Song Notes: Peacemaker

PEACEMAKER
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Scott:  The name of the song comes from the 1960s comic book character The Peacemaker, who was the basis of the Watchmen character The Comedian.

The references to the Peacemaker and The Comedian are not coincidental, but their respective symbolisms here had nothing to do with each other.

The lyrics came about because I had this record by the Dutch hardcore band Balthazar Gerards Kommandos, and in the song "Blank Stare - Sharp Shot", I could make out the lyric "somewhere in the city, some crazy army vet...".  I couldn't make out any other lyrics in the song, but that one phrase really stuck in my imagination.  I ran with the idea, writing a song about a crazy army vet somewhere in the city.

BGK - Blank Stare / Sharp Shot (excerpt) 

Frank Miller's 1986 graphic novel Daredevil: Born Again featured a mentally unstable, drug-addicted super-soldier who also had an impression on me. 

Naked Raygun had a song called "Peacemaker" which might have literally been about the character, and which was written before Watchmen was published.  I was aware that I was stealing the title of this song, but didn't think it was a big deal.

The melodies were written on a toy Casio keyboard before I had bought or played a bass.  The bells in the drum track were there so I would know when to switch riffs.

Deron:  Not sure what the clean guitar tone is all about. Also, I seem to have started my lifelong battle with rushed timing. Amy and Scott hold it together well.

Amy:  This was the first song that we learned as a band, so it brought me a great deal of excitement and anticipation…I still shiver upon hearing that opening bass line. I also think the guitar and keyboard timbres work in perfect sync with the bass to create a desolate atmosphere of delusion. These are reasons why this song, for me, encapsulates our band identity.

I never realized this before, but "Peacemaker" evokes the murder ballad tradition. I dare say we beat Nirvana's Unplugged album to the punch in that respect. 

Although the bells before the instrumental chorus served as a musician's cue to be removed in the final mix, I couldn't imagine the song without them now.

Song Notes: Stress

STRESS
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Scott:  I wanted to write a song with a fast hardcore punk beat like early Minor Threat, Bad Brains, or one of the faster Ministry songs of the time and combine that with a more Floyd-ish down-tempo part.

Ministry - The Diety (excerpt)

I wrote another sing-songy keyboard part which ended up sounding less Floyd-ish and more like something out of a John Hughes movie.  It was the '80s, after all.  In my mind, the fast part of this song was pummeling and relentless (as all the songs were supposed to be), followed by the didn't-see-it-coming slower part with dual vocals which was going to be a monolithic wall of sound, but it didn't really work out that way in the studio.  We rehearsed quietly in garages and living rooms with little practice amps... I really did not know the first thing about how to produce a wall of sound outside of my imagination.  It did work live, though it's a shame we never tried the dual-vocals at a show.

Amy:  Reading Scott's comment, I found it interesting that he conceived the song with a dual vocal in mind; I don't remember knowing that at the time. Perhaps he asked me if I could pull it off. I thought it was my suggestion, but, then again, I've always loved singing harmony to any melody I hear. In any event, I was very happy with the vocal blend. Reflecting upon more recent listens, I think the dual vocal does indeed achieve a wall-of-sound effect, especially with its intentionally blunt monotone…although, if I had performed it with Scott live, it might not have protected my intense adolescent self-consciousness enough! 

Perhaps more than any other on the recording, this song captures the irony that ran through Scott's music. A sing-songy keyboard line buffeted by a major key, juxtaposed with lyrics about maddening anxiety, our signature doleful keyboard timbre, and melody lines moving down, down, down. Not to mention the fact that this section brackets a ska-on-meth interlude of angst that finally succumbs to a machine-gun round…the sweet hard candy surface masking a bitter core. "Hiding from the rain…hiding in the rain." Incorporating its opposite only heightens the tragedy.

Deron:  The kick in after the machine gun drums still astounds. Very effective. At first I was kicking myself for my poor timing during the fast break, but it's still hard to nail even now.

Song Notes: Instrumental

UNTITLED INSTRUMENTAL
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Scott:  I have it in my notes as "Intro".  Amy might have had a title for this song, but I don't think it was ever spoken.  After learning the three songs I had when we started the band, I began asking Amy and Deron if they had any song ideas.  After a time, Amy brought in this one.  It sounded so much more advanced than anything I would have come up with.  Deron and I thought it was so good that we didn't want to ruin it.  I carefully came up with parts that I hoped would not detract from what was already a complete song, as far as we were concerned.  I thought that this song made all of the other songs - and our band - sound more legitimate.

Amy:  I actually never came up with a title.  The keyboard patch here was the same forlorn one as on “Peacemaker” and “Stress,” but the use of chords rather than single-note melodies brought the timbre to its fruition.  Listening to the song now, I can hear how much the bass line I wrote was influenced by Scott’s bass playing at the time, with its stoic militarism.  The first time I heard it on bass instead of keyboard confirmed my suspicion that it would sound perfect: I was absolutely delighted.  But it didn’t end there.  The guitar line that Scott wrote, coupled with Deron’s guitar timbre, gave the song a much-needed edge.  I love how its appearance in the second verse begins in unison with the bass, then branches out into its own form of commentary that becomes a full-fledged statement in a chorus that sorely needed one.   

“Untitled” also marks the first time that I ever presented any of my songs for others to hear or realize.  If it hadn’t been such a “safe” and encouraging experience, who knows if I would have continued in other bands… 

Deron:  Scott and I were excited not only to have Amy write a song, but were impressed by the composed quality.

Thanks to Scott for coming up with a part for me. Between shyness and inability, I don't think I wrote a single note of any of the songs. 

Song Notes: Leaves

LEAVES
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Scott:  I'm sure this song had a title, but I don't have it written down anywhere.  I think it was "Leaves" but I don't remember for sure.

I figured that if the Beastie Boys could just appropriate the drums from "When the Levee Breaks", then I could too, and it was some kind of artistic allusion.  Though not really a Zeppelin kind of guy, I thought it was one of the coolest drum parts ever, and listeners would get it.

Led Zeppelin - When the Levee Breaks (excerpt)

The song has only one riff that goes on forever.  At first I felt guilty about this, as it seemed like lazy songwriting, but ultimately I just liked it how it was and didn't try too hard to shoehorn additional riffs into the song.  I decided to actually sing and try to let that be the interesting part.  So, Deron and I were just playing the same thing over and over while I sang.  Then we asked Amy if she had something she could play over the top of it which might sound different, and she came up with the incredible keyboard part.  Again, she comes up with this stuff that makes us sound like a real band.  I have a feeling that Amy was more musically knowledgable with regards to classic rock (from her dad, maybe), and certainly a real musician with understanding of theory.  Anyway, it was years after we created this song before I heard other Zeppelin songs like Kashmir and wondered if she was intentionally riffing off of my stolen Zeppelin drum beat.  I would have never gotten the reference at the time, but I'm guessing the rest of the band did.

About the lyrics... during the 10th grade I got into the habit of skipping school.  There were a lot of fields in Plano which were the undeveloped subdivisions of the future.  So I would skip school and find a clump of trees or bushes or a ditch to spend the day in, listening to headphones, reading, sleeping, and obsessing about how much it sucked to be alive.  The song lyrics are basically a suicide fantasy about dying in a forest, and I was reminiscing about those days.

Not that this has anything to do with anything, but I while re-listening to this tape, I noticed that the similarities between this song, structurally and lyrically, to PIL's "Poptones" are uncanny.  I mean, singing in falsetto about dying in a forest over a single, looping riff.  I first heard "Poptones" in 2003, honest.  It is my favorite PIL song; maybe everyone's favorite.

Amy:  The repetition in this song conjures an expanse of landscape that never seems to end. Those fields in Plano had that quality. I always liked how, in the lyrics, the perception of being surrounded by eternally treacherous forces transforms into a peaceful feeling of surrendering to/making peace with those same forces (albeit through self-inflicted death). Friend or foe…it's mostly in your head.

I remember this photographed "leaf" of  lyrics very well; Scott made us each a copy. I remember the song title being "Leaves" too. I didn't realize what an awesome follow up to "Untitled" it was on the demo until today, 8/25/10; together, they make a fittingly mellow middle act that reflects the craft that Scott put into the song order.

Led Zeppelin - Kashmir (excerpt) 

His drum part did indeed prompt the evocation of "Kashmir" in my keyboard line, a product of growing up in a classic rock soundscape (thanks to my dad, yes). I found the meeting of references to be great fun!  I came up with the core melody and then decided to elaborate in certain spots as the song progressed: a theme-and-(ever-so-slight) variations.

Scott calls his vocals "falsetto," but they sound like full-fledged chest voice to me! :  You can always count on his melodic contours to mirror the message.

My dad punched in at 4:45", just before the first sounding of the final note by the guitar and bass…you can hear it if you listen closely.

Deron:  Really great after all these years! Everyone playing just right thing and well. Not only does it show off a great keys part by Amy, but illustrates Scott's great drum programming. He really was able to put humanity into every song. Definitely, the drum programming is a linchpin to the maturity and agelessness of the songs.

Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath (excerpt) 

Song Notes: Song For Deadman

SONG FOR DEADMAN
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Scott:  The Intro part of the song was literally the first thing original thing I hashed out on my first bass, before I had an amp.  I was looking around the fret board for "2-note chords"... things I could do with more than one string at a time, having really no concept of a chord.  The sounds rang out from this un-amped, hollow-body McCartney-type bass, and I thought "that sounds like a Sonic Youth sound.  Is this all they are doing?"

Sonic Youth - Intro (excerpt)

I found all the 2-note-chords I could find on the fret board, and I jammed them all together into a little "acoustic" riff-thing that I thought could be the intro to a song.  I was thinking about the way Metallica's "Fight Fire With Fire" started with a classical guitar thing before moving right into the thrash zone.  I figured I could do this with a punk song.  Once I came up with the Deadman parts, I put this intro in front of it and the song was done.

Sonic Youth - Brave Men Run (excerpt)

The drum machine had 49 drum samples on it, and most of them were boring as hell.  My two favorite sounds were the gated snare and gated kick, as they sounded the more aggressive, unnatural, and industrial.  I detuned each and made a drum loop out of it.  I loved the pattern and jammed with it over and over, just enjoying the beat and playing what came to mind.

The body of the song is the simplest thing in the world but I fucking loved it.  I had quickly realized that the main riff of AC-DC's "Back In Black" was just 3 open notes, and if they could do it, so could I.  The second riff was just a small piece of the intro passage, which tied all the parts together perfectly.

Where I got the idea that I could perform the song by myself is beyond me, but it worked, and I have been doing that kind of thing ever since to some degree.  I suppose I had played it over and over and worked it all out before bringing it to rehearsal.  I had envisioned Deron and Amy playing feedback or some kind of noise during the song, but neither was comfortable with that kind of improvising as I recall, and I was really OK with playing this one alone.  They thought it sounded good "as is", and I agreed.  It was the only song that I really thought it made sense to play solo.  For "Pools" or anything else at the time, playing solo was not the original intention. 

Heavily influenced by several passages on Sonic Youth's Bad Moon Rising, which is the only Sonic youth album I ever really liked.  I was even chant-talking like Thurston Moore, whether or not I realized it.

Sonic Youth - I'm Insane (excerpt)

At that age I had a lot of thoughts, fears, or fixations related to annihilation running through my head.  One such recurring image was of being hit by a large truck, so I wrote about it. 

This aesthetic - the distorted interval "half chords" played on bass, solo, with or without drum machine - it really stuck.  It is the activity that has brought me the most creative enjoyment throughout my entire life, and it started here, 20 years ago, with the first song I wrote on a bass.  That makes this song very significant to me.

Deron:  Really loved this bass part. Remember sitting at home learning it myself. Another great drum part too.

Amy:  A heroic bass line that belongs in the annals of punk history. This was also the one place on the demo where that "blanket of intense reservation" in our sound, as Scott puts it, was completely stripped. It was raw anger, and extremely poignant for that. Perhaps it represents best what he originally intended for The Comedian to sound like. The feedback at the end is classic. Scott's background as a drummer shines through in the subtle touches of his drum programming here, too. I agree that the gated kick and snare were the best samples on the Alesis: my dad had a slightly different model, and those were the ones I played with. 

While Sonic Youth influenced the bass line and vocals, the song structure and drum loop always reminded me a lot of Big Black's "Kerosene." 

As in the first run-through of the lyrics, "Truck wasn't hurt, truck was a Dodge…" was supposed to come after "You should've seen his back, man, you should've seen his legs" in the second run-through, instead of closing the song. My dad felt it was fine as is, and it was onto the next track. But the screaming vocal climax, followed by the resigned utterance at the end, works.

Song Notes: Pools

POOLS
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Scott:  The most wince-inducing song on this cassette.  I think it is not a bad song, just very under-cooked.

Ministry - Twitch (excerpt) 

I was experimenting with the drum machine, just seeing what I could make it do, and then I played along with that.  I had heard the last song on Ministry's Twitch LP, and thought 'I bet I could do that with my HR-16".  I de-tuned the drums so they would sound like industrial samples and turned them into this machine-gun noise pattern.

Anyway, it was the tail wagging the dog, and made for too much of a canned song.  The first time I played it for Deron and Amy, I asked if they had any ideas for how they could play along.  Deron said something like "it sounds good just like that" and Amy nodded in agreement.  I should have pressed the issue, but there was already precedent for me playing solo while the rest of the band hung back, so I suppose it didn't seem like a bad plan.  It really should have had everybody on it just going nuts, and I think it could have been a pretty frightening song. 

The inspiration for the lyrics came from an ad in a 1986 Thrasher magazine for a Losi skateboard deck called "Pool Dreams".  I liked the graphic on the deck.  I just took that image and ran with it, describing what I thought it would be like to be in that pool dream.  I guess the graphic was supposed to look like a dream-come-true for the obsessed pool-skater.  Despite the palm trees, I thought it looked like a nightmare.

On the studio recording, it's evident that I intended to improvise the ending, but that didn't work.  When it's time to go to the studio, one should know how the song ends.


Deron:  I think this is one of the most successful songs lyrically.  "I'm scared of what I used to love, scared of what I can't control" resonated then and now.

Amy:  I didn't know many guys into punk and alternative at the time who wrote songs that empathetically described what a woman was thinking and feeling. I really liked how her perspective became Scott's own.

I thought the song sounded fine without additions from me or Deron because it already sounded so full. The machine gun pattern of the drum machine passes for distorted guitar, and the rhythmic texture is thick. I remember Scott improvising the ending…the timekeeping of his bass line is a little wobbly, but I never thought it sounded half-baked.

Song Notes: Women

WOMEN
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Scott:  Written at the same time as Peacemaker, using my step-dad's toy keyboard before I had a bass, hence the up-front arpeggio synth line which was not Amy's fault.

The most egregious Big Black rip-off out of all the Big Black rip-offs.  Reference Ugly American, RIP, Cables, or L Dopa.  I wanted to write a song with The Big Black Drum Beat, so it was one of the first things I set about once I had the hardware.  Being one of the first songs I ever wrote, I suppose I had to get that desire out of my system right away. 

Big Black - L Dopa (excerpt)

I had absolutely no frame of reference for anything I was talking about in this song, including relationships, sex, being cheated on, or calling anyone a fucking bitch.  When the song was written, it had been at least a year since I had so much as been on a date, so if these lyrics were personal in any way, it was probably because I just liked some girl and she didn't like me back.

The toms at the beginning of the song were just there as a click track, and weren't supposed to be in the final mix.

Amy:  I have to admit that the lyrics made me feel uncomfortable at the time. They appeared to be about all women, and I am a woman…but Scott was my friend. What to think? If the title had been a particular woman's name, perhaps it would've been different (although not entirely). Of course, "Fucking bitch, need me a new one," coming from Scott, had to be modeling a style rather than expressing a personal viewpoint! I knew that deep down--look at the lyrics to "Pools," for instance--but I took the lack of irony a little personally nonetheless.

I remember the toms at the beginning being left in by mistake…one of several mistakes that my dad didn't feel the need to correct. Another piece of evidence that he wasn't about to try to understand the modus operandi of the band, generous as he was about recording us.

I chuckle now at the combination of Deron's Steve Albini guitar impression (pretty darned spot-on, if you ask me!) with my grandiosely goth-sounding keyboard timbre. I think it captured the sentiment quite well.

Of course, I managed a bum note at the end of the very last song on the demo, after all of the other instruments cut out.  Sigh.

Deron:  Another case of explaining what the guitar sound should be and not getting quite there. Although for asking a blues guy to mimic Big Black style buzz, this is closer than it could have been.

The most fun song to play on guitar. My shining moment!