Travel Light on Your Road

For some reason, I was reading an article about traveling songs and I remembered a song I’d written a few years ago but not posted here for you. I have the feeling I let it out somewhere though, so apologies if you’ve heard it before….

As much as I love seeing new places and experiencing hotel culture (yeah, I’m one of those weirdos that actually enjoys hotel rooms), I’m not particularly fond of traveling, and I think the main reason can be found in one essential preparatory act: packing. I’ve never found that sweet spot of bringing along just the right amount of items with me on a trip. Always too much or too little, but I’ve found that the less I’m toting around with me, the more pleasant the journey.

Some say modern developments in technology make it unnecessary to actually have to travel anywhere, allowing you to experience and interact with distant places and cultures without leaving your home. As great as that sounds to a homebody like me, we both know that one hasn’t really been to a place if one hasn’t eaten the food, breathed the air, and smelled the skin of the locals. But it’s interesting to me that I’ve driven down roads in Hawaii that I’d swear were exactly the same roads I’d driven down in Alabama, and sat in a park in Spain that you’d be hard pressed to convince me wasn’t a park in San Antonio. There’re lots of differences in this vast and varied world we live in, but there are also many, many similarities.

Now this song obviously isn’t really about traveling in that sense. It’s just a mantra for freeing up your mind and your body as you take your journey down life’s lonely and exciting highway. (And remember what the George-mouse said.)

Also don’t forget: There’s a 5-song EP called A Blizzard / A True Storm that’s available as a free download exclusively for Marble Tea Facebook friends. Come be one and get your copy!

I’d Rather See You Than Avatar

Not too long ago, I received an email from Hackydog that simply said,

I have a title that could use a song:
‘I’d Rather See You Than Avatar’

I’m not sure why exactly, but I connected with that and within about an hour had recorded the song presented to you today. It’s silly and absurd, but it’s also very short. All the things Avatar is not, as I understand it. I was a little concerned about the questioning of my pronunciation of minotaur, but I’m happy to find that the American Heritage Dictionary, at least, backs me up.

So no, I haven’t seen that movie, and I doubt I will for quite a while. Probably I’ll eventually check it out on DVD (or Blu-ray or whatever happens to be the technologie du jour down the road), but I’m currently suffering from that nagging inability to separate the man from the art thing with James Cameron. I can’t say that I’m a big fan of any of his films – well, Terminator was cool and the sequel looked really good – and I don’t think I’d enjoy having dinner with him under any circumstance I could imagine. Your mileage may vary of course, and I realize it’s a shame to let my personal hunches about someone interfere with my enjoyment of their creations, but you know…that’s how I feel right now. I will say that his hair looked really good on SNL a couple of weeks ago, though.

Have you ever liked or not liked something just because of the person behind it? You can be honest with me.

And oh yes, in case you don’t know: I’ve just released a 5-song EP called A Blizzard / A True Storm that’s available as a free download exclusively for Marble Tea Facebook friends. Come be one and get your copy!

You can hate me if you want, but Catcher in the Rye is my least favorite book by J.D. Salinger. In fact, it’s not even one of my favorite books by anybody. And yet, oddly enough, Salinger is one of my favorite writers.

Certainly I recognize the importance of Catcher in shaping the lives and outlooks of any number of angry young men (and, perhaps, the women who love and hope to understand them), and I realize too the profound cultural impact it’s had. However, it seems to me that Salinger was just warming up with that one.

I was sitting on an airplane once, reading yet again my worn paperback copy of Franny and Zooey, when the gentleman next to me said he had heard Salinger had only written one good book, that Holden Caufield one. This was probably twenty-five years ago, and the man appeared to be about the age I am now, though much more successful judging by the fabric of his suit, the shine of his shoes and the length of his belt.

I looked at him with every intention of explaining why the other books were at least as worthy of the praise – my God, the spiritual themes, the poetry, the letters, that wedding, the soldiers, the bathtub, the apartment buildings, the cigarettes…Seymour Glass, of all things beautiful and holy – but all I said was, “No, the others are really good too.”

How could I explain to him the magic and power of that slim little book I held in my hands; the way, after each reading, I’d slid into a cocoon of sorts, a place not completely unlike Murakami’s deep well where time and place and I were indistinguishable, and from which I emerged each time with renewed vigor and creativity as though I had indeed been a caterpillar waiting to blossom into a colorful butterfly, now free and vividly alive in the world – in it and of it – embracing and lifted by the spontaneous and erratic breezes of life? “No, the others are really good too.”

That’s all he needed to know, and probably all you need to know too if you haven’t read them. So do. Please.

Now J. D. Salinger has died and the irony is that we may see more new work from him than we did during his lifetime, if the rumors are true. And I hope they are.

RIP, Jerome David Salinger.

9 Stories
He gave me Nine Stories by Salinger
And I gave them all to you
Will you think of me every time Seymour dies?
Because you know I was over that line

I’ve been dreaming
I’ve been dreaming
I’ve been dreaming about bananafish and you….

Here’s a video with the 9 Stories song and some drawings by Tom Hachtman:

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Let’s start the new year’s gaggle of songs with an instrumental, shall we? Above is a recent one I wrote & recorded for an independent film about an ill-fated Hindu dating service. The film’s a comedy, and some of the humor reminded me of those over-the-top sixties films that I love so much (I mean, those colors and miniskirts are outta sight, cat daddy!). In the usual manner of things, I’d recently re-watched The Party (1968) starring Peter Sellers, and it seemed a not surprisingly appropriate place to start for a bit of musical inspiration.

Here’s the trailer for that wonderful film if you’re not familiar:

I love that movie. It’s weird because it goes from madcap to nearly contemplative quite frequently, alternating, as many parties do, excitement and boredom along the way. Sellers is brilliant, and this was the only non-Pink Panther pairing he had with filmmaker Blake Edwards. You should know that…it might help you in a trivia game one day.

So now let me ask you: do you dig those sixties films, or do you find them tedious?

Well a happy Birdie Num Num to ya in either case!

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Some will say 2009 was a good year, and others will say it was a bad year. Me, I hardly noticed it, slipping by as quickly and subtly as it did. Plus – just as many folks give up meat or smoking because they’re bad for you – I’ve been trying not to let too much concern about time into my life. I mean, what is it anyway? We’ve done well to control it with calendars and clocks, but we haven’t actually tamed it, have we. I imagine it feels it’s the one that has us trained, if Time could think such a thing or anything at all. And perhaps it would be right….

The alarm clock rings. Time to get up. There’s a traffic jam. I’m gonna be late for work. Lunchtime? I’m feeling hungry. Five o’clock whistle blows. Yabba dabba doo, time to slide down that dinosaur! Dinnertime. Bedtime. Does anybody really know what time it is?

Well, whatever. It’s time to say goodbye to 2009. Celebrating that with a video for my song Say Goodbye, which I pulled together in iMovie with various clips from Megahertz, the wonderful movie you’ve heard me speak about that concerns Nikola Tesla and a soul-searching DJ in the after-life. Keep an eye out for it…it’s coming soon. You should download my score for it here for free. You can also download Say Goodbye and the EP it’s from for free, but you’ll have to enter your email address to join my mailing list. I’d explain why I think that’s a great deal, but dinner’s almost ready so I’m running out of time.

I hope you enjoy the video, and here’s to a splendid new year for you & yours. Happy time traveling!

I love snow. Probably because, growing up in the Deep South, there wasn’t a lot of it around. Oh sure, we managed a flurry most years, but accumulation was a rare and meager thing: one inch and the whole town shut down. White Christmas? I didn’t know what that song was about until I was a teenager, since having snow on Christmas Day was never even a remote consideration.

Living in New Jersey these past nine years has allowed me to get to know snow better, and I still love it. Yes, it comes on big and brawny sometimes, and shoveling it is a royal pain, but as long as it’s cold outside it might as well be pretty, says I. And it is, at least until it gets mucked up along the roadways with all the dirt and grime of life and travel. Ah, but we must take the black with the white. Always.

Here’s a view out my window when I was recording yesterday:

And that brings us to this month’s song. Written by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne in July 1945 (in Hollywood of all places), it’s always been one of my favorites of the Holiday Season. But that’s kind of a shame really, that it’s so closely associated with Christmas…there’s no mention of that joyously celebrated day anywhere in the song, its authors were Jewish, and it was written in the middle of the Summer in Hollywood, CA for Pete’s Sake!

As lauded as the these two songsmiths are, I know that I’m not the only person to think the opening couplet should have been written slightly differently, and I took the liberty to do just that. You’re welcome.

So – while I present this version as a Christmas song, even though the tone is more somber than festive – remember that it’s okay to sing it whenever snow may appear throughout the year. Even if you’re noshing Gefilte fish by a pool under the bloody red sun of phantastic L.A.

Happy Holidays to you!

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Thanksgiving came and went without so much as a burp, if by burp you mean song (and I do). This song was intended to be a song for that holiday, but well you know me and so it’s moved along and become probably just what it wanted to be all along: not that at all. Oh there’s still some Thanksgiving in it – we haven’t finished all of our turkey, after all – but it’s mostly Tom Hanks giving you a hard time, not me. Just let it go….

Coincidentally, if you believe in that sort of thing, Mr. Hanks appears on David Letterman tonight. I did not plan that.

IS TOM HANKS GIVING YOU A HARD TIME?

Tom Hanks is a movie star
Cadillac is a fancy car
The Pavilion was my favorite bar
But it’s gone gone gone

Tom Hanks in a rocket ship
Section 25 From the Hip
Can’t kiss if you got no lip
It’s just gone gone gone

It’s gone, all these things have gone
But I’m happy for the other things
That keep coming along

Bosom Buddies and a face like mine
Slice of pizza and a jug of wine
Skinny-dippin’ back in ‘89
It’s just gone gone gone

It’s gone, all these things have gone
But I’m happy for the other things
That keep coming along

Is Tom Hanks giving you a hard time?
Is Tom Hanks giving you a hard time?
Is Tom Hanks giving you a hard time?
Just let it go, let it go…

Ol’ da Vinci never had a clue
That I may be more than quarter Jew
Or about the things you like to chew
He’s just gone gone gone

Is Tom Hanks giving you a hard time?
Is Tom Hanks giving you a hard time?
Is Tom Hanks giving you a hard time?
Just let it go, let it go…

Tom Hanks on a fated trip
Jungle dancing in a sexy slip
Give me one of those I’d like a sip
And we’re gone gone gone

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Perhaps there’s no better time for a sacrilege than Halloween.

As the end of this month was drawing nigh and I was finally finding some time to work on this month’s song, I decided to do something in the frightful orange spirit of this holiday. I’ve been catching up on the first season of True Blood (having abandoned it last year as too not for me after watching the first episode…vampires don’t socialize with humans, after all), and I’m enjoying it now. I somehow got sucked in – if you’ll allow me to stick my neck out and say that – for the second season and so had to go back and find out the things I’d missed. Netflix to the rescue.

Well, two days ago I was driving around listening to the Velvet Underground’s Loaded, and an idea hit me. I hit it back, because there was no way I was going to take one of Lou’s songs and bastardize it into a tune about a TV vampire. I’m not Weird Al Yankovic you know. For better or worse, I’m not Joe Louis either so I succumbed to the idea’s punches and have carved out this hopefully enjoyable quick, rough and nasty for you. Happy Halloween!

Here’s the original for you:

LONESOME VAMPIRE BILL

Lonesome Vampire Bill cries the blood red tears
Lonesome Vampire Bill, you’ve got to see him
Face your darkest fears

Lonesome Vampire Bill cries the tears so red
Ever since the Rebels fell, cries the tears so red
Drinkin’ True yeah, suckin’ Sook
You gotta see him go
And all those fang-bangin’ girls
Well they just don’t know

Lonesome Vampire Bill cries the blood red tears
Lonesome Vampire Bill, you’ve got to see him
Face your darkest fears

Oh, Lonesome Vampire Bill still cries the tears so red
Up around Merlotte’s Bar she can’t see inside his head
Sometimes even Shreveport, down by Fangtasia
And all those fang-bangin’ girls
Oh well they still just don’t know

Lonesome Vampire Bill cries the blood red tears
Lonesome Vampire Bill, you’ve got to see him
Face your darkest fears

You’ve got to see him when he looks at her
In the evening and she’s in distress
You got to see all the people scream and shout
They call him
Lonesome Vampire Bill
Lonesome Vampire Bill
He goes, “Aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrgh!”

Lonesome Vampire Bill cries the blood red tears
Lonesome Vampire Bill, you’ve got to see him
Face your darkest fears

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When someone tapes your voice, does it sound strange to you when you hear it played back? Mine does, as it does for so many people. The sound I hear myself making from inside my head, from within the acoustical confines of my skull I suppose, is often embarrassingly different from the sound emitting from the tape recorder. And I wonder if this implies a certain lack of self-awareness, or if it’s a matter of the way sound behaves in different spaces (inside a head, for instance, as opposed to out in the open air or magnetically captured onto tape). I have a feeling it’s the former, unfortunately.

Singing can be a whole ‘nother thing because we’re making noises with our voices that hopefully equate to certain notes on a musical scale. Often, a singer hitting wrong notes in a song can ruin the performance, but at other times it doesn’t seem to matter. Lloyd Cole once said something like, “I learned from Bob Dylan and Lou Reed that you don’t have to have a great voice to be a great singer,” and I think that’s true. Most of the singers that I like would rarely be accused of having great voices, but there’s something about their delivery that just fits the songs they sing.

And that, in a weird sort of way, brings us around to this month’s entry in the ever-rolling Marble Tea songfest. I’ll be the first to admit that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing when it comes to singing (or tuning instruments, keeping time, etc.), but when I was recording this song I had the definite idea in my head that I should sound like Matt Berninger of The National in order to fully convey the mood I was hearing in my head. And in a way, in my head, I did indeed sound like him. The tape, on the other hand, reveals a totally different story.

So, if you really want to get a feel for my intention with this song, put yourself in my head and we’ll be somewhere in the ballpark. It’s just another ditty about the magic of universal consciousness after all….

BECAUSE WE ARE THE SKY

I’ll tell you one thing I have learned
There’s never a good time to be burned
On a stake
With your hands pure and soul like silver
And your eyes wide to life’s one river

I’ll give you one night to rehearse
The melody and the phrasing of the verse
Of the moon
That reflects into your dark cover
Telling you there is just one lover

And it knows it’s you
And it knows it’s you

So we ride, because we are the sky
And we are the sky so we ride

I’ll take you away from your heart
And we’ll glide along like sisters in the dark
To reveal
That our shadow selves are anchored to us
Like the wave of light that shines right through us

And you know it’s you
And you know it’s you

So we ride, because we are the sky
And we are the sky so we ride

If you’re playing around on Facebook, come be a friend at facebook.com/marbletea, and also be sure to check out the progress of my forthcoming EP at trumanshat.wordpress.com where I show you how you can make your own fun recordings from the comfort of your home, singing chops not required. Thanks for listening!

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Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of Truman Capote, one of my favorite writers.

Truman possessed that glorious ability to dream-up an excellent story and then craft it into perfection with the precision and grace of a masterful wordsmith. From humble beginnings, he rose to enjoy the riches of celebrity, and floated about in its high circles with effortless aplomb, soon charming himself into the talks and toasts of many…just as he had expected. He was also quite the tiny tyrant at times, often becoming an embarrassment to himself and those around him with his uncontrollable boozing and fiery tongue.

His speaking voice was an instantly recognizable extension of his appearance and personality, and he was always an entertaining guest when making his myriad talk show appearances throughout the 60’s and 70’s, often baffling the young me with his curious persona. How could I have known that this somewhat toadish man-boy had once been young and handsome, a thrilling fireball of creativity and joie de vivre? (That’s him in 1949 on this Smiths’ single cover from 1985.)

But it’s his writing voice that gets into you. And, in the end, it’s that writing voice that will speak for him throughout the ages.

And if you’re wondering, my favorite book by him – generally speaking – is Music for Chameleons, a collection of short stories and essays. But that may change with the next one I revisit.

Years ago, in his honor, I’d written a little tune called Truman’s Hat that I hoped would help me get a better handle on him, genius bag of contradictions that he was (he reportedly once said that he was more interested in the truth than he was in the facts). I recorded the song a few times throughout the years, and this month’s mp3 is a hopefully hypnotic instrumental version of it.

A full version with lyrics appears on my next “official” release (plug plug), due out early September. I’m doing something different this time in that I’m going to try to chronicle not only some of the recording of the EP, but also the ways I actually go about getting it onto CD and then promote and sell it…cheaply and mostly effortlessly of course. My desire is that some of you who might think to yourself, “I oughta record some music and put it out there” will find some inspiration and guidance to get you started. So if you want to follow along, check out the new site I’ve set up for it here.

And, lest we forget:

Two quotes from Truman Capote:

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

and

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make.

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I share a birthday with Thomas Edison and claimed him as a hero from a very young age, even going so far as to cause chemistry set explosions in my closet many mornings before walking off to school. I’ve had many heroes since, but find it slightly ironic that one of my latest icons was an arch-nemesis of Mr. Edison’s, a Serbian visionary whose name even to this day isn’t given the credit it’s due.

With that in mind, I’m pleased to announce that A Score for Tesla: Music from the film Megahertz is available for download, and FREE even until the end of this month! Donations entitle you to higher quality sound files, if you’re of an audiophilic nature.

MHz (Megahertz) is an enlightening film from Jordan Graye at Anam Cara Productions that’s about a self-destructive radio DJ who encounters Nikola Tesla in the afterlife, and the ways they help each other work through the tattered energies of their lives. While the story deals with the emotional and spiritual dramas of the characters, it also provides quite a bit of insight into the enigmatic inventor’s personal and professional life as it aims to set the records straight about Tesla’s massive contribution to the modern world. An excellent film, and I was honored to be involved.

The film also includes a few Marble Tea tunes, as well as some music from another of my heroes, the recently coastal Max Eider. Sorry, folks…you’ll have to hunt those songs down elsewhere. Also, I’m greatly indebted to Stephanie Bissonnette for her help and expertise in whipping the artwork for the Score into shape. Thanks, Steph!

Now, about this month’s free mp3. The original version of this song appears on the I’m Batman EP (link subject to change soon), but I gave a shot at re-recording it about a year ago and just realized I never let you have it. So hear you go – a somber song for a rainy summer.

Oh and a final question for you. I think the iPhone is the first great consumer invention of the 21st century. What’s your favorite invention?

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