Click to listen to “The Cause of the Effect” by Scott Davis
Context:
“I wrote it in the car on the way home and sung it into my phone, then got home, ate indomie, and recorded it. Oh, and I think you’ll enjoy the the end of the song for obvious reasons [ed.: "Obvious" because I'm a melodica fiend - NC]”
Related:
Scott’s Friend of a Friend Interview
1/2 of The New Plagiarism EP, by Scott Davis
Click to listen to “Bleeker St,” performed by Mark Fullmer
Context: A couple weeks back, as I sat transcribing the lyrics for “Beijing Huan Ying Ni,” my mp3 player got stuck on “Bleeker Street,” a Simon & Garf. number from their pre folk-rock phase (and did you know folk-rock wasn’t even really their idea?). Well techically, I got my mp3 player stuck on it, but the point is I found a new appreciation for the song’s simple intricacy. The counterpoint melodies weaving back and forth above and below each other. The subdominant-to-mediant suspensions. Funny how it doesn’t sound nearly as nice when you put it into technical terms. Anyway. I figured I could write something like that. So I did, recorded it, listened to it, and promptly concluded that I liked the original song far better. Thus this cover, born’d.
Click here to listen to “Across the Universe,” by Mark Fullmer
Context: Yep, second time this month I broke my promise not to do covers, but if the first time (“Vespers”) was well worth it, this time…well let’s just say I have reasons which will become evident on March 18th (cue mysterious Mark laugh).
On the music: I started with a concept – since I’m without access to (or competency at) percussion, why not use *rain* to provide the rhythm for a song? I’ve always had a thing for rain. I layered it in, after recording the synthesizer and vocals, and that concept led to the other ‘atmospheric’ FX. Perhaps the effect comes across as heavy-handed, given the lyrics, but hey, take it up with John Lennon if you got a problem.
Click to listen to “Beijing welcomes you,” by Mark Fullmer
Context:
I’ll be leaving for China in June for 2 years to serve in the Peace Corps. So. There you go.
The song title translates as “Beijing welcomes you,” and I think this is sort of the Chinese equivalent of “It’s a Small World.” It was composed for the 2008 Olympics and famously sung by 100 of China’s biggest celebrities, including Wang Lee Hom, Zhou Bichang, Karen Mok, Jang Nara, Li Yuchun, Zhang Zilin and yes, Jackie Chan. Apparently everyone in China knows it. It’s a catchy tune and good Mandarin practice, and I like to think of the lyrics as a good omen for my journey.
Lyrics (Transcribed):
Click to hear “New Young Americans,” by Nick Courage
Context: I was having a latency problem all AMR music month, which sounds sexual but isn’t – just a frustrating recording issues. Actually, had a tough time expressing myself all February; was misunderstood by strangers, had some half-hearted vitriol slung my way. Tried to push through regardless, but tended more easily toward hibernation. Felt like History was holding my hands down while the Future licked my face. This song is partly a reaction to that.
Lyrics:
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Click to hear “Po’ Man’s Blues,” by Mark Fullmer
Context:
The musical inspiration for “Po. Man’s Blues” came mostly from The Beatles’ “Dizzy Miss Lizzy”, with a dash of Sammy Davis Jr’s version of “Have a Little Talk with Myself”. Personally, the most enjoyable part of recording the thing was laying down the bass line. I would’ve thrown in a few rockabilly screams but I really didn’t want to concern my landlord who was next door painting. The lyrics began with trying to figure out how to avoid a mess of tired similes and the concept just got worse from there:
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Click here to listen to “The Crusades,” by Mark Fullmer
Context:
Ever since I was a kid, I always wondered what a David Lynch film about the Dalai Lama would be like. This is my musical realisation of that film.
I suppose the composition also has a personal meaning, as it imbricates three spiritualities I’ve dabbled with (in?) over the years.
The texts:
“Nam myoho renge kyoho” — Nichiren
“Door of my heart open wide I keep for thee” — Paramahansa Yogananda
“Dona nobis pacem” — Latin liturgy
Click to hear “Rebecca True & Charlie Kind,” by Mark Fullmer
Context: I was driving home from this sushi place–I don’t know, probably the only one in town–and I had my radio on the local NPR. Really local, if you know what I mean. It was Mexico music hour, apparently, and I fell in love instantly. Playing was one of those slow ballads with the guitarron plucking away at a lullaby walking bass. It really transported me, I mean really. That’s where the feeling for my song came from, anyway. The kernel of the lyrics came next, and then a rough version of the melody, which straightened itself out as I figured out the precise words. Having completed the song, I really like how the melody makes use of a single note, G-sharp, first functioning as the major 7th of the A chord, then as the 3rd of the E, and then as the added (and raised!) 4th of the D in the chorus. Listen when you’re in the mood for nap time.
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Click here to listen to “Hot Kristeva (Rap),” by Mark Fullmer
Context:
Back when I was in grad school–near the end, clearly, when all of us second-years were a bit slap happy from postcolonial hybridity and the fictive imago–a murder of us flocked to our T.A. offices in a solemn effort to compile the most heady canon ever conceived by literary scholars. Hours we should have been scanning Pope and Donne and performing dizzingly rhizomatic readings of Irish brothel music we gave up to ProQuest, to WorldCat, even to the lofty MLA Bibliography–all for this very list.
We called it “Acadaemia’s Sexiest Theorists.”
We never really finished the thing–an impossible task?–but the person I personally put at the top inspired this song.
Previously:
AMR Music Month (Introduction)
AMR Music Month – Track 1
This one’s a laffer for all you pre-Valentine’s day <3 birds, lyrics after the jump:
Click to hear “My love,” by Mark Fullmer
Quick Housekeeping: All you folks participating in AMR music month, send me your mp3s! I just remedied my own recording situation so will start posting Courage tracks over the weekend, but so far Mark’s leading the convoy. Or, you know, whatever.
Context:
“I hadn’t at all expected to get to my second song on the list this soon, but after I got home from this Thai cafe I found myself playing around with ye ol’ guitar of yore and, well, this is what came out. I originally wrote the lyrics as a poem, back in those highfalutin grad school days. I sent it out to the literati, the intelligentsia, the hoi AND the poloi. One friend, a girl, a grad school buddy who shall remain nameless, wrote back something like “Please don’t send me stuff like this again. Ever.” So now I find myself putting it to music. Anyway. The chorus came first (from a tidbit I was humming on the way home today) and the verses followed pretty intuitively. -M”
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Click here to listen to “Vespers” (cover), by Mark Fullmer
The first installment of AMR Music Month, an updated version of the cover song you may remember resonating so profoundly with me in a previous post. Without repeating myself, this version – this version is darker and more hopeful, which seems like an impossibility, but never underestimate escape. It’s also more of a palimpsest. There’s some Plath, I think some Hemingway (?), an unmistakable Ginsberg. Definitely, in any case, a textured yearning, an almost – appropriately – ecclesiastical meditation reverberating with best-of-Tarantino atmosphere. For completists, the spoken word bit at the end is from a poem in Mr. Feather’s Flies Again, “PhDville burnt down”.
Liner notes, care of Mark: “This was put down over three states — the guitar and main vocals in CA, the poetry additions and harmonies in AZ, the final mastering in NM (one time zone closer to Brooklyn).”
Addenda: Mark is currently making his way eastward from California en route, ultimately, to China for two years. The catalyst in the crucible of this particular cover, I think. Relatedly: Last night, before Mark sent this on, I was watching a BBC documentary on China and thinking vaguely about Mark’s future life there. Today an editor friend sent me a picture of one of our authors with Quincy Jones’ daughter – whats-her-name – and my immediate Rorschach reaction to their admittedly impressive foreheads was “the limestone mountains of Hunan” and, of course, Mark among them.
Which feels reflected here, everything all together – the tension between self-mythology and mounting history, the impossible abnegation of a primetime oversoul that recognizes itself in world wonders and facebook doppelganger shots. Sort of the opposite, really, of the solipsistic original (in the player at right as “younger”).
Also see: Mark’s take on MarkFullmer.com
Related:
Friend of a Friend Interview: Mark Fullmer
“The Right Shadow Spoke”: A Facebook App Novel Shout-out
Tweet, Tweet: A mysticotelegraphic fistbump panegyric to the American open road odyssey
Heads up! February is RPM Challenge month, which is basically the same concept as NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month – except for rock and roll (or, you know, whatever). The challenge: 10 songs or 35 minutes of original music by the end of February. Which isn’t that wild by AMR standards, but a few of us have decided to do a thing anyway and will be posting the results here. So watch this space!
So far, expect to hear from: Mark Fullmer, Mighty Amy, Scott Davis, me, and you, if you think you’re up to it. If so, you know where to send your mp3s! Also, hey – I think friend covers are okay.
Bat is moving back to Brooklyn and wrote a song about it (click to listen). Know anyone looking for a roommate in Williamsburg/Greenpoint starting late February/March?
this green or that green.mp3 (No Sexy Regrets version). Actually, don’t choose – I like them both. But, I was going through my mp3s yesterday for the player and realized I’d never recorded a clean version of “green,” my song on SORRY ABOUT THE SOUNDS (the colors album). You gotta have a clean version.
click here for green.mp3 redux
While clicking through the archives, I also found this – the cavalierly misinterpreted guiding principle of No Sexy Regrets: “It is an art which does not seem to be an art. One must avoid affectation and practice in all things a certain sprezzatura, disdain or carelessness, so as to conceal art, and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it … obvious effort is the antithesis of grace.” – Baldassare Castiglioni (Book of the Courtier, 1528)
home waiting for a couch to be delivered (funnily, the same couch my mom apparently has in her living room!) and decided to get an AMR mp3 player up. This one is less exhaustive than the last one – only 25 compared to over 100 songs – but should load fast and will remain conveniently in the sidebar.
If you think of any songs you want me to upload into this player, let me know – and repost if you like what you hear, right?
