Tomorrow Never Knows...

Tomorrow Never Knows... I never know, that's for sure. I have just taken three songs off my album because they aren't playing well with the others. One step forward, two steps back...forward on! One of the hardest things to do is to take songs you write, record, mix, and to ultimately discard them. Sending them off to the Island of Misfit Songs... 

A month ago my friend and drummer-percussionist extraordinaire Matt Lynott came over to the studio with his "new" 60's vintage drum set. Excited, we wanted to record...but neither of us had any new songs ready, so he said off-the-cuff "Hey...let's record "Tomorrow Never Knows"...ya know the Beatles tune!" Inside I cringed. "Ugh...a cover song?" I said deep inside my inner dialog. BUT...I have this one rule. One. All ideas are worth trying. Never say no. Try it, then decide.

"Okaaay...let's do it" Tentatively answering. Matt set up his drums and I set up my Wurlitzer electric piano and my Fender Bassman amp...set up the microphones... I hadn't heard the song in years so I barely had a clue how the song went. Matt said there were only two chords in the whole song. "Okay...let's just jam a bit on these two chords and see what comes out." I said. We did a couple of takes. We went out for some Irish bar food. I then forgot about the recording for a few weeks.

Suddenly remembering about that afternoon (I guess I am getting old...), I brought it up on my system. "Hey...this ain't bad. Maybe if I put on a bass...some more percussion..." Well...a few days later I finished it. I am really happy how it came out. Since I didn't really know the original version of the song...the structure is different...new melodies...chopping up the lyrics a bit, it feels good to me. I suppose if one does a cover song, it is important to make it your own. I cannot let you hear it until the release of the album. Why? Because of licensing. I have to pay for each time someone listens to it, even if it is just streaming. So...I am waiting to get my license to use and will have to be stingy with it and only have it available in iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, and such.

Just you wait! It's a good one! Damn that John Lennon. *smile* 

I am listening to Les Baxter's "Jewels Of The Sea" album right now as I type this blahg... I am smiling. I am also thinking I gotta get back to writing new songs to replace the ones I just removed. I am sighing...

Rise...

I keep thinking I am finished with my album. Maybe I am. I need a few months to save up some money before I can release it, soooo...maybe a couple new songs might nudge out ones I thought would be released. A work in progress. I am not really Kickstarter material, meaning.....I hate promoting. Case in point, my last album "Galaxies With Long Yellow Curtains", I mentioned the release once on Twitter, Facebook, et al, on the day it came out. That's it. *laughing* I figure I will be found like a bread crumb, a shiny coin, or like gum on your shoe...somehow found and either picked up and put in your pocket or scraped off on the edge of the sidewalk.

Rise

Out to the sets! Pay need heed to the warning sounds!
Ultramarine. Don't be afraid!
Seventy breaths. The plexus of Next is willingly with you now
For an instant and forever. 

A raging sea, the ghost of me, so strange and sinking
Where a soul cannot hide
Plummet the depths, with no regrets
Sunsets of eye closed
Bursting up through the water to the sun.
Soon we are sleeping... 

Just like we're gliding along on a lightning chrome yellow sky
to the sea again
For an instant and Forever

A raging sea, the ghost of me, so strange and sinking
Where a soul cannot hide
Plummet the depths, with no regrets
Sunsets of eye closed
Bursting up through the water to the sun.
Soon we are sleeping... 

Four oceans wide...the rain and the passage will eventually rise...

Sea Horses Forever...

Having finished possibly my last song for my next album...I feel curiously unfinished and unsatiated. Perhaps this is due to my album artwork being undone from an artist I am truly excited about his involvement in my project. I plan to continue writing until he has finished the piece. This is very different for me, which I like, simply for the fact that I must give up complete control. I am really into writing on piano these days, so maybe I will continue this direction and see how deep I fall.

Songs and wrongs...

Sea Horses Forever

Day after day...

Shimmering, glimmering fathoms deep, spasms seep
Mermaid tongues in long lost Mariner's
Water-filled, water-willed lungs
Taken by storm, green light morn'
Up, Up, Up, Up under your
Blankets of night, fingers of stars, fist of light
Water everywhere, everywhere
Your Seven Sea Smile, a downward spiral
Into the water of your mouth

Day after day... 

Unending, descending my life on Leviathan
Sea horses forever, I'm a mirror and you're a mirror too
So blue the oceans parts cotton candy hearts

Up, Up, Up, Up under your

Blankets of night, fingers of stars, fist of light
Water everywhere, everywhere
Your Seven Sea Smile, a downward spiral
Into the water of your mouth

Alright. Okay. 

Day after day... 

Maelstrom...

Uppity...downitty...uppity...downitty...down...down...downitty...​

​Well...inbetweenst work, I write. I am compelled to. "All artwork is eventually abandoned"...so Picasso was once quoted. I feel that too. I have abandoned another song today, my possible ninth piece for my next album aptly titled "Flotsam and Jetsam".

​I have no idea what songs will ultimately be used for the album, though I am not one to discard and destroy my pieces, you never know. I also know my mental state heavily influences my perception of liking or disliking a song of mine. All of them have been hated at one time or another, some have been liked. Twenty-five years of doing this I know that what I think rarely matters. It is everyone else that will breath life or castrate them, and even then change their mind later. There is a scene in the movie "Basquiat" that is like a tape loop in my head...I say tape loop because it has slowly distorted over time I think, but it goes something like this: "Once you're famous, you are gonna have to keep on making the same stuff that made you famous, or they will hate you, but then...they'll end up hating you anyway..."

Now, I am not famous. Unknown, and the idea of love and hate of art and artists is complicated. Love of songs might be love of the artist as a person/personality and not the song. Or vice versa. Hate of a song is the same. I would rather be loved or hated, because they are very similar in my mind. Indifference is the killer.

Being unknown as I am, indifference rules with an iron hand. The goal/hope for me is endurance. To stay standing in all the rounds. Win or lose, I can say..."You never got me me down Ray...you never got me down..."

​Maelstrom

To know like a sinking ship
Dripping from my fingertip
The torpedoed and the damned
In line and holding hands
Oh kill me...​

It's pulling me down

​The Devil's in the deep blue sea
Angel's have no memory
Triangulating 'round the block
Nothing ever seems to stop
Stop me...

It's pulling me down

Traveling At The Speed Of If...

Spending creative energy making up tweets has always frustrated me because the tweets are gone in minutes, never to be seen or thought of again. Well...screw that, I am using them! I chopped up some drums from the amazing Matt Lynott, I recorded him just warming up on his panther sleek Roger's drum kit before we started work on another song. Then I proceeded to copy tweets from my @inthblackforest Twitter page on to my lyric book and commenced to draw arrows everywhere trying to make sense out of my 140 character assassinations.

It read like a rap song, so it became one. Granted, I am a white boy/old man from Memphis-living-in-Southern-California-too-long...but I am not embarrassed. 

The Flying Double Dutchman (Traveling At The Speed Of If) 

First flash at least until the end of night
Smoke and machine dreams hurl in black light
I'm just a hooker with a heart of gold
Everything inside him's been told except the cum shot

Traveling at the speed of if

I'm riding in the back of an ambiance ambulance
In a trace of wide-stance-circumstance
You can't murder the Devil, only change his name
It's still the same lame changing game writing your
Number on the bathroom wall for fame
Too fast to be touched and all too slow to be seen
My words may stop on red, but on yellow they speed

Traveling at the speed of if

Seahorses forevah... 

To be or to become that is the question
Now's the truth and past's the secession
I have fallen and I can't get down
The future is the promise we try to keep and lose the crown
My tongue smells like Christmas, this ain't no litmus
Rocking the Switchblade Sisters, rappin' with the Rickster,
No trickster, Saturday night stoop sitting, cement stair sitting, cement stair smitten
As I lay down some low end on her back end kitten
South paw writer, North paw smiter
Heart above my head and my feet above my heart
Without love, passion fades
Made in the shade, undone in the sun
It's all begun 1809 miles away from home

Traveling at the speed of if