A Plug & a Song
July 15th, 2008
We recently got a nice couple of mentions from Ryan of Ryan’s Smashing Life. He plugged our recent Boston show and posted Red Jacket Orchards (from our upcoming record) as, well, a song to listen to, over at his recent guest spot at The Plugg.. Thanks, Ryan.
I’m a big Fugazi fan. Not because of the $5-$7 show thing; that was just an excuse for men who were 36 to keep dressing like 18-year olds. Believe me, I’m 36. Those baggy shorts and 20 year old t-shirts prolong your life.
In this song’s case, I was drawn to a Fugazi song lyric from ‘Red Medicine’:
“It’s cold outside and my hands are dry
Skin is cracked and I realize
That I hate the sound of guitars
A thousand grudging young millionaires
Forcing silence sucking sound”
Yeah. That line’s been stuck in my head for a long time–long enough to realize that you could build a song around a piano riff without sounding like Billy Joel, Elton John or Wayne Hornsby. At times, the piano can sound sinister.
PS Oh, and there’s a piano coda on this one, which was a complete accident. But I like to include these for my parents, who paid for piano lessons. Mom & Dad, if you’re reading, I wanted to play Sonatas for a living, before it became economically unfeasible.
Let us pray
June 25th, 2008
Get Help will be performing soon, and also imminently:
Saturday, June 28, 9pm
The Church
69 Kilmarnock Street
Boston, MA
21+, $8.00
We will be performing with our label mates, The Spanish Armada (12am), as well as the fine fellows in Shadwell (10pm) and The Daily Pravda (11pm).
We will also be annexing some ships from the Spanish Armada for a few songs. It has worked quite well in the past, hopefully soon we will have some evidence of that to post for you. Keep the faith.
General Winter
June 8th, 2008
This song was originally conceived one day on the Light Rail when I decided I was going to go home and write an entire concept album in one sitting. If there is anyone left still reading after that sentence, let me just say that I didn’t even come close to achieving this goal. Not even an EP. It was a complete disaster, both in terms of matériel and morale, not unlike the German invasion of the Soviet Union. It was dead on arrival. Fortunately there were no witnesses and I had an alibi. Possibly, I might be exaggerating. Let’s just say if I were going to compose a concept album, this is how it would begin.
General Winter appears on our new album in a somewhat abbreviated form, pretty much as is. In fact, several songs on the new record are supported with the original audio files from either Mike’s Pro Tools or my Garageband recordings. Our producer, Chris Pace, is a madman. A more selfish or less enthusiastic producer would probably insist on re-recording our lo-fi elements. But Chris’s mania for Get Help extended back to the original tracks. The record would have been a completely different beast without his input, ideas, and mixing, and much for the worse.
Digression aside, after I began this song and struggled over the course of a few weeks to envision how it would end, I would joke to Mike about how the next Get Help album would be a concept album with no concept. Or vice versa. Neither joke was particularly funny. That’s why the truth hurts.