I Love it When a Song Comes Together

Jason — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 17:03:51 +0000

Our gig last Friday night really kicked us into high gear and we thought we should add a new song to our set. There are a couple of really challenging ones that we’ve noodled around with for a long time that are just still miles away from being stage ready, namely Genesis’ Return of the Giant Hogweed and Yes’ Long Distance Runaround. When we have a nice long time between gigs (like between our May 7th and June 18th gigs, perhaps) we can maybe get one of these in shape. But with only 3 rehearsals between, we needed something a little bit less challenging, yet still complex and interesting enough to add to our set of complex and interesting music.

We all really like Genesis, though not the Genesis most children of the 80′s know. Before they were a pop band fronted by Phil Collins, they were a prog band fronted by Peter Gabriel. And that’s just how we like them! There are three brilliant chapters in American Psycho where Patric Bateman takes a break from all the killing to talk about music and wax philosophically about his incredibly pedestrian musical tastes. The one on Genesis is hysterical. He pretty much says that their old stuff sucked, but they finally achieved greatness with Invisible Touch. So when it was suggested that we try a song from the first post-Gabriel album, Trick of the Tale, I was a bit skeptical.

But Squonk rocks. According to wikipedia, it’s Genesis’ attempt to sound like Led Zeppelin. Most of what I’m playing is just basic thumping on open D and A strings, but there are all sorts of places where we need to anticipate and come in a little bit ahead of the beat. Having worked on it all alone during the week between rehearsals, there were some spots where I just could not figure out what I was supposed to play, but last night it all came together in practice. We spent about 2 hours on the song and by the end it was damn near respectable. We went over the transitions, and over them, and over them, and over them, and it paid off. I can’t wait to debut this song in a little over a week! And now, for your listening pleasure…

Music Monday -Back in NYC

Jason — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:03:17 +0000

I’ve chosen this song for 2 reasons. The first is that tomorrow afternoon we should be touching down in a very snowy New York City and then driving upstate to see my family. The second is that I’ve been attempting to sing this song for a few weeks. My band has been trying to do this song for a while, and a few practices ago, we realized that I was the only one not to try singing it, so I gave it a whirl and we decided that would be mine to sing live. I really have difficulty singing and playing bass at the same time, and this one is even harder than usual since it’s in an odd meter and the bass really has to hold down the 7/8 with the drums. Luckily, our singer also plays bass, so we’re going to switch for this one. Aggressively hitting those Peter Gabriel highs is no easy task, but it’s a lot of fun trying.

I’ll post a few different versions of it. First is a snippet of Genesis doing it live in 1975 from a rare video from their Lamb Lies Down on Broadway tour:

Here’s Tony Levin and his band doing it:

And here’s the Genesis tribute band, the Musical Box, recreating the original stage show:

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I Love it When a Song Comes Together

Music Monday -Back in NYC