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.
Friend of a friend and AMR music month champion Mark Fullmer created a Courage quotation page on Facebook. It expires in a few days, so if anything stands out for you, head on over and slap it on the wall.
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 “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:
more
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.
more
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.
So, I like, fo reals had a ridic rad assignment all lined up for Super Snoop Sunday, which was to infiltrate the neo-golf subculture couched within some Aussie dude’s Superbowl party in the West Village and report back to my peeps at AMR. My homegirl Ellie’s ex/not-ex boyf who she like just kicked out of her pad is now crashing with the Aussie-partydude, so it seemed all drama and whatevs, but eff it. There’s gonna be golfers there??? Weird. The only golfers I know are like my dad and my gramps, so I was all set to find out what was the color a la mode for polo shirts. Collars popped up? Have golf shoes become hip like bowling shoes, informing street shoes, informing golf shoes, informing Fashion Week? Is it still all about plaid and argyle, or are they mixin it up with metallic leggings or neon harem pants? Has Tiger Woods made golfing sexy? Are these golfers gonna be total scrotties? Back when I was a teenager, my grandpa was all about trying to get me to pimp myself out to pro golfers. We’d be watching a game on the tube, and he’d point out some sideline slutz all decked out in Ralph Lauren visors and shorts and biz, and he’d say, “You know, you should really just go hang out at these tournaments like those gals… pick up a nice young pro. There’s big money in golf!” So like, I know the whole Tiger Woods shiz is totes played out (SCOOPED!!!), but I’m just gonna throw in my op to the ed, and say that it probably wasn’t Tiger’s libido that got all caaarrraaaaaazzzzy OOC. He was just trying to make all those ladies’ grandpas happy!
more
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”
more
The New Orleans Saints are playing in Super Bowl XLIV this Sunday and it’s officially a thing. I knew it was a thing – officially – when my sister, an ornithologist and the world’s foremost expert on the Swainson’s warbler, a small swampy bird that’s notoriously tough to spot, gave me the run down on Pierre Thomas (#23) one morning when I called to talk to my five-year-old niece. And my mom…I can’t even get into that. She raised me atheist – rational humanist for those with delicate sensibilities – and now she asks me why I’m not Catholic like her; it’s the same with football but with Drew Brees (QB) on the votive.
more
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
So the novel is called 1337: A Videogame Novel About Videogames and it’s an honest to goodness facebook app by Friend of a Friend Mark Fullmer, drawing on your friend-base for characters and fully interactive in a post-modern but also old school text adventure sort of way. Points for Ennui and Whimsey! A refreshable Lustiness index!
I work in publishing where we’re always talking about harnessing “New Media” and a nowhere lit. e-zine just became a major player because they tweeted a short story – badly. This is pretty much the most fun thing I’ve seen in a while, and the least specious re: actually utilizing new media (not counting “Mr. Plimpton’s Revenge: A Google Maps Essay”).
But unlike “Plimp’s Revenge” this is a whole novel: serialized and super-fun – launched on David Lynch’s birthday, 1337 (pronounced: “leet”, for I guess my octogenarian demo) has a sort of William Gibson down the rabbit hole meets Cory Doctorow in Little Brother feel to it. I hope you give it a chance, because I <3 this stuff. And while you're at it, check out the context, both wiki – linked – and “developer website“, which is extensive and more Hackers than Hackers. This, folks, is Mark Fullmer Overdrive.
