Chapter 18: After Piano Liaisons

      When I was a little boy, it was our family’s Sunday routine to drive over fifty miles to attend church, and after services were over (at which point I'd most sincerely thank God) we'd head back home—stopping halfway to visit my maternal grandmother in Indianola.  Truly, this is when I learned what it was to be mind-numbingly bored.

     I was the last-chance child of parents pushing forty.  My youngest cousin was an adult.  So after going over the river and through the snow, my only playmate was an old upright piano.  The combination of bored handsy child and unsupervised access to grinning yellowed ivory yielded dissonant clusters and anti-melodies that eventually prodded mater and pater to have me take piano lessons.  …to at least lessen the blows' impact.

     What I remember about those piano lessons is that—especially in the warm late spring, summer, and early autumn—it felt like I was in prison.  Every time I would hear through my practice room window gleeful screams of laughter or hear the dull refracted thump of a basketball, the keys would become all the more resistant to my touch.  Soon after, it was more about lasting through the remaining hour-long minutes left to do on my stretch.

     After serving a three-year term, I pled my case before the parole board (a.k.a. my father).  Recidivism being what it is, by my sophomore year in college, I found myself back inside—this time serving a life sentence. …we are talking music, right?

     This song is one I composed while watching a DVD of A&E's "Napoleon" miniseries.  I had entertained releasing an entire album of piano sketches like "…Liaisons".  On SIDzCarbonatedMilk I: "Please Don't Harmonica", I felt it needed something soft and relaxing to serve as a cerebral fingerbowl—after all the booming and occasional frenetic weirdness.  I concluded the 17 song project with an acoustic piano piece titled "Last Stop Su's"—based on a more than amorous short story I wrote about my wife being the last stop on my delivery route.  [Note:  I later realized that the actual "Last Stop Su's" was a different song all together, but I liked the title at that position on the playlist, so I switched titles.]

This one serves as dramatic relief, or maybe a Funk-napkin of sorts.  Uhh…you got a little something…there.  There.  You got it…much better.

Chapter 17: Tempted and Tested

          Here's one that Jack and I wrote together in record time. It was one of those inventions mothered by an opportune necessity to place a song on an album of promised prominence that was already in production. [Hint: it involved Jack's niece and a son of a Detroit Motown™ Temptation in L.A.]   It is the fourth and final entry in the “Well Ain’t She Suite” series.

          This was 1998. I had moved operations from Avery Street [in (Detroit Tiger Hall-of-Famer) Ty Cobb's old neighborhood] to Clinton Township—a Met-DET suburb near its northeastern extremes. Ask anyone who was around in the Avery studio [S. A. S. Productions] and they'll tell you we left a lot of good memories…fortunately, we still have most of the music in one format or another. [Note: Look for the release in the medium-near future of some of the best of this on a release titled "The Avery Tapes".]

Chapter 16: I'm Faithful

         I wrote "I'm Faithful" in 1990, with no idea of where I might place it.  It is the third entry in this 4-part series.  All my connections were R&B or Jazz.  And this post-New Wave club piece was going to take loads of dough, dropping wax, and greasing palms to do something independently of the majors.  I had watched one of my collaborators (Herschell Masten; White Limousine) dole out big funds doing such.  At the time, buying food and keeping a roof over my family's heads was my other choice of investment.  Aside from the monetary logistics, this was best launched as a Pop thing.  I didn't know anyone with the voice capable of conveying the feel without sounding wannabe.

Chapter 15: What’s It Gonna Take?

…is the second entry in the “Well Ain’t She Suite”.  It is yet another one of those test-songs of which I so often have made mention.  I’ve a tech-stuff addiction.  I salivate gazing at all the naked knobs on display in Vintage King® advert-inserts in my voluminous trade periodicals. …techno-porn for the gear-lustful.  I’ve managed to control it with plug-ins-patches; it’s music gear methadone.  I’ve had to ramp up my dosages with DSP accelerators like UAD-1, UAD-2, the Scope-Platform (now my Plugiator), T. C. Electronic’s Powercore, and Korg Oasys PCI.  While auditioning a modeled electric rigged guitar on the latter, I came up with this very convincing application of a riff.  The words and melody immediately followed.  However, I could never seem to build upon it enough to compose a radio playable length. It was shelved for several years.

          Building The Mμne-Pi Parables song list, I had added “I’m Faithful” as an follow up answer to the musical question posed in “Lies”.  Then I remembered “What’s It Gonna Take”; the lyrics work in, added to and fortified the story arc.  And soul of wit that its brevity is, it serves well as an interlude because of its short length.

What’s it gonna take to make you change your mind?

…all the things I’ve been telling you,

You think is just a line

But these times will be behind you soon

What’s it gonna take to make the truth divine?

Is it all about the signs?

You want to look no further than your eyes

Chapter 14: Lies

This is the first chapter in a 4-part series within a series ably authored by an abstruse riddler wrapped in an enigma while using his zillion-piece white sand puzzle box as a maraca.

This song series, codenamed "Well Ain't She-Suite", is a mini-musical melodrama about betrayal, mistrust, denial, and finally contrition.

In November 2008 (at the Mμne’s onset)—when I played "That Said" [see Chapter 3] over the phone for my firstborn:  Maceo, he commented, "Pops…doing it old school."  It was my intent to produce that late 2008 composition with a funky 70's feel.  "Lies" is different, and is probably early old school…maybe pre-school, for that matter.

It has been my observation that popular music has a twenty-five to thirty year turnover cycle.  Think of all the Beatles Sgt. Pepper-esque affectations in the past few years. …as well as Coldplay's Viva La Vida-tour garb in 2008.  Late last century (in the nineties), Rap performers and producers began utilizing P-Funk elements in their products, and the term and concept of old school became the new thing all over again.  Where I grew up, the best dances were held in a building that was literally literally an old one-room schoolhouse, so old school even means a different thing to me.

"Lies" is a pre-school groove stylistically, as it has that 1987 Minneapolis music-heyday feel that hasn't quite yet rolled up in the chamber.  The thing about "Lies" is that it was actually written and produced in 1987, and is current for that time.

…the Second Coming of Motown?