Podcast

 

For some reason I got the Moody Blues song I’m Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band stuck in my head. This is what we do to earworms here in Frenzyland.

 

Smooth Operator by Sade came over the radio on the way to Cape Cod. As it played I ran it forward in my head so I was ready for the chorus, to BBFB-It. It sounded good in my head but you have to actually hear it to know if it works.

Smooth Operator is a very simple song to play from a technical standpoint. The crucial thing is to keep that slinky vibe going without making the song sleepy. The guitar is my main Fender Hiwy One Strat with the bridge Vintage pickup selected. Now that I think of it, I could have used the Les Paul for the rhythm since it would probably have a slicker sound. Oh well.

The I tried to make the vocals as smooth as I can. They turned out just at the edge of sloppy, there are two places I wanted to redo but I decided to let genuineness (laziness) rule the day. For the lyrics I wanted to match the mood of the song, kind of sad and tragic, with the story of Bruce Wayne’s tragic early life. I used ‘Batman’s Toys’ as a link to Bruce’s childhood. He is eager to stop other tragedies, in a doomed effort to stop his own.

This song was written and recorded in the time it took to make a two-bag shopping trip. I had figured out the chords earlier this morning from watching a guy on YouTube. I didn’t want to do all 4 bars of the opening lick that the sax player does on the album. You have to keep these songs as short as possible. So I had to make something up for the second bar that was in the spirit of the sax but worked as an opening to the vocals. I improvised the little base line before the chorus. I think it is right, but not 100% sure.

Since Prince had his version of Nothing Compares to You released, I figure I’d get in on the action.

I actually do have other things I should be doing. Instead I am ruining perfectly good songs.

I had a rangly-jangly-fancy-pants-guitar version recorded and ready to go. Then I got some advice to grunge it up. I redid the whole thing and yeah, I think it is better now.

This is all done with my Strat Highway 1 HSS. I was swapping between the Duncan Distortion bridge pickup and Vintage Duncan Humbucker in the neck, not sure which one I ended up with here.

I did the guitar part in one long take. This is really the simplest way to play this song and I managed not to mess it up.

I just sung through the song 4 times or so, got rid of the mistakes and made some chorus’ out of it.

 

Here are the lyrics:

NOTHING COMPARES TO MY PULL
Its been seven days since last week’s pull
What will Batman do today?

Will he be tangling with Bane or Ras’ al Ghul
Will he know how to get away.

Since the last pull I’ve been worrying my poor eyes out
And its nothing but nothing but that the rack can cure

Its Bat Books for Beginners
Bat Books for Beginners
We know.

This is a parody of Bachman Turner Overdrive’s ‘Taking Care of Buisness”. I never learned this song before, there is a little history behind why. I was in a band in High School and we played a talent show, also in the show was a rival band. They played this song and beat us. Grrrr.

My Podpartner Chris Karnes’ twitter handle is @BTOandBatbooks. BTO is the initials of a podcast he does a segment on called Batgirl to Oracle. People jokingly say that he is a big Bachman Turner Overdrive fan. So, I figured I would suck it up and do this song.

The tune is all played on my Les Paul which is unusual. The rhythm part isn’t hard but it is relentless and I thought that it would be easier to play on the LP than the Strat. Also, the LP has a nice crunchy rhythm sound I like very much. I figured since I had it set up I’d use it for the leads as well. I am happy with how the sound turned out.

The tempo is faster than the BTO song. I’m not sure how I feel about that. It made for some weird sounds in the leads because I had to play them fairly quickly and there are a few unwanted open string ringing, but the ethos of this parody work is to leave in some mistakes and move on to the next song.  Mission accomplished.

For some reason I love Peace of Mind from Boston’s first album. I always have, it has a similar chord progression that Sister Golden Hair has. I’ve always like the sound of leading with a minor 3rd and coming down to the root chord. It is a very pretty progression.

I went through a number of arrangements for this song. I was trying the song out in different keys and it was a bit frustrating syncing up both the opening chords and the lead key. I finally just got picked one and improved my way through it with a totally different feel than I planned on. It went in one take. Luckily I was still recording myself from a recently failed attempt. I had to tweak just one teensy little missed beat (like a tenth of a second off)  but otherwise it is here as recorded.

I wasn’t sure about that background bluesy guitar. I need it to end the song with because I’m not happy with the ending without it. But it does kind of come out of nowhere here and there in the song. That kind of playing is kind of my thing though, so I left it in.

Originally I had a very distorted version of the main rhythm guitar. It hurt my ears to listen to after a while which is why I like this less distorted but still crunchy sound. There is a funny tick tick tick in the opening guitar lead. Not sure what that is, I left it in for ambiance (I misspelled lazy).

Note: After listening to the original version of the song on my laptop speaker I decided to remove some of the bluesy guitar. It sounded good on my fancy headphones but the music gets seriously compressed on earbuds and tiny computer speakers so I had to pull some things out. Original is below, new one is above.

 

In honor of tonight’s Svengoolie movie Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, here is a little Kaiju parody song for Bat Books for Beginners.

It is pretty straightforward, going back to my ‘less than an hour’ approach. Simple rhythm and leads. To be honest I did a bunch of versions of the leads behind the vocals and I Frankensteined them together to take the best parts of each take.

This is using my Fender HSS Highway 1 Strat with using the bridge Duncan Distortion pickup. The distortion is just what my Fender Mustang I uses as the British 60s model. Both the rhythm and lead use the same setup. I did add some Audacity reverb to the opening lead to give it a little air.

One thing I’m not sure about is that for the first pass through the rhythm riff I don’t do the strum scratching. My theory is that I wanted to give it a little build up and I think it works. However, it does sound a little bare, luckily it is just the first time through.