This is kind of an embarrassing demo from 2007, but it's one of my favorite songs I've written. It's a touch sentimental, kind of purposefully and blatantly so, but it's not bad to have a few songs like that, to contrast with your 100 coldhearted cynical songs.
This song is based on a road trip I took with my friend Matt, when we went to see The Rheostatics in Canada. It's just about the freeing feeling of getting the hell out of New York City, and the "joke" is that it was really only like 45 minutes of driving till we were upstate and saw a mountain. It's so close yet so far. I also threw in some allusions to being at a stuffy office job, to help hammer the contrast home. The bridge is meant to have a somewhat sexual double meaning, hopefully it's not too gross. I think a possible other interpretation for this song could also be about finding...love....Yep I told you it's sentimental. When I wrote this I was painfully single and basically no matter what kind of song I was writing, those feelings would creep in without me knowing it. Anyway, I'm really proud of the line "3 day weekend, forever smile." I feel like that could be a state motto or a slogan for a tourist destination. But it's really sincere, I still smile about that 3 day weekend. OH one more thing about the lyrics, the first line refers to stolen food. It's cause I did steal a bunch of food for the trip. At a temp job I was working at that week, I grabbed tons of snacks and threw them in my car. Hehehe. As for the recording, it's an ultra late night low quality awkward demo. It's the first time I ever tried singing the song so my timing is off and I don't quite know the melody yet. So please listen with that in mind. Or don't listen. I think this song would rock with a full band. Imagine it more confident, with electric guitars and organ and stuff. The problem is it's very similar rhythmically to another song of mine, more than I'm comfortable with. Here are the lyrics: We've got all our stolen food stowed away Stashed in the dash and crushed by our feet Get some gas but not too much Just enough for a running start I see a mountain once the traffic is gone I see a mountain with shuffle mode on I see a mountain So let's climb on This ain't a joke I've never seen one before Just in posters hanging on the office door Just on TV where some character escapes Just in dreams when I can barely stay awake Now all you mountains, better open wide Cause I'm comin' right inside I'm thinkin' I might stay awhile 3 day weekend, forever smile Hills on the highway make the road fade in Such a strange image, like special effects I'm so enthusiastic, you can't even tell Never been able to express these feelings well I see a mountain, I see a mountain It was only 45 minutes away
This week's/month's/year's MP3 is a really wacky song from 2005 that I made for my friend Matt Koff's old comedy blog, Word Du Jour (sadly no longer existing on the internet.)
On the blog he taught you a new word every day and then used them in funny sentences. I offered to do some musical word lessons for him. I ended up doing 3 in total. Here's one of them!
I think I shocked him because he thought he was going to get a 10 second thing and this is basically a complete song, with a full band arrangement and even singing back up girls (which are all me.)
"Bombinate" means to hum, so knowing that, here are the surprisingly dark lyrics:
BOMBINATE, BABY!
I bombinate on the way to work (ooh, I bombinate) I bombinate in the bathroom stall (ooh, I bombinate) I bombinate in the journey home (ooh, I bombinate) THEN I BOMBINATE ALL NIGHT LONG! (wow!)
(humming)
I bombinate in the dentist chair (ooh, I bombinate) I bombinate on the garage floor (ooh, I bombinate) I bombinate inside a plastic bag (ooh, I bombinate) LET ME BOMBINATE JUST ONCE MORE! (WOW!!!)
Here is another bizarre oddball relic from my musical past. A song called "Grandaddy Eyepatch," written by myself and Dave Fox.
One week in 2002 we went to visit our friend Matt in New Paltz, and he let us open for his band. I brought my giant keyboard, Dave brought his electric guitar, and we rehearsed 3 or 4 weird songs that we had never planned on playing live. This is what happened. Dave plays a pretty rocking guitar solo.
This MP3 is ripped from an old video camera recording, so it is TERRIBLE audio quality. Here is a transcription of what you are about to hear. This makes me laugh.
Dave: This is another one...about um...(mic goes dead)...Did I just turn this off?
Me: YOU DON'T NEED IT!
Dave: CHECK. Yeah I did. (mic goes dead again.) Oh god.
Matt: SQUEEZE IT FROM THE BOTTOM
Dave: SHUT UP.
Matt: Alright.
Dave: I'LL SQUEEZE YOU FROM THE BOTTOM.
Audience: OHHH WOOO
Song Starts
Dave: I ain't no basket of sunshine I ain't no bucket of rain I got a refrigerator full of body parts And that includes...your brain! Let's go!
I ain't no basket of sunshine I ain't no bucket of rain Refrigerator. With body parts. That includes your brain.
Alright that's enough of that. That's just a dumb song we wrote.
I have been totally busy and totally slacked off Mp3 of the Week this past 2 weeks. So here is an MP3 now, with another one sooner this week. AUGH HERE WE GO.
This week's MP3 was made with my friend Matt Koff in 2002. He recorded a guitar part and vocals while I was in the bathroom. Then I came out and added some keyboard shenanigans for the 2nd half. I really like this. And I'm betting he forgot this existed.
This week's MP3 is extremely special and random and rare.
Back in 1999 my friend Matt Koff gave me lyrics for a song he wanted to perform at the senior revue for his high school in Ardsley, Westchester. I put them to music, and the plan was for me to go to the piano and play while he sings. We were really happy with our work, but the people in charge didn't want us to take too much time away from the show (which is crazy now that I think about it..we wrote an original song for ARDSLEY HIGH SCHOOLl!), so the plan got aborted and we replaced it with something a lot weirder.*
This is the 2nd demo I sent Matt -- the first one was too fast -- and even though this was 1999, and possibly the first full song I ever wrote, I'm pretty impressed with how elaborate it is. And it's also fun.
* Matt grabbed the mic, said "and now everybody, CHRISTOPHER WALKEN!" I came on stage in a suit, did a bad Christopher Walken impression and said "The fire exits....are over THERE....And over THERE....Please...remember that...or else you're gonna get caught in a FIRE...!" to much confused laughter and silence.
Still no luck on the tooth front. Oh well. On to other things:
This week's mp3 is fucking crazy!
Basically, me and my friend Matt, as our weird on again off again comedy band "Special Friends", played the Sidewalk Cafe open mic in 2002. It was packed. I went on stage and said I found a man named "Mr. Supper" to play a song with me, and we did our amazing song "Funky Frankfurters." Matt Koff on lead vocals, and me on guitar. These are the lyrics:
Hey bitch, don't touch my franks They're mine, not yours Hey bitch if you touch my franks I'll show you the door
DON'T TOUCH MY FRANKS (FUNK FUNK FUNKY FRANKFURTERS) DON'T TOUCH MY FRANKS (FUNK FUNK FUNKY FRANKFURTERS)
You get the idea. Matt went up there with a big wooden spoon and banged in a pot. It was pretty fun, and you could hear how much fun we were having up there. The audience seemed to HATE US. And we weren't sure why. Our main goal was to be as energetic and fun as possible at a really low key and slow open mic. Everyone sitting there looked angry at us.
We found out later there was some mix up, and Moldy Peaches' girl Kimya Dawson was announced to go on, but for some reason we went up instead (we don't know if it was our mix up or someone else's mix up), and I think people were angry they had to wait 3 minutes to see Kimya Dawson. You can hear in the mp3, the open mic MC says, "right now let's welcome Kimya, FINALLY, to the stage." Some people in the audience gave us a good cheer but if you were there you would have felt the bad vibes.
I left some of her performance on the mp3 to show what people wanted to hear instead of us.
On another note, a guy came up to us after and said he thought it would have been a funnier song if we sang "hey bitch don't touch my FRIENDS, they're mine, not yours." But that's completely missing the whole point. We think it is a lot funnier for a weird character to be angry and overprotective of his frankfurters, rather than a dumb misogynist song about some girl fucking your friends.
This week's mp3 is dearly special to my dear heart. Me, Matt Koff and Tim Deery got together one day and made up songs on out of tune instruments and taped it with a video camera. I made mp3s from the videotape. We called ourselves "Three Lonely Guys."
This was a song where, as you can hear, we made it up one line at a time. The old Exquisite Corpse game put to music. The song is a bit SILLY WILLY but you won't hear an mp3 anywhere else that has more unrehearsed and genuine joy. There's plenty more where that came from too, many songs are featured on our myspace page, and more will be popping up on this blog!
