Shooting arrows into somebody’s chapped ass

I get it. It's a pictogram!

SpinTunes4 Round2 songs

We’re back! Not like we went away, but this blog has been dormant for a while, so I’m kicking it back into high gear with projects we’ve been working on. First up – The song deconstruction on our latest tunes for the SpinTunes4 songwriting contest.

You can hear all of the songs here:
http://spintown.bandcamp.com/album/spintunes-4-round-2

You can vote on them until Friday here: (but listen to them all)
http://spintunes.blogspot.com/2012/02/spintunes-4-round-2-songs.html

As usual, Al and I bounced ideas and tracks back and forth between Chicago and Boston to get the final mix.

“A Letter to Bernie”:

Al:
This was one of those “click” moments where we were brainstorming and Tom came up with an idea that I knew we had to do something with: Cupid gets arrested for arrow abuse and has to butter up his bail bondsman to spring him. I knew our lyrics would be bringing the tasteless and wacky to the table, so to play against that I had an urge to go with some “Love Boat”-y soft-rock post-disco musical cheese. Tom was indulgent, as always.

Tom:
Indulgent, indeed. After a bunch of cogitating, we narrowed the ideas down to Cupid incarcerated and fearing for his jailtime virginity. We knew I had to sneak in some pop culture and Skyrim lines, but it took a bit to get the tone correct. It helped tie it together when we swapped in Cupid speaking like a poor man’s Danny DeVito to the verses instead of singing the whole song.

I like how the chorus comes in kinda like Harry Nilsson’s ‘The Point’. Gave it a line drawn cartoony feel to me.

“Be My Valentine (Settle For Me)”

Al: The last song we did was a wee bit cutesy, so naturally I wanted to go the complete opposite direction and do something loud and just kinda…wrong. So hence we have a story about someone who just can’t let go of a past love, even though she’s (and he’s) supposedly moved on. In retrospect, I could have tuned the guitar (and my voice) better, but keeping the energy seemed paramount at the time. Oh, well, that’s why it’s the b-side.

Tom: I like the ballad intro with just the guitar to lead into the high energy chorus. Also the ‘not all there’ feel for the guy, who just can’t find his limits on his past love. The ‘Settle repeating chorus morphed into a mantra/hypnotic type thing, which made it all the more creepy to me. It’s like he’s trying to rationalize his bad behavior by imposing his will on his past love.

I’m also going to rationalize the tuning and off key parts as being part of his demented psyche, and not because the guitars were out of tune at first. It was intentional. Yeah, that’s the ticket…

Please visit and listen to all the contestants. There are a lot of quality tunage here this round. Props to Robert Borden for getting Julia Nunes involved in his campaign to rule the popular vote! The more the merrier in the voting process.

I’m planning on doing regular updates again to this blog – lots of projects we haven’t plugged or talked about in the last few months that are long over due! Enjoy.

Tom

Advertisement