Daily Demo: Kick Me

Song #238: Kick Me (live demo) [“Save As” to download from that link]
Never before recorded.

Not all Fridays are not of the TGI variety. Some of them leave you bruised and battered, wondering if you can really make it through another week – or even through the weekend.

That was the sort of Friday that spawned the chorus of “Kick Me” this spring – a day of intellectual punishment resulting in that arpeggiated major-chord melody spinning in my brain on my walk home. I sat on the bed with Elise in the afternoon sun and worked out the chords on my guitar. They seem simple now, but at the time they made no sense!

All I had for a week or two was the chorus, until one night I was waiting on the bus at 18th and Market. No bus was evident, but urban hipsters kept whipping by on road bikes with their skinny jeans and iPod earbuds. Probably listening to something obscure, I thought. Or, jazz.

In my head blossomed the phrase “You’ve got your skinny jeans, and your Love Supreme, you left me dying on the vine while you were out on the scene.”

The rest came quickly, but in bits and pieces. Somewhere there is still an extra verse of castoff lyrics floating around that I cut while sitting at the piano. I knew it was done when I tweeted the “#1 vulture in line for my body” verse, because it sounded so right once I wrote it down.

“Kick Me” was so thoroughly composed for piano that it took me months to learn the chords on guitar, especially around the key change. I’m still much more comfortable playing it on piano.