(written + recorded in ‘2006’)
(based intro riff off a guitar pattern shown to me by don juan)
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research
i enter the studio for the second time this month…
JoGa is busy working on a new composition entitled “lift-off!”
multiple references to his high school band
(in a power grab, keyboard player jon birkhead derived the name of the band “eighty-8” from the number of keys on a standard piano)
JoGa laughs as he reminisces about how the band was forced to drop the name after they discovered that the number “88” is heavily associated with white-supremacist philosophy…
Gatti explains that the song was initially conceived as a theme song for his band to be performed at his high school graduation party, a collaboration between Gatti and Birkhead (who had the initial inspiration for the song). 4 years later, all that Gatti can remember of the composition is the standard Am G F G chord progression (think of the power chords at the end of “Stairway To Heaven”) and a single lyric: “others make ‘the return’ home, Eighty-8’s coming to town tonight!” (“The Return” was the title of “Reh Hussein’s” trademark rap song; Reh was the leader of rival band Flux Kapacitor). Gatti had just completed two albums worth of material (“Childhood” and “Adolescence”); the last time I was at the studio he was working on the sixth track for the “Adolescence” album “This Time”. While thinking about a strong album opener for the “Adulthood” section, Gatti recalled the general premise of “Eighty-8” and liked the idea of writing an overtly cocky theme song. A song about the leader of a fictional rock band (with affinities to Paul McCartney’s vision of the Beatles adopting the alter ego of “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”) fit in with his overall concept, since at the end of the “Adolescence” album, Gatti’s protagonist had just tapped into a well of creativity, discovering his muse, and on “Finest Hour” (the final track of “Adolescence”), he declares that “our finest hour is at hand…” Now at the beginning of his adult life, the protagonist achieves fame and success through this rock band. Gatti described how he retreated to the beach for a night to write the song basically from scratch. The song begins with a “heavy-sounding” riff, first on acoustic guitar before the electric guitar crashes in, the riff fluctuates between a B and C power chord, A, D, then playing a strange two-note chord of C and F# (Gatti explains that it is a C diminished chord) then B G A power chords to enter into the key of A major. Gatti describes this opening chordal riff as a motif that he’d had in his back pocket since age 16, and he finally found a song to incorporate it into. The chordal riff is complemented by squealing high guitar fills in the A blues scale coming from one channel then the other, with Gatti’s typically intense vibrato on full display. The introductory drums are straightforward and heavy as the bassline doubles the guitar line, before the dramatic shift into lighter territory as the tempo shifts from 4/4 to 2/4 and the verse breezily alternates between an A and D chord on a relaxed-sounding acoustic guitar before an interesting conclusion to the verse of Fm->F#m D9 A. Gatti describes the lyrics as his “mission statement” as his vocal lines (spanning about an octave in the verse, from F3 to F#4) establish an ear-pleasing melody for the listener (mostly due to his inclusion of the “blue” C note), as Gatti sings “he sings along with the choir, dressed in schoolboy attire, just a spark to set off a fire, the chorus soars through the night…” In the second verse, an electric rhythm guitar (alternating between left/right pan on each downbeat to drive the song along) enters as Gatti sings “so he pores through a record collection, establishes his connection, he’s leading a resurrection, his fingers bleed through the night”. Gatti explains that he got the inspiration for the verse structure by listening to Todd Rundgren (also a one-man-band!) tracks “Saving Grace” and “Piss Aaron” off his seminal album “Something/Anything?” I can’t help but suspect that the lyrics are autobiographical…
(with dueling screaming guitar bends coming from L and R channels)…then the song begins to SWING like an old-time Tin Pan Alley number…I played around with panning for the electric guitar verse tracks (with a call-and-response dynamic over the simple chords)…with the refrain, I arpeggiated the chords and laid on the spatial effects and crunch (to contrast with the earthier tones of the verse)…I’ve decided to use the bridge as a dreamy “calm before the storm” with simple acoustic guitar and a backing chorus over the lead vocal…for Verse 3 and 4, I simply put the electric guitar on the backbeat for an entirely different dynamic…the end of the song proper is extremely jazzy, with the guitar chords/cymbals interaction a throwback to old-time Broadway climaxes…then Phase 2 begins, just a gradually intensifying guitar solo over a straightforward Am G F G progression (the first part of the song is in A Major) depicting a fictional stadium rock concert (complete with a bombastic announcer for the band); this section serves the dual purpose of tracing our hero’s evolution on the instrument, as I plan to record the solo using gradually complex techniques with each passing measure (after about 16 measures, the drums intensify and electric power chords enter to push the solo towards climax)…the song ends with reverse “quasi arpi” on stacked acoustic guitars playing Am…
I resurrected some bizarre arpeggiated modal pattern I composed back in high school in lieu of a conventional “playing the main melody embellished with grace notes” guitar solo, though I do use this technique to transition into the refrain (I plan to make it more interesting with octave doubling on the guitar)…
(sometimes those riffs i composed back when I had (relatively) no idea what I was doing come in handy when I’m trying to create something original but know exactly which notes will “work”)
(guitar solo 2 is going to take me well into the night, as i want it to be one of the best solos i’ve committed to tape so far)
X
******************************************************************
XXX
**********************************************************************************************
(***BACK TO “CUT AND PASTE”***)
**********************************************************************************************
********************************************
********************************************
**********************************************************************************************
********************************************
********************************************
**********************************************************************************************