SWS
Well. The music for the record is completely written and demo’d. The lyrics – not so much. I think this time I’d like to just go ahead and get the recording process started and I can work on words while that’s happening. I know what each song is about, and I have snippets of this and that, and most of the chorus lyrics – but it’s always the verses that are a massive hassle. Lyrics are a pain in the ass and huge fun at the same time. I mean – I know what I want to say and what the song needs to be about and what it needs to get across. But then you have the limitations of a song to contend with. You have 3-5 minutes to get it all in there. Then – you have the syllabic (is that a word?) limitations. Like, I’m working on a song called Life is a Fatal Disease right now. It’ll be the first song on the record. And – it’s supposed to sort of introduce everyone and give the main theme of the thing – which actually I guess the title does pretty well all on it’s own.
“Life is a Fatal Disease” is a quote that I swear I came up with and that’s been wanting to be a song for a long long time. I googled it to check my originality (always a mistake) and the only thing I can find is a book of poetry published in 1997. Now – I can prove that I had it before then – because I had custom picks made back in the day that had the quote on it – and that was in 1995. So I’m taking credit for the quote.
Anyway – back to the lyrics. So – once I’ve got some music and a subject, you’d think that the rest would be easy. But for the verse of this song – for it to sound right and unforced, I have to come up with lines that are 3 syllables, 3 syllables and then 7 syllables. So like, “Crucifix, swastika, Micky Mouse in silhouette…” That works within the limitations. And it says something I want to say in this song. Like, how iconic symbols like this are all really just the same thing. Bu those few words took for fucking ever! So anyway – that’s how it is. Giving myself more time while the recording starts is either a good idea, or a bad idea because it doesn’t give me any real deadline. So most likely – the music will all get recorded and it’ll be time to do vocals, and I won’t have lyrics ready and by then I’ll probably be completely bored with the whole project and will have moved on to the next one, (which I’m calling the “Sophisticated Record” – more on that later…) and the entire SWS idea will be scraped and I’ll have wasted a bunch of time and money. So I’m looking forward to all that.
Anyway – time to organize some studio time and get shit going.