RED JACKET ORCHARDS
Get Help has been tying up a licensing project with George Vitray & Via Skyway. We've set up a music publishing company, we're going to sell some soap. Hopefully tonight represents one of the last one or two sessions. We hope you hear 'Arroz Con Pollo' in a Corel commercial or 'Chicken Taco' during the next Chris Kattan vehicle, but if not, we'll send you a cd to put on anytime you do some online shopping.
In the meantime, we got a cool email from a guy who grew up in a place I wrote a song about called Red Jacket Orchards. He felt that the song did a pretty good job of encapsulating what life was like on an orchard, recounting arguments with his grandfather. It took him back there.
The closest I've been to Red Jacket Orchards is approximately 60 paces east and 30 paces north, where I bought a delicious bottle of Red Jacket Orchards apple cider at the Tompkins Square park farmer's market one Sunday a year ago. I did grow up in Northern California, which, while 3,000+ miles from the Geneva, NY metropolitan area, hosted an overgrown pear tree orchard looming past the heights of my backyard fence, chaotic heights due to my lesser stature in those days.
Bob Mould once described songwriting as something other than creation, as an exercise (and I paraphase *very* roughly) of translation. A song isn't written so much as it's harnessed and transcribed. I've always agreed with this notion; it's a little ridiculous to credit Pete Townshend with the Can't Explain riff when someone else would've come up with it, like, 10-15 days later. Ideas rarely come from within, they're clutched from the air at in/opportune times. It's as much communication as inspiration, if not more.
A point in Bob's favor: I remember reading that in the late '70s Glenn Frey used to wake up and spend a few hours each morning at the piano writing songs, because he was too rich to work. And look at those songs! They SUCK. He harnessed crap.
But the other thing I drew from the friendly user comment about my song was that it paid off to 'release' all Get Help's songs for free in a format where people we've never might would stumble across them and forge connections to them. At the least, it gives me a little gasoline to burn, a spark to write another song that might be consumed.
In the meantime, we got a cool email from a guy who grew up in a place I wrote a song about called Red Jacket Orchards. He felt that the song did a pretty good job of encapsulating what life was like on an orchard, recounting arguments with his grandfather. It took him back there.
The closest I've been to Red Jacket Orchards is approximately 60 paces east and 30 paces north, where I bought a delicious bottle of Red Jacket Orchards apple cider at the Tompkins Square park farmer's market one Sunday a year ago. I did grow up in Northern California, which, while 3,000+ miles from the Geneva, NY metropolitan area, hosted an overgrown pear tree orchard looming past the heights of my backyard fence, chaotic heights due to my lesser stature in those days.
Bob Mould once described songwriting as something other than creation, as an exercise (and I paraphase *very* roughly) of translation. A song isn't written so much as it's harnessed and transcribed. I've always agreed with this notion; it's a little ridiculous to credit Pete Townshend with the Can't Explain riff when someone else would've come up with it, like, 10-15 days later. Ideas rarely come from within, they're clutched from the air at in/opportune times. It's as much communication as inspiration, if not more.
A point in Bob's favor: I remember reading that in the late '70s Glenn Frey used to wake up and spend a few hours each morning at the piano writing songs, because he was too rich to work. And look at those songs! They SUCK. He harnessed crap.
But the other thing I drew from the friendly user comment about my song was that it paid off to 'release' all Get Help's songs for free in a format where people we've never might would stumble across them and forge connections to them. At the least, it gives me a little gasoline to burn, a spark to write another song that might be consumed.
posted by stinkrock at 4:51 PM
2 Comments:
I maintain that the fact that "Eagles: Greatest Hits" is the best-selling record of all time in America is the single scariest fact I have ever heard.
DCC
I love the tune.
I agree about the non-process of translating the harnessed notions. Put the atennea up, see what's floating about. Maybe Glenn Frey's antennea is bent or something.
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