Here is my first entry into the SpinTunes song writing competition. The challenge was to write a song about your hometown. I’ve had a lot of them, but Fairfield, NJ is where I grew up and lived the longest so that’s what I’m going with. The main problem I came across in this challenge is what to cram into a 3 minute song about your hometown? Luckily for me, there’s not much in Fairfield that’s too exciting to write a song about so that made my job somewhat easy. Then again, I compare everything to Disney World so I could be wrong.
The song draws mostly from childhood memories and images from growing up. I’m not a big fan about explaining every last detail about a song but since this is about a place that I’m sure most of you have never been to, I’ll try my best to keep it brief. Ready?
The diner does have a name and it’s name is Versailles. The old library was somehow removed to build a new one across town. Whether it was blown up or zapped by aliens I couldn’t tell you for sure. I didn’t see it happen so I wouldn’t rule it out. The Ice Caverns is where scary animated Santas and Mrs. Santas stand and twist and turn and wave in different holiday settings. It was always FREE, until recently. Sniff… 
The bush with the hand was at my cousin’s house down the street from where my family lived. We used to hide in it as kids and wave to cars to see the reactions. Sorry to ruin the illusion for all you people that drove by and thought it was real. The song then goes on to reference the ongoing flood problem brought on by the mighty Passaic River during heavy long rainstorms. And yes I have a brother Davey that I was forced to watch play softball. Good Tymes was a bar in town that is no longer there and Calandras is the often mispronounced bakery. Stevenson and Churchill are the two rival grammar schools in town and we had arcade games where any kid would rather be than school. Whew!
You can check out the results of the contest here and also read the judges reviews.
The entire SpinTunes round 1 album can be found here. The #1 song, London, is by far my favorite of the round! Great job by everybody involved.
Fairfield
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It’s here! The next SpinTunes contest has started. I will be among the many many participants. 35 to be exact! Check out the profiles of those competing here. You’ll find a lot of really cool and talented people there. The first challenge will be posted tonight at 1 AM. I guess technically tomorrow but you know what I mean. I’m pretty excited about this and I hope it shows in the songs. I haven’t had time to do much lately except for the White Elephant Club’s Skultar challenge and a song for CureFight. I’ll do another post about those tomorrow. Better super late than never. The winner of the Skultar challenge will be announced tonight. For now stay tuned to SpinTunes. It’s going to be fun for everyone.
So………. it’s been quiet in here for awhile huh? I wasn’t slacking though. Most of my time was taken up by the Nur Ein V competition. I meant to put up each song here as the competition rolled on but obviously never got around to it. My plans are to remix each song and put them here and on Bandcamp. Each song needed to be written and recorded so fast that they could all use a better mix.
Also, I just signed up for another songwriting competition. This one is over at Spintown. It’ll be starting up over the weekend. You could check that out here. Over 30 people are in this one. Should be a lot of fun.
Keep checking back for the remixes of songs from Nur Ein and I’ll also have them for free downloads at Bandcamp.
You can go directly to Nur Ein V here and listen to the entire competition round by round. A lot of good stuff.
This song was written for the Circle Of Titles collection which was put together by Jon Eric over at Song Fight. The plan is that all participating members submit one title. All the titles would then get randomized by Jon’s Super Duper Randomizing machine and we’d get someone else s title to write a song about in return. The title I got: The Prisoner’s Dilemma. Not knowing what a prisoner’s dilemma was at the time, I had to call on Wikipedia to the rescue. After reading the definition, and still not too sure what it means, I wrote a song about it.
The song needs a little setup and I’ll try my best NOT to confuse anyone. It’s about a guy and a girl who both get arrested for doing some kind of horrible crime. Actually, I don’t know if the crime was that horrible, but it was a crime nonetheless. It’s sung from the guy’s wishful thinking point of view while he sits in his interrogation room trying to decide what to do next. At the same time, she is in her own room, possibly having the same thoughts as he is. Here ya go. Hope you like. Rock on!
The birds were recorded outside the window when I was trying to record vocals. They were VERY annoying at the time. I figured I’d record them and those are the birds you hear in the song.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma
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Download it here at Bandcamp.
Well it wasn’t a complete failure. I did manage to get most of the music finished. Ran into a few snags so it couldn’t be completed in time. The song was originally written as a waltz (by accident) and couldn’t get the drums to sound right so rewrote the music as 4/4. Then the bass I was using sounded like turd so……new bass. Then some of the lyrics weren’t fitting with the music and sounded forced. You could tell a good song when the music and words just flow naturally and it wasn’t happening with this one. The last big snag was that the song file became corrupt due to some Windows updates I installed (by accident). I smell a Mac in my future, perhaps? I was able to eventually recover from that but by then it was too late and had to throw in the towel. There you have it in a large nutshell, the anatomy of a Song Fight failure.
Here’s what I had so far. I don’t usually put out an unfinished song but I’m in the sharing mood today. There’s an absence of a guitar solo which would be where the drums go to the splashy open hi hats and at the end also. The end of the song I was experimenting with a bunch of percussion and will probably take them out. I didn’t want to submit it to Song Fight because I am one of those that believes instrumentals should not be submitted. I do like the song and the direction it’s going and think it would fit nicely on the new album. As of this posting the new songs have not been put up yet at Song Fight, when they do, show your support and vote for your favorites.
Double Take
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