I posted a snippet of the beat. I posted the lyrics. Now, finally – it’s the whole song! Here’s the next demo for the Polaroids project, a song called…called…actually, I still don’t know what it’s called (despite some excellent suggestions – thanks, e$).

What’s it about? When did you write it? Where did those sounds come from? What the hell is going on here? All these questions and more answered later – I just wanted to get this out to you before Thanksgiving rolled around….

Ithink I mentioned a few days ago that this song was on the boil. Well, if it’s still on the metaphorical stove, then now the lid is jumping around and rogue puffs of steam are escaping.

There’s one major unchecked item remaining on the list: what to call the thing?

If you’d like to take a crack at the title, here are some lyrics to guide your brainstorming:

untie your shoes, take off your clothes
for the last plane out / last plane
nobody wants to be the one to watch it all blow sky high
it won’t be long ’cause we’re counting down
take the runway out / runway
gravity comes and goes
wave goodbye

so you wait outside
’til the car gets parked
and the hardest part
is just believing
that you’re faster than your feet can fly
tell me who are you to live forever?
don’t say that they’ll never come for you
my heart doesn’t know it’s a lie

strike a match and bolt the door
shoot the lights clean out / lights out
you never want to let it go when you get so high
say a prayer, pick up the phone
get a dial tone out / dial tone
operator can you help me please
there’s no reply

so you wait outside
’til the car gets parked
and the hardest part
is just believing
that you’re faster than your feet can fly
tell me who are you to live forever?
don’t say that they’ll never come for you
my heart doesn’t know it’s a lie

Actually, I’ve had two or three new demos on the boil lately, but there’s one in particular that’s coming together right now. It doesn’t actually have a name yet – I just call it “the loopy one”. Hopefully I’ll think of something catchier by the time it’s all ready to go.

This track has actually been around for several years. I call it “the loopy one” because for a long time it consisted solely of one verse, the chorus, and a loop. This loop:

[A playable audio file would normally go here. Check the blog to listen to it.]

It’s pretty groovy, sets a nice mood, but never really suggested anything else to me when I worked with it, and so never expanded into an entire song. By mid-2009, the groovy, moody unsong was starting to be more upsetting than pleasant to listen to, and so a few weeks ago I locked myself in the studio and swore I wouldn’t come out until Mr. Loopy gave up the goods and turned into an honest to goodness song.

Usually these kinds of creative ultimatums end badly, but this time it paid off, as you will hear soon…

P.S. If you’re wondering about the track I previewed a couple of weeks ago, it’s still coming – just resolving a few technical difficulties.

Doing t-shirts now. Click the photo below to go to the Radio Nowhere store at www.spreadshirt.com, a BBB-accredited business that accepts Paypal and all major credit cards. I like the red one…

Well, I’m getting pretty close to finished with another track. This one’s a little bit different, in that you might recognize it from somewhere else (I’ll continue being coy for the moment). It’s also a departure from the generally restrained nature of the last couple of songs – especially in this rough mix, where the drummer seems to have seized control of the mixing console. Check it out:

[A playable audio file would normally go here. Check the blog to listen to it.]

Sound familiar? Floor us with your obscure musical knowledge in comments…

Time for the latest demo from the Polaroids project. As usual, just click the “Download” link above to get this track for free!

Katydid is a song that I’ve been kicking around for a long time, always enjoying the melody and emotion, but never quite sure what shape it was going to take.

Given that the Polaroids album project is all about taking snapshots of songs and then seeing how they develop (hence the clever title), I figured this was the perfect time to put nose to grindstone and force this track to transition from pleasant idea to actual music.

The result? Well, on first listen, you might decide it’s a brooding, semi-subcontinental meditation on life and death in the insect world. And that wouldn’t necessarily be too far off!

However, any song you describe that way probably isn’t exactly headed for the top of the charts (on this planet, anyway), so let’s call it…a sultry slow-jam with, uh, Bollywood Bugs.

Boy, that makes you want to push the play button, doesn’t it?

Honestly, it’s better than it sounds. There’s probably a better way to whet the curiosity of non-entomologists, and if you can think of what that might be, please let me know in comments.

So I’m working away on the next demo from the Polaroids album, getting pretty close to finishing it, and it occurs to me that no one else has any idea that I’ve even started another demo.

Not necessarily the end of the world, of course, but I did say that I’d be posting notes from the writing/recording/creative process along the way…

So, with that in mind, allow me to introduce a little something I’m calling “Katydid” (in a naked play for an endorsement from Ortho Home Defense). Here are the lyrics.

katydid
what she did they won’t tell me
katy lies
underwater/fast asleep
fast asleep
dreaming deep

and are you fast enough to fly away
when the time for you comes?
are you still so young to take your wings
so close to the sun?
and when the wrecking ball finally comes for you
when the hour for you comes
will you go quiet or will you cry
that it’s not your time?

butterfly
flies in circles over me
butterflies
live a day/then they are free
then they’re free
she’s nothing to me

and are you fast enough to fly away
when the time for you comes?
are you still so young to take your wings
so close to the sun?
and when the wrecking ball finally comes for you
when the hour for you comes
will you go quiet or will you cry
that it’s not your time?

katydid
what she did they won’t tell me
katy lies
katy lies

and are you fast enough to fly away
when the time for you comes?
are you still so young to take your wings
so close to the sun?
and when the wrecking ball finally comes for you
when the hour for you comes
will you go quiet or will you cry
will you go quiet or will you cry
will you go quiet or will you cry
that it’s not your time?

Forgot to mention that Eric Rubin from the East Bay Express did a nice writeup on Radio Nowhere in last week’s paper.

We talked about music, social networking, and erhu. I apparently said “fuckin’” a lot. Check it out!

If you’re interested in hearing what Radio Nowhere sounds like, the handy player above is a good place to start. I’ve crammed all the songs from the LP, EP and demos into it: click the big black play button for an audio tour through the whole catalog.

If you prefer your music in bite-size chunks, click here to check out all of Radio Nowhere’s releases (so far).

Really?

No, not really. But their music critic, Sasha-Frere Jones, did a pretty good job today of explaining why albums are losing ground in today’s music scene, and articulating a creative approach that some independent musicians (ahem) are beginning to employ.

He said, and I quote:

“Serialized work is a tradition that often results in the unified whole that album enthusiasts are so keen on. Dickens’s novels were released in installments; only later did they became those delightful bricks. If Radiohead finishes four EPs and decides a larger shape has emerged, there’s nothing to stop them from recognizing that shape, calling it an album, and packaging it as such. Future audiences may never know how the material was first released, but it hardly matters. The work will be there.”

[Be sure to read the whole thing, as well as Frere-Jones' previous post, for the full context.]

We might not be getting any more material from Dickens, but as a Radiohead fan, I’m excited about the prospect of hearing from them more often than once every 3 years. I’m even more interested in hearing demos, in-progress versions of songs, and alternate takes as the “final” versions of the songs slowly come together, and in listening to the richly anticipated album that comes together at the end of the process as well.

The artist gets to express him/herself on a more regular basis, the fan gets an inside look into what’s going on, as well as new music every few weeks or months – what’s not to like?