Sunday, June 20, 2010

WEEK 56: If We Had No Moon (demo)


Hey!

This week's MP3 is one of my favorite songs. I was surprised I hadn't put this up yet (I had to google myself to make sure I didn't.) A lot to say about it, so let's go:

It's called "If We Had No Moon." It was based on the title of a scientific and doom-laden special I saw on the Discovery Channel, which basically stated that our moon is slowly being pulled away, and when it's gone Earth will spin out of orbit and kill us all.

Talk about dropping a love song right into my lap! What better romantic metaphor could there be for a relationship ending? Or the idea that a relationship needs the romance of the moon to keep it alive? Le sigh. This was originally going to be a "Sally" song (my side band where a female vocalist sings my songs), but I liked singing it too much.

The 2nd verse in the song is actually based on an episode of The Tom Green Show on MTV. He had a guest on his show who was obsessed with the "face on mars," basically a series of landscape formations that look like a scary sad face in the right light. This man (and many others) say that this face is proof of extraterrestrial life on Mars, or elsewhere.

He was on the show to be ridiculed, and I felt really awful for somebody who was so passionate about something that just was not true and so easily disproved. The idea in general was heartbreaking to me, so I popped it onto the moon song and there you have it, the saddest song ever.

The demo: I'm pretty happy with this demo, though it may be a bit "busy." My acoustic guitar is making little space beeps, the metronome is being used as the percussion track, and I'm proud of the subtle harmonies. No bass necessary, which gives it a more weightless outer-space zero gravity feel. Adding a bass line would have weighed things down a little too much.

Originally my main guitar track was very stiff and boring and "nice," but I realized it felt kind of dead. Inspired by the Rheostatics, I re-recorded it to be a lot more free-form and natural. Some random hits on random strings, not bogged down or sounding like a "scratch track" for people to easily play along with. Again, I was really happy with that.

Here are the lyrics:


These chilly nights make me think
I think of you and me, but also other things
I think about the laws of time and space
and what would happen if everything changed
I heard the moon is pulling farther away
And soon it will be gone, though soon is far away

And if we had no moon
the Earth would not just spin 'round
But sideways and upside down
And everything would be thrown around

You've heard about that face on Mars?
Some people think it's put there
By beings very far away
I'd like to think that that's the case
But evidence has shown that it's just not that way
And though the shadows make it look like a sad face
It's just not that way
It's just a mountain range

And if we had no moon
the Earth would not just spin round
But sideways and upside down
And everything would be thrown around

If we had no moon
No times for light or dark
Oceans wouldn't know where to start
Most certainly we'd be torn apart




Download it here!


Or preview it:





See ya!


-Jordan

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