South Of Heaven

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

Grrrrr!

I am in the middle of a very frustrating computer, uh, episode. Again it has to do with my music program stuff. What is very cool now is that you can run signals through audio effects that are digital programs. That is, if you want a reverb you can get a reverb program and tailor your sound to whether you want your guitar to sound like it's in a closet or the Taj Mahal. You know, just by flipping through different digital patches.

It's simple and elegant except because it's digital it's easily copied and stolen. Thus, companies who spend money developing these things think of all sorts of ways to prevent people from stealing them. And, unfortunately, sometimes it seems impossible to actually install a program because of all the crap you need to go through.

My instant problem is my new Amplitube Fender program, made by IK Multimedia. I got another program from them, one that emulates all those Mellotron instruments. Unfortunately, that program didn't install right. I just figured since I was working on music that didn't use Mellotrons that I'd get back to it later.

But I'm having problems with this Amplitube too. It comes with a serial number. When you go through the process of registering it and enter the serial number the company sends you two more numbers, one of them is something like 24 digits, that you have to reenter. It took the first number but then rejected the second number which was the very number that IK Multimedia had just sent me.

When I emailed the website to complain I got a message saying that I should download their "Authorization Manager" which will help me authorize the program. Unfortunately, it took me three tries to install the Authorization Manager. Then it didn't recognize that the program was on my computer and tried downloading the program somewhere else in my computer. I need the program to sit inside an effects folder within my music recording program (Sonar, if you're interested) or otherwise Sonar doesn't recognize it.

So as it stands I've got a few hundred dollars worth of software from IK Multimedia that won't work.

It would be nice if there was an actual person I could talk with. Or yell at.

Music Friday: Let's Burn Down The Cornfield

Randy Newman won an Oscar last Sunday, I think for one of his whimsical songs for one of those "Toy Story" movies. He had a funny acceptance speech.

His movie work is not why I've liked Randy Newman. It's because he's written great songs for decades. I read an essay once about his stuff, the author called his style "the unreliable narrator" because the listener can't trust the narrator in the song to be saying what's right or correct, or even Newman's point.

I'm not sure if the narrator of Let's Burn Down The Cornfield is unreliable. Well, I guess a pyromaniac is unreliable, but the narrative is straightforward. The bluesy sensuousness of the song, the danger of doing something so naughty... "Let's burn down the cornfield, and I'll make love to you while it's burnin'." When this song came out in 1970 no one else was writing anything like this. That great slide guitar is Ry Cooder.

 

Music Friday: Snow In San Anselmo

As I write this on Thursday evening there is a possibility of snow here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Possibly at sea level. It's because a very cold storm is heading south from the Gulf of Alaska. It's snowing in Portland. There's a question as to if the moisture and the freezing temperatures will reach here at the same time. Up in Napa the wineries are worried about the grapevines getting injured by the cold.

 
This is such a rare occurrence here that the local news is all a-twitter (the old usage) about the possibility. I remember the last time, in 1976, just a year and a half after I moved to San Francisco from New Jersey. I was working at the VA Hospital at Fort Miley, at the northwest corner of the City. My supervisor, a middle-aged woman who'd lived her whole life in San Francisco, went outside, gathered up a bucket full of snow, and began lobbing snowballs across the lobby. By noon it was pretty much melted away.

 
This week's song is Van Morrison's Snow In San Anselmo. I'm not sure where he's living now but back in the 70s he lived up in Marin County. A lot of rock musicians moved up there back then. San Anselmo is a small town up there. I spent a lot of time up there my second go-round as a union officer, helping them get absorbed into the San Francisco branch and dealing with union-related issues. Never snowed when I was up there. Needless to say, snow in San Anselmo is a pretty rare event. Maybe this weekend it happens again.

 
The background vocals on the song were done by the Oakland Symphony Chamber Chorus. This sounds nothing like "Gloria" or some of his other hits. This was a weird period for Morrison's music. The song was from a pretty obscure album, "Hard Nose The Highway", which is no long available on CD, which had been recorded a little to the west of San Anselmo in Fairfax, Marin County. The album also contained a minor hit of his, "Warm Love", along with a bizarre cover of "Bein' Green", a song first done by the Sesame Street character Kermit the Frog.

Must have been some good stuff up there in Marin County back in the early 70s.

Music Friday: It's raining out here on the Coast

 
Yeah, it's raining. When it rains in the San Francisco Bay Area that's when our little town of Pacifica shows up on the news. A mobile unit usually parks down by the pier and takes video of the waves crashing up against it. One of the junior reporters stands there with a slicker and at a certain point turns and gestures to pier. There often is a gratuitous mention of whether or not the Chit Chat Cafe, located at the front of pier, is open. In recent years there have been reports on the eroding cliff with the apartment house on it up at the north end of town. It's been teetering but hasn't fallen. But it's always good for a minute on the local news during a rainstorm. And then there are the reports of a landslide blocking the road at Devil's Slide at the south end of town. If if weren't for rain, Pacifica would never be in the news.

 
Wednesday night we got a very intense hailstorm that rattled the house. Arabella seemed a little spooked by it so I invited her to come up and sleep with us. She followed me up the stairs and settled herself down around our feet between the two of us.

It's been a very rainy week. So, of course, let us lead off Music Friday with The Beatles' Rain.

Another easy pick is Ann Peebles' I Can't Stand The Rain, which after four straight days is true.

Girlfriend noted that there is a confession app for iPhones now, so here's The English Beat's I Confess. That song reminded me of another cool song they did, a ska cover of Smokey Robinson's "Tears Of A Clown". Here's their version.

Our trip down memory lane brought a song to Girlfriend's mind, the lyrics of which said something about "boogie shoes". But it wasn't KC & The Sunshine Band's song. So I putzed around the internet, unable to find this song. However, I found The Fantastic Johnny C's Boogaloo Down Broadway.

Which kind of dovetails into the Chinese New Year's Parade in San Francisco coming up on Saturday. Almost every year it rains. Girlfriend and I plan to be sitting here at home with some Dungeness crab cracked and cooked in garlic butter. Mmmm.

Music Friday: Mix tapes

Exchanged emails with a friend the other day and he mentioned some mix tapes he was listening to on his commute. Actually, they're mix CDs these days. Technology. I guess if we were younger they'd be mix iPods or MP3 players built into the dash.

 
It reminded me of a mix tape I had in the early 80s. I have a vivid memory of leaving the union office after work and speeding home along 280 with it blasting away. Around five p.m. It kicked off with Alex Chilton by The Replacements. Now that song kicked it into gear!

 
There was another song, either on that mix tape or another one I made around that time. It had The Fleshtones' Hexbreaker on it. The Fleshtones came out out New York during the punk scene, but they clearly got their stylings from Sixties garage bands.

Which reminds me of another song by the Fleshtones, Hope Come Back, which has a plot about someone named Hope running away and "Daddy" being worried about her. Just the way they sang things you couldn't take them all that seriously, so you might like the song Hope Come Back but you don't necessarily worry about her.

 
Hope Come Back reminds me of another song from around that time, Carrie by Cliff Richard. Richard was considered "the British Elvis" because he was popular during Elvis' time period. His career lasted a long time. This one is from 1979, lots of drama. You actually might worry a little about Carrie than Hope, at least from the song.

 
All of this brought me back to The Replacements' song, Alex Chilton, the homage to the lead singer for the Boxtops who later fronted Big Star. Big Star covered The Kinks' Till The End Of The Day, which is one of my favorite Kinks tunes.

There. Full circle.

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.

+++

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.

 

+++

Addendum:

And this.

 

+++

Another addendum:

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

Music Friday: The Singing Nun goes disco

 
Or actually she went disco. Here.

The Singing Nun, Jeanine Dekkers, was a Belgian nun who scored big with "Dominique" in the wake of the JFK assassination when radio stations were looking for softer music after the national tragedy. It was the only Belgian song ever to reach #1 on American pop charts.

Dekkers was a pretty radical nun. She wrote a song, "Glory Be to God for the Golden Pill", about the birth control pill.

She left the nunnery and started a school for autistic children with her partner.

The disco version of "Dominique" didn't take off and a few years after that she and her partner committed suicide related to financial problems and the closing of the school. The story can be found here.

This exploration of The Singing Nun came out when Girlfriend got a little soused and rowdy and began singing "Dominique" while looking up video clips on You Tube.

Music Friday: The Smiths Project

Here is what Janice Whaley has been doing. Being a fan of the 80s British band The Smiths, she's recorded every song that they made, a cappella. Each song contains from 30 to 50 tracks of her voice, singing lead vocals, harmonies, and all the instrumental parts.

Not shabby at all. I particularly like her version of Ask.

 

Here's an article about her and her project.

Music Friday: Miscellaneous

Nothing is jumping out at me for Music Friday. I got a chipped tooth yesterday and it's somewhere between sensitive and aching. I'm guessing that this will mean a visit to the dentist, and I don't have dental insurance. Ouch.

So on to the music, which may or may not feel like a toothache to you.

 
The first cut is Masikulu Dub by Mark Ernestus vs. Konono No1. It's from a very curious album of trance music called "Tradi-Mods Vs Rockers". I like some stuff by Konono No1. Their buzzing amplified thumb pianos are just cool. My fave on the album so far is the opening cut, "Travel Broadens The Mind" by Deerhoof vs Kasai Allstars.

 
The whole thing is a process teaming up western musicians with various "Congotronics" bands. I was a big Fela fan way back in the 80s. He sang political protest songs. Now there's a show about him on Broadway. I dabbled in Soukous, and loved Lea Lignanzi's Dede Priscilla. My big problem with much African music is the problem I have with French music: It's mostly not sung in English. Some people have no problem with listening to a song wherein they don't know what's going on, but it bothers me. I recently mentioned Vampire Weekend and their recently ubiquitous song backing Honda commercials. They were supposed to be afrobeat, but not by me. The best pop adaptation of afrobeat by my book has to be Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al".

 
Where was I? Oh, other songs. I picked up a sampler album of songs by bands on 415 Records, a punk/new wave label that started out in San Francisco back in 1978. One of their bands was Wire Train. They had a jangly sound as can be heard in their early 80s tune Chamber Of Hellos. Labelmates Translator had a minor hit with Everywhere That I'm Not.

Best song of the week is Merry Clayton's own version of Gimme Shelter. Clayton had been called in to do studio work on the song. It's her voice that lifts the Rolling Stones' version up, and later she cut her own version. I like it a lot.

And my tooth hurts.