Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Float like a float bot, sting like an automated stinging machine!


Leah dreams about me all the time. Well, not me, really, but a kind of "Bizarro Taylor." Bizarro Taylor, apparently doesn't care much for Leah. He's constantly ignoring her to hang out with his friends, cheating on her, or doing some other asshole thing. I hate Bizarro Taylor. If he were a real person, I'd beat the living shit out of him. When our relationship was in its infancy, Leah would actually wake up kind of pissed at me for what Bizarro Taylor had done. Luckily, she doesn't do that anymore, but he still occasionally plagues her nights. Last night he was giving her hell. I guess all I can do is keep not giving her any reason to suspect that he and I are related in any way.

For some reason, I was thinking about the movie Garden State this morning. When that movie came out in 2004, Leah and I saw it more than once in the theatre. We loved Zach Braff because Scrubs was still really good, and we found the film's quirkiness endearing. When it came out on DVD we bought it straight away as well as the soundtrack.

A short while back, Leah and I decided to watch a movie in bed and selected Garden State because we hadn't seen it in a while and...we really didn't like it. Not very much at all. I mean, it's OK, and it definitely has its moments, but I just kept thinking "What kind of 14 year old emo girl must I have been to think this movie was so good?" Leah had the same reaction.

So, this morning I was thinking about that because it just kind of shows, in an albeit trivial way perhaps, that Leah and I have grown together. Of course, I don't need a Garden State analogy to know that my wife and I have grown together in the almost 7 years we've been together but it's nice to stop and appreciate it as often as possible. In a world where the divorce rates show us that most couples grow apart, I take comfort in the fact that true love does exist. It's not some abstract idea, nor is it something commonplace. It is real, tangible, and unfortunately seems to be a lot harder to find than our movies and pop songs lead us to believe. The point is that I love my wife and I'm still just as intrigued by her as I was the day I accidentally asked her on a date in 2002.

We had Quiet Company practice last night for the sole purpose of learning new songs. We spent all night on a song called "Preaching to the Choir Invisible, part II." We're all really excited about it because it's epic as shit. We're hoping to pull it out by our February 24th show with Evan Dando at Emo's as well as another one.

With everything we've ever done, I've always recorded demos of the songs with all the parts more or less fleshed out. So everyone just had to learn the part on the demo, essentially. Of course, they added their own flavor but, in general, the idea was there for them to work with already. With the next record we're trying something different. We already have a handful of songs demoed but we're not going to do any more. Instead, we're building the rest of the songs up together and we're going to try to play them all live for a little while before putting them on tape. The idea is that the songs will be able to breathe and grow a little more, creatively speaking. I'll still be writing all the lyrics, melodies, and chords, but I think the arrangements will benefit a lot from this.

6 comments:

  1. I saw Garden State 4 or 5 times in the theater and at the time I considered it a movie that changed my life. I now own it on DVD but have yet to watch it again because I am afraid of experiencing what you and Leah did :/

    I like reading about the process y'all go through in making music.

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  2. Excuse me, Mr. Taylor Muse. WHY did I not know about this Evan Dando show????

    Have you not listened to me when I've told my countless stories about being a Lemonheads fanatic? Evan Dando stopped in the middle of his song to tell people to calm down because I got kicked in the head with a combat boot and started bleeding. Ohhh, I'm totally star struck right now.

    I'll be there.

    P.S. Okay, not just for Evan Dando, but for you and Leah, too.

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  3. I remember being confused as to why so many of my friends loved Garden State. Before my wife and I started dating, our mutual dislike of that movie was something we shared. I sort of always thought it was shallow and trite, although I kind of like the soundtrack.

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  4. You are also growing as a musician.. I remember walking down Red River well before I was involved with the band and asking you if you ever thought about letting the band help write or help structure some of the songs to which you gave me a "hell no" and punched me in the face. At least you were kind enough to help me look for my missing teeth. Then as you were handing me my bicuspid, you remembered what I asked and decided to throw my tooth across the street into a drainage ditch instead. It's exciting to see you stretch out of your comfort zone and let these songs grow. Album 3 will destroy all of you (in the best possible way that you could be destroyed, of course)

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  5. My birthday is February 25 so if there's a February 24th show I expect there to be new songs for me to geek out about.. 'cause.. youknow... my birthday.

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