WEEK 89: Kristen (I Love You)

Happy Valentine etc!

This MP3 is taken from the same show as Week 77, which was a Trouble's Afoot duo show at Goodbye Blue Monday, with regular Sally drummer Will Kastner. I can imagine a lot of people have no idea what that sentence says.

Anyway, this was a little song I wrote for my girlfriend Kristen. In the spirit of the Valentine I'm posting it here today. The lyrics are self explanatory, I love Kristen (our 2 year anniversary is this weekend, and we now live together with our dog Penny and every day is the best day ever) and anyone who thinks I don't love her is dumb.

You can hear the surprise in the audience and from Kristen and her friends as I start this song. Not for those sensitive to intensely personal awkward things. Please enjoy.

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See you soon!

-Jordan

WEEK 84: Undo (Sally)

Hello everyone!

A super special exciting MP3 this week!

A NEW song from my band Sally. And...

A NEW singer! The wonderful Kristen Gudsnuk! (Special eternal thanks to Meghan O'Neill for being lead singer for the first year of the band!)

This recording is from a practice we had 2 days ago! Will Kastner nailing the drums after only playing the song like twice before ever. FUNKY STUFF!

We are really excited about this song and see it as some sort of future "single." It's currently my favorite song of ours.

This song is about how excited you get when you start dating someone you like, and how crushing it is when they reject you, especially after you've already imagined the entire relationship you two were supposed to have.

Here are the lyrics:

We went to every park in New York City
We visited your relatives in south New Jersey
On the bus we traded headphones
Played each other our favorite songs

These things didn't happen yet
but now I've got to undo
I've got to undo 
the things I imagined doing with you

Remember when you met my friends?
You liked them all, except for one
Then we went and met your friends
They all liked me, except for one

I shouldn't have talked about you so much
That was my first mistake
I shouldn't have talked to you so much
I should have given you a break

I planned the way I'd say "I love you"
The time and place, and weather and clothes
I planned the way that I'd react
To your reaction, however it goes


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See ya!

-Jordan

WEEK 77: The Usual Way (live with drummer)

Hey everyone!

This week's MP3 is a live version of one of my favorite songs, The Usual Way.

Instead of going into the whole background of the song, I'll mainly talk about this live mp3. Took place on May 13th of this year, at Goodbye Blue Monday in Brooklyn.

That's Will Kastner on drums, from my band Sally. This is officially a Trouble's Afoot performance. Will was a superhuman drum man for this show, learning around 15 Trouble's Afoot songs in like 2 days. This was a new song for Trouble's Afoot, but will probably stick around. Also of note is that we had no bass player for this show.

Also of note is that yes, people are talking about french fries at the start of the MP3. That's the nature of a live recording, folks.

Briefly, the song is about feeling like a disappointment in a relationship, and thus in your relationship with yourself. Enjoy!

Lyrics:

So what if I write a message down?

Not like I can say it outloud

I express myself in the usual way

So what if I wait a day or two?

Not like I'm in charge of when I get to see you

I express myself in the usual way

I'm running out.

I'm running out.

So what if I'm feeling sorry?

Not like you can get it out of me.

I express myself in the usual way.

I distress myself in the usual way.

Download it here!

or:

Sample it!

-Jordan

WEEK 74: April Fools (Was Yesterday) Live!

Well how can I NOT put this song up today?

This is a performance of my song "April Fools (Was Yesterday)" with my band Sally.

Featuring Meghan O'Neil on vocals, Will Kastner on drums, and me on guitar and harmony.

This was from our 2nd show, at Goodbye Blue Mondays on March 13th. The recording came out so nice, except for some digital audio blips.

For more info on this song, check out the older Mp3 of the Week entry here!


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Jordan

WEEK 69: Sally: Have You Met Someone (live)

WELCOME TO WEEK 69!

This week's MP3 is ultra awesome super cool. I had a show last week at Hank's Saloon in Brooklyn, and my vocally gifted friend Meghan O'Neill joined me on stage for a mini-Sally set! (Sally is my band with all love songs and female lead vocals.)

My often-bass-player Dave Fox played drums along (after only hearing the song about 2 hours earlier before the show), and I played electric guitar, trying to do the best Johnny Marr impression I can possibly fake. I love how it all came out.

The quality of this recording isn't so great, mainly because there were a lot of people talking at the bar, and we were struggling to be louder than them. Still, I loved playing these songs live, and there will be more MP3s from this show and future Sally recordings soon!

Here are the lyrics. The song is pretty self explanatory:

I don’t regret the time we spent

In fact I think it’s splendid

The more I guess at your progress

The more it seems we’ve ended

I haven’t been with many people

Not after what happened with us

I don’t know why I feel like I must be faithful

But…have you met someone?

A guy at work is a big flirt

He asked me out for supper

My red cheeks glowed but I said no

It just doesn’t seem proper

Chorus

Is she pretty?

Is she happy?

How does she kiss

Does she exist?

My kitchens cold and all alone

I miss you at the table

I eat and go to sleep I don’t

Know if this mood is fatal

HAVE YOU MET SOMEONE?!?



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Jordan

WEEK 64: Sally: April Fools (Was Yesterday)

Hey guys and gal,

This week's MP3 is a song I wrote called "April Fools (Was Yesterday)", and sung by the lovely Yoko Kikuchi. It is part of an ongoing project called Sally, where a female vocalist sings my sad or happy love songs. I play guitar and sing back ups ("oh no.") This recording is from 2005.

This song, and all the Sally songs, are fairly direct: It's a break up song. Here are the happy lyrics! My favorite line is "Let me down gently, but it's still gonna kill me." Ouch.


You say you love me
But you're breaking up with me (oh no)
You look so happy
But you're breaking up with me (oh no)

I don't know what to say
except that April Fools was yesterday

I made you happy
Now you can't even stand me (oh no)
Let me down gently
But it's still gonna kill me (oh no)

I don't know what to say
except that April Fools was yesterday
Unless I'm wrong and it's today
Let me be wrong, don't go away
Let me be wrong
And please say that we're OK

Holding you tightly
But I'm feeling you squirming (oh no)
Missing you nightly
God my stomach is hurting (oh no)

I don't know what to say.


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-Jordan

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!


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See ya!


-Jordan

WEEK 14: A Summer Song (demo)

It's "SUMMER" here at Mp3 of the Week! So this week and the next (AND THE NEXT??) will be all Summer related!

From Wikipedia: Sumarr, a personification of summer in Norse mythology.



Interesting, huh gang?

So anyway, this is an old demo for a song called "A Summer Song." It was written for my side project Sally, where a female sings the songs, currently female-less at the moment (story of my life!) It's basically about a summer fling that ended, and now everything is bleak and empty! Yay!

Here are lyrics:

Where did every day go?
I don't really wanna know.
Summer's over and I'm not over you.

I threw out my calendar
Cause every single time I check it
It's the day after the last, and I can't handle that.

Where did every night go?
Where did all of our fights go?
Now it's all too quiet, and a cool breeze has transpired.

No more June
Goodbye July
A black and white August
That was us.

Download the song here.

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Hope you liked!


-Jordan