Song #24: Sin It Away (1985)

This is the first song Teddy Zambetti and I wrote, and it established the template for the songs we would create together in the future.

We actually "wrote together". Teddy supplied a snippet of a chord progression, and I fleshed it out on piano while he accompanied on drums. At some point I started singing a melody with whatever words came out (mostly nonsense) whilst recording the proceedings on my Sony Walkman.
Teddy took the tape home, and the next time we met, he had lyrics. He told me that he wrote down "what it sounded like I was singing". 

Being the good New York Italian-American boy he was, Teddy went to Catholic schools all the way through Georgetown University.
My parents, escaping their rigid Episcopalian Ohioan upbringing, brought me up with Zen Buddhism, and Unitarianism. When I was nine years old, and my best friend Tommy Aiani told me I was going to hell, I spent about a week freaking out, (even going so far as to attend a Sunday School class) before realizing that if God was going to be that mean to a nine-year-old, I didn't want any part of it.

Teddy and I talked about everything including sex and politics, but never about religion. This could have been an unspoken  "don't ask don't tell" kind of policy, but I think we understood that personal spiritual stuff was just that: personal.
When Teddy presented the lyrics for this song I was gobsmacked. Pretty heady stuff.

In Song #19 I wrote about my friend Eckart.
One evening, as we were figuring out the world in front of the fireplace of the Lake Sherwood house we shared, Eckart said something that rang true with me:
"Jesus already died for our sins. We don't have to kill ourselves anymore."

This made good sense, and I felt safe. Perhaps I wouldn't be going to hell after all.

I've often heard other writers tell of "being visited by the muse", and from personal experience I know writing can feel like a divine intervention ("where did that come from?"), but for the most part it's just hard work. It would be fun to say that Teddy transcribed the lyrics I "channeled", but I'd rather leave that job to my remarkable sister.

Sin It Away

You say that you don't love me

I don't believe it true

You say you're gonna prove it

Now look what you go and do

The angels from on heaven

Won't save you from your plight

Pray with all your might

Worship your favorite icon

Drink the milk of the sacred cow

While the turmoil of existence

Needs answered the question "how"

And the damage you inflict on you

Are the wounds that never bled

These actions that can only say

What we have never said

Sin it away

Sin it away from you

Well sin it away

Sin it a way you do

Now sin it away

Sin it away from you

It's all that you have to do

The lessons that they taught you

What your Momma felt inside

What your parents called religion

What your Poppa claims is pride

Through the trials and tribulations

You can't be taught in Sunday School

How your heart was broke in two

So you seek to find redemption

Find a hole to crawl and hide

Let your soul fall to temptation

Try to mask the hurt inside

Through the world of good and evil

Black and white begins to grey

Through the one night stands

And do drop ins

The memories will fade

From the dawn of man and woman

People sinned their hurts away

From the moment that you said goodbye

You chose to go that way

I offer sanctuary from indecision within you

You choose

You can pay for meditation

Or come sit right down next to me

Til the holy war subsides

And our crusade has come to be

And the sermon that I preach

Don't make me holier than you

Cause your method is my madness

Yes I have been out there too

Britt Bacon: piano, synth, vocal

Teddy Zambetti: drums, bgs

Alan Morse: guitar, bgs

Ritt Henn: bass

Written by Britt Bacon and Teddy Zambetti

© 1985

Song #23: Calling Out to Juliette (1988)

In the days before Pro Tools or GarageBand, having access to a multi-track recording studio was a luxury few musicians had.
Owning a studio gave me access, but paying clients always came first, so I recorded during "off" hours (usually late at night), and rarely had the luxury of perfecting a performance or a mix. The recordings of songs on this blog were as good as we could get them given the time allotted, or as we used to say: "close enough for rock and roll".
To many musicians, the benchmark for great rock an roll recordings was the Beatles first album, which was recorded in one long day at EMI studios. The band was very "tight" having spent many nights performing live at the Cavern Club, so when it came time to record George Martin recalled, "It was a straightforward performance of their stage repertoire — a broadcast, more or less."

I attempted to replicate this method of recording, with a new line-up of the band "Eckey Thump" Teddy and I assembled in 1990. We rehearsed religiously, and played gigs around Los Angeles until we had achieved a level of tightness that I felt would qualify us to record "Beatles style".

At the same time I was winding down my partnership at the studio, and our Neve V series console was going to be "returned" to Siemens, so I "booked" the band for a full day of recording.

The resulting tracks from this session are mostly live and in the spirit of "what would the Beatles do?" or WWBD?

In the spirit of transparency, the recording of this song is actually a blend of two versions we recorded; an earlier version with french horn, and the mostly live WWBD version.

Teddy Zambetti's lyrics were often about love; requited, unrequited, obsessive, and in retrospect quite precocious: this song evokes a divorce with children, and Teddy wasn't even married...

Being in a band is like being in a polygamous marriage (but without the sex), and breaking up is hard to do. When we dissolved Eckey Thump in the early 90's, I was as sad as after a good love relationship gone bad.

Calling Out to Juliette

You told me I was lying 

'bout my thoughts of you

You're reading the writing 

Between the lines of the truth

The singing and the sighing 

Pulled our hearts in tune

The feeding and the fighting 

Ripping those memories in two

The seasons are hiding

The rain falling between the leaves

The echo so blinding

Calling out to Juliette

The children are growing 

Without knowing you

Their questions unfolding 

Daddy how come how soon

If I told you of my findings 

Would I break the rules

You're stubborn as a diamond

Cutting the glass I see through

The seasons are hiding

The rain falling between the leaves

The echo so blinding

Calling out to Juliette

In a lullaby

I can close my eyes

And the sleep will come

Until the morning sun

In a lullaby

I could sing my lines

In a lullaby

I can sing to a distant hum

Your mother and your father

Broke the news to me

You're living with another

Somebody set me free

The seasons are hiding

The rain falling between the leaves

The echo so blinding

Calling out to Juliette

Britt Bacon: vocals

Helena Buscema: bgs

Teddy Zambetti: drums

Michael Parnell: bass

Richy Stano: guitars

Michael Lington: sax

Written by Britt Bacon and Teddy Zambetti

©1988

Source: 1/4" analogue tape 30ips

Song #22: The Soul of a New Machine (1982)

In 1967 I was 10 years old, and  there was a cool television show called "The 21st Century", hosted by Walter Cronkite.

I couldn't wait until the year 2000...

Flying cars, lasers, and computers!

At my (public) middle school, "Patrick Henry Jr. High", we were lucky enough to have a Computer Lab equipped with some first generation calculators, and a Teletype Model 33 ASR teleprinter keyboard with punched tape reader and punch. We wrote programs using the BASIC programming language, and literally fed them into the Model 33 where it communicated with a mainframe computer off campus, and we waited for the results to return.

In 1982, Ira Ingber and I read "The Soul of a New Machine", by Tracy Kidder, and were inspired by this true story of the new computer pioneers. Their work resonated with our work as we toiled for hours in the darkness of the recording studio, and experimented with the new ways of music production using the MIDI protocol, and synthesizers.

One musician who was on the leading edge of these techniques was Paul Delph, and we were blessed with his sonic contributions to many of our songs. All the sounds (including drums) you hear on this track were created by Paul, except for the usual blazing guitars of Mr. Ira Ingber.

Ira and used to halfheartedly joke that in the future, we would be able to record an album on a watch.

Thirty-one years later the technological contributions of countless pioneers have brought some amazing benefits to our lives; I am writing this blog on my back porch with an iPad2, and the iPhone 5S can run 64 tracks of GarageBand.

But dammit: where's my flying car?

The Soul of a New Machine

You've got the data all behind you

You took the phone apart when you were just a child

And now all the lessons have been learned

And your imagination runs wild

Stuck in a windowless pit with the micro-kids

In silent darkness invented codes reveal

Secret veins of distance and time

And your imagination runs wild

The moon controls the tides

Synchronized program at the core of memory

The moon controls the tides

What controls the logic in the soul of a new machine

Even the experts stare in wonder

Is this mechanism corporeal

It has the human touch concealed

Cause your imagination ran wild

The moon controls the tides

Synchronized program at the core of memory

The moon controls the tides

What controls the logic in the soul of a new machine

I can't stop I can't sleep

I can't taste the food that I eat

Alone with my madness

Just like a man in love

Britt Bacon: vocals

Ira Ingber: guitars, bgs

Paul Delph: Prophet 10 keyboard

Written by Britt Bacon and Ira Ingber

©1982

Source: 1/4" analogue tape 30ips