Release Date: 1/10
Album: HELLO CLEVELAND
Writer: CHARLIE ZAYLESKIE, TERESA COWLES, JON BRAUN, ADAM MARSLAND
Audio:
Lyrics:
none whatsoever
Musicians:
Adam - guitar
Teresa Cowles - bass
Jon Braun - drums
Charlie Zayleskie - keyboard
Adam sez:
While we were all cooling our heels at the Buckeye Hall of Fame (see the story behind "Sports Bar"), we started working on an idea we'd had in the van. Basically, I got out a sheet of paper, wrote down a chord and a time signature, and passed it around the table. Each person in the band got to write whatever they wanted for one bar, and then passed it on to the next person. After a while we started to one-up each other to see how weird we could get. On one of them, we went randomly into 3/4. On another, Jon demanded that we play "the Hendrix chord", which he had to show me the next day on the guitar. Charlie says "I want a full beat rest." Etc., etc. You can see us enjoying ourselves way too much "writing" this song on the band picture in the inner sleeve of HELLO CLEVELAND.
Charlie really made the song work with his mellotron part, and Bill Stone provided the quirky vintage amp that gave my guitar its odd, trembly sound. I really, really enjoyed recording this song, figuring out how to finger the weird chords and negotiating our way through the puzzle of the chord sheet. You have to admit that even though we had to record all these songs really fast, we didn't make it easy on ourselves, considering this maze of weird progressions (and I have to admit the "Hendrix chord" was genius) and the odd time signatures of "40 Year-Old College Student." In fact, we all enjoyed the challenge of this so much that we did more takes than were really necessary, which slowly drove Bill Korecky insane.
The title of the song came from Teresa, referring to something that had occurred the previous night in Pittsburgh. We were in the middle of a song when suddenly Teresa took a dive and Jon, very uncharacteristically, dropped a beat. I had no idea what had happened; I wonder if a lighting fixture fell or something. I didn't see it, but it turned out a stinkbug had flown straight into Teresa's face. Teresa ducked and then it went after Jon. Bill Korecky said himself that the music really did convey a stinkbug flying around to him. "I can hear him getting angry here!" he said when we got to the place where the chords just move up and down the scale. He, and Earle Mankey after him, were incredulous that the chords were strung together totally at random. It just goes to show that you can make just about anything sound like music if you do it right. That idea really gave me pause, and it definitely influenced me moving forward.