Some alternate titles to this post would include:
“It Takes A Village to Kill a Pop Song”
“Death By 50 Tracks”
Or to quote Tim Gunn, “A Tortured Mess.”
(But maybe I made it work?)
Like a new friend who feels like an old pal, Free Energy had me at one listen. The tunes and technique sat in that nice comfy zone between just right and endearingly flawed. They were fun and new, but familiar too. Then Rocs put her slender finger of perception on the crux of it: “They sound like you guys.”
By “you guys”, she was referring to my old pop-rock combo and our quixotic quest to meld 30 years of rock ‘n roll into 3 minutes of aural bliss. She was on to something, especially when one cocks an ear to the solid but not exactly, eh, earth-quaking guitar figures.
Anyhoo, from a recording point of view, I thought this would be a darn easy assignment. So I looked up a few tabs and learned a few of the licks and dove right into laying down some takes. But something wasn’t right.
I should have know better. You can’t build garage-rock with a computer. You’ve got to let it grow like a seizable crop. It’s got to be an all-organic affair nurtured in a damp basement or a drafty attic. Some out-of-the-way place where you can wood-shed your way to air-wave victory.
To rock this way, some bunch of “you guys” have to get together and let a little alchemy overtake the sum of your parts. It might take a few years or it might gel in just one night, but a lone wolf in a one-man digital den won’t make the cut. The results will be the opposite of my intentions, but there’s some nice moments in there, so what the heck…
still nice to hear you play! rock on!
will do! at this point, quitting doesn’t seem to be an option.