South Of Heaven

Because it's work now.

I decided over the weekend that I'm going to stop the blog.

Why?

It feels like work, and I'm retired.

Oh, I like to spread information that I find interesting. But people who seek it out will find it anyway, and I'm just annoying those who don't want to know. And I just don't touch that much of the universe so I'm not going to be spreading anything all that far. I'm not going to change the world.

I started out this blog in 2004 because Girlfriend had one. But she stopped hers soon thereafter. Early on it was kind of therapy. I printed bad poems, uploaded some of my songs, some of which were okay, I think. I've written some of my favorite conspiracy theories, but they've all pretty much proven to be true and nothing's changed. Oh well.

I used to write top ten lists of songs I liked, but I don't feel like it anymore. Music Fridays were my favorites.

Friends and anyone else interested who has my email or phone number or even address can find me. Then there's that Facebook thing.

I'd like to spend more time on music and writing, but not this writing. Of course, stopping one thing doesn't necessarily mean I'll put the free time to good use, and with or without the blog I've got plenty of free time. 

So I'm just going to ease away from this and see what's next. Unless I change my mind, in which case I'll start up another blog. This one has gone on for almost seven years now.

Later.

Music Friday: Dissecting "She Looked Back"

Those close to me know I’ve been working for years on a collection of songs to record. There are many issues as to why there’s been a logjam. I won’t bore you here.

Suffice it to say that a lot of the songs are about the failure of my marriage. That means that a lot of the songs are downbeat, to say the least. Even musically upbeat songs like “Count Each Misery” are lyrically devastating:

We had our plans all drawn up.
I tried to make ‘em work.
You needed one good handyman
but you got stuck with a clerk.
I wish you were as satisfied
as I used to be with me.
Now I get up every morning
just to count each misery.

You get the idea. There are other songs in the collection about what the hell is the meaning of life, about betrayals and failures and death. And looking at it I realized that there was damned little hope in the collection. Oh, I do a slowed-down version of “Daydream Believer” which is actually a hopeful song about a not-so-great situation, if you follow the lyrics. My version of that song isn’t very chipper (like the way the Monkees did it) but rather doleful. Cheer up, sleepy Jean.

Here’s another problem. I am working on songs I wrote during my failed marriage and in the immediate aftermath when I had good reason to be a Gloomy Gus. These days I’m feeling pretty damned good about myself and my situation. I’m living with the woman I love and who loves me. You know the expression: I can’t complain. But that’s precisely what I’m doing with this collection of music. And it’s a huge roadblock that needs to be busted through before I move to whatever my next batch of songs is going to be.

I needed some positive thinking music. A song to stick in there. The “hit” off the album, if you will. I was going through some old music files on one of my computer music programs and came across one called “She Looked Back”. If I have a music file without lyrics I often just give it a name. If and when I come up with lyrics for the music I can change the name to suit the lyrics. This music is years old. I’m not even sure if I had met my woman when I wrote it. Nevertheless, there’s a moment when the music and the idea for a song and the lyrics all begin to sync up, and it’s a part of the creative process I really enjoy.

(I’m about to give a musical explanation of the song, but since I’ve never been trained in music and can’t even read it, don’t expect this to be terribly precise.)

“She Looked Back” has probably the most complicated set of chord changes I’ve ever used. You don’t normally think of country music (and this collection of songs, for want of a better term, is kind of country-ish) as having lots of jazzy chords, but this one does. It’s built around generally unadorned piano chording. If the chords are “complicated” in structure then too much action within the playing of the chords further confuses the motion of the melody. And the melody is pretty simple.

The song starts out with a simple piano riff (the song is in the key of C), the line bouncing among C, D, E and G notes with maybe an F thrown in. When the first verse starts there is the first 2m7-5-1 progression. In every key there are various chords related to the root note. 2-5-1 progressions are extremely common in pop music. In the key of C the chords would be D minor, G and then the root, C. In this song I use Dminor7, Gsustained7 and then a Cadd2. The Dminor7 adds a C note to a Dminor. The Gsustained7 sharps the normal B to a C. And the Cadd2 adds a D to a C chord. What does all this do? It makes the chord change more interesting. The Dminor7 is a whole step away from the root, and musical tension eventually resolves to the root. But the Dm7 already is at the root (in that it contains a C) while it is away from it. Likewise, the Gsus7 has a C in it, so while it is supposed to oppose the root it also embraces it. It gently confuses the ear. The Cadd2 adds a D to a C chord, so while it’s supposed to be the final resolution the D again confuses the issue. Those three chords thus suspend the resolution, which is fine, they’re the first three chords of the song, but they are giving a general resolution without resolving.

If you don’t follow you’ll have to trust me on this.

The second line in the verse starts with a Cmajor9 instead of what more logically should be a C. This chord adds a B and a D to a C chord (which is C, G and E). Those notes again slightly confuse the ear. The mind knows generally where it’s going with the melody but the extra notes suggest a G chord. In fact, you could look at a Cmaj9 as a G chord within a C chord. Oh my! The song then moves from Cmaj9 to a Bbmajor7 which does not normally belong within the key of C. Most of the chord is one whole note down from a C, which gives the melody a feeling of dropping. But the major 7 of Bb is A, and A is the minor in the key of C. So the movement downward and to the minor brings a shift towards a serious or sad point. However, the next chord is an Aminor7, entirely comfortable inside the key of C. The Aminor7 quickly moves to a Gminor7, which mirrors the falling movement a couple bars earlier from Cmaj9 to Bbmaj7. Then the Gminor7 resolves to an Fmajor7, which if this song had been in the key of F would have been a 2m7 to the 1 change. But it’s actually moving from 5 to 4 in the key of C. And that is followed by a very quick Dm7 to G7, again the 2-5 movement.

Okay, I realize that if you understand music I sound like an idiot explaining this and if you don’t understand music it’s beyond you. Help me, folks. I’m trying here.

That was the first verse. The chorus has two sections. The first section returns to the root with a C2, I employ similar ear tricks with the chording. The second part of the chorus gets tricky, immediately going from an Fmaj7 to a Bb9#11 (I won’t even go there). But the effect of the next eight bars is much like jazz comping where chord changes come fast enough so that things are interesting, but the melody itself stays simple. The chorus then resolves into that simple little piano riff that starts the song.

Here is the piano part as I just described it:

Download Piano part from She Looked Back

The bass part is fairly simple due to all of the “confusion” of the chord changes. The bass part generally roots the song and here the bass pretty much stays with the root note of each chord. In simpler chord changes it’s nice to have the bass bounce around and make things more interesting, but here you don’t want to add to the confusion.

The guitar at the beginning of the first verse plays a baritone part, pretty much mimicking the bass. The guitar has a bit of tremolo which suggests some of the old rockabilly guitar stylings. At the beginning of the first chorus the guitar begins picking notes in the chord, making the guitar part a little more interesting. In the second part of the chorus the guitar begins strumming, which adds a little power to the chorus. And in most songs the chorus is where the point of the narrative is driven home.

Here’s the guitar part:

Download Guitar part from She Looked Back

In popular music dynamics are important. Even when there’s a lack of dynamics that in a way delivers a message to the listener. It’s like sex. The intro is foreplay, you get started, eventually you build to a climax. You have a cigarette.

“She Looked Back” follows the general rules. The verses state something, the meaning or message of the song is defined or generalized in the chorus. The first part of the chorus goes: “She looked back at me. What did she see?” At that point in each verse there is speculation as to what she had seen. The second part of the chorus goes: “Some folks may say it’s fate, some folks call it destiny./I’m just glad that she looked back at me.” Kind of a folksy statement that things worked out well.

The song is vaguely about the first date Girlfriend and I went on. You know, a meeting in a public place, a little talking, and let’s see where it goes. We’d chosen to meet at a coffee shop near the beach in Pacifica. When we were about to leave the shop I dropped my hat and was looking around for it and she looked back. The song speculates about what was going through her mind at that moment. Because she could have easily dismissed me as a dork and that would have been that. So what did she see? And it kind of plays around with the little choices we face from moment to moment. How if you maybe said something to a stranger how your life may have changed forever. And if you didn’t say anything it didn’t. Something or someone amazing might have walked right past. Anyway, that’s roughly the plot of the story, although from the lyrics (which have not been completed) you don’t know that we’re on a first date. We could be passing strangers. Which we were in a sense.

Back to the music.

The first chorus resolves into that simple piano part. The drums, which had built throughout the first verse and chorus, calm down. Verse two comes, which advances the story, goes into the chorus. But this time the guitar part for the second verse does not mimic the bass but starts out with the picking. When the second part of the second chorus hits suddenly there’s a new instrument: the pedal steel guitar. In many pop songs this would be where a string or horn section would come in to reinforce the chorus. Here, in order to further enforce the idea that this is a country song, I use a country instrument. But the pedal steel plays like strings, high, holding notes. And with lots of reverb to make it fill the background.

Here's where the pedal steel comes in:

Download Pedal steel guitar on She Looked Back

(I’ll note right now that this entire thing was composed on computer. The pedal steel part was originally a string part. While it’s set back in the mix I’m not entirely satisfied with it because it’s not “pedal steely” enough. I’ll need to put in bends and such to make it sound more realistic.)

The pedal steel continues in the background through the solo. The solo itself is the tremolo guitar, but louder and boosted with reverb. It’s playing across the complex chords and has a jazzy feeling to it, but hopefully still keeping a toe in the country genre.

Then the song goes right into the third chorus. The pedal steel disappears. It’s the piano chording along with the guitar back to playing a baritone part where you get to those longer notes kind of broinging. When the song hits the second part of chorus not only does the pedal steel return, but there are also fiddles panned to the other side of the stereo spectrum. I say fiddle instead of violin because it’s a more fiddle-ish sound than, say, a concert violinist.

The second part of the chorus repeats and then the song resolves to the opening piano riff as things calm down to an end. But before the chorus repeats it lands on a solid C chord. No confusing augmentations. The lyrics are absolutely positive and the chords are too. A solid C. And that C rolls into a C-Am-F-G progression, the most basic progression in American pop music. Then the final chorus. Then the simple piano line. Done.

That’s the musical logic behind the song.

Here's the whole song:

Download She Looked Back

It's more complicated than you thought

Blood, that is.

Tuesday I had to get my twice-a-year fasting blood tests. The hard part was that not having anything but water in the morning. I'm generally not a big breakfast eater but without coffee I'm hopeless.

It was a crappy day all around. I bent over the wrong way and pulled a muscle in my back. It was bill-paying day. I couldn't manage to install some software on my computer and have that to deal with today.

But here's something from the article:

"Right now a medical doctor analyzing the blood of an ailing patient looks at something like 10 to 20 chemicals," said University of Alberta biochemist David Wishart. "We've identified 4,229 blood chemicals that doctors can potentially look at to diagnose and treat health problems."

Blood chemicals, or metabolites, are routinely analyzed by doctors to diagnose conditions such as diabetes and kidney failure. Wishart says the new research opens up the possibility of diagnosing hundreds of other diseases that are characterized by an imbalance in blood chemistry.

Wishart led more than 20 researchers at six different institutions using modern technology to validate past research, and the team also conducted its own lab experiments to break new ground on the content of human-blood chemistry.

"This is the most complete chemical characterization of blood ever done," said Wishart. "We now know the normal values of all the detectable chemicals in blood. Doctors can use these measurements as a reference point for monitoring a patient's current and even future health."

Wishart says blood chemicals are the "canary in the coal mine," for catching the first signs of an oncoming medical problem. "The blood chemistry is the first thing to change when a person is developing a dangerous condition like high cholesterol."

Music Friday: Kicking your cat all over the place

There's a commercial on TV for a local radio station that uses Queen's "We Will Rock You". Girlfriend commented that the person in the song was a disgrace for "kicking his cat all over the place". I said that always I thought it was "kicking your can all over the place".

I was right.

In our cat own cat world Arabella's gotten so spoiled that she presumes she owns us. She comes up every morning when the alarm goes on and herds us downstairs. Really. She hops up on the bed and announces, "Meh!" which is her meow. When we flick on the lights downstairs she's already sitting in front of Honeywell, the little space heater. If I'm too long getting my coffee there's another disgruntled "Meh!" for me. If I'm walking around the house she'll follow me, little a puppy. Or she gets underfoot, which raises the risk about kicking my cat all over the place.

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So for today's Music Friday I select... If I Should Fall From Grace With God by The Pogues. That song is being used to sell automobiles on TV, but I like that song.

 

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Addendum:

And this.

 

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Another addendum:

This tune is Arabella's favorite Shonen Knife song. No cats get kicked around in this video!

Well, we got our internet back

And I hear they're having trouble with their internet in Egypt and millions of people are demonstrating over it.

Two days without the internet

Around dinnertime on Saturday night the internet went out. It's now Monday afternoon and it's still out. Sunday I called Comcast and talked with their machine, which informed me in a chipper manner that there were problems in my area and that their technicians were working on it.

I guess that they're still working on it.

It's not that there aren't other options. The City of Pacifica has wifi in our neighborhood. Girlfriend had to get on (she's taking college courses on the net) so she took the one-day option, which covered her for Sunday. I could get on the net through my iPhone, but the screen's small so it's not really enjoyable to dick around for hours. Plus, my thumbs are really big so I make mistakes all the time when I'm typing on it or just trying to navigate.

My temporary fix is to sit in the Bay Area Coffee Company, sip a decaf mocha, and try to bang out a blog on the fly.

It was a kind of shock to be disconnected. This is the kind of thing I go through when visiting my mom, who is not connected. Football is pretty much over with the exceptions of the the Pro Bowl yesterday (not really football) and the Super Bowl next Sunday. I'm not a basketball fan, so I kept rotating through the TV channels looking for something.

The infomercials: get rid of pimples, get muscles, lose weight.

The Magic Bullet. I've seen the Magic Bullet commercials so often I try to imagine stories about the various characters and their histories, you know, what brought them all together to celebrate The Magic Bullet. The Aussie pitchman. He seems to be living with the American pitchwoman, at least in the story. How did they meet up? And why did they invite that cranky old woman with the ciggie dangling from her lips who never believes anything anyone says about The Magic Bullet? I'm sure there's a rich tapestry of human interest somewhere in the back stories of those characters. 

The Nu-Wave Oven. I've seen the paunchy guy who's pitching them pitch other things. I think he used to have the home chicken rotisserie gig. There are a lot of different vaccuum cleaners being advertised for hours at a time. Time-Life is pitching the easy listening songs of the seventies. Nothing like seeing Tony Orlando and Dawn again. Then there are the reality shows. There are shows about pawn shops, about guys looking for gold in Alaska. About the Alaskan State Troopers. About cops having 48 hours to solve murders. In most of those cases the perps are pretty stupid. They come in to the police station and toss the bull for a little while and then admit to the crime and get arrested. Most of them seem to be dope deals gone bad. Teenaged mothers. I caught fifteen seconds of "The Jersey Shore". One of the girls was asking another girl who was sleeping if she had any extra condoms. That's the way it is on the Jersey Shore. Either fucking or fighting. Take my word for it. I'm from New Jersey. Ask me sometime and I'll take off my shirt and show you my six-pack abs. 

Then there's the Hitler Channel, actually the WWII Channel, but it seems to always be airing a show on Hitler, or Hitler's bodyguard, or Hitler trying to get hold of the Holy Grail. There are a lot of Holy Grail shows on the various networks. I particularly like the one about the Norsemen taking the Holy Grail to Minnesota. I've seen parts of that several times. There are lots of shows on Nostradamus, a few on Nostradamus and Hitler. I haven't seen the trifecta with Nostradamus, Hitler and the Holy Grail in one show, but I am confident that one will show up. Also, the Masons seem to show up a lot.

The guys who used to get dropped in the wilderness and survive seems to have been taken out of heavy rotation because I didn't see either of them.

I watched a show on how beer saved the world, which was really good. The theory was that the accidental discovery of beer was so impressive that it began the agricultural revolution, convinced hunter gatherers to grow barley and began humanity on the road to discovery and happiness. Apparently, most of what the Babylonians wrote about in cuneiform was beer sales. Ancient Egyptians paid their help in beer. People in the Middle Ages avoided getting sick from bad water by turning it into beer. Very fascinating show. I recommend it.

Then I caught part of a Matt Damon movie where he's a CIA killer who doesn't know who he is and is running around the world killing people who are trying to kill him. I think there are three of these movies, and if you don't get bogged down in the plot the constant car crashes and gunshots and strangulations are kind of comforting. I saw most of "Devil In A Blue Dress", one of my favorite movies of all time. It's a detective story set in L.A. post-WWII, with a young Denzel Washington stuck between powerful characters in the white world and all the people around him in the black world. Don Cheadle is great as the amoral homicidal sidekick.

This morning I turned on ESPN 2. Skip Bayless was yelling and his neck veins were throbbing, but it didn't seem like there was anything to get upset about, except maybe that Comcast still hasn't fixed our internet service.

Well, the battery on my laptop is getting low, so I must head off. Hopefully, Comcast's technicians will solve the problem one of these days.

Music Friday: When Santa Gets Drunk

I was reminded this week of a Christmas tape I made close to thirty years ago. There was a very thin plot about me walking around San Francisco and saying hello to friends and occasionally breaking into song. I got the idea from little Christmas records that the Beatles used to make. Granted, there was a dropoff in quality. The highlight, as I remember, was a rendition of "The Hawaiian Christmas Song" (by Stillman and Maxwell). As I recall there was a lovely little slide guitar part on it. I've lost it, though. Cassettes don't last forever. Maybe a friend or relative out there has a copy in a shoe box in the attic.

So this year it's this guy again:

 
Here is:

When Santa Gets Drunk

Sometimes Santa can't cope
like the time he and Mrs. Claus eloped,
chasin' a dream and runnin' away
from their problems.

Along came Susie and Jean
and a pair of little brothers in between.
Ain't enough Christmas spirit to pass around
to all of 'em.

When he's in these fixes
he mixes up a drink.
His nose turns red
but thinks he's in the pink
till he rips off his disguise.
When Santa gets drunk he cries.

And on.

Merry Christmas for all, whether or not you have a job.

 

The other guy

When I was in seventh grade there were three Bob Millers. One was arrested for breaking into someone's house. Another pooped in his pants during a social studies test.

I wasn't either of those guys.

My union's branch paper was delivered today. There on page 2, under the "In Memoriam" banner, was "Bob Miller".

It's the other guy.

My blog's popularity!

I am always amazed when I get a blip in readership. The other day I got double the readership, and pretty amazing jump. Why? Not my keen insight into the political process.

No, in the wake of the Niners' victory on Monday Night Football people were searching online and found a picture I had posted of linebacker Takeo Spikes. Spikes has a huge neck. An incredible neck. And after the game people wanted to look at a picture of his neck.

So I got a boost in readership because of someone's big neck.

Wednesday tiredness

I walked six and a half miles yesterday. It made me tired.