further

Further came to fruition first after a failed take of Farther that I tapped over shortly afterwards. However, the first take was so much longer that the last bits of it still lingered, so I just kept it there mainly because I was lazy. I also tried to do some track bouncing (where you rerecord a bunch of different tracks onto a single track in order to free up the other tracks for additional layering) which would have been wonderful to extend my four-track so that I could put as many instruments as I wanted onto a song, but the wiring got mixed up somehow and I ended up with this high-pitched squeal that you can hear at the end of the song. So instead of deeming it a throw-away failure, I put it smack-dab in the middle of the album. Go me.

Ooh, have you seen the newly revamped archive page? I separated the albums so that they have their own page, which now that You Do What You Can is now completely online as of today, you can see and listen to the whole album pretty much as it was meant to be listened to. I shall do a little dance, then make a little love afterwards, and finally I’ll get down. TONIGHT.

idols ate our babies

Someone once referred to Idols Ate Our Babies as the comedic song off of “You Do What You Can”, but other than the odd title, I don’t think that there’s much humor in it, except maybe the speak-sing voice in the background. Another song about city life, this time it’s about the attempt to find great success in a crazy urban setting where perhaps many people aren’t prepared to live their lives this way. Of course, it’s different for many people, but I knew even then that I couldn’t live there forever. If I wanted a family, for instance, I’d never put them in a city like that for more than a few days at most. There was something highly unnatural about seeing young kids brought up in the city, something that was much more forgivable with adults who chose to stay there. Not that I was a hick by any means, but I liked exploring the woods in my back yard with my friends and riding my bike to the lake during the summer. Playing in fallen leaves and snow. Sigh, perhaps I’m idealizing a past that never quite was what my memories paint them to be, but I’m glad that I lived in the city when I did and not any time earlier in my life.

leave it on the island

I suppose that Leave It On The Island has remained one of the more accessible pieces of recording I’ve done to date, although I must admit that it’s perhaps that very reason that I’ve been so timid about listening to this one. It presents me at one of my most exposed, that I chose not to let drum machines, synthesizers, or even microphone distortion from hiding the voice within the music, and it’s been uncomfortable to hear me like this.

At least with most of the other Black Candy Plus tracks they sound dissonant for a few reasons, the shame of my underdeveloped voice being one of them. But at the same time, I’m glad that I did this. I’m also surprised that I did this on a record that I’ve shared with a wide group of people, for better or for worse. And it turns out that they tend to enjoy this one more than the pseudo-punk-experimental-electronic tracks. Who knew?

Since then, I’ve tried to make it more of a priority to embrace that side of my songwriting, because in the end, the genesis of many of my songs sound much like “Leave It On The Island”, and to record them otherwise takes away the innocence and magic of the original. Hopefully, the experimentation adds something positive in that void (which for the most part I think I accomplish, more or less), but if I can develop both sides for long enough, maybe something really amazing can come from it.

So with that in mind, I’ve made a couple records, which will slowly find their way on the Democore website in the next couple of months or so, with that intimate sound in mind. Once I have all of the Black Candy Plus stuff online and running, I think I’ll be aiming for a 14 June debut for a 12 song LP and a 14 song LP. The songs are ready, just need to work on the artwork…

dial z

Dial Z was one of my early fave compositions that originally was a song for Phosphates. However, we never got around to make an original recording, so I thought I’d give it the Black Candy treatment, doing away with the rock band sound in favor of three voices and a guitar. Both versions are pretty awesome, and if I have permission from my former Phosphate members, I’d like to find and post the rock band version as well. But until then, enjoy yet another observation of the city, albeit a little more political than usual.

american, i

The American Series, #6:

That’s it, I’m a-gone live in Cuba now.

Joking, joking, joking. Miss out on the fireworks here? Bloody likely, my friend.

american s

The American Series, #4:

I was going to paraphrase a George Carlin quote for this one, but I thought that instead I’ll just let the whole quote speak for itself. Not that I ENTIRELY agree with all of this, but should I entirely agree with anybody on anything? Besides, it saves me the trouble of tweaking it to my liking.

american, u

Oh snap! I forgot to update the Democore page before I left for work, so here I am during my break, making an entry for a song that you can’t listen to on the regular page. Thankfully, there IS one song on the Black Candy Plus Myspace that hasn’t been talked about here, so hopefully once the Democore page gets updated by tonight, BC+’s Myspace will be completely out of date. Well, I guess maybe not COMPLETELY, but you get the picture…

Anyway, this entry marks the first of many songs in the American series. Each letter tries to correspond to a sound that corresponds to a word. Sometimes, especially with something like American, U, it works rather well. They tend to be oddly experimental, although this one is relatively straightforward, along the lines of New Haven Dance Party.

But why did I choose to label these songs “American”? Maybe it was an observation that I felt as an American ON Americans, or maybe I was trying to be patriotic somehow, or maybe I was trying to create a new national anthem and make a bundle of that sweet, sweet American money. Mmmm, U.S. dollars…

Which reminds me: I need to change the last song in the (expectations) archive to say “american, n”. Silly me, I wouldn’t repeat an American series song on two consecutive albums!

new haven dance party

For my first shout-out to Connecticut on You Do What You Can, I chose New Haven Dance Party’s city because it seems like THE famous Connecticut city of prestige. Sure, Hartford might be the capital, and Waterbury might be the city that I’m most familiar with, but as the first planned community of the original British New World settlements, the Elm City was the center of the New Haven Colony, one of the three original Connecticut colonies before uniting in 1664. If it weren’t for economic disaster in the mid-1600’s, it could have been nearly as prestigious of a trade city as Boston. It was actually co-capital of the state with Hartford until 1873, perhaps since Hartford was a more central locale (New Haven lies on the Long Island Sound coastline), and Roger Sherman, its first mayor, was the only founding father to sign the original U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and both Articles of Association and Confederation. New Haven also hosts the “other” Ivy League college, Yale, from which Eli Whitney graduated and set up shop nearby to manufacture the cotton gin and various armaments (it was this manufacturing plant where Samuel Colt also invented the revolver), and is the birthplace of the current U.S. president George W. Bush, when his father and former U.S. president George H. W. Bush attended Yale before graduating and relocating to Texas in pursuit of oil and riches.

Thank you, Wikipedia!

iceberg

Iceberg is another “ode” to the city, although this one less about my relationship to the general population (close friends not withstanding, of course) but more about my relationship to the general environment. It does mention the people to a certain extent, but it is nearly impossible to leave people out of an ode to a city since it’s such a man-made entity. It is rather bitter like much of my writing about the city over the past couple of years, which may be odd considering the anthem-like quality of the music.

I chose this as my debut song off my debut full-length album since it seemed to sum up the sound and mood of what I was trying to accomplish with Black Candy Plus. It combines the acoustic guitar songwriting aspect with the electronic experimentation amazingly well, in my opinion, and gives the album a jolt to the listeners that I hoped would spark their attention throughout this ramble of a record.

it’s time to go

I’m still surprised at how well It’s Time To Go has held up my respect, seeing as it’s a somewhat older song, many of which I’ve tossed aside as something that I’m glad I wrote at the time but I’m ready to move onto something better. It’s also one of the more traditional songs I’ve written (straightforward intro/verse/chorus/coda style), but one where the virtue of the lyrics hold the rest of the song together.

If you read the lyrics as you listen to the song, you may find a few differences between the two versions. When I recorded it, I wasn’t too sure about the chorus “It’s getting cold/And it’s time to go”. For a song whose narrator sounded so unsure about himself, that line sounded awfully definitive, so I changed it to something I felt captured his feelings. I think it’s an old change, but I suppose it isn’t quite old enough.

The second change is the line “I don’t want to hurt a single person I don’t know/except the ones who treat me like a gun”. This line always disturbed me a little, but it wasn’t until recently that I changed it to a more pacifist feel, especially since the narrator initially said that he doesn’t “want to smile like a man in uniform without washing out a single drop of blood”.

So there you go, a recipe for one perfectly good song.