Happy Smegdog: 7/4/10

Y'know how in the past I've made posts (probably just one, actually) about how I felt like I was on the 'home stretch' of my Extension 2 work, because I was nearing the end, and the biggest decisive moments of the process?

Well I'm totally feeling that now, except with the HSC as a whole. You can bet I'm gonna be making another one of these posts when I'm weeks away from the final exams (if I'm not y'know, studying like how I should be), but now that the trials are drawing closer, and I realise that I've only got a few weeks to prepare for them, I'm starting to realise just how pressed I am for time, and how much I need to get my game face on. More than ever, it feels like every single day where work or revision or anything isn't done is a day I want to kick myself.

BUT DON'T FEAR GUISE, this isn't just gonna be another post about how I've reached an epiphany about studying and my future and whatever else. This post was supposed to be about all the things that I really feel like doing this holiday. I don't know if it's just cruel coincidence that I feel so driven to pursue all these things just when I can't, or if the prospect of having to start actually working is having some crazy effect on my mindset that I'd know more about if I read some psychology textbooks or talked to Nick Lee, but here they are:

1. Recording more garage punk songs

chuckbear: slides and volume swells

I would absolutely love to have another mad recording sesh at Bacon's - too bad he's spending the holiday moving to Lilyfield. Since it was too much trouble to get a drumkit to his place, we went super DIY and used Guitar Pro drums, which went out of time because the laptop lagged, as well as preset keyboard drums on this ancient keyboard he had. I remember I wrote half the lyrics on the train there and the other half with the aid of the rest of music krew - thinking back, that probably wasn't the best way to treat an assessment task, but turns out Music is a subject where you can get marks (18/20) for being as ignorantly, stereotypically punk as you possibly can:

My hair's a mess and my shoes are scuffed,

Your rules are screwed and I've had enough,

I've got better things to do yeah (hey hey hey!),

than try to impress you, yeah (hey hey hey!)

I don't need your future coz your future sucks,

I don't need your future coz I've had it enough,

No future, no future for me.

Wow Genvin, isn't that last line pretty much a Sex Pistols line? Did you actually get 18/20 for stealing Sex Pistols lyrics? Pretty much, yeah.

Ain't no other studio like Bacon's upstairs landing. It took me maybe four attempts all up to get the vocals perfect (or as perfect as improvised garage tunes can get), and even longer for us to get all the group shouts done properly, and by that time, Bacon's sister Rikki had probably died from laughing too hard on the couch downstairs. So had everyone else, actually, but I'm not even joking when I say that I quite often listen to this on my iPod because if a band made music that sounded exactly like this, I'd be pretty nuts for them. Too bad no one else thinks so, besides maybe Stephen and Santi. Especially Santi actually, he seems to love it.

Wow, it's actually my 103rd most played track. Right up there with a bunch of my favourite bands, too.

Garage Bear: The song again, in all it's snotty glory.

Anyway, what I was saying was, I'd love to record a few more tracks that I've been working on for the past few weeks. As ridiculous as this sounds, I've been having difficulty writing something as choppy and obnoxious as Garage Bear, but I hope I'm slowly getting there. At times it borders ridiculously close to White-Guy rock, which would make sense since I listened to a lot of the Hives and the Vines when I was trying to draw inspiration, but hopefully the Black Flag and Minor Threat influences balances it out.

2. Bob and Genvin's Infinitely Depressing Playlist

Probably not the absolute best time to be embarking on something as time-consuming as this, but here's the gist: basically, Bob and I, who have now been joined by Stephen, are getting as many people as we can to contribute the saddest songs they can think of, and compiling all these sad songs into one sagging mass of misery in the form of a playlist.

You might be thinking, hey Genvin, that doesn't seem so bad - it's just downloading a lot of songs! Right? No, stranger, I'm afraid it doesn't stop there, because we're going one step further with this madness and making an accompanying booklet to go with the playlist, much like the album booklet with liner notes of your average album, only hand-written and hand-drawn, with hand-numbering on the CD.

But wait, it doesn't stop there either! Okay I suppose it does, this last step barely counts, but we are also going to be making copies of the booklet + playlist CD and distributing to whoever would like it - most probably the same people who contributed. Time-consuming? Expensive? Probably not the best thing to be pursuing weeks before your trials? Too true, stranger, but we've got high hopes, we've got high hopes, we've got high apple pie in the sky hopes.

What I've got of the list so far. Props to Jana for being diligent with the sending of her contribution (Y)

3. Fur concept album

Yep, I am that bigheaded - I am actually thinking of writing a set of songs that represent Fur, my major work. Been listening to the Antlers a bit too much there, Genvin?

Probably.

What's more is that I'm not even particularly proud of my major work anymore - at least not at the moment. I'm supposed to be spending a fair portion of this holiday working at it and adding the final touches (which for me, is a lot, seeing as how I've barely finished), but since I'm the laziest man alive, I haven't been keeping up.

You've probably noticed that I've been mentioning concept albums a bit lately (no you haven't). Contrary to how it may appear, I haven't in fact been greatly inspired by Metapodestroyer - however great an album that was - and, as I just suggested, a lot of inspiration was in fact drawn from Hospice by the Antlers.

What's that? You want to know what Hospice is about? WELL I'LL TELL YOU, BECAUSE THAT'S HOW MUCH I'M ENJOYING IT AT THE MOMENT, SORRY STEPHEN. It's basically the story of a guy who has to take care of Sylvia, a terminally ill patient (I can't remember what exactly is killing her - come to think of it, I'm not even sure it's specified) who's mentally abusive to him. Not my intention to give away the plot, but she dies in the end. In the words of the vocalist/primary songwriter:

... Genvin, you didn't even try to put it into your own words.

You're probably wondering what genre this totally mindblowing amazing release is, so I'll just come right out and say that most of the album has this sort of anthemic-ambient kind of sound, which is probably enough for you to conclude that you don't really want to listen to it. If you are feeling fun though, you could totally check out the most accessible track of the album here, I think it's great. And in any case, I really like the album art - I really like the simplistic way the hands are drawn. I wish I could draw like that.

Anyway, there are a myriad of reasons why creating music based on my major work is a bad idea.

a. For starters, I could take all the time I'd spend trying to figure out just which scale (or modality, gasp!) suits a story of a talking cat the most, and spend it instead on other things. Like, oh I dunno, my major work.

b. I kinda covered this in my first point - I'd be spending a ridiculous amount of time trying to sort out scales and etc, so much that I'd eventually reach the conclusion that I'm actually rubbish with composing anything beyond the choppy three-chord tunes I always churn out. There's also the fact that I'd be limited to the most rudimentary expressive techniques ever. Think about it - an album where the entire first half is supposed to represent dry, grey routine? This is gonna turn out like Sun O))), if you made it less dense, and put some really sparse melodies in there... and then made it even more repetitive. Now how would that sound? Exactly.

c. I'm pretty sure it takes more than a computer drum program, a beginner keyboard (I'd call it a synthesiser to make myself seem a bit more legit, but not even I can delude myself into thinking that this plastic entry-level piece of shit is anything more than it is) and an authentic Stagg guitar to tell a story. That's okay guys, I'll just - oh wait! Not only are those the only things I have experience composing music in, but also the only instruments AVAILABLE. AT ALL. Oh right, and bass too.

All that aside though, this is something I'd really like to pursue once the HSC is up / I get better at writing music.

Since this is a ridiculously long post, I'm going to publish this first, then start up a Part 2.

Stay chooned, ravenous Smeg-fans - next post, I talk about even more things that I want to do this holiday instead of studying, featuring my acoustic guitar, the Rabbeatles, shoegaze, mathcore, atmospheric-ambient-soundtrack music with the J-A-B, and probably a whole heap of other things.