Last week was kinda heavy, what with all the psychological fear and tales of youthful misfortune. I’ll own it. It was a bummer. But this week I bring joyful news: There’s a new song in the Giant Lusca universe. It’s called Lester Deluxe and its up on the Bandcamp. I had a great time making this one and my songwriting process has improved in terms of efficiency and ease of production. It’s getting so, so close to a-- tearless delivery. By the way, I dropped my first music video this weekend onto the Giant Lusca YouTube channel. Check that out. This week was like Christmas or something-- the feeling of all kinds of shit coming together in a big way. I hit the weekend and there’s a bunch of stuff just an inch away from completion. Business cards are also in production, so if you’re having trouble connecting with me, the cards will serve as a cheat sheet. They’re pretty spiffy too. (If you don’t mind me sayin’ so.)

Back to Lester D. The idea came together using the new process which contains three stages on paper and a final digital doc which goes into the songbook. I must have order! It’s a chaotic world, after all. The first stage works like this: I get new ideas in the morning, and over morning coffee or even in the parking lot at work after the commute, I write short, super loose notes. This is the part of the process that I think of as the most stimulating. Inception! (If only I didn’t get these ideas while driving. How do I maintain safety? I keep another, smaller memo book in the car for red light creative emergencies.) These notes go into the small notebook. Sometimes what I write is only a couple of lines or a short phrase. It’s nowhere close to the shape or syntax of what the thing will become and lots of these ideas are discarded as I progress through the small notebook. There’s a lot of goofy junk in the small notebook. The first lines in Lester started appearing in the small notebook in October of 2017, though he didn’t even have a name yet. Other ideas would pop up but every few pages or so I would return to the idea. Add a little bit, discard bad lines: rewrite, strikethrough, rinse, repeat. The frequency of returning is how I know that I’m going to make a crude basic idea into a song. What I find interesting is the recycling of lines and (awkward!) evidence of how I think it’s going to go musically during this stage.

But after awhile a song idea is getting kinda wordy for the little notebook and it’s time to graduate to the composition book. I love lined composition books with the speckly cover and rounded corners. I always have (It’s a tactile/look thing!) but only recently have I had the method down to complete these. I would usually just discard a book after scribbling for a quarter or maybe half of the page count. Confusion about the process is to blame. The books become Beatnik Word Salad Abandoned Disasters. In other words, I used to become ashamed of the contents, discard the book, forget about it, and buy another one. Now, I work all the way through with a minimum of truly embarrassing text evidence (to be discovered by my enemies!) The composition book is where the song expands and the verse/chorus/bridge structure emerges. I keep this book right in the area where I practice the songs and I will add chord ideas during morning practice. But it’s still pretty sloppy and unfocused at this point. But with Lester, the enthusiasm continued and it became time for the final handwritten paper stage: the lined yellow pad. It’s actually multiple pads. I’m nuts. There’s one pad for each verse, the chorus, and bridge. (No, I don’t fill each pad with drafts of the current song. Just a couple of sheets each and then onto the next song.) The songwriting gets completed on the yellow pad. By this time the chords and lyrics have been finalized and all I have to do is consider how the song is going to exist as a reference document. Not a whole lot to it, I just type it up and print it out. This works best for long-term practice use.

So there you go, that’s the full circle of the writing process. Very little composition happens in Garageband these days, but I do allow for the recording process to influence me. (Studio-as-instrument and blah blah of course.) I’ll just spend a little time on the recording mixed with my interpretation of Lester Deluxe and then we can wrap this post up. The Lester in Lester Deluxe is a kind of composite character/crazy wise man archetype dealy. Sometimes I want to say that, “Lester is me.” That seems kind of bold (and self-deprecating). But that’s not entirely true in terms of what I think the song does. I have frequently observed real individuals in crisis ranting and dancing at traffic. I wanted observational content to be in there and this Lester was a dude I really did see on my morning commute. Then there’s the Miller character from the Alex Cox movie Repo Man. Miller is a kind of Lester Deluxe and before I graduated to the composition book I became aware of that association. In fact, I think it was misremembering the character name that put me on the path in the first place. But that was unconscious until I made the connection. Nevertheless once I put it together, I included a sample of the Miller ‘plate of shrimp’ monologue. In terms of visual presentation I wanted to reference something to do with oddball evangelism in the song. I went with an ‘80s punk rock b&w layout and selected an image from the HCPLC Burgert Brothers photo archives (used with the Tampa-Hillsborough permission statement in the Bandcamp metadata). It’s a picture of a pentecostal preacher in some Florida backwater town with worshippers-- and he’s holding a rattlesnake. Musically, I experimented with some tremolo on a gained-up bass guitar. There’s also some nice ‘digital tape music’ looping and reversing of the acoustic guitars at the end, which is good because I didn’t go all freak-out heavy on the effects on this one. Other notes: I cannot properly pronounce spaghetti singing at that tempo. So I just left it like that. It wasn’t a twee intention, I simply got frustrated, said ‘fuck-it’ and let it ride. Also, the vocals kind of get over-saturated, especially in the first verse. I twiddled knobs and checked my gain and my conclusion is that the effect was what my throat was doing. Again, fuck it, let it ride. Okay, I feel like I’m just going on a bit. We’re done here. Thanks for reading. Please enjoy the song.

Little Boxes (Hereafter referred to as Pt.1) is a 1962  song written by San Francisco folkie Malvina Reynolds. It is of its time, an example of ‘60s neo-folk pop, a kind of criticism of the post-Eisenhower suburban cold war zeitgeist. Its sing-song lilt was appealing to the boomers and this kind of stylistic infantilization of serious themes was a common technique of the hippies to come. (Also, Jello Biafra, twenty years later!) Nevertheless the song has a biting power, albeit with a large dose of boomer condescension. What makes this condescension noteworthy is that it is pointed directly at the previous generation. (Put another way, it condescends upward. A technique which would make the so called Greatest Generation furious and bemused, but which was also flawed in its lack of introspection and sense of culpability.) Over time the song has lost much of its power, a cover version appearing in the soundtrack to a 2014 children’s animated movie. This leaves only crumbs of background amusement for grandparents on the upteenth home screening on babysitting duty.

I felt that a sequel was in order. An answer of sorts. Something different, but working with the bones of the idea put forth in Pt.1. This was not to be a cover song, but a reimagining. (As for cover song attempts, I had already given myself a headache during the Bush II presidency with taking a go at Know Your Rights by the Clash. From thinking about my appreciation of Know Your Rights, I was forced to examine polemics in song, and (outside of song[writing]) question the utility of polemics in life. Of course I could also not technically pull off playing the song. Then Eddie Vedder did a version... Game over!)

Here’s the main reason to reimagine the tune: So much has changed in the world since Pt.1. The little boxes were no longer just suburban homes. Now the little boxes were smartphones providing the American Dream/Nightmare on a much greater scale. People are driving themselves crazy in new ways. But the crazy itself is timeless. Insight!

Temporal considerations aside, there’s lots of satirical relevance in Pt.1 to work with. For example, the problems of housing segregation/equity still exists. Though the legality, process, and ethos of this has mutated. There is (what I believe to be) the gospel theme of the hillside. In Pt. 1 this a twist on the idea of heaven on-the-hill, now a suburban Babylon. Also, that most sing-songy part of the song, that ticky-tacky refrain-- seemed a lot more effective than saying, “It’s all bullshit.” So I took the parts I liked, did no research whatsoever on the music, and started a creative process of reimagining the song. The end result is Little Boxes Pt. 2. You could think of it as a satire-- of a satire.

Musically, I was trying to get some of that action so beautifully realized by a band that I love, Centro-Matic. (Here’s the thing: I will never approach anything close to what Will Johnson and Co. can do. I know that, okay?!) So I pushed around drum loops, trying for that drop kick beat and paper-dry snare that features so prominently in their songs. Guitar tone was dialed in low gain and twangy. A chirpy arpeggiated synth line was added to emphasize the digital aspect of the hubris and mania in the subject matter. This is kind of an obvious move, but I think it integrates into the mix pretty well. I had also (finally!) discovered reverse playback in Garageband. I started to go nuts with this as it allowed me to make digital tape music-- a technique I had really enjoyed back in my days of taking the Analog 1 class at USF back in the ‘90s. I made some more progress with doubling vocals as well. My affinity for dry vocals remains (It’s all about the makeup gain after compression!), but the progress I’m talking about is the judicial use of where to drop the layers in, phrasing, and force (volume control). It’s a nice song and one that fits into the restraint mode of Giant Lusca. I need to do more of these, as the touchpoints of late ‘80s hardcore and thrash can become too easy in terms of problem solving in songwriting. Variety, man! It keeps things going.

Giant Lusca has a history, a fraught relationship, with cover songs. As I developed whatever playing skills I possess, I would hear the advice time and again (from reading interviews with esteemed and established artists-- and again, the same story during desperate conversations [on my end] with equally esteemed local artists). The advice was this: that the way to improve writing/playing was through the activity of playing along to records. I could never do this. It could be some undiagnosed ADHD, a bad ear, or, and this is my primary suspicion, a self-identification as not being a so-called player (By player, what I’m talking about a musician who hogs the acoustic at the party and who is generally thought of by others as having achieved a level of mastery. A session guy. I am jealous of these people. Marty, you make me sick. Kidding!) I identify more as a songwriter and I think adopting this notion has handicapped me greatly. It’s an easy out, an excuse to avoid performance and growth. Ultimately this is a lazy excuse (and the fundamental punk ideological weakness), but looking at it more deeply, it could be a defense mechanism of sorts in the sense of apprehensions in relation to the realization of creative work. In other words, actually doing the work is scary and the dream version is always exact, appreciated, and otherwise perfect. The avoidance of realization is a big topic and I’ll save that for another post.

But I do listen to lots of music and very little of it comes from online sources (Exception: I gotta hear that new Radon!) Mostly my listening habits revolve around the CD format on a single-disk player (Hello new 2018 Onkyo! Let’s beat the 30 year Yamaha longevity record.) Yes, I still have my records, but keeping a turntable up and running is a drag. (Shuffle functions and streaming services have their place too, of course. For example, while writing a blog post.) Learning disabilities aside, listening to music greatly influences my writing. The songwriting method for me is incredibly simple (and flawed) and has something to do with cover songs. What I do is pick a song, say, Deacon Blues by Steely Dan. Then, without listening to it, I do a cover. But this is where not being a player comes in really handy. I cannot exactly (or even relatively closely) reproduce the song. So, in the Deacon Blues example, I came up with the song Dandelion Fur, a song about prostitution activity in public libraries. It’s not even close to the sad-sack sax player narrative written by the Dan. (I was also trying to write my own version of Staggolee at the time, which also heavily played into the Dandelion Fur outcome.) This creates a kind of originalishness. A kinda-sorta new thing. And Ultimate Guitar will provide some new-to-me 7th chords to throw in the mix. In other words, I do not begin with a blank page. Ever. It all starts with an almost casual self-imposed assignment and a petty larceny-- born of admiration and affection. I rely on my ineptitude for protection. Despite the claims of established artist millionaires, this is how the rock ‘n’ roll gets made. It’s how they (Metallica) did it and is the true basis of art making. A speck of theft is what makes the secret sauce. This is the Oscar Wilde defense to the Lars Ulrich attack.

Giant Lusca has done a cover. Early on in the project, I recorded a cover of Ace of Spades by Mötörhead. Lemmy was still alive and at the time it didn’t feel like I was taking a piss… More of a self-deprecation which was also meaningful in the development of a personal style. It made me think about the percentage of shit-eating grin that should be present (stylistically speaking) in my songs. But, honestly, it was a piss take which was more fun with a living Lemmy Kilmister, the embodiment of hard-rocking, confident masculinity. (Do I have to mention that I am not this? No? Okay, good.) The cover taught me a lot about what I want to do musically and I actually did use the web to get useable chords and tablature. (Which is a whole other can of worms as online tabs are all over the map in terms of accuracy.)

There are three cover songs that I would like to do live. I think that the Giant Lusca sound could be applied to each and would produce something fun. And I think there kind of is a Giant Lusca sound. Having said that, these three would take a lot of work (attention span suffering, focus) to realize. These are my top three:

• Vitamin C, by CAN

• You Wear it Well, by Rod Stewart

• Perfect Day, by Lou Reed

The Song:  Modern Rube

Modern Rube is the first and greatest song of the Trump presidency. Of course this statement is bullshit, but that’s my lead sentence nonetheless... We’re only a year and three months into the shitstorm and Pitchfork has yet to weigh in on the issue as far as I know. But this, this boil in the form of a song started raising itself in my brain prior to the 2016 election. As with all of my creative forensic efforts, the exact month is unclear. I don’t keep a diary or journal (David Sedaris would be pissed!)  But I do remember kicking the idea around in February 2016 at my brother-in-law’s wedding out on a beach park in Tarpon Springs. The primary race was already getting ugly and I was trying like hell not to drink at this gathering. (I succeeded, by the way, and this is what the AA folks call a white-knuckle, dry drunk sober-- detached, distracted, and freaked.) On that day the mixture of NPR coverage in transit, and feeling out (pretending to get to know) new relations created a vertigo which guided me in the direction of Modern Rube. Am I saying that my brother-in-law’s new family is a bunch of hicks? No, far from it. But when I meet new people under (semi) formal circumstances, I go into a kind of socio-anthropological studies mode. I realize that this may not be a very endearing character trait and it doesn't make me look smart-- just jerky. But hey, I get it, nobody likes to feel like they’re being watched or judged for sport or diversion-- or watched at all. Sorry. Defense mechanism! But that’s what I did and this is the moment that the song started brewing.

I don’t want to get all etymological on this joint, but let’s suffer through a minute to use our Circle K feet and slash through the rube/reuben word idea and who I stole it from. (Don’t wash your feet or clean your toenails before we do this.) Here’s the reveal.  It was Hunter Thompson, and there you go. The carnival metaphor and its associated vernacular has lots of precedents in social and political criticism because… It works. It goes really good when you’re writin’. I’m just the latest jerk to come and grab onto it. But the current show is, well, unique-- and much freakier than the administrations of Nixon or Reagan (or Clinton, if you have a Libertarian/Anarchist worldview). This song is focused on the enraged dunce mentality that feeds the chaos magic shit storm of our current reality. This is a jam about the mechanisms of disorder, which of course is very punk (even if I sing like a pussy). It was after all, the responsibility of a carny to let the other grifters know when shit was going south. Here's what I’m talking about: universal complicity, everybody’s got bad teeth in the scenario and seemingly cannot find happiness, with the exception of doing micro-sadisms. But the micro-sadistic junk adds up and here we are. As for the Modern in the title, that’s a dumb joke that won’t play very well here, but I’ll try. It’s something along the lines of a hypothetical magazine title. Because, you know, nobody reads print magazines anymore and nobody uses the term rube anymore. Hilarious! Time as a concept is weird and hard to understand and it’s hard to relate to each other, but we kinda try (Not really. We’re self-centered animals) We will certainly fight about anything and ain’t it a thing to put your personal fury/fear/grudge into the most simple of social interactions. Yeah!

I had already done some work on the subject of rubes. (I’m like a scholar, majoring in Reuben Studies, man. Don’t that just bleach my karate trousers, yeah?) The song That Yellow Flag, took a shot at the behavior of the Tea Party movement in the wake of the 2008 Obama election. (I remember talking to my dad about it at the St. Pete Grand Prix.This felt exactly like explicating the plot of the Empire Strikes Back, which was another real one-sided conversation with dad, decades earlier.) As Modern Rube was taking shape, I realized that another chapter was required. A sequel of sorts. These true believers seemed to be skewing even more closely to the observations of Eric Hoffer A pattern was emerging and of course I’ wasn’t the only jackass to notice. It was more than just the trappings of rage that had changed... [For that matter, does anyone remember neo-conservatism? That seemed to end with the Tea Party uprising. It was the Tea Party coming up that led to the creation of That Yellow Flag. For now, let’s park that thread for another post on that song and/or the disappearance (and inevitable return) of the neocons. No one has gone anywhere. Except Cohen, Bowie, and Lemmy. They’re not here to help anymore.]

But there I was writing Modern Rube & thinking again about the weird self-hypnosis of the human animal and noticing the change in the branding of discontent (Not that the anger ain’t real. We can all feel that.)  Fast forward to an unnecessarily hot Thanksgiving at another set of in-laws: I remember running through an early version of Modern Rube. I was wearing a yellow Old Navy flannel (Uncool! Unfair trade!) I rolled up the sleeves. It was too hot for that shirt… Anyways, sometimes I drag an instrument to family gatherings (What the hell am I expecting to happen performance-wise anyways? Really! I have no idea how that’s supposed to go down. Sometimes I don’t even pull the guitar out of the case. I just show up and-- futz about non-musically, anxiously for hours.) Okay, here we were, and it was well over 80 degrees and I had overdressed based on seasonal expectations. My niece was less than impressed with my song craft. She was my main audience because she’d been taking piano lessons, so it’s like kinda related to her musical interests (Not really!)  Mom was supportive. She always is, but performing for her does much different work-- for both of us. This experience, as awkward as it was, still felt like something. I had made an effort in real time to describe what was happening as a songwriter. Modern Rube is important to me for that reason: a somewhat newfound ability to  articulate ideas in song form. (For most of my thirties it was a neo-beatnik word salad shooter routine. I think most writers go through this.) It’s still clumsy, but I think the effort matters in terms of moving forward with my craft.

Between these two stories (the Wedding and Thanksgiving) there’s my weird tale of the NYC vacation. We all have our version, our personal experience of the 2016 election night. This is mine. Before Thanksgiving, DL and I went up to New York because we could. We stayed downtown in the financial district; and, for Florida natives it’s nice to get a little piece of winter in the city (Please no more than a week though. Thanks much, that’s enough.) It was a great vacation, although the instinct to attach terms like, overall and, for the most part do seem all kinds of wrong when considering the end of 2016. But we really did have a good time up there. Looking back at the pictures, I had a huge mustache and a desire to consume lots of processed cheese. Museum visits happened. On the night of November 8th, I left the clock radio going, not really knowing how to set the alarm or the sleep functions. Like everybody (Popular vote!) in the US, I thought things would sort themselves out.

Me and DL go to sleep early, even in NYC. I wanted to drift off into the expected outcome and boring acceptance speech noises. Wake with a normal level of new president jitters. Needless to say, shit did not go down as most people (Hello popular vote, again!) expected and there were multiple fitful episodes throughout the night. This is the true beginning of the song. The outcome was an imperative for me. Real chaos had been unleashed and nothing-- no assumptions of human decency, rule of law, or conventions of conduct -- would ever be the same again.