Songtown - Vol. 3 (Rest Of My Life)

Artist - Sloan
Song - Rest Of My Life
Album - Action Pact
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My first Sloan album was Navy Blues, and since that purchase, my life has been a better place. I quickly went back into their catalog and picked everything up, becoming a so-called fanatic. As with all of the great bands that employ three or four great songwriters, it takes me forever to figure out who is who. Not because they don't all have very distinct voices, but for some reason I go after the melodies and song structures first and then once I return to the vocalists, I'm thoroughly miffed. I remember struggling as a young teen to tell the difference between Lennon and McCartney, and especially Lennon and Harrison. Now, it all seems so obvious, but back then, I really had to do some research.

And so the story goes for Sloan. What did Chris Murphy sound like? Patrick Pentland? Jay Ferguson? It wasn't until I saw my first Sloan concert, that I finally began to figure it out. And you're telling me that Andrew Scott, the drummer, even sings a few songs? This is getting too out of hand.

Well, I worked it out. I'm still unsure as to how to describe Andrew's voice. Patrick is the token acquired taste. Jay is the one with the high range. And Chris, as it goes with Chrises, is the one that sings all of the really clever stuff.

Which brings us to Rest Of My Life. This Chris Murphy has a way of writing songs about anything as if he was the first ever to write about it. Granted, in a lot of cases (which I'm sure will be the topic of future blogs), he is actually the first to write about it, or at least the first in a long, long time.

So, here's this song. This isn't the cleverest of his songs, I know, so I shouldn't have promised "clever." There are plenty of songs written by twenty/thirty-somethings wondering whether they're finally gonna grow up and settle down or if they're destined to be bip-bopping well into the rest of their life. But this one is so good, that I can't think of any other songs about it. So, for all intensive purposes, this is the only one. And why shouldn't it be?

One thing I know about the rest of my life,
I know that I'll be living it in Canada

This other Chris' references to his home country and provinces rivals only my propensity to name check Baltimore in at least every third song. So obviously, I'm going to be a sucker for lyrics like that.

But that's only part of a verse. The verse is solid. It's not mind-blowing, but it clues you into the fact that something special is about to happen. And that something's name is the CHORUS.

There are two verses and and an early bridge that eventually warps itself into the middle of future choruses. But really, this song is just the chorus over and over.

Am I gonna settle down?
Am I gonna be
Someone who has to take the rest of my life to settle down?
Then I guess you caught me lying to myself

So, there's a common theme developing in this Songtown feature, which I'll try to be conscience to avoid returning to everyday, but...does this song need any more lyrics? No f'n way, man. The lyrics are perfect and the fact that each and every chorus is slightly different is totally awesome. I'm sure the three other band members were cursing him for writing the least straight-forward verse/chorus/verse song of all time, but whatever, man!

I'm not actually typing this for someone called "man."

If there was a "man," it would be this guy who's like a hybrid of Gary B and Mark O'D (if they learned how to sap the energy from a song):



And since I don't want to type anymore, here's Sloan's video for the song, which is a real treat, especially after that last one. In fact, it'd be a real injustice if you didn't click the play button.

New Delicious Word

Imagine this.

• desert \ˈde-zərt\ noun - a desolate or forbidding area
• dessert \di-ˈzərt\ noun - a usually sweet course or dish usually served at the end of a meal
• forest \ˈfär-əst\ noun - a dense growth of trees and underbrush covering a large tract
• forrest \'fər-ˈēst\ noun - a usually chalky variety or collection of after-dinner mints/gums

Songtown - Introduction and #1 (The French Inhaler)

Hi again. So my plan for this year was that I would countdown my 260something favorite songs of all time. Once a weekday, I'd riff on one particular song and maybe why its made my life better.

I've adjusted this plan a tiny bit since its inception. First off, there's no way that I could put these songs into an sort of definitive order, so it wouldn't be a countdown. Secondly, I'm not going to force myself to write one everyday. So, there won't necessarily be 260some of them. And I won't necessarily stop on December 31st. It might end in February or it might continue forever, as long as I keep liking songs. And finally, some days, I'll riff on more than one song. Perhaps an entire album or a trilogy of songs that I feel go hand in hand with each other. "Hand in hand," "hand and hand," or both??

Without further ado, I decided that the first song obviously had to be the one that shares its name with this blog...

Artist: Warren Zevon
Title: The French Inhaler
Album: Warren Zevon
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My fascination with Warren Zevon began in 2002. I had known "Werewolves of London" and I had inherited my uncle's Excitable Boy LP, but had never listened to it. In addition, he was always the guy that would fill in for Paul Schaffer on The Late Show With David Letterman whenever Paul would take a vacation. He seemed like a real character and he'd say a lot of weird stuff that only he and Dave seemed to find the humor in. He generally seemed like my kind of guy.

Still, I didn't explore anymore of his music until Fall 2002, when I read that Zevon had been diagnosed with mesothelioma and that he had six months left to live. In November, Letterman invited him onto the Late Show as the guest. The only guest. Letterman spent the monologue talking about how good of a friend Zevon had been and how he was one of the greatest songwriters of all time. Then Zevon came out for one of the saddest interviews I've ever watched and also played three or four songs. It was awesome. The next day, I bought his greatest hits collection and from that point on, he was my Bob Dylan.

Warren Zevon seemed like someone that my mother should have introduced me to years earlier. He ran around with the Eagles and Jackson Browne, two of her favorites, and at his best, wrote songs every bit as good as Browne, Frey and Henley. That said, she missed the Zevon train for some reason or another, which forced me to find him on my own.

I'm not saying that he doesn't have plenty of rough patches in his catalog, but when he's on, he's on fire. That said, his voice would probably be placed in the Acquired Taste category, so I've held back in terms of promoting him to my friends, for the most part. Until now! Plus, most would describe my tastes as having gone off the deep end in the past few years, so they'd most certainly scoff at me with Boy Who Cried Dylan incredulation, anyhow.

"The French Inhaler" didn't pop out at me immediately when I first heard that collection. "Poor Poor Pitiful Me," "Excitable Boy," and "A Certain Girl" took me by the hand immediately, so TFI had to wait its turn before it truly made its impact.

I don't have a particular talent for breaking down songs enough to tell you specifically what they're about, but this one sounds pretty simple. The age old tale of one too many nights at that old Hollywood bar with all of the other horny, down-and-out, out-of-work actors and musicians. Zevon is the master of turning his narrators into the saddest of sacks and paints Hollywood as the most depressing town in all of the world. Yet, it makes me want to move there.

When the lights came up at two, I caught a glimpse of you
And your face looked like something Death brought with him in his suitcase
Your pretty face looked so wasted
Another pretty face devasted

Acquired taste or not, when the Eagles harmonize that bit behind him, there are zero alternatives to those shivers.

I've always been fascinated with pop songs that have no discernible verse/chorus pattern, yet each part is so fantastic that it sounds like you're listening to a four minute refrain. He only repeats two lines. He returns to the opening line once, "How you gonna make your way in the world, woman, when you weren't cut out for working?" And then for last line, "So Long, Norman," he sings it twice because it makes the most sense musically, plus he must have known that I love that sort of thing. Its only just now that I've figured out who Norman is.

I've become pretty awful at lyric retention in recent times, so it was to my surprise when I picked up my guitar last night and played this one all the way through, having never attempted it previously. Sure, nothing repeats itself, but it all makes sense. Each part and each lyric logically leads into the next.

Anyhow, listen to this thing and maybe come back tomorrow!

My New Sketch Show

If I was in the business of running and operating a Sketch Comedy show, most of it would be modern internet based humor.

The first sketch would be about this guy, JoJo Maclius. When he signed up for his first hotmail account in 1997, he tried to register jojomaclius@hotmail.com, only to have the hotmail system tell him that address had already been registered and that maybe he would rather like one of the following addresses:

• jojomac@hotmail.com
• jojojojojo@hotmail.com
• maclius1jojo@hotmail.com
• jojomaclius1997@hotmail.com

Of course, JoJo picks jojomaclius1997, because it says everything about him! Come Jan1, 1998, JoJo realizes that he's made a horrible mistake. So, he prints out his address book and manually retypes them into his "My New Email!!!" email upon registering jojomaclius1998@hotmail.com. Cue credits!

My other sketch would be exactly the same, except JoJo would be 22 years old and decide that jojomaclius22@hotmail.com would be more his style. Cue credits!

Jojo Mac is gonna get spambotted like wildfire once they track down this blog!