With these song blogs I always post a listen link about halfway through the blog but I'm going to do some thing a little different this time.
First, go put on a pair of good over-the-ear headphones if you have some. Turn up the volume to a respectable level. If you don't have good head phones, listening through speakers will do if you place yourself between them and turn em' up good and loud.
In either case turn out all the lights while you listen or at least close your eyes. Forget about the rest of the blog for a minute, just sit down and listen.
I'll do it too, I promise, just like I recommended here in my hotel room in Toronto.
Got your headphones? Are the all lights turned off? Good.
Did you listen? Kinda freaky huh? It still creeps me out; and I wrote the darn thing.
When I recorded this song, I wasn't sure about posting a demo.
I thought the song might be a bit too weird. After all, it contained only bass droning one note for ten minutes and quasi-a cappella singing about some sort of crime that is never made clear, only implied.
Oh 'me' of little faith.
I posted it anyway, perhaps three years ago. Since then I have gotten more plays and I have received more comments about this song than anything I have ever written, posted or performed.
The comments are usually like, “Dude, This is the creepiest thing I've ever heard... I love it!”
Go figure.
Fade to the back-story...
A friend of mine told me about a particular black sheep in their extended family. This guy had a demon's breakfast of some seriously twisted parental practices. And of course, he churned out a number of highly messed-up step and foster kids.
I say: “messed-up”... I'm being polite.
If one entertains the stereotypical reputation the circus has had for being a dysfunctional enclave of poverty on wheels, a refuge for the depraved, it could be considered of collection of runaways with no where left to go.
So what kind of person runs away from the circus?
Okay, so I'm letting my HBO Carnivale days get the better of me.
One of those messed-up kids from that messed-up family had indeed joined a circus, but the circus found him a bit too depraved for even their standards and kicked him to the curb. He claimed he was quitting anyway.
He found himself homeless and near a family house that had been largely abandoned. Naturally, he decided to break in and squat for a spell.
Later, the family found evidence of his being there. He had apparently made use of what little was there in the house. He'd slept on a couch and he'd finished off an ancient box of cornflakes in the cupboard. Next to the bowl was a bottle of gin or perhaps it was vodka.
That's pretty much it.
It's not really even a story on it's own. I found it fascinating as a character sketch though and my imagination took over. Someone returning to the scene of the crime. Maybe crimes against him, maybe his crimes against others, or both.
Things I made unspeakable, simply by not speaking of them.
What had brought up this account of the family vagrant up in the first place was my mentioning a skit on SCTV, an old Canadian TV show that was the launch pad for talents like John Candy, Rick Moranis and Catherine O'Hara. This particular skit portrayed “Leave It to Beaver” 25 years later. The 'Beav' played by John Candy, was an adult, unemployed, still living at home. June Cleaver was having an affair and Ward had become a stumbling alcoholic that poured gin on his Weetabix.
The actual SCTV sketch that started it all
“That reminds me of something” my friend had said before telling me the tale.
To me, to whom cereal is a sacred thing. Eating stale cereal with alcohol instead of milk, although far from the ultimate sin, is clear evidence of a person with very few morals and capable of nearly anything!
For God's sake not the cereal man!
Poetic license changed the Corn Flakes to Rice Crispies and Vodka. A desire not to slander the name of a similarly named breakfast cereal altered the spelling.
Rice Crispies and Gin
© 2007 Joel T Johnson
He was gunna run away from the circus
But they'd already ask him to go
The old house seemed dark and empty
So he stood back
And kicked-in the front door
There was only cereal in the cupboard
Stale and getting' older by the minute
Well, sickness and hunger don't give a damn
Now for something to pour in it
Rice crispies and gin
Rice crispies and gin
There is no peace there is no sin
Rice crispies and gin
He passed out like the dead
On the couch
Years of dust brought memories to his nose
Was it real, the things he done
It's still dark when he gets up and goes
Years later
She gets chills in this place
Her skin like spiders still crawls
She knows that something
Very wrong and forgotten
Is stained in these childhood walls
Rice crispies and gin
Rice crispies and gin
There is no peace there is no sin
Washed down with...
Rice crispies and gin
All she knows is what they found
A blanket a bowl and spoon
And empty bottle deep in back yard
Hurled in fury
At the moon
And in the peeling wall paper
Scraped and scrawled with a knife
Your a fool if you think that cause I've gone
That I'm gone from out of your life
Cause every little noise gunna make you shutter
Every dream's gunna scare you awake
Your a fool if you think I'm sorry
Ain't no givin' back
The things that I take
Rice crispies and gin
Rice crispies and gin
There is no peace there is no sin
Like that...
Washed down with...
Rice crispies and gin
–
The song asks far more questions than it answers. And if you ask me any of them, I'll just say: “What do you think?”
The Recording
Only bass and my voice were harmed in the recording of this tune, period.
There are some wind chimes and some other ambient stuff that happened to get picked-up in the background. There are a couple of things that sound like a synthesizer or a guitar; these are filters and distortion effects, but it all came from bass, upright bass and my voice.
I use a looping device called an “Electrix Repeater.” Simply put, the looper records what I play or sing until I hit a 'loop' button or foot switch then it plays back the recording from the beginning and repeats it ad infinitum. It doesn't stop there, for I can continue to record on top of that as many times as I like and can even record on separate tracks so certain loops and be faded or muted while others play.
Most of 'Rice Crispies', the main droning sounds and effects, was recorded right to the Repeater.
I used several techniques to get the sounds that I did: using the Leatherman at the end of the string to buzz against the vibrating E-string; using lots of reverb and delay, playing tracks backwards; using two different parts of the Leatherman for two different violin sounding bowing effects; using the Leatherman as a slide; rapidly swishing my hand over the strings; scraping the E-string with my thumbnail right near the bridge which gives a creepy-crawly sound.
I transferred the Repeater memory card to a computer where I flew them into Cubase, my main recording software. From there the song became the biggest editing and mixing project I have ever undertaken. Even though it is only voice and bass this song is by far the most complex mix on the album.
During recording sessions recording Anna Stadlman's upright bass at her house, I rolled tape (hard disk) and spent about five minutes using the bow near the bridge to create scary, squawky sound effects. Like all the tracks I recorded at Anna's, the wind chimes outside her open door can be heard in the background whenever the upright tracks are present. As a bonus, her Spanish speaking neighbors walked by. Their talking can be heard on the final track around 5:40 though the effects make them sound otherworldly.
The a cappella style singing on the track was directly inspired by “O Death” by Ralph Stanley on the “Oh Brother Where Art Thou” sound track, an album that had a pretty big impact on my music in general.
I also made use of my rudimentary Tuvan tone singing abilities. For lack of a better description, imagine the low guttural tones Tibetan monks make. This effect first show up in my recording at around 3:10. I feed them into a distorted guitar amp effect not long after that.
I was concerned about the fact that the song is over ten minutes long, but I couldn't think of anyway of make it shorter without seriously diluting the song. Besides, as I pointed out earlier, people seem to love this song in spite of the formula rules it breaks... maybe that's part of why?
Maybe I should have made it longer?
No comments:
Post a Comment