Ever wonder where all that music comes from?
It seems like where ever you turn you hear tunes streaming out of radios, iPods, MP3 players, heck it’s even on the Internets. Like the 150,000 gallons of water per second pouring over Niagara Falls the music industry keeps cranking out music to our delight and sometimes consternation.
Well, we are here to lift the lid on how some of our songs are created and give you a peek into the soft underbelly of our song writing process. Now, we can’t speak for Dylan, Lennon, Kobain, the Boss, Beethoven, Williams (Hank not Andy) or any other of the great song writers but we do have intimate knowledge of how the Colin Sphinctor Band’s songs came to fruition. Since all of the band’s songs are original, we were there when they were written (most of the time anyway).
In The Stories Behind the Songs, we tell some interesting (at least to us) stories of how some of the songs came to be. No, none of them were handed to us from some bearded guy holding two stone tablets coming down from some mountain or were written shortly after being struck by lightning, but the real stories of how some of our songs were written are somewhat entertaining and enlightening.
First some background, there are three songwriters in the band, Jim Findlay, John Garbo, and Jay Schober who write songs both independently and collaboratively. Each of the trio has a unique approach to writing songs, and if you listen closely you can often hear the individual styles represented even in the collaborative songs. For example, Jay went through a period where he was unnaturally fixated on Duncan Hines, so if you hear Duncan mentioned chances are you just experienced Jay’s warped mind is at work. Another interesting factoid is that Jim and John wrote their first song together before they even met. John, who worked with Jay gave him the lyrics of a song who then passed it to his friend, Jim who proceeded to put music to it. And thus, sight unseen John and Jim began a song writing team that has lasted over three decades. The interesting thing is that neither of them can remember the song that got the partnership rolling. Jim and John collaborated on many songs from 1975 through 1979 and then took a 25 year break from writing together and then began writing songs again in 2005.
So sit back and enjoy learning how some of the sausage that is our songs have been made.
From Abbasid to Zagroes (a.k.a. From A to Z)
This is the oldest collaborative song that survived the early efforts between Jim and John. It was written circa 1974 and was a “hand-off” song where John wrote the lyrics and then gave them to Jim who put it to music. As John sometimes does he took an existing tune (this time a song by Bob Dylan) started to write lyrics to that tune and then went off in some direction that Dylan himself would not recognize. John never tells Jim the tune he used partly because Jim doesn’t want to be unduly influenced as he comes up with a tune of his own and partly because by the time John gets finishes with the lyrics there is little or no resemblance to the original tune anyway, so why bother? This song was reworked in 2007, dropping a verse and reworking some of the original lyrics. Much to Jim’s amazement and sometimes frustration John can never seem to leave well enough alone and never considers a song complete, even after 30 years of singing it the same way. He’s always tweaking and changing, sometimes to update the lyrics but more often to smooth out some rough edges that has bugged him for years. Wow, talk about compulsive, but hey, what would the Colin Sphinctor Band be without at least one anal retentive character in the mix?
I Am
This song was born in the late 1970s in the form of lyrics John wrote while in his “Dylan” period. Once again he started writing lyrics to a Dylan tune and then the lyrics quickly degenerated into something all together different. Jim and John kicked around ideas for a tune but never came up with anything at the time, so the lyrics were tucked away in their “odds and ends” folders to be looked at “someday”.
Fast forward this story 30 years to 2006 with Jim and John sitting one day around trying, unsuccessfully, to come up with an idea for a song. Turning up dry, John went home and started getting ready to leave for a week’s vacation with his wife, Debbie. John decided to bring along his “odds and ends” folder to clean it out while he was on vacation. During the clean out session he came across I Am which was written all those years ago and deciding that there was potential in the song started working on it. The week after returning from vacation John was still refining the I Am lyrics while waiting for Jim to come by. Jim came in and immediately asked why John was working on I Am when he saw what he was working on. Jim was grew excited as he went to his bag and pulled out the song he started working on the previous week which was, you guessed it, I Am. So, after not talking about this song for nearly 30 years both Jim and John, independent of each other, decided to work on the same song in the same week. John reworked the lyrics a bit while Jim put the finishing touches on the tune and, after a 30 year gestation period, I Am was born. Note, one of the lines requiring updating from the 1970s required changing, “I’m a Cadillac man driving a Ford” to, “I’m a Lexus man driving a Ford”. Such are the times we live in.
Tucumcari Tonight:
Tucumcari Tonight is another “handoff” song where John wrote the lyrics and gave them to Jim. Jim then reworked some of the lyrics to them fit into his musical arrangement. This is the first song Jim wrote on the piano. It is dedicated to a fictional multi-orgasmic girlfriend named Carrie.
Puff Up for Me Johnny
Puff Up for Me Johnny was thirty years in the making, the story goes like this. John went on a vacation out west in 1975. Just before he left he purchased a small amount of ‘herbal’ recreation. There must have been something in the herbs because every time John ‘puffed up’ he literally puffed up. The entire right side of his face swelled up for a few hours. After a couple of these sessions John figured out what was happening and found other forms of recreation for the duration of the trip.
When John returned from vacation he told Jim about the experience, without a further thought, Jim picked up his guitar, strummed out the chorus, “Puff up for me Johnny, puff for me Johnny” and then proceeded on to other frivolity and put “puff up” he hind him. But John kept this in the back of his mind for 30 plus years.
One day in 2005 John approached Jim with an idea to write a song around the thirty year old refrain. The song has four stanzas with each stanza representing a different type of “puffing up”. The first obviously deals with puffing up with drugs, the second addresses weight gain, (thin suit on a very fat man) then it turns to the darker of side of bulimia (a reflection turned by a slight of hand….what goes down must come up), the next stanza focuses on the puffing up associated with ego (it’s not what you think it’s just what you fear), and then the last stanza focuses on sex (what took you so long?). The bridge is a tribute to the histamine reaction which is what got the whole thing started off in the first place.
A Fist Full of Polka
This song was written in 2006 and is primarily the brain-child of Jim. Jim and John got together to write songs one evening when Jim told John he had an idea for a polka song. John would have been surprised if it had been any person other than Jim, but with Jim John has learned to expect the unexpected. Jim picked up his guitar, John picked up his pad of paper and a pen and then the tune and lyrics flowed out of Jim faster than John could write down the words. John’s only contribution to the song is suggesting replacing “panting on the floor” with the phrase “bleeding on the floor”. In addition John helped to formulate the “plot” for the third verse. Other than that, the song is pretty much work of Jim.
Wearing My Heart
Some songs don’t have a very interesting story behind them. This is one of them.
Gaggle of Love
One day in 1978 Jim told John that a “gaggle” is a one (1) followed by 100 zeros. Well, John was quite impressed with such a large number and decided to write a love song titled “Gaggle of Love” to show his girlfriend, soon to be wife, exactly how much he loved her. John went off and wrote the song and brought it to Jim to put music to it. When Jim saw the song, he said that had made a mistake and the term he meant to say was “google” not gaggle. Well, it was decided that a Gaggle of Love was meant to be, and A Gaggle of Love was played at John’s wedding later that year. As it turns out it is a good thing that we stuck with Gaggle because now a days everyone would be wondering what a popular Internet search engine has to do with love. P.S. the song must have worked, John and Debbie just celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary.
The Great Divide (On Becoming an Educated Person)
This song was originally written in 1976 to be sung a cupola using a phony English accent (for effect). Tim Wood, an early Sphictor helped John put his words to music. There the tune sat unperformed for 30 or so years. Fast forward to the year 2006 and to the newly rekindled song writing efforts of Jim and John. John decided that there was a potential for a rework there and gave the lyrics to Jim. After Jim put a new tune to the words he suggested that we write a bridge to it, thus, the two bridges were written to complement the born again song. The subtitle, On Becoming an Educated Person) was the title of a book John was reading when he wrote the original lyrics.
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