Track 12: Rocket Fuel

Originally titled "Rocket Science" this was one of my mad experiments that began innocently enough.

I had a drum line I was interested in and wanted to see what I could do with it. So, I grabbed some abandoned lyric scraps and sat down to record. I only wanted to do a brief sound test, but when you enter a new song, the machine asks for a title first. You can’t bypass it. I had no title, so I closed my eyes, hit a random key and up popped “Q”. Hmm, I thought to myself, “What word starts with Q?” – Anyhow, I’m improvising this guitar piece, singing these scribbled down lyrics and the drums come to a stop for a few seconds, and off the top of my head I shout, “QUAKE!” And there we have it, a title.

After I listened to it, I thought it was an unholy bunch of noise, but what a blast to create a song on the quick, and to write it backwards (from how I usually write). It was so exhilarating that I wanted to do it again. 

This was the formula for “Rocket Fuel” –

#1: Find a drum pattern and just blindly record it. #2: Find a scrap of discarded lyric, adapt and form a new song around it. #3. Randomly hit a key and the first letter I hit would be the first letter in the title. #4. Now try and structure the words and music around this skeleton. #5. And be noisy; add lots of distortion on guitar and voice.

Cover art by wataboku



QUAKE!
Written on April 25, 2009

Songwriting had taken on the tint of work and to get back to making it a source of play was energizing. The lyrics came from a rarely played ballad titled "Jane Austen", which turned sappy at the end (and I didn't use that piece of the lyric). I really wanted to rock out on this thing. BTW, these tracks sound better through headphones

Lyrics
A trickle of Seagram's works its way warmly down

Down, down, I swear I could drown
The phone doesn't want to ring no matter how long, long

Long, long I summon its sound
I must have text you days before, I wonder what you felt when you read it
I'd have said more but even as the words escaped from my mind, I feared I would regret it

QUAKE!



Supersonic
Written on April 29, 2009

The first verse uses abandoned lyrics from a song called "Doll's Eyes" (not on the blog). I quickly hashed out the rest and wrote a long bit about watching insects burrow under someone's skin and hearing that person scream, The line was too long for the music, so I pared it down - it now reads as if I can hear the insects scream, which is surreal and frightening.

The song ended too abruptly, so I looped the drum one more time, Beatles-style, and boosted the run time to over 2 minutes. It's a mess, but a cool mess, and let me restate the importance of listening with a good pair of headphones.

Lyrics
To the crew on board, I send an S.O.S
But the captain and his partner make light of my light of my distress
They pound on my fingers till they give away -sonic-

Saw the insects under your skin, heard them scream - Supersonic! (2x)

Saw something bad crawl out of your mouth
Saw something bad worm its way inside

Saw the insects under your skin, heard them scream - Supersonic! (2x)



Righteous Holly
Written on May 1, 2009. In the key of Am

I didn't know what I was going to do with “H”. I had Holy and thought "Holy Holly", before changing it to Righteous. I broke a rule on this one and actually came up with the bass line first, and then found and laid down a drum track. The discarded lyrics I used were scribbled on a page of notebook paper, but most of them were unsuitable (meaning "rotten"). I did take a line about a ‘touchstone hidden in a maze’. But changed it to a headstone in a field of daisy chain. So this wound up the most original of the Rocket Fuel tracks.

Lyrically I went through a rhyming dictionary and wrote down all the rhyming words first. Then fleshed out a song around them. Again, this was another fun backwards way off doing things. The opening line I wanted to sing it like a Gregorian chant – It's Irish and translates roughly, "My Beloved". Beatrice is a reference to Dante, I thought it would be more interesting than saying My Muse. One listener said it sounded like Davie Bowie mixed with The Sugarplastic.

Lyrics
Ah Ghra mo Chroi

Here was the light, the light of righteous Holly 

Here lies the headstone in field of daisy chain 

Here rests my Beatrice, under this restless terrain

There, righteous Holly wrestled with contempt 

And found its hunger greater than she dreamt 

There languished my Beatrice, all life in her drained and spent

And here righteous Holly, runs her fingers through her hair 

And contemplates the folly, of actions taken in despair

Chorus / Repeat 1st verse



Dawn
Written on May 3, 2009

After the first two numbers, my natural songwriting instincts took over, and while off the cuff, the songs slowly started to get more melodic (Holly and Dawn).

Though I loved recording these and I dig many of the songs, production wise they are raw (an average song in this project was written and recorded in under 2 hours). And with all the filters and distortions, my voice sounded screechy at the chorus. Lyrically the song was an amalgam of two women I knew (one a Goth girl). The snippet of discarded lyric from which I drew the rest of the song, came from the first 2 lines. The smoke line also came from that number, originally written in 2006.

Lyrics
She glides in the room, doesn't waste a smile
I'll shutter the blinds and pretend for a while
She takes my hand, her skin is like ice
Three times I'll try to steal a kiss and she'll, pull away twice

Dawn of the dead, you got inside my head
Black lipstick and lace, silk sheets upon her bed
Dawn of the dead, you got inside my head
You hardly speak a word but I sing everything you've said

She looks so sad, but she says she's happy to see me
But I suspect I'm nothing but smoke in her memory
She pulls a draw from her cigarette and quotes existentialist lit
I know she's going to ruin me but she's someone I can't quit

Chorus

I feel her weight, the cool of her breath
She gets a charge pretending she's the angel of death

Chorus



"Torch" and "Vertigo"
Torch written on May 3, Vertigo on May 4, 2009

These final two broke formula. With Torch I was humming the title while out grocery shopping and when I returned home, I recorded the drum track, then later added the bass and guitar. It was getting very late, and I didn't want to wake up the neighborhood, so I whispered the improvised lyrics, I actually liked the sound of that, and kept it when I polished up the lyrics the next day. 

The words don't relate to me at all and are a fiction about an ice queen falling for a bad boy. Originally titled "Human Torch", musically it opens with a Dbm, and dances around F#, A's and an occasional E.

Lyrics

You saw in him, a wonderland

Electricity is there in his hand

And anything he gives is more than enough

To break the ice in you

He's your torch, he's your torch, your burning torch

He takes all the pain away, takes all the pain away

You thought the cold would never end

He's supernova, you can't pretend

You want that heat again and again

It's more than you can stand

He's your torch, your burning torch, your human torch

He takes all the pain away, takes all the pain away

Vertigo was linked to Torch with incidental music/noise created by rubbing two ceramic bowls rapidly together (and boy, did they get hot as a pistol!) and by running a screwdriver down the bass guitars E string. The weakest production, it really comes undone by the end, my playing is sloppy and the lead vocal sounds dull and muted. I almost didn't share it, but the project was never supposed to be polished, so here it is. 

Lyrically, I improvised a line about atomic men, and that became the theme - an autobiographical journey through songs I wrote in the past, and these lyrics are the strength of the song.

Lyrics

In the beginning there were Atomic Men, a Mutant Force, and of course....

From Kelly to Diane, I discovered tears, a heart only listens to what it wants to hear

I played in my room deep into the night

I played 'till my fingers would ache

I played away each and every mistake...

Except for you

Then came the day when I saw the light, Jesus wept and I took flight

Nashville called, so I entered the game, I sang for Ophelia over lost fame

Chorus

My wife gained her senses and I lost mine, found this specter who struck me blind

I thought the muse was here by design, it spun into madness, a cut so unkind