#9 A bit of inspiration
Magic - Mick Smiley - Ghostbusters (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Follow Me - Muse - The 2nd Law
Duchess - Genesis - Duke
Blame it On Bad Luck - Bayside - Bayside
Jaws Theme Swimming - Brand New - Deja Entendu
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So we’re gonna do something a little different today. (An attempt at keeping this blog a LITTLE more consistently.) I’d like to talk about some of the musical inspiration for my show, Vincent. Which is…conveniently having a concert at 54 Below on August 9th at 9:30pm. Tickets available here! So here we go…the first five…
Magic - Mick Smiley - Ghostbusters (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
- Spotify - Apple Music - Youtube
This song fascinates me. I LOVED Ghostbusters as a kid. I bought the soundtrack and would play songs like “Savin’ the Day,” the main title song, and obviously the classic Ray Parker Jr. tune. But i’d get to this one…and hear like 10 seconds and skip it. I couldn’t place where in the movie it was from. It was this very 80s synth pop song. At the time I wasn’t really into synth pop and i’d just movie past it. And one, no pun intended, magically day…actually ya know what…pun intended. Fight the power…intend your puns! …anyway…one magical day I decided to just listen. It starts almost like a major key version of In the Air Tonight. The chorus ends up being very power ballad-y with this distorted guitar. Pretty cool. And then at 2:19…everything changes. It takes the hardest left turn in the history of left turns. Like…that turn the bus from Speed has to make where it looks like it’s a dead end. That hard of a turn. It gets dark, it gets mysterious. All of sudden the vocals are almost spoken. And most of all…I recognized it from the movie. The scene where Walter Peck blows up the containment unit. All this time I assumed that was score. But no…it was an actual song. When I first heard it…I listened over and over. I couldn’t get past the switch over. It just hits like a brick wall. It feels like a psychotic man speaking of love…and then a switch flips and suddenly it’s not love…it’s obsession. The music video supports this even further with a distinct version of the song that actually goes back and forth between feels. (I don’t like it as much as a song…but as accompaniment to the video it’s cool.). I’ve taken this idea of just an abrupt transition and have spent years trying to recreate that feeling. Maybe I figured it out. Maybe I didn’t. Either way…it lives rent free in my mind.
Follow Me - Muse - The 2nd Law
- Spotify - Apple Music - Youtube
Muse fascinates me as band. They have this basis of classical music (a lot of Rachmaninoff, a lot of Chopin). They played a lot of metal. And then in 2012 they released an album after hearing dubstep. They realized some of that gets deeper and heavier than the heaviest metal. So they decided to mix it all together. This song…mixes just about all of it together. The side chained synth feels like the heaviest guitar. I’m also obsessed with the arpeggiating synth line that shifts feel between the half time and the normal time from the drums. It’s just all so good. I heard this song and the first thing I thought was “man…this sounds like what Dr Frankenstein would sing when he brings life to his creation.” World War Z used an instrumental version of this song as its end credits music. It just has this natural feeling of angst and power. I wanted to attribute a bit of that into Vincent’s I want song. The original version included a side chained synth at its final chorus. It was cool but ultimately way too distracting. I eventually replaced it with what would develop into a leitmotif for the rest of the show.
Duchess - Genesis - Duke
- Spotify - Apple Music - Youtube
Genesis as a whole has been an inspiration in so many ways. Phil Collins drumming style and composition is scattered through the show. The very original idea of Vincent was to use emo music, because of Vincent’s volatile emotional state. But then I realized I could use that as a basis and then paint over it with the melodic beauty of progressive rock like Genesis. Duchess is another song that goes through a mood shift. The drum machine at the beginning creating a sparse beat with stabs of random sounds. Then a piano begins a melody that slowly builds. out into this beautiful palette of synth and a glistening guitar in the key of B major. It feels like starlight. And then suddenly these pounding gated toms give us a fill into a new section starting on a G chord…and then establishing the new key of B minor. It feels like being in a state of happiness and bliss…when reality trudges back in. It’s Tony Banks’ (keyboardist of Genesis) favorite song of theirs. I only got to see them in concert one time and luckily they had decided to add this to the setlist. (The first time playing it since the ‘81 Duke tour). It was incredible. The drums are unpitched (Phil has stated he doesn’t so much tune his toms to any pitch..just gets them so they sound relatively good to each other). When they enter…they feel like a melody bringing us down from the Major to the G. It feels natural and melodic. Phil was excellent at that kind of drum composition. Drums, being my first instrument…I continually try to understand and find that secret to drum composition in terms of melody. There’s a few moments in the score that I think i’ve found it and the drum book should read like melody. I can’t wait for the first drummer who doesn’t get it and decides to ignore the sheet to make their own fill…and for me to roll my eyes.
Blame it On Bad Luck - Bayside - Bayside
- Spotify - Apple Music - Youtube
When I write, I like to create playlists of vibes. Sometimes it’s musical…sometimes lyrical. This was both. When I imagined the scene where Vincent’s ear is cut off…I initially imagined something like this. The catalyst for the ear severing was a fight with Paul Gauguin…allegedly. So I imagined the fight happening and then this being Vincent’s own version of Epiphany. I wanted my Sondheim moment. So I imagined a balls to the wall pop/punk tune of angst and agony. Lyrically this is a song about a bunch of bad stuff happening to someone and them deciding to shift blame. I was going to do the opposite. Some bad stuff happens to Vincent and they take the blame for EVERYTHING. This anger would then lead to the severing of the ear. As soon as I started writing, I realized the moment needed to be approached completely differently. It needed to be defeated, not angry. And so the song became a beautiful song of acceptance and defeat. Closer to the real life feeling that hits after a major falling out. That feeling that hits only after everyone’s gone and you’re finally alone. The initial reaction might be anger…but it’s the defeat you sit in. And THAT’s what it needed to be. I never would’ve reached that conclusion without this song.
Jaws Theme Swimming - Brand New - Deja Entendu
- Spotify - Apple Musif - Youtube
Brand New is ALL over Vincent. This album was one of the most played CDs I own. I once played in a band that played half of one show. We covered “The Quiet Things that No One Ever Knows” and the guitarist yelled at me during the gig cause the fills weren’t exactly what Brian Lane played. …Wasn’t a great band. But this song. It was the best example of a pop/punk waltz I knew. Cause I knew that I needed at least one duet for Paul Gauguin and Vincent to sing and to argue with each other. But I wanted it to be a waltz. I wanted them to feel like they were dancing around each other as they threw arrows of discussion. The song in Vincent, “In Plain Sight” owes a lot to the kind of song this is. It has a vibe and sets up new rules for what a waltz could do when being pushed out by saw like distorted guitars. I still hold to the idea that one day Vincent’s vocals will sound less sung and more rawly shouted like the great pop/punk bands of the early 2000s. One day.
Stay tuned for the next five.
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