Song of Sam

This week's song is a jam. Or rather, it's about jam. The story of the song is that a guy named Sam meets a gal named Sam and she makes jam. He thinks she's sweet and her jam's even sweeter. Just a couple of Sam's that make and eat jam. Why not?

On a side note, we've reached the point in the blog project where we now have less than twenty songs left to write and record. For some reason this seems like such a small number! It's got me thinking about the kinds of songs we have yet to record. Like this morning on my drive to work I heard "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits and decided we should aim for an intro and sound that's as epically cool as that song (minus the homophobia, of course). We'd also like to do a highly percussive Phil Collins meets Janet Jackson number. And we did always say we were going to have a role reversal week where Scot writes the lyrics and I do the music....so maybe there will be an a cappella song in the collection. Would that be cheating?



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Peck, Finch, Mockingbird

Gregory Peck played Atticus Finch in the film version of To Kill A Mockingbird. That factual statement is like a verbal nesting doll. After hearing the lovely music that Scot composed for this week's song, I decided that it should be about the destruction of and perhaps too, the fight to preserve innocence. I liked the idea of juxtaposing the imagery of hollow boned birds and nesting dolls. Nesting dolls are hollow until you get down to the smallest, densest doll. Perhaps this is symbolism? Inner child, anyone? And it is their hollow bones that allows birds to whistle over our heads. They are free to fly because of their lightness. Birds also start out encased in eggs. Every time a bird hatches from it's egg it's like the sky is reborn. This song is about trying to cling to the core of who we are before we are forced to encase ourselves and amass layers of protective self.



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Naybors

We live next door to some people who had an unsuccessful yard sale. Everything they failed to sell has remained on their lawn. It's like an abandoned never ending yard sale over there. I realize that we are maybe not everyone's favorite neighbors due to the sometimes rather loud noises associated with recording a song a week in our apartment, but seeing a graveyard of unsold, unwanted CRAP every time we look out our dining room windows makes these people the worst. As I sit typing this I have a fantastic view of a green and blue metal picnic table, an aluminum workbench, two rusty grills and a black, leaf covered love seat. Oh, and two weeks ago, I got to watch as one of the children who lives in this unfortunate household relieved himself outside this same window and then threw one of his little shoes on our doorstep. So this song is just about how we don't particularly appreciate the way these people are living. Sometimes it's hard for me to come up with lyrical content for these Hessian songs Scot composes. I basically closed my eyes and thought of who was annoying me the most at present and made the song about them. Yikes.



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Walk Around The Block

Damn, that was a hard winter. I know we're all glad to see it go. One good thing about being buried under snow for months on end is that you have plenty of time to stay inside and write songs. Well, we did that and I knew there would be some cabin fever striking us pretty hard come April. Don't worry, we can take it. Even though we spent our entire week riding bikes and walking around the block, we are fully committed to seeing this project through. Hopefully we won't wait until Friday to start the songs all Summer long...not my favorite way to make the hits happen. Break out the lime flavored beers and de-hibernate with this springy new song.



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mirror mirror

We're feeling reflective, and since no one submitted an answer to last week's story problem, we decided to write this song about ALL OF YOU! That's what you get. This week's song reminded me of so much, musically. It kicked off with what I thought of as a White Stripes' sound and then the bridge reminded me of a Blondie song that Scot, who wrote the music, isn't even familiar with. Scot thought parts were reminiscent of Steppenwolf and The Strokes. This got me to thinking about how really, everything has been done before. It's all so pasticheous. Every attempt at originality is a failure. Ideas are recyclable, echo-logical. Everything repeats. Like this blog, this whole project, it's not really all that original. We could easily be accused of seeing Julie & Julia a few too many times. Humans are a rather futile race when you think about it, but we're in this together. That's consoling, right? We think so. Instead of concentrating on and striving for such sever originality, which only causes us to drift further away from our own humanity, why not form a powerful superhuman Pangaea? After all, we are the world...see, again, none of this is original thought folks. Doesn't make it any less true.



Direct download HERE