So in early July I took a trip to Las Vegas after I'd been working a ton and when I got home I was exhausted and I got really really sick. It lasted for a month and a half and when I was finally able to record this last weekend, I had to retrain myself to sing because my lungs were so weak. I wrote this in 2004 and revised the lyrics this weekend to make it make my vibe. It turned out better than I ever thought this song would turn out especially the guitar solo. Have I mentioned I love my strat? Serious guitar crush + it's white...Hope you like the jam.
Coincidentally it's shark week. I didn't plan that. This is from "The Life & Times of Shawn Mathes" album which I started working on in 2008 as a tribute to one of my best friends. Vocals by Shawn Mathes. Co-produced by Stefan Miller. This is a totally experimental project and was originally branded under the band name "Kung-Fu Classes For Women." Please enjoy.
As I mentioned previously, I'm working on "Wristbreaker" which is your favorite album ever. I mean, how could it not be? This is one of my favorite jamz I've ever written due to the fact that it includes gasoline, trampoline & monkey references, combined surfing and anarchy references, a declaration to unicorns, a wizard of Oz reference and possibly one of my favorite hooks. The true meaning(s) behind this song are many and I will not get into it but let's just say that someone said something unkind once and it stuck in my head so I had to purge it. Random thought: I hope someday someone writes fan fiction about my band...that would be incredibly epic. Oh, this song has lots of guitars and I had to cut some out because the mix was muddy. I hope you like it. I'm now caught up.
So I wrote this a few weeks ago while I was thinking about Pavement & listening to lots (or some) Weezer. I realized after the fact that it's almost kind of Blue Album sounding which I like. I dig the vibe of it and it's different from a lot of the jamz in that it's kind of happy. I know that sounds bad but the reality is I write a lot of sad sounding songs due to where I used to pull from. I'm changing that a bit or at least trying and this is an example of one of those songs as is "Oh Fuck...We Got Cats & Blue Rainbows Tattooed on our Backs Because We Were Really Fucking Hammered." or "Blue Rainbows, Pt. 2" for short which has never been or never will be released and has not even been written. Now that I've thoroughly confused you, please enjoy El Slacker Song. I'm actually almost caught up thanks to my terrible illness so I might post about one of the albums tomorrow.
In January I was working a ton and exhausted and noticed early in the year or late in 2009 (I can't remember) that there was something going on with my wrist. It was incredibly frightening because when you google health problems you always get led to cancer. So, I was exhausted, couldn't play guitar because it hurt very badly and I thought I had cancer. Additionally, I was starting to have problems with other areas of my life and the days were rough. If you fast forward to a month or so ago, I was thinking about this time and it amazed me how messy I was. This inspired me to start working an album that was intentionally sloppy/heavy/chaotic basically mimicking how I felt from December - March (up until I wrote Hey, Angel... which was the turning point). So, "Wristbreaker" which is named as an homage to one of the best records ever made may or may not be released in the near future. So far two tracks are done and I really like it although I've shamed myself a bit as I had originally intended every song to be as lyrically incoherent as "tourette's" by Nirvana and I wussed out (similar to the infamous remixing of In Utero to be more radio friendly). So yeah, "Broken Wrist" is short, heavy and chaotic and I really adore the songs coming from these sessions because they are just so raw and every time I record one I just think about how awesome it will be to play live because they are so fast and chaotic. Anyway, longer post. Hope you like.
