my mind somewhere, probably to never see the light of day. Instead I present it to you now as a song that overall I am actually pretty happy with.

Musically this song is very influenced by the fact that I recently bought both a Fender Jaguar and a Jazz bass. I was going for a Drones/Birthday Party type feel with this one and I don't think that would have been possible with any of my other guitars. I also wanted to get this one as close to 'live' as I could. Of course this is impossible when you're using programmed drums and only one person is playing every instrument. But I did record each instrument in one take from start to finish, so there's plenty of imperfections and rough bits. I was even rocking out by myself in the lounge room while playing to get the feel right. The lead guitar parts weren't even properly written when I did that take, I just had a general idea of how I wanted them to sound. This meant all the lyrics had to be finalised before I could start recording though, otherwise I couldn't know how many verses there would be or how long they should go for. The vocals turned out to be the hardest part to get for this one. One thing that became apparent is I need to develop a non-metal style of yelling/barking/sounding sinister. I don't know what my neighbours would have made of all the yelling either.

Lyrically this represents my first attempt to tell a fictional story in the lyrics. In this case a tale of death, sex and revenge. Heavily influenced by Nick Cave's 'Murder Ballads' album, and Murder by Death (anything off 'Who Will Survive and What Will be Left of Them?' or 'Red of Tooth and Claw' especially). The initial spark actually came from watching an episode of Skins, which is where I got the line "our eyes met over an eight ball". I remember reading an interview with Gareth Liddiard of The Drones once where he said that the trick with writing was to take an idea and just run with it. Use anything for inspiration and make your self write about it. I also knew that I wanted to end the song with the "She said 'I don't wanna see that look in your eyes'" part, which is something that popped into my head when I first came up with the riff, and that this would be a recurring motif. So from there it was a matter of figuring out what had happened to these people between meeting in a pool hall and her getting scared away. I started thinking along the lines of some epic character like that in MBD's 'Until Morale Improves, the Beatings Will Continue', or 'Ash', or 'Rumbrave' - outlaw, almost mythical characters who travel the land leaving a trail of death and destruction behind them. Of course the Pool Hall reference puts this tale more around the 1920's than the Old West, but that's more of a technicality really. I wanted it to be one of those stories that's not tied to any specific era. I also threw a Batman reference in there for good measure. Gotham City embodies that idea in some ways, a city outside of time where a classical style/feel and modern technology sit side-by-side. The line about "wine, women and song" is also based around this idea. I recently became aware of the fact that "Sex, Drugs & Rock 'n' Roll" is really just an updated version of this classic concept traceable back to at least the 10th Century. Death, Cards and Bad Ways are other vices that appear in some translations of the phrase, while the rest of the line refers to a 17th century poetical interpretation that "Who does not love wine, women and song / Remains a fool his whole life long." And as for leopards? I know they have spots, not lines, but lines just sounds much better, and technically a spot is a type of line. I could have used a tiger I guess, but again leopard sounds better, and they're smaller, stealthier animals which is the imagery I wanted.

I really wasn't sure what to call this one either. i thought about 'That Look in Your Eyes', but that kind of sounded like a love song. Then I thought 'Gotham City Pool Hall', but that sounds a bit gimmicky. So I've settled on 'Death City Pool Hall' for now, but this may change still. And that's pretty much all I have to say. Hope you enjoy it. If you're interested in the lyrics, I've put them below.

Song a Month: B-side 1

B-side 1: Untitled Bomb the Music Industry! cover

(If you haven't yet read about my Song a Month project you can do so here. And make sure you read about January's song in this post.)

I've decided to include a few "B-Sides" in this project. These will be things like covers, or re-workings of old songs or anything that doesn't quite fit. (It's my project, my rules, so these could all be pretty subjective.)

The first of these is a cover by one of my favourite bands, Bomb the Music Industry! This is not the song I talked about in my last post, though maybe I should do a cover of that sometime too. I don't know what this song is called. As far as I'm aware it doesn't have a name. It's the hidden song on their most recent album Vacation. (You can download the album, and all BTMI! albums, from that link via donation. However the bonus track is only on the CD version, not the download.)

As I mentioned last time, BTMI! songs often resonate with me, and this one definitely does at the moment. Something I've been enjoying recently is going for bike rides along the river while listening to music. This was recorded live after returning from one of those trips. I plugged my guitar into a little Marshall MS-2 battery powered amp and used my phone to record as I played while looking out off our balcony. Simple, lo-fi and effective. Inspired by the way the original sound, and a test to see how recording something like this would sound. I really like the way you can hear both the "acoustic" strums of the actual strings on the guitar and the sound coming out of the shitty little amp as well. I don't think this style would be effective for February's song, but it's something that may have worked well with January's.

Speaking of February's song, the music is all written. I have the seeds of a lyric idea, but it still needs a lot of work. And I'm going to attempt some drums for this one too(!).
We've also been working on a new Death by Death Ray track which is about 90% done now too, so I might have something to post for you on that front soon as well!

Artists Are (Shitty) People Too. (Song a Month: January).

Artists Are (Shitty) People Too

So here's the first song of my Song a Month project. (If you haven't already read my introduction to this project, you can do so in my last post, here.) It's called "Artists Are (Shitty) People Too", and was inspired by a conversation with a friend about heartbreak, overseas travel and the inherent emotional selfishness of the artistic.

For anyone interested, I've included some discussion about the song, and the lyrics after the jump.

Song a Month!

Last year I did one of those 365 - Photo a Day things, and while it was interesting for me to go back through and see what I was doing each day, the whole process didn't really excite me. Photography is fun, but it's not one of my main passions. In fact looking at the photos it's very obvious what my main passion is: probably 60% or more feature a band, band practice, or some kind of musical equipment. So rather than focus on that again, this year I've decided to take on a project that's much more personal to me.

I've been playing guitar, playing in bands and writing songs since I was 15. My first band Altered lasted about 1 and a half years. After we broke up it took a while before I joined another band properly, but I kept writing songs in the meantime. It was around this time that I first got the idea to record a solo album. This is when I came up with the name wysht for a band (it's a variation of an old English word for silence). This band never materialised because I couldn't find people who had the same visions for the songs as I did. So I started recording them at home by myself to make sure I at least had a record of them, and because I felt they went together and told a story well. (I also started using the name wysht for my online presence.)

Then I joined a hardcore band called Sinatra's Eyes and all that fell by the wayside. The music we were doing was very different and none of those songs fit into it. I continued recording the album in bits and pieces, but it wasn't my priority anymore. When Sinatra's Eyes broke up about two years later, I eventually finished the album and released early morning silence in 2006. It was incredibly rough, the production was horrible, and I learnt I'm nowhere near as good a singer as I wish to be. But I'm still proud that I had this concept and followed it through from beginning to end.

Since then I have been involved in a string of bands pretty much constantly: We Came to be Robots!, Kaviya and the Committal, which has now transformed into Death by Death Ray. These bands have taken the focus of my creative outlet and I'm proud of the stuff I did with all of them, especially what I'm doing now with Death by Death Ray. I still write music of a lot of styles, some of which doesn't fit into these homes and therefore often gets left by the wayside.

One thing I've noticed is that I've gotten very bad at finishing songs. This is not a problem with Death Ray because we tend to write collaboratively and feed off each others ideas. But for songs that don't fit into that style it means I have a whole heap of unfinished ideas sitting around that I can see the potential in, but never go anywhere. I've also stopped trying to sing so much, since Death Ray has an amazing singer and I just do backup screams. This means I've stopped writing lyrics too though, which is something I've always enjoyed. Recently I've been really taken with artists who tell stories through their songs, rather than personal tales and this is something I really want to try too.

So for this year I've decided to challenge myself to write, finish and record at least one song for every month. The aim being to improve my songwriting, singing and home recording skills. I intend to explore a number of different musical styles where possible. Some songs will incorporate the ideas I've had for years and finally finish them off. Hopefully some will be completely new. Some will be solo songs, some I will attempt to make sound like a full band. Some will hopefully be collaborations with others. Some might be demos/alternate versions of Death Ray songs. I won't be including any covers (unless they are significantly different from the originals), but I may put some covers up as references for the songs I do write, and to practice production/recording skills.

Hopefully I'll improve my skills and have something I'm proud of by the end of it. And hopefully some of you will enjoy listening to it! To this end I've set up a Soundcloud account to share the songs with anyone who wants to listen. http://soundcloud.com/wysht The first song is up there now, with a brief description. It's called Artists Are (Shitty) People Too and was inspired by a conversation I had with a friend. I'll write another blog post soon specifically about this song to give some more details for anyone who's interested as there's a lot of references to outside things in the song, including this project itself and other songs I've written that most people have never heard. But as Amanda Palmer said "don't tell me not to reference my songs within my songs."

But I'll write that next week as I'm heading out for the night soon. In the meantime, I've started working on February's song. It's a killer riff and as long as I can get the lyrics right for it, I'm really excited about how it will come out. Also, if you're free on Saturday night, come see Death by Death Ray at the Prague, it's gonna be an awesome night! Death By Deathray, Babymachine (NSW), Thrasher Jynx, Boy Red @ The Prague.

wysht.