Shoebox Full of Tapes

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Tryst is so new, we don’t have a website yet. Hell, we’re so new, we’re not even on MySpace. (If you don’t know what that is, consider yourself lucky.) And we’ve played exactly one show, which may or may not have been attended by anyone who was not actually a member of one of the other bands who played. But now, this week, in a startling confirmation of rumors that we actually exist, we’re podcasting a song! It’s just a live demo, and a pretty bad recording at that, but hey, you take your SM58 and your borrowed drum kit and GarageBand running on your already-outdated PowerBook and you make what you can of it, right? And it is my great honor and privilege this week to introduce Brian, my friend and co-conspirator, not to mention the only drummer in Portland who shows up on time and sober…

I posted the lyrics back in February, the first time this song appeared on SFoT. Thank you for listening, and for forgiving our inevitable mistakes as we figure out how to be a band. We’re just getting started.

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In the short time that I’ve been making music, and the shorter time that I’ve been trying to figure out how to give it away for free on the Internet, it has been my privilege to have made the acquaintance of a few people who, for one reason or another, seem to enjoy listening to it. As anyone who’s ever read the comments around here undoubtedly already knows, Nick May has pretty much established himself as the official SFoT trackback-and-comment maven-in-residence and fan-at-large. One thing about Nick is that he usually wants to know the backstory. About everything. Even if it doesn’t exist. Not that that’s ever really been an issue, considering that he has proven himself more than capable of making it up himself if necessary — but tonight, as it turns out, the song is preceded by the backstory that I wrote in a comment in his blog a couple hours ago. Or, at least, a backstory. Or, rather, one interpretation of one small part of one of any number of possible backstories, as filtered through two large mugs of strong coffee at the Red and Black this evening, along with franticness that increased at a rate inversely proportional to that of my decreasing battery charge as I tried to type it all out before my laptop died.

Now that I’m back at home and plugged in again, I can relax (well, sort of relax — man, they really don’t fuck around when they make that coffee, do they?) and tell some back-backstory: this is a cover of a song called “Home” that I did five years ago for Act 4, which was a Smashing Pumpkins tribute concert benefiting the Make-a-Wish Foundation. (Since I didn’t write it, the usual license doesn’t apply.) I kind of sucked when I played at the actual show, but this recording isn’t too bad, and it ended up on the accompanying tribute album that we made, the proceeds from which also went to Make-a-Wish. So there was that. I really like this song; I first heard it on a Pumpkins tour bootleg in my college dorm room when I was nineteen, and had to get up and run downstairs to the lounge at three in the morning to flail at the piano until I had figured out how I was going to play it. By the way, you can’t buy the original in any store; you can only get it in any of the numerous places where it’s given away, for free, on the Internet.

Thanks, always, for listening.

My new band, Tryst, had our first show last night!

Okay, so my drummer, Brian, and I only know a few songs so far, and yeah, so the show was sort of…at my house. (Line I forgot to use: “We’re so indie, we barely even exist.”) But still! First show! The Jigsaw Gentlemen, Chris Corbell, and Douglas Shepherd played as well, and in case four bands and a keg and a half didn’t put it completely over the top as house parties go, we even had a couple of belly dancers. All of the performers were great. I couldn’t have asked for a friendlier or more talented group of people to help us make the party a success. And our set was well-received, too. Thanks to all of you who made it out! I can’t wait for our next show!

I wanted to put up a song today, but I need to pause for breath — I spent the day cleaning up our living room, which looked like, uh, like a rock show happened in it last night. So instead of a song, here’s a different kind of art — the beautiful flyer illustration that Indigo Kelleigh made for the show. We’re all out of the first run of flyers (naturally — they’re all up on telephone poles around town, no doubt being flyered over with something else as we speak), but if any of you are interested, it’s no trouble for me to make some more and give you one. Let me know.

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In the fall of 2000, I was in my first semester of college. Needing a fix one night, I snuck into a practice room in the basement of my school’s music building with the intention of playing something else, probably a Smashing Pumpkins song. This was what came out instead. I didn’t have any paper on me, and I tore home to attempt to write down what I had just sung before it slipped away. What you see written here now is as close as I could come that night.

Before writing “The Song Nobody Knows”, both my songs sucked. After writing it, I decided that I might really be able to do this, which was what eventually led to actually studying music in college, which, among other perks, made it so I didn’t have to sneak into the practice rooms anymore. This recording, which was made a few months later, leaves a lot to be desired, but I have to remember that I was eighteen and so was my friend who was recording me and neither of us knew what the hell we were doing yet. Nevertheless, this made it onto the Freesound comp in 2001, which feels like two or three lifetimes ago. I’m not sure if I even remember how to play this one. I’ve learned my lesson, though: I carry a notebook with me now.

My favorite song is the song nobody knows
I hear it only in my head
And when we reach across the wires,
I feel you and the memories we had
When I was six years old
I wanted to change my name
Now I just want everyone to know who I am
But how can they know me if they don’t know
That my favorite song is the song nobody knows
I hear it only inside
Looking out the rain-streaked windows as the bus goes by
Do you share my sentiment?
Do you feel the way I feel?
Do you know the song I know?
Do you know how it goes?
Because my favorite song is the song nobody knows
I feel it only in my dreams
And when we reach across the wires,
I feel you reaching back through me
And then I see that beneath the show
I know you know the song nobody knows

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I was holding back with this one, waiting until I was really desperate for something to put up. I guess I’m really desperate this week.

These are the lyrics as they are now; the recording’s old. It was a shock to listen to it and realize that I haven’t always sung “can’t stop thinking about you” in the last chorus, because that’s so much a part of the song now. Weird.

We talk about how the day went
in words that are always plain
No superfluous affectations
No pretenses get in our way
You’re always so real and always
unchangingly uncontrived
And it’s taken a while, but I’ve finally
I’ve finally realized
That you’re beautiful
More beautiful with each day as they keep flying along
And I can’t stop thinking about how insane it is
That I was the one who never noticed

We talk about how the day went
We talk about all our friends
We talk about everything but
This thing I don’t understand
I still don’t know how it started,
and you’re as amazed as I
With you it’s just so easy
I don’t even have to try
Because you’re beautiful
More beautiful with each day as they keep flying along
And I can’t stop thinking about how insane it is
That I was the one who never noticed

You’re always plain
No affectations and no cliches
With all these reasons, it’s unbelievable
To think I once needed
Any convincing at all
That you’re beautiful
More beautiful with each day as they keep flying along
And I can’t stop thinking about you
And how I could have taken so long
And never noticed

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I have a shoebox full of tapes. No, really. It’s actually more of a plastic storage container, and they’re mostly CDs and DATs, but I’ve been carrying this thing around with me for years, and everything I’ve recorded over the past five years has gone into it. I started SFoT not only because I had new music to share, but because I had a lot of old music too. Some of it deserves to see the light of day, some of it probably doesn’t, but it’s definitely not doing anyone any good sitting in the box, you know?

So this week, just in case it was killing you not knowing what “Chase” sounded like before it sounded like “Chase”, here’s an older demo of the same song. Meanwhile, back in the present, I’ve been practicing with a new drummer for a couple weeks now, getting closer to doing what we really want to do, which is play rock shows. We’re not going to record anything until we’re ready and it won’t go on SFoT unless all contributors are okay with that, and that’s why, for a while here, I don’t think I’ll really have much new stuff to share. But I’ve still got this box — and yes, the box actually exists, it’s about two feet from my elbow right now — and I’m still going to try my damnedest to dig up something “new” that’s not too cringe-inducing, every week. Maybe I’ll discover some things I hadn’t heard before, either.

Thanks for listening!

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Let me be your rock star girl
just because I think that I could love you
more than everyone already does
We could show each other
how to see and to be seen
Don’t you think that we’d be perfect
in every magazine?
I will be your rock star girl
if you’ll be my rock star boy
Happily ever after until next year comes around
Writing songs that are much too long
Pretending we are profound
Don’t look now
I see your makeup streaming down

Let me be your rock star girl
Don’t get me wrong;
I understand that we are hopeless
but it’s okay just as long
as we both swallow our ambitions
Turn your good face to the man
Don’t you see, they see right through
your visionary plans?
I will be your rock star girl
if you’ll be my rock star boy
Happily ever after or until we both pass out
Writing songs that are much too long
Pretending we are profound
And we’ll freak out with our makeup streaming down

It’s amazing just how free you are
when you’re doomed before you begin
in some kind of psychic sellout
where the highest concept wins
I will be your rock star girl
if you’ll be my rock star boy
Happily ever after or until we hit the ground
Writing songs that are much too long
Pretending we are profound
And we’ll break up with our makeup streaming down

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Here’s another kind-of-old song. This one has evolved, so a different version is likely to turn up on SFoT before too long.

Thanks for listening.

As soon as I have something to lose,
it’s strange how each day passing
only leaves me more confused
and each decision matters more than I ever knew
All my temporary answers,
it turns out are no use
But I’m changing,
’cause changing is all I ever do
As soon as I have something to lose

As soon as I have something to lose,
it’s strange how each day passing
realigns my point of view
to meet the whirl of thoughts that I’ve been wandering through
And dreams almost forgotten,
yet so hard to refuse
But I’m changing,
’cause changing is all I ever do
As soon as I have something to lose

And I keep on getting closer,
but it seems like as soon as I have something
to show for what I’m trying to prove,
as soon as I have something to lose,
it’s strange how all my thoughts
are redefined in terms of you
and each decision matters more than I ever knew
and each decision rests on what I think you might choose
But I’m changing,
’cause changing is all I ever do
As soon as I have something to lose

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Just so we’re clear: this is a Bob Dylan song; the usual copyright and Creative Commons licensing do not apply; I have no permission whatsoever to use it; and I’ll remove it if asked.

It’s just a song I really like.

Enjoy and have a great week. I’ll be back next weekend, perhaps even with something I actually wrote!

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Here’s another old song dug up from the bottom of the box. That’s Tanny playing guitar.

There’s pretty much just one idea here, and I’ve found that some people like it for just that reason, while others find that it’s too simplistic and repetitive for their taste. Maybe it depends on how recently, if ever, you felt this way.

I’d happily stand here alone all day
Just to watch you walk down the stairs
Trying to think of what I could say
That might make you smile if you happened to hear
I’d happily stand here alone all day
Just to watch you and try not to stare
Try not to stare

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This is one of those old songs that won’t go away. It’s the song that “You’ve Got Her Number” grew out of; it’s here for historical reasons, I guess, and because Maya said she liked it.

Y’know, I do think there’s a lot of good stuff in here, in between the banalities (like “reap what we sowed” — that’s got to go, dude) and the affected singing and the way I plow the phone metaphor into the ground, and I’m still working on it, and I’ll probably get a song I like out of it someday. At the time I wrote it I’m sure I thought that “I don’t know what I want, but I want it so bad” was a stroke of genius of “I believe when I fall in love with you, it will be forever” proportions. These days I’m just as likely to sing, “I don’t know what I want, but I don’t want it that bad.”

I don’t know what I want, but I want it so bad
I don’t know what I want, but I want it so bad
I always believed that we’d reap what we sowed
I thought of your number and reached for the phone
How to be independent and still depend on you?
How to love you completely
and have a way out in case it falls through?
How do I settle these two?
I don’t want to compromise you
I don’t know what I want, but I want it so bad
I hope that this will connect me to you
Even though I’m scared of this call going through
How to be independent and still depend on you?
How to love you completely
and have a way out in case it falls through?
How do I settle these two?
Don’t make me compromise you
I don’t know what I want, but I want it so bad
I always believed that we’d make this work out
I guess now you know what this call is about
I can’t be independent and still depend on you
And I know I can’t love you and have a way out
If this won’t go through, then
It’s hard enough just to keep talking to you
And now you want me to compromise, too
I don’t know what I want, but I want it so bad
I don’t know what I want, but I want it so bad

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When taken together, holidays, road trips, and long showers are a pretty good recipe for awakening the muse; I came up with this song in the shower in a Kansas City hotel room around Christmas 2002. It always cried out to be played with a band, and finally, in spring ‘04, my short-lived college band (Tanny Phillips, guitar; JP Ramos, drums) made this recording for the same comp that “Union Station” was on. (At our school, bandcest was widespread enough that if somebody played on one song on the comp, they probably played on more than one.) We weren’t all that great, but I think you can hear at least a whisper of what this song is supposed to be. Thanks for listening.

Breathing heavy every time he walked by
Feeling ready when his eyes met mine
I loved to push him, loved to hear him protest
Knew it was over when he finally said yes

I love the chase; the rest is no fun
Why do the boys here always let me down?
I love the chase, and before I’m done,
I’ll probably chase them all right out of this town

Don’t know what happened to my crush on you
Remember all the crazy things I would do?
Followed you home; I drove out of my way
Just ain’t the same now that we talk every day

I love the chase; the rest is no fun
Why do the boys here always let me down?
I love the chase, and before I’m done,
I’ll probably chase them all right out of this town

Get me out of here
Am I the only one?
Sure could use a change and I’ve barely begun
Chasing people around
Did I hear someone say settle down?

I set the cruise control to seventy-five
I caught my breath as I watched him pass by
I saw his suitcase and guitar in the back
I smiled a little and I stepped on the gas

I love the chase; the rest is no fun
Why do the boys here always let me down?
I love the chase, and before I’m done,
I’ll probably chase them all right out of this town

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When I was studying jazz in college, some of the flavor of the stuff we were working on in class started to creep into my songs unexpectedly.

Leaning on the left mains with my drink in my hand
See, I seem to have this problem where I remember everything
And all the floorboards resonate in quiet sympathy
’cause you bear enough resemblance to this boy who’s holding me

Giving up my place, I have to get some air
Stumbling to the back, I see you standing by the stairs
Did you know I’d be here, or was it the other way around?
You sure do make it easy for your hangers-on

Now I know
I’ve been so wrong this time
Wrong enough to totally misread the situation
Now it’s too late to change my mind

This must have been a good show, ’cause I can barely stand
See, I seem to have this problem with escapism’s demands
And all the floorboards resonate in quiet sympathy
’cause lonely at a rock show is as lonely as you can be

Now I know
I’ve been so wrong this time
Wrong enough to miss all of the obvious signs
Wrong enough to try to change your mind

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A couple weeks ago, I sat down to work on a song called “Compromise” which I’ve never quite been satisfied with since I wrote it in 2002. I normally wouldn’t have even dragged it out except that I was getting nervous about my writing not being able to keep pace with SFoT, and I thought that maybe I could buy some time by dusting off songs from the reject pile, seeing about fixing the most cringeworthy bits, and then passing them off as new, without, you know, actually having to write entirely new ones.

Hah.

And there are about fourteen pages in my lyrics notebook to document the process by which “Compromise” then became “You’ve Got Her Number”, but still, damned if I understand how it happened. The only words they have in common are “reach for the phone”. It’s not like I’ve ever really set out to write a new song, but this time I was actually trying to do something else and the song happened in spite of it. They’re incorrigible like that. I think that at some point I must’ve just realized that the new stuff I was writing was being dragged down by the old stuff, and that there was enough there for a story in its own right.

It started out in the first person, but someone I showed the lyrics to felt that “How many rings will each of us wait?” didn’t make sense, ’cause why would the other person wait — wasn’t the singer supposed to be the screwed-up one? I’d been trying to convey that maybe both participants were a little screwed up, and that they could play on each other’s neuroses by doing things as minor as (not) answering the phone. I think that giving the narrator some distance from the two of them might make that idea more supposable for the listener, but I’m not sure it hits quite as hard, this way.

Jury’s out. And so am I — except to say that this week, by Will’s request, we recorded piano first and vocal second. I was really hesitant to do this ’cause I thought the songs would lose the immediacy that comes from laying down everything at once. I was wrong, wrong, wrong. It turns out that the only thing we lost was crap singing and playing. Thanks.

You’ve got her number
You reach for the phone
You might be reckless –
but she might be home
You shouldn’t care
as much as you do
Should have a way out
In case you can’t get through

How many rings
will each of you wait?
And suppose she picks up –
Just what do you think
that you’re gonna say?
You shouldn’t be nervous
Should have other plans
But you’ve got her number
You’ve got it bad

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This week “we” interrupt your regularly scheduled Shoebox Full of Tapes to bring you a brief plug for my friend Joe’s band, Industrial Theme Park. The band is Joe and a rotating cast of others, including myself at one point; “Union Station” is a song we did for a comp in 2004.

Joe has just started putting new Industrial Theme Park stuff online, and it’s really good. Please check it out, and I’ll see you back here next week with an actual new song. Thanks for listening. (The license I’m using for the rest of SFoT doesn’t apply to this week’s song because I didn’t write most of it. However, I hereby apply said license to the keyboard and vocal parts. Whee!)

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Someday, when the Perfect Drummer shows up on my doorstep, this one’s getting the full-on power-pop treatment. Well, actually, whatever, “this one”. When that happens, they’re all getting the full-on power-pop treatment.

A postcard from last April…

Your back seat’s cluttered with our morning haste:
Best of Bowie in a Promise Ring case.
I scraped both knees on the way to the train for you.
You know I’m always twenty minutes late,
you know I think that your stupid puns are great,
and now you know that I’m gonna wait for you

’cause I’d been waiting for so long
for someone else to value spontaneity
when you said, “Let’s buy that house.”
And now I’m waking up again like I knew I would,
and it’s taking everything I’ve ever learned.
It was never so easy to fall so hard.

I want to always have fading rubber stamps
from shows we went to on my wrists and hands.
I want to always be making crazy plans with you.
Headphones seated low and tight,
cables dressed for four-hour flight:
I’ll be in Portland at 9:25 with you

’cause I’d been waiting for so long
for someone else to value spontaneity
when you said, “Let’s buy that house.”
And now I’m waking up again like I knew I would,
and it’s taking everything I’ve ever learned.
It was never so easy to fall so hard.

Waking up again like I knew I would,
and it’s taking everything I ever learned:
All the mistakes that I ever made then
and every trace of wisdom I ever gained from them,
every time I ever second-guessed myself
when I tried to be someone else,
whenever I couldn’t stand to just read my lines
was practice for this time.
My whole life feels like practice for this time.

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This one was written about a year and a half ago. It’s pretty much the same six-chord pattern the whole way through, but the lyrical line is shorter than the ostinato, which I hope gives the song a nice forward momentum and saves it from feeling overly repetitive.

On this recording I managed to get the pronouns wrong at the end of the second verse, so for best results imagine a nice, deliberate, dripping-with-portent “but they…have…too” instead of whatever I sang.

It’s the way that you sit so you can reach everything from there
All angles and eyelashes, beat-up shoes and scruffy hair
It’s the things that you say
It’s how you make me concentrate
That I might catch the edge to every inside joke you make

It’s the way you speak in riddles and how you choose your words:
Hesitate a little, so I know you thought them through
as much as I will
And I’m sure the others wonder what it is with me and you
Well, let them wonder more
I’ve been wrong before, but they have, too

Glitching live heartskips we both pretend to concentrate
These days, who cares?
What’s maturity anyway?
Leaving here with recent scars
From each miscue that got us this far
And I’m glad you know me well,
but I wish you couldn’t tell I try this hard

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There’s a passage in Mona Lisa Overdrive in which one of the main characters is trying to find a friend of hers who has disappeared. When she asks what happened to him, she’s told, “He reverted to type.” Just like that. Back to living on the street like he’d done before they’d met. That sentence stayed with me for a long time after I finished the book. Something about how world-weary and dismissive it sounded — and, of course, the whole idea that people can’t change, that our “types” are inescapable for better or for worse — made a pretty strong impression on me.

With these lyrics, I’m trying to treat the concept of “reverting to type” with importance, to observe and describe it, but without necessarily claiming to understand it — certainly not judging it as either good or bad. A neat trick, if I can manage it. Thanks for listening.

You wait until door meets door
And you’re sure that he’s gone
And then you sway and sing in the elevator
All the way down
Rushing down Sherman to MAB
Breathless on the crooked stairs
Reaching for the most familiar keys
Reverting to type again
Reverting to type again
Returning to what you were then
And every time you say
that this time you’re sure you’ve really changed
You always end up reverting to type again

He must have caught you sitting up straight
Instantly no longer bored
Trying slightly harder to concentrate
Failing at it slightly more
With no excuse to communicate
No use in being heard
We’re both still hoping
Both still reloading
Still hanging on every word
Reverting to type again
Returning to what you were then
And every time you say
that this time you’re sure you’ve really changed
You always end up reverting to type again