The Freshman Experiment

All right. So here’s my new bridge beginning to accommodate all those pesky little 8th notes. Actually, I like it better. Changes in bold.

Nobody can fathom the price tag of my perfection.
No one knows the beauty queen’s plight.
With the manicures
The pedicures
Preventative botox, vegan,
No-tox chemical face peels every night
to keep my skin tight.
I got a new haircut.
I got a new haircut.

At long last, we have finished pretty girl blues.

What you missed: tiff btwn kk and bl regarding the size and scope of the song and therefore the bridge including but not limited to a heated discussion about just how many key changes a song like pretty girl blues is allowed to have.

In this corner: Kait says 1 key change tops. Maybe zero. It’s a small song and why can’t it be? It’s inherently small. It’s an ironic little ditty about a pretty girl who has the blues. Oh boo hoo pretty girl.

In this corner: Brian says 1 key change minimum. Perhaps 2. In fact, I’ve written 2 so smell you. There’s 2 key changes. Wherefore no high notes? Why can’t the song expand? Don’t we want people to want to perform this song? It might be small but need it be trivial?

Oh the drama. Oh the verbal spars. Oh the right hooks (literal right hooks like in boxing not like appropriate song titles)! Oh the boredom that you would have felt if you watched this argument progress from heated to downright embroiled: highlights include Brian telling Kait that the song would become inherently unperformable and did she really want that? Kait resisted (but then I guess passive agressively fine fine, whatever, yes, ok? passive agressively told him what she was going to say after the fight had ended…) saying that Brian was only saying any of this because of the recent sheet-music-perfecting bender he’s been on and everything is about performability for him. What about art? Hm? Cuz pretty girl blues is clearly the highest of art. There was no hyperbole here. Not used by either of them. No. Of course not.

Finally boredom or some higher power turned the page on their fight and they came back to the bridge they had already come up with (the one that was half way between 2 key changes and 0 - in that it was ONE), and they realized that it worked actually quite well.

I like this song. I think it is inherently performable. It does not have really high notes. No. But it’s so much fun to sing. I challenge you not to walk down the street singing it about how pretty you are and how no one understands. Go ahead. Don’t sing it. (But I bet you do.)

Enjoy fresh Xers. Enjoy.

pretty girl blues
I look so fine that no one likes to walk with me.
My hair’s so poker straight I go to clubs for free.
But when I get inside there’s not a girl as pretty.
No one understands my plight in this whole damn city.

I got a new haircut, new dress, a pair of new shoes.
I got an attitude that might be rude but that’s how I cruise.
I got a palpitating heart in my itty bitty chest
So I’m the best dressed whose (whose) got the pretty girl blues.

I’m not complaining bout the fringe benefits
I’m stuck with this dilemma cuz the Prada shoe fits.
I know I know I know I got a good thing going.
But up here on my pedestal it’s not so easy knowing.

I got a new haircut, new dress, a pair of new shoes.
I got an attitude that might be rude but that’s how I cruise.
I got a palpitating heart in my 32-C chest
So I’m the one who’s getting lonely feeling she’s the only one
whose (whose) got the pretty girl blues (blues)

Nobody appreciates the lengths I go to.
No one understands my plight.
With the manicures
The pedicures
Preventative botox, vegan,
No-tox chemical face peels every night
to keep my skin tight.
I got a new haircut.
I got a new haircut.

I got a new haircut, a new dress, a pair of new shoes
I got an attitude that might be rude, but that’s how I cruise
I got a palpitating heart in my itty-bitty chest.
So tell me true is that a way to treat a lady
who is only tryin’ to find a man who understands
that she’s only one whose (whose) got the pretty girls blues.
I got the pretty girl blues.
Got the pretty girl blues.

Brian has now had a chance to look at this, and he says that I screwed up the scansion in the bridge (1st two lines of the bridge - the 2 that start with “nobody”) but that’s ok. I figure I’ll show this to you anyway and I’ll make the slight change tomorrow.

I was just looking through a bunch of the older posts and I finally recognized how fully CC’s titles almost always have hooks for songs in them. Even when it’s not a song I want to write or it’s a song that doesn’t really match the post itself (Rolling Thunder being a prime example), it’s still a song title.

This is not to disparage any of PC’s post titles (or mine for that matter). It’s just one of those things. Some people’s writing lends itself to hooks. We never asked for song titles. This was not something that was planned. It just happened. That’s sort of the beauty of it. Sometimes, we found hooks in other places within the post, but generally speaking - it just sat there in the title.

For those of you who are wondering what a hook is - it is quite simply the repeated and defining phrase that is sung in a song. Generally speaking, it’s the title: Some Enchanted Evening, Oops I Did It Again, I’m Not Gonna Write You a Love Song (actually - I don’t know if that’s the title of the song but that’s definitely the hook) … Born in the USA. Basically, when a musical hook and a lyric hook are working in tandem - they are ridiculously memorable and catchy. When they aren’t, there’s some other memorable musical idea of the song.

Anyway, some people write in cliches, some people write in axioms, CC writes song titles.

Today, I’m going over to Brian’s to do some work on the epic Last Week’s Alcohol. I know we’ve been remiss in our Fresh X song writing. It’s been a long hard few months on our little brains. So many songs, so many concerts, so many rewrites. But we’re excited to isolate this and just do a bit of good and dirty work today. Nothing refined. I’ll let you know how it goes.

After the Bruce Springsteen concert. Because yes, we’re going to that first. Remember when they call him The Boss? I do. I think he still dresses like he’s in the 80s - which is about to go out of style AGAIN.

I might also let you know how that goes.

recording studio + lisa howard + carmel dean = unfuckingbelievable.

Kait here. I’ve been thinking a lot about college in the past few days. Bloggers, be glad you’re writing down as much of your day-to-day as you are. It fades. And it fades differently than childhood, which is so ingrained and formative. Some moments burn into your brain but others disappear with the passing years. I remember all the big moments - the ceremonious ones - but I can’t pull up little details. I can see a roommate cleaning dishes but I can’t hear her tell the story I know was so funny. I can’t remember what made her impression of our economics professor so pricelessly dead-on. I can see her eyes, and I know she’s laughing. I can hear her voice and I know something hilarious happened. But what? I wish I could remember just one thing.

I did keep a journal in college and I’m going to go back through and look at it. But I’m afraid I wrote down the wrong things - the important events instead of the little beautiful and ugly things that happened every day. You never know when you’re going to miss those. I wish I could write it all down, you know? Just in case.