SOUNDTRACK: GEORGIE JAMES-Builds ‘Monument’ In Two Days (Project Song: December 17, 2007).
Project Song was a nifty little show that NPR Music created. The premise was that NPR would give a musician some prompts and a recording studio. They then had two days to write and record a song. I don’t know how much of the process was to be filmed, but presumably most of it. Then it would be edited down to a fifteen minute show. The results are pretty cool and it’s a shame they only made five of them.
The second one they did was with Georgie James
Georgie James is a band on the rise [Note: they broke up on August 4, 2008]. The duo makes smart, infectious pop with tight harmonies and jangling guitars — an upbeat and innocent sound that’s made its debut album (Places, 2007) a sleeper success. Georgie James got its start when drummer John Davis’ former band, Q and Not U, disbanded in 2005. Davis turned to his singer-songwriter friend, Burhenn, to forge something new.
At first, the two seemed like an unlikely pair. Davis had spent the past seven years releasing records with his bandmates on the legendary D.C. punk label Dischord and touring the world. Burhenn, on the other hand, had been releasing solo projects on her own label, Laboratory Records, and playing smaller venues on the east and west coast.
They eventually settled on a stark but serene image by New York photographer Phil Toledano, depicting a bare room with a large pile of books stacked in the middle. For the phrase, the band chose “Something Joyful.”
Their process seems tense to me. But maybe that’s just how they bounce ideas off of each other.
He chose the words “something joyful.” She chose David Bowie and 45.
She likes the pile of books in empty room–she sees it youthful and he sees it as disuse, disrepair, neglect. They decide to use that picture and the phrase “something joyful.”
She plays piano melody banging out ideas for the tune on the first day. There’s lots of discussion and back and forth–very different from Merritt’s solitary style.
“It’s really difficult when you have two people who are trying to meet in the middle,” Burhenn says. “We each had a different vision of where this was going to go, and to try to very quickly throw that together is a difficult thing.”
They change styles. She suggests maybe a Talking Heads’ vibe. She sings it in a David Byrne-ish drawl but he doesn’t like it. She says this is turning into a nightmare and fears the song sounds like John Cougar Mellencamp or Rod Stewart.
But in the final hour they pulled it out.
Davis added drums, bass and guitar. The two layered the sound with multiple harmonies and hand-claps.
Two days later, they had a song they called “Monument.” It’s a three-and-a-half-minute pop gem that marries the contrasting loneliness of the photograph with the spirit of “something joyful.”
As they walk out she says, “I think it’s awesome.” And it’s very catchy.
[READ: February 2, 2018] “All That Glass”
This is a peculiar story that starts out seemingly reasonable and then just goes off the rails.
A man says his wife no longer wants to sleep in the bedroom anymore. He took it as an attack against him and wondered what he did. But she ignores that and says she wants to move into the conservatory. He agrees but says that “All that glass, it gets cold in there at night.”
She moves some basics into the conservatory. He thought it was odd, but it gave the conservatory a good spring cleaning.
It was cold in there at night She wore extra clothes though, and that was that. Continue Reading »
I’m still puzzled by the existence of Vanilla Fudge. By 1967 I wouldn’t think that a band who existed primarily on covers would be viable. I also wouldn’t think that an album that is all covers would have been marketable. But I guess the fascinating sound of Vanilla Fudge–lots of organ, screamed vocals and a heavy rhythm section covering recent hits at a drastically reduced speed was a sensation.
I Just Read About That... 