Influences Part 1

OK, I'm not going to do this all at once, but here's a start:

LEONARD COHEN

Probably influenced my lyric-writing more than any other person. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I write like him, but studying his approach to writing lyrics and poetry helped shape the way that I write. Leonard Cohen has a real gift for telling you just enough about a person or a scene to create a picture in your mind, while still leaving enough to your imagination that you can truly make the scene your own. If I had to pick my favorite work of his, I'd say it's "Famous Blue Raincoat" - it's written as a letter to a forgotten friend and rival. Check out these excerpts:

It's four in the morning
the end of December;
I'm writing you now just
to see if you're better;
New York is cold but I
like where I'm living;
There's music on Clinton Street
all through the evening;

The last time I saw you
you looked so much older;
Your famous blue raincoat
was torn at the shoulder;
You'd been to the station
to meet every train;
But you came home alone
without Lilly Marlaine;
You treated my woman
to a flake of your life;
And when she came back
she was nobody's wife;

What can I tell you
my brother, my killer;
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you
I guess I forgive you;
I'm glad that you stood in my way;
If you ever come by here
for Jane or for me;
Your enemy is sleeping
and his woman is free;

Thanks for the trouble you
took from her eyes;
I thought it was there for good
so I never tried;

I see you there with a rose in your teeth;
One more thin gypsy thief;
I see Jane's awake
she sends her regards

and he ends it:

Sincerely, L. Cohen

Just amazing.

I don't know exactly what it is about that song that hits me so hard. It's a beautiful melody too, although Leonard doesn't have the sweetest voice in the world (look up Tori Amos' cover - it's worth it). I always go back to this song when I'm struggling with a lyric, and I ask myself "How can I say more with this line? How can I use one line to convey a feeling; a whole scene?" WWLCD? When I was writing the lyrics for The Barfly, I was trying to write a story without giving away all the pieces, and I was always thinking about the way the lyrics for Famous Blue Raincoat made me feel - and how personal an experience that song was. I attribute that connection to the fact that Cohen didn't TELL you the story, he SHOWED it to you. Just enough to pull you in. That was necessary when writing The Barfly, because the song was just TOO LONG and I had to cut, cut, cut. (Originally there were three more verses. Seriously.) I had to look at the story and decide which parts were superfluous, and what I could get rid of without losing the meaning of the song.

Incidentally, any time you read a lyric of mine and just can't for the life of you figure out what the hell I'm talking about, it's possibly an example of where I tried to do this and failed. There's a fine line between telling so much that there's no mystery, no imagination - and telling so little that there's no thread to grasp. Some lines in my songs are, like, the third lateral jump from the original metaphor, and then I cut the original metaphor out, and it's suddenly a lot harder to piece it together. So.... sorry about that. Work in progress. I also tend to finish lyrics about 30 seconds before I enter the booth to record them, so that doesn't help.

Other songs that really connect with me lyrically:

• Last Goodbye, by Jeff Buckley
• Stumbeline, by the Smashing Pumpkins
• Piano Man, by Billy Joel
• Subterranean Homesick Alien, by Radiohead
• Eleanor Rigby, by The Beatles
• John Wayne Gacy Jr., by Sufjan Stevens (and pretty much everything else, too)
• Hallelujah, by Leonard Cohen
• Suzanne, by Leonard Cohen
• The Partisan, by Leonard Cohen (see a pattern?)
• Mr. Bojangles, by Jerry Jeff Walker

Hope that's a bit of a window, anyways. Till next time...

In Rainbows

I'm in the middle of maybe my 10th time listening to the new Radiohead album In Rainbows right now, and it's blowing my mind. It's painful, and romantic, and epic, and under-stated - all the things I knew it would be. Bastards. I hate good music. I swear, if this band isn't remembered as one of the most important rock bands in history, there's something seriously wrong with history.

Their distribution method is very interesting too, and it's got the music industry scrambling to respond: they're allowing fans to pick their own price for the album, and selling it as a download only through their website (www.radiohead.com).

Nine Inch Nails and a few other bands have announced plans to follow suit, so we'll see what effect this has on the industry as a whole.

In the meantime - here's a bit of background on me, since the other guys are all doing it:

I came to music really early - I started piano lessons when I was 3, and violin lessons when I was 5. I loved to sing, and had a talent for singing harmonies from the time I started singing in a choir at the age of 4. I guess it's my ears that I consider my greatest gift - I really suck at sight-reading, my technique is pretty awful - but I can learn and play just about anything after hearing it once or twice. This probably allowed me to be lazier as a musician than some other people; maybe if I hadn't had as good an ear I would have stuck to classical music and more rudimentary forms of music, I don't know.

I wrote songs my whole life, although I'm sure they weren't very good. I was also in just about every play and musical you can think of, mostly because my mom was a high-school drama teacher and always needed extras. A lot of the "theatrical" elements of my songwriting, and my love for melodramatic music, can probably be traced back to my early exposure to musical theater.

My first rock concert was, embarrassingly enough, Richard Marx. My dad was a fan and bought tickets for my brother and I. You know him from the soft-rock mainstay, "Right Here Waiting For You". My life wasn't changed.

My next concert was a triple bill: Live, Veruca Sault and PJ Harvey. I was sufficiently affected by this concert to completely devour Live's album Throwing Copper, from which I moved to the Smashing Pumpkins, Tool and Radiohead - from which I moved to everything else. I guess you always stick with what you're familiar with, but those are still among my absolute favorite bands.

My first band didn't have a name - a few of us just jammed together and decided to play at a school function. The jackass MC thought it was really funny that we didn't have a name, so he dubbed us "Los Lamos Banditos" which he translated as "The Lame Bandits". My Spanish isn't good enough to know if that's an accurate translation.

I actually played electric guitar, sang, and *gasp* played DRUMS in that band. Specifically, I played drums for the song 1979 by the Smashing Pumpkins. It was every bit as bad as you imagine it was.

My next band was in the 10th grade - we played a grand total of one song, at one show. We didn't have a name. We didn't have a drummer either - I programmed a drum machine and we played along with that. Needless to say, it wasn't my big break.

The end of that year saw the birth of my first REAL band, unfortunately called Necrolepsy. We weren't anywhere near as dark or heavy as the name suggests - basically we were a cross between all the bands I was listening to at that point. I played lead guitar and sang, and wrote all the songs. The only hold-over from that band is the intro to ETH's song Arcturus - I originally wrote that for the one and only song in which I played electric violin during my time with Necrolepsy. We didn't make it. We did win a battle of the bands once, though...

The next band I stumbled into was called Kuru. They were a somewhat established Goth-Rock band with heavy Queen and David Bowie influences. My brother inadvertently hooked me up with Kuru when he met the lead-singer, Leslea Keurvorst, waitressing in a topless bar (no joke) and struck up a conversation about her tattoo. She mentioned in passing that her band was looking for someone who played keyboards and violin.... So my friend and drummer Eric Lightfoot and I moved to Toronto and eventually both joined the band.

I played around Toronto with Kuru for a couple of years, and eventually one night we played at a Brian Eno tribute night. We covered the song "Heroes", which although recorded by Bowie, was co-written by Brian Eno. In the audience that night was one Michael Pallett (now Owen Pallett) who was getting ready to leave his band, Enter The Haggis, and needed to find a replacement.

For a short while I was playing with both bands, but ETH took priority pretty fast, mostly because playing with them wasn't actually COSTING me money. It worked out well though - Mike Pallett started hanging around with the Kuru crew and eventually took my place. So we effectively traded bands. Funny how things work out..

So that's my story - eventually I plan on doing another "influences" blog in case people are interested, but for now I'm going to listen to In Rainbows again and try hard not to quit music forever. Sigh.