by admin
Archives for July 2001
This tiny trouble finally got the best of you and made a nest in your heart and a lump in your throat, and all that you possess will never mean as much to you as that one small chance you missed. And it’s nagging at your heels just like a dog trying to chew up the cover over what went wrong, because your excuses will expire eventually. Tiny creeping wrinkles tucked into the corners of your eyes – a simple smile does not constitute a suitable disguise. A flick of the wrist, a wrinkle of your nose won’t fix this – although we all watch Bewitched sometimes. But no magic act can change the fact that you got hung up on so fast phone’s in the cradle as fast as your able to get it down on the table.
You set the alarm for 5am just so you can get up with the sun as if the brightness it brings can drown out the din of all the worries your done in for. You take the keys so so careful there’s no sound and drive around until you pass the playground, but it’s too early for children to appreciated it so you sit on a swing and you contemplate the situation. Cause mourning doesn’t hold all the answers and it keeps picking at you a little faster and you use your feet to drag to a stop. But what will you tell them? What will they say? You put your hands into your pockets and you’re so afraid. Days will go by and you’re still be waiting just inhaling and exhaling that air that contains you because you’re so afraid to dilate to open up to anyone.
So, back in your room at 6am, not a moment too soon for you. You close the door, turn the key so nobody can and pull that letter out of the drawer. To you it reads “don’t bother trying anymore,” but you rip it to shreds. And go back to bed
So, should i be talking about the songs? I suppose talking about them is the way to get to know me over the course of the day, right? I still don’t know where “This Tiny Trouble” came from – i know i had just been working on a song called “Up & Down” because my guitar was tuned really low, and i tuned it to what would’ve been EADF#BD if it hadn’t been tuned so low, and i found that funny little simple riff, and then it came to me that i was singing about some kind of tiny trouble nipping at someone’s heels. It was a strange song to write because i didn’t know at any point how it would end … it was like the story was using me to write it rather my using the story to write a song. I finally finished it with that somewhat open ending, which felt like a bit of a cop-out because it didn’t say anything about what was happening in the song. It wasn’t until last month that i realized i had been writing the song about an entirely real person and the reason i left the ending open was because i wasn’t sure what was going to happen to her. I still don’t quite know what the ending will be, but i really wish she got to hear the song i unintentionally wrote for her, so that’s why it’s first. I wrote a song for her intentionally which you’ll hear later.
When i was little i used to love 45’s. For those of you who are my age but lacked musically enthusiastic parents, 45’s were vinyl record singles. The number ’45’ referred to the speed that you’d play them at on your record player. Back in the 80’s, they made record players for children… little FisherPrice affairs done up in child-safe plastic with absolutely no edges. Back when Woodland Avenue used to be a place you could actually go shopping my mom and i would take a trip around the corner every week or two to go to the music store, and i netted quite a few 45’s in the process. I have happy memories of “We Built This City” and my mother’s old copy of “Bungle in the Jungle” and some random Expose song that i’ll always associate with the smell of baby powder because when i first listened to it i had just taken a shower and i was sitting on my blue rug smelling like baby power.
The cool thing about 45’s is that they had an A side and a B side to them … the single was on the A-side of the record, and some other song would be on the B-side. Singles now-a-days don’t really have the same kind of dynamic – they’re all mostly just remixes and radio edits. But, in the 80’s B-sides were fun; they’d be a track from the album that would further entice you to buy it, or sometimes the instrumental version of a song (like the B-side for “La Isla Bonita”). However, the most special kind of B-sides were songs that weren’t found anywhere on the album that the song was released from, and today that’s what a B-side is when people refer to artists like Tori Amos or Garbage. So, today there are 25 primary songs for you to aim your ears at, but also 25 B-sides that aren’t necessarily from this little adventure, but for you all the same. Enjoy.
So, this is the blog-a-thon. Hi. At some point during my various escapades in University City i decided that between all of the posting i’ll be doing and all of the random traffic that would be stopping by, that this day’s log would be starting totally fresh … no assumptions, no shorthand, no backlinking – a one day crash-course in me and my music for the most novice of fans. Appropriately, the first BeeSide of 25/24 is Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” which i just recorded a few hours ago. And, hi.