Ziggy 2000

This week I am taking a sidetrip down memory lane. I have mentioned the detholz in past posts. Not only friends and great musicians, but a great band. They do a halloween show that is a must see if you live in chicago land. I will post a detholz related song at the end but this is about my first detholz experieince. One of legendary preportions…

Ziggy

I was at a conference in sunny california about 6 months ago. The reception had a hollywood theme with impersonaters walking around. Your regulars, marilynn monroe, clark gable, etc…

Did I mention Clark Gable? He had a “could not be natural” tan and gave off an overall creepy vibe. Several of us noticed it and it became the subject of conversation. That’s when I said “It reminds me of the scariest David Bowie impersonater…”

That is when, Brian, who I have worked with for 4 years, turned to me and dropped the bomb. “Oh, Ziggy 2000!” Who is Ziggy 2000 and what does this have to do with the Detholz?

The first detholz show I saw was in chicago at the Big Horse Saloon. They were sandwiched between Alison Kenady and Ziggy 2000. I could write an entire post on Miss Alison as well. It was a memorable night. (just one anecdote: For one song, she used a drop-d tuning along with her companion on 12 string. I took a good 5 minutes to get that done. only to play one song and then 5 more minutes to tune back up to e).

In the words of my work mate, responding to my lifting my jaw off the floor and shouting “do not tell me you know who ziggy 2000 is !!!!”

“yeah. I never saw him, but I friends that did. they said they couldn’t describe the show other than its the scariest thing you will ever experience”

That about sums it up. Here are some of the things I remember.

• “Do not forget to tip your mexican bartender” said repeatedly throughout the set. It was a mexican resturant.
• Ziggy, floating above a bundle of balloons singing Major Tom
• A feeling of complete panic everytime ziggy got near the audience (especially anywhere near me).
• Jim Cooper, getting up to go to the restroom (requiring one to walk up near the stage), and Ziggy shouting “Where the f#$k are you going!” – a frightened Mr. Cooper half jumping and looking at us.
• Ziggy 2000, rolling on the floor with a 8×12 glossy of Donald Trump
• Ziggy 2000 simulating being felated by said 8×12 glossy of Donald Trump

did I miss anything?

What I also remember from that night:

• hearing sunburned in the sun for the first time and just being absolutely floored by that song.
• hearing Mr. roboto with detholz treatment
• pretty much not being able to follow anything they were doing on guitar
• meeting up with old college friends
• figuring out who Jim Cooper was in college (oh, its the neil young guy!)
• did I say being blown away by how good the detholz were?

To this day, that show lives in my memory as something special. The detholz may have been upstaged by a psychotic bowie impersonater, but only by a little.

The other show that has a special place in my heart is the one and only Jukebox of the Dead show I have been able to attend in chicago. I still remember the chills as they opened with Susudio. I remember, Jim barking out the words to live a virgin, with eyeliner melting down is pale corpse like face (nice combo there).

I am hoping to attend this year. If you live in the chicagoland area, you need, and I mean you really need, to go to the show. Get tickets. It will probably sell out again like last year. here is what you need to know:

Jukebox of the Dead IX
“Detholz! FLEX!”
w/special guests Aleks and the Drummer & Hood Internet
Friday, October 31, 2008
Empty Bottle
1035 N Western Avenue
Chicago, IL
Buy tickets at www.emptybottle.com

A Heavenly Way – my detholz tribute

And here is a link to a song I wrote called “A heavenly way” which was my attempt to rip off completely the Detholz! It’s many years old and imitates the “classic” detholz which included, ridiculous time signatures, dissonant chords, erratic chord changes, odd runs, and slightly off kilter lyrics.

None of which, at the time, did i have any experience with. So I challenged myself to write something like that. I will leave it there except to say the lyrics for the verses were based on the lyrics for Michael W. Smith’s “friends”. On of the worse songs every. I would take a line from that song (which had long flowing lines) and remove words to make a short line from it. IE. “packing up the dreams god planted” = “packing up god planted”

here is a link: http://tinyurl.com/3osn83

Wham Take 2

I have r-etracked all the distorted guitars and the vocals to what I think is a much better version. I no longer cringe (too much) at it. A missed note here and there. Still not super happy with the fuzzed out vocals. But it’s sounding a lot better. And I am pretty much done with it.

Download Everything She Wants

For the distorted guitars instead of banging out the chords on the verses like previously, I decided to try something different. There are 4 (count them, 1-2-3-4!) distorted guitars. I seem to rather layer simple parts over each other than work to come up with one or two more involved parts. It’s either a recording technic or I am lazy. There is one gutiar just playing the bass notes of the chorus. Two guitars (panned 100% in each speaker) playing alternative ocatives – the ones that break into the chorus to start. The 4 guitar is playing a higher scale of notes that is closely linked to the harmony vocals (george’s singing part). I put a nasty chorus and LFO effect on it as well.

Breaking into the after chorus riffage, the bass guitar part plays the origingal bass line, the two panned guitars play the riff (with some shredding between) and the higher guitar plays the riff an octive higher with a different line between.

The vocals are pretty much the same, just sung better.

Download Everything She Wants

Bury It

This songs comes to us from yet another novel. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a tale of an autistic kid who finds the neighbor’s dog murdered (with a pitchfork, no less) and his attempt to track down the culprit, Sherlock Holmes style. Although it sounds gimmicky, the book is from the perspective of the autistic kid and is extremely sad, funny, and enlightening.

Listen & Download Bury It

This song is also my rediscovering standard tuning. After years of almost always screwing around with my strings, this is the first of several (more to come soon) songs written in good ole EADGBE.

Lyrics

Leave well enough alone and drop it
If you knew what the neighbors know, you would drop it

Machine hum in head
Reading letters from the dead
Machine hum in head

Liars lying low
Criers crying home
Liars lying low

When you found it all alone, and you carried it
If you knew what the neighbors know, you would bury it

Liars lying low
Criers crying home
Liars lying low

Origins

So some of you are [ familiar with/actually in ] the detholz!. A primo band from chicago. beside being a good band with good songs, they have a special talent at deconstructing bad 80’s songs and reconstructing them into horribly complex and, well, good songs. I have a deep love for reinterpreting, in a semi ironic manner, popular songs as well (more on that some other day). Anyway… I got the idea of taking detholz songs that tend to be more complex and good, and turning them into simple and bad pop songs. I think i have successfully done that to one of them. Sometime I do plan to commit my singer/songwriter version of “behold the man” to .wav

Anyway I had the idea (and it sounded great in my head at they time) to turn the song “sunburned in the sun” into a green day song. When I sat down and tried to get it working, well…, it didn’t… at all. So I ditched that. But immediately came up with the guitar part for this song. It’s in Eb and even has a G drone through a lot of it ala SITS. Other than that, the song doesn’t sound anything like it or have any other similarities. But that is its auspicious beginnings.

Music

The song starts with a muted plucking of the primary chord. Between each verse and between the various later sections, it keeps returning to it. It ends as well, just as it begins, with a muted guitar playing that chord. The song wanders off a bit in the second half so that was a way to keep it anchored.

There are a lot of half steps in this song. The chorus melody is mostly half steps by using augmented and diminished chords (i think that is the technical term) as well as at one point going from Em to Eb. From verse to chorus, it goes from G# to G, another half step. At the end there is a guitar line that walks up mostly in half steps. Can’t say I planned all the half steps. But as I have listened to it, it’s something I have noticed.

The verses have a distinct progression but the notes (in the first part of each verse) are all part of the Eb scale, so in the second verse, I decided to pound out the single chord on top of the mix (the C chord (pattern?) up on the 6th fret has a real nice sound to it with doubled notes.

The drum sequencing in my songs tend to leave a lot to be desired. I am a really bad drummer and tend to be over ambitious in sequencing drums to fit the specifics of a song. But in this case, I think the drum track actually adds to the song, giving it a good groove with its particular bam-bam … bam pattern

The mid section. I wanted to do two things. One is to have it be just a single chord (back to Eb) and have it be a groove. I was thinking Talking Heads (early stuff) like found a job where they build this great vibe with very little complexity going on.

I also had in mind to build it up (which i always seem to do) with a progressively noisier sound. I actually ended up playing one guitar part with a phone just to get a cool sound out of it. The little melody that starts off the mid section is another nod to the detholz.

At the very end, I start playing full chords (of the verses) with a melody over it. Second pass through, there is another guitar line (i mentioned earlier). I ended up turning some chords minor where it would be natural to be major and also the other way around, which actually allowed me to do that half step walk up I mentioned earlier. It did not affect the melody of the song, so I could still sing the same thing over it.

The last half of the song sort of juts off into its own territory without returning. That was inspired by the book. In it, without getting into details, the kid starts investigating the murder of this dog, but in that, other secrets are discovered and his search goes somewhere completely else and the murdered dog turns out to have nothing to do with the second half of the book. I was attempting to do the same in the song. Although, I ended up putting the vocal parts at the end to tie it up and as it turns out, is my favorite part of the song.

Listen & Download Bury It

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Had a Revelation

So here is a song I just re-recorded. Originally recorded maybe two years ago, the original had some issues with hiss and a general “doesn’t sound very good” problem. I also lost the source files. It happens to also be one of my better songs, I think. So I decided to just re-track the whole damn thing. I’ve become more adept at producing this stuff, so i thought I’d give it an update. For the most part I didn’t change things around. It even uses the same drum track (the only thing left of the original).

This is my Stephen Malkmus song. I am a huge pavement fan and this song certainly reflects it.

Listen & Download Had a Revelation

About the Song

One of the few songs that actually means anything. I think of it as an anti-anthem. A warning to myself and others (specific or not) to not take ourselves too seriously. What you (I) are doing is not going to change anything and no one really cares. Happy stuff! I find it delightfully ironic that one of the few songs that have any serious thought into the lyrics rails against itself.

Lyrics

Not everyone is seen
You’re not the exception you thought you would be
Holding on to all those half brilliant tomes like the manufactured homes
with rooms to keep your luggage in

If they threw you half a boquet
You’d lay it down like the lion’s prey
Oh the comfort of those tiny hands a-clappin
Like the insects all a-thrashin
beneath the wind and the rain

And I had a revelation
and I thought that you would like to know
You wore a blank expression
As you watched yourself sinking like stone

You didn’t hear it from me
but I have it on such good authority
Only likes five minutes to say what you want but a lifetime
to try and explain what you mean

And I had a revelation
and I thought that you would like to know
You wore a blank expression
As you watched yourself sinking like stone

Music

The song is one of many written in some variation of D A C# F# A E. I became very familiar with this tuning and wrote a whole slue of songs in it. One thing I do on this song that I do quite often is to include the melody in the primary guitar part. Almost every note I sing is there. I like doing that because 1. It’s easier to sing and 2. sounds cool. I generally work on the melody and chord structures at the same time so it only makes sense combining them this way.

One thing that I did change was during the verses, I was playing harmonics. With an open tuning like this its easy to take advantage of open strings. So in each speaker I am playing harmonics in the notes the end on and the notes I’m singing usually coincide.

So song’s chord progressions are pretty standard though they are not played that way. I threw in one bizarre dissonant chord near the end for emphasis.

The lead guitar part at the end takes advantage of the tuning. It was very easy and natural to play half notes together to get a dissonant sound . It walks up a note at a time with a half note following. Gives it a muddy sound for lack of a better word. The last two times through the lead just plays a very simple descending run until it hits the base note. I then bend it up slowly and back down causing it to get lost for a second. It reminded my of one of my favorite pavement songs “grounded”.

I also added some keyboards to the mix. Mostly its just background stuff that makes up for no bass. One touch that I like is that at the end, i double the riff (or whatever you would call it. its not led zeppelin or anything) with a harp sound. I’m pleasantly surprised with how it sounds.

So enjoy…

Listen & Download Had a Revelation

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