Felsen New Album Project Mid Term Progress Report. OK, maybe it’s more like the end of the first trimester as I don’t think we’re at the halfway point just yet, but we’re making good progress. To get you up to speed, we currently have 7 songs in various stages of production and we’re aiming for 10-12 songs total.
I know, who’s buying CD’s anymore you may be thinking??? It seems very trendy now-a-days to put out an EP or just put out singles/youtube videos/ringtones, but us dinosaurs are making an LP’s worth of new Felsen music. An album should be like a novel in that every song is a chapter in the book; the songs fit together to tell a bigger story. That doesn’t mean it’s gonna be a corny rock opera (dōmo arigatō Mr. Robotto). Think: OK Computer, Sea Change, Pet Sounds, Grace or the White Album where the songs have a vibe and a feeling tying them together. As great as any individual song on any of those masterpiece albums was, the real magic is listening to the albums as a whole. Things may be looking grim for the good ship music biz, but I’m willing to go down with the ship--that’s how much I love you. For better or for worse, making albums is my artform.
We worked really hard last week. On Saturday we did an all day session at Cris’s house in San Lorenzo where we recorded basics for 3 news songs. It seemed like we’re getting better at our process and things went surprisingly well. We put in a few rehearsals in the 2 weeks leading up to the session to workshop the songs. Rehearsal=results, go figure. Who knew? Two of the songs we rehearsed enough we debuted them at a little local SF gig Friday night. Never playing it safe, we played 5 songs from the upcoming album in our 45 min set. It was risky, but it was a rush to pull that off and not fall flat on our faces. The audience was pretty much entirely people who’d never heard us before--all the tunes were new to them and they seemed to enjoy it. One person came up to me and asked which CD has “Gimme Shelter for the Devil”. She’ll have to wait for it to come out. I sold her a different CD instead. I'm good at sales.
One of the catchier new tunes is "Lorazepam". Do you know what Lorazepam is? It’s a prescription sleeping med for insomnia and anxiety. I had some medical problems a while back and it was prescribed to me. It makes you sleep like a baby floating on a puffy cloud high above an enchanted forest of magical pixie dreams. Ahhh...it would be real easy to get hooked, real easy. I always thought the name of the med sounded like a girl’s name, a girl you get hooked on in a bad way. We debuted it at the gig. People dug it. America, you’ll have to wait a few more months to hear that one. FYI: Lorazepam was Michael Jackson’s drug of choice. Careful kids, don’t try this at home.
Well, it's time to go write a few more tunes. I have some song titles that I like. I think I'll start with that and work from the top down. That's how Metallica does it. And I wouldn't argue with those dudes.
video highlights here
No comments:
Post a Comment