SONG DETAILS
I don’t care what your friends all say
when your hands will pray
where you’ll be some day
it’s all useless; independent
This little piggy sets your mind at ease
Put the money down please,
Or your body will freeze
It’s all useless– ‘yea, what he says’
It’s all… It’s useless!
If you finally find you get behind
there’ll be no time for peace of mind, it’s all useless
So sublime, in your prime; gonna spend it all doin’ time, it’s all useless
You wanna be, yea
You wanna go, yea
You wanna do, yea
Wanna be, wanna go wanna do whatcha wanna do
So you’re a cool cat singin’ but your friends don’t like
and they’re gonna pick a fight, cause you’ll never get it right, it’s all useless
(and they KNOW what they’re talking about!)
So “Gather ’round, hit the ground!” everyone says it’s gonna go down!
“Gather ’round, hit the ground! everyone says it’s gotta go down!”
You wanna be, yea
You wanna go, yea
You wanna do, yea
Wanna be, wanna go wanna do whatcha wanna do
I don’t care what your friends all say
when your hands will pray
where you’ll be some day
Words & Music by Chance
©2006 Upside Down Left Handed Music (BMI)
Whew, where do I begin? This is going to be long…
This song is the ultimate frankenstein, and a moral to NEVER throw anything away.
The two separates are primarily the verse and the chorus, so here goes:
Verse–started out on acoustic (but written for electric), it
immediately found its way to a synth tone. I believe I was
just dicking around with sounds when I happened upon the
synth tone and just started playing the riff. It was close but I
needed more. So I added a little portamento and boom: there it was.
The one thing this verse thing also had was the general melody and the 1st verse. I was able to spit that out pretty quickly. Then…….
Nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing… at all. It sat around waiting to be finished. I wondered mightily whether it was even worth working on. It just didn’t have any beat that I could settle on (although I did want it to be groovy). And I tried a ton of chorus ideas that just simply didn’t work.
Then it dawned on me (blast from the recent past):
A couple of years ago this manager asked me if I wanted to tryout for what was to be Velvet Revolver’s band because Duff had heard my voice on a CD the manager was playing in his office one day and (his words) “flipped out.” After some hemming and hawing (mostly because I was in my old band and also because I wondered whether they’d even care about my style), I thought, You know what? I’ll do it if for no other reasons than to call my friends back in Orlando and simply say “You’re never going to guess who I just jammed with!”
So, I get this CD with 3 songs on it; no lyrics, no melodies, just music. Here it is Monday morning and I was told “write lyrics, melodies for audition on Thursday.” Ha…I love a challenge.
Very quickly I wrote stuff I actually liked a lot. During the audition though it was apparent we were all from different styles of music, but I left really feeling good about the fact that I wrote so quickly under such hilarious pressure. And since the melodies and lyrics were mine, perhaps they could one day be retrofitted to work in a new song.
Fast forward to a few months ago: The key was different, the rhythms were different, but I just thought these chorus lyrics could work if I re-fashioned it. (The good news is I only used the chorus; going to use the verse lyrics for something else!)
So, I did. And after a while, the song came to shape. The 2nd verse started writing itself, and more importantly the drums came to me. Lyrically, I just felt the song should be about how no matter how hard we try to be different we end up all being the same. Anyone get a tattoo recently? A piercing? Then you know what I mean. Rebellion is now in fashion and the norm. That strikes me as infinitely hilarious. Check out the geekout section for two tidbits related to this.
So strike your rebel yell and listen to this song. That is, if you don’t got something to rebel against… 😉
Recorded & mixed in Pro Tools LE Digi 002 on a Creation Station Pro DAW
Microphones:
All Vocals-AKG C-451
Guitars: Fender ’57 Strat, through my new Line6 Toneport
Piano: Kawai ES-X
Bass: Fender Jazz (el latino)
Drums: Propellerhead Reason 3.0
Synths & loops: Propellerhead Reason 3.0 & the FM7 (VST plugin)
Written, performed, recorded & mixed by Chance
Cool Geekout Notes
* What could be more conformist than two specific things: audiences clapping and marching in unison. These ideas came to me just after I finished recording, so I licensed some samples for the beginning and the end of the song to really hammer the idea home. If you didn’t pick up on that, that’s ok, because I also happen to think it sounds cool.
*There are two separate drum beats—one a loop, the other a drum part—during most of the song.
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