Here is a post about a goofy song I accidently wrote several years ago.
Pithy backstory. I am a 55 year old fart. In the 80’s I had hair past my shoulders, torn jeans and wore any number of metal shirts to school. Cut my bass teeth on Gene Simmons, Steve Harris and Geddy Lee.
Play in bands, try and be a rock star. Years later I sell my bass for a Chapman Stick, played it for a few years…get close to a record deal with A&M records (remember them?). A couple of years later I sell the stick when I get into studio production and needed a neve mic pre. I was a studio rat for decades having given up on the Rock and Roll dream.
One night the wife was away with her girlfriends. I had my studio up and my strat was plugged into my red bean pod. My goal was to WRITE a song that night. I tinkered, I struggled and inspiration was not to be found. Out of frustration I flung my strat on the studio couch, go down stairs and grab a big ole bottle of red wine. Didn’t even bother with getting a glass glass as I was mad at the whole unproductive situation and chose to drink right from the bottle. After a gulp or three I look at the strat and say “What the heck are you doing? You are a bass player, man”.
I unplug the strat, plug in my bass and do NOT change a single distorted/delayed guitar setting on the pod. After two notes of the delayed distorted goodness…the song gods opened the musical heavens. They chose me as the vessel for this song. I could say I wrote it but I know this song had already been written and the Song Gods just needed a human vessel to commit it to tape. (sounds all hippy new age, right?)
The music and arrangement totally wrote itself in less than 5 minutes. I sat in 3rd person and watched it happen before my eyes. CRAZY!
Now, as I got older i left my Metal credentials way behind. When I try and write I shoot for something somewhere The Eagles, Jellyfish and Peter Gabriel. That is what I WANT to write. This fateful night, something unexpected flowed from my goofy old fingers. I laughed as I printed a rough demo of it. I drunkenly got on the studio drum kit and badly played a beat behind it. Sobered up the next morning, rendered a rough mix and sent it to a guitar player buddy of mine. I wanted him to laugh with me at its silliness. The email reply came back a day later without any text in the email, just an MP3. He had imported it into garage band and played guitars and a rough vocal appeared, to my astonishment. I stepped back and said “Wait, I think this is a ……..thing”.
I soberly fleshed out a legit arrangement the next day. A week later I had an old drummer pal who’s played on many albums (The Mother Station, Course of Nature, Dust for Life) track drums for me. Weeks later guitars were tracked and I even called in a favor to a singer pal from the 80’s. At 60 years old he laid down the vocal you hear on this track. Done in about 2 takes. ALL this was done in and around 2010. I never got around to mixing it. A close pal of mine who used to be a live gunslinger for Winger for a few years did video production locally. He heard a rough mix of this goofy song and insisted we do a video for it. So, during lockdown I put the mix in the hands of another pal, Michael Patterson (Beck, Biggy Smalls, Puff Daddy, Jlo, TLC, Custom… to name a few). He mixed it, during lockdown. I convinced the cats that played on the song to show up in a covid safe building where we shot a traditional rock video. Again, did it for grins and giggles. It was a vanity project. Its NOT a band…BUT I wanted it to look like a band. My guitar pal who wrote the lyrics said “I always though a cool band name would be Mercy For The Wolf”. In an instant, we were named (hey, we are not a band). We shoot the video, my video pal edits it and here it is.
I still laugh today that I had anything to do with it. I aimed for The Long Run and landed somewhere near the Trooper (with a pinch of MUSE)!
It’s a bass out front song. Feel free to laugh along with me.
A 16 year old me would have though I just wrote a hit. The now 54 year old me just smiles and shakes his head…..
I give you Mercy For The Wolf’s “The General”
(hey, we are not a band)
Pithy backstory. I am a 55 year old fart. In the 80’s I had hair past my shoulders, torn jeans and wore any number of metal shirts to school. Cut my bass teeth on Gene Simmons, Steve Harris and Geddy Lee.
Play in bands, try and be a rock star. Years later I sell my bass for a Chapman Stick, played it for a few years…get close to a record deal with A&M records (remember them?). A couple of years later I sell the stick when I get into studio production and needed a neve mic pre. I was a studio rat for decades having given up on the Rock and Roll dream.
One night the wife was away with her girlfriends. I had my studio up and my strat was plugged into my red bean pod. My goal was to WRITE a song that night. I tinkered, I struggled and inspiration was not to be found. Out of frustration I flung my strat on the studio couch, go down stairs and grab a big ole bottle of red wine. Didn’t even bother with getting a glass glass as I was mad at the whole unproductive situation and chose to drink right from the bottle. After a gulp or three I look at the strat and say “What the heck are you doing? You are a bass player, man”.
I unplug the strat, plug in my bass and do NOT change a single distorted/delayed guitar setting on the pod. After two notes of the delayed distorted goodness…the song gods opened the musical heavens. They chose me as the vessel for this song. I could say I wrote it but I know this song had already been written and the Song Gods just needed a human vessel to commit it to tape. (sounds all hippy new age, right?)
The music and arrangement totally wrote itself in less than 5 minutes. I sat in 3rd person and watched it happen before my eyes. CRAZY!
Now, as I got older i left my Metal credentials way behind. When I try and write I shoot for something somewhere The Eagles, Jellyfish and Peter Gabriel. That is what I WANT to write. This fateful night, something unexpected flowed from my goofy old fingers. I laughed as I printed a rough demo of it. I drunkenly got on the studio drum kit and badly played a beat behind it. Sobered up the next morning, rendered a rough mix and sent it to a guitar player buddy of mine. I wanted him to laugh with me at its silliness. The email reply came back a day later without any text in the email, just an MP3. He had imported it into garage band and played guitars and a rough vocal appeared, to my astonishment. I stepped back and said “Wait, I think this is a ……..thing”.
I soberly fleshed out a legit arrangement the next day. A week later I had an old drummer pal who’s played on many albums (The Mother Station, Course of Nature, Dust for Life) track drums for me. Weeks later guitars were tracked and I even called in a favor to a singer pal from the 80’s. At 60 years old he laid down the vocal you hear on this track. Done in about 2 takes. ALL this was done in and around 2010. I never got around to mixing it. A close pal of mine who used to be a live gunslinger for Winger for a few years did video production locally. He heard a rough mix of this goofy song and insisted we do a video for it. So, during lockdown I put the mix in the hands of another pal, Michael Patterson (Beck, Biggy Smalls, Puff Daddy, Jlo, TLC, Custom… to name a few). He mixed it, during lockdown. I convinced the cats that played on the song to show up in a covid safe building where we shot a traditional rock video. Again, did it for grins and giggles. It was a vanity project. Its NOT a band…BUT I wanted it to look like a band. My guitar pal who wrote the lyrics said “I always though a cool band name would be Mercy For The Wolf”. In an instant, we were named (hey, we are not a band). We shoot the video, my video pal edits it and here it is.
I still laugh today that I had anything to do with it. I aimed for The Long Run and landed somewhere near the Trooper (with a pinch of MUSE)!
It’s a bass out front song. Feel free to laugh along with me.
A 16 year old me would have though I just wrote a hit. The now 54 year old me just smiles and shakes his head…..
I give you Mercy For The Wolf’s “The General”
(hey, we are not a band)
Maybe you should be a band; you already have a great band name.
