I posted a song on FAWM today. Strictly speaking, it does not qualify. The song was started last February, left in limbo for a year, and resumed this year. I posted a demo of us playing it this morning at Wood Burning Cat practice. Below is the demo and the full lyrics. Tentatively, this song is titled "Radio Waves," though I may change that down the road.

Wood Burning Cat - New Song (final take) by notjason

If I had it my way
I would just work the whole damn day
Until I'm too tired to do anything but sleep
And when I would drop
free from the burden of my thoughts
I wouldn't have to think of how I'm wasting all my time

I now apprehend
that this is a means without an end
And I am as far behind as I have ever been
And some would suggest
that you should just do what you like best
But if they knew what that meant they'd probably disagree
Cause I hate the things I love and they hate me

I spent the last six months living aboard a satellite
Orbiting miles above the surface of the Earth
Broadcasting radio waves to a discreet antenna
On an Earthly robot that looks quite a bit like me
And I see everything it sees through a small black and white TV
And it does most the things that I ask it to do
But I can't grab it's robot jaws and issue one simple request
Please just stop filling me with fuel
Please just stop filling me with fuel

Potential lyrics for the bridge of an existing Wood Burning Cat song.

I've been the last six months living aboard a satelite

orbiting miles above the surface of the earth

broadcasting radio waves to a discrete antenna

on an earthly robot that looks quite a bit like me

and I see everything it sees through a small black and white TV

and it does most the things that I ask it to do

but I can't grab it's robot jaws and utter one simple command

please just stop filling me with fuel

Alright, it's morning and I feel slightly less hopeless. I can do this damnit. Still, expect not to hear from me until at least tomorrow. Snow storm and work and all that shit.

Last year, I didn't end up doing FAWM at all. I recorded a lot of little demos, some of which still seem to have potential, but none of which ever actually amounted to anything. Eventually I just admitted defeat and gave up entirely. Of course, I'm only a day into it this time, but it's hard not to feel like I'm heading down the same rout. The only thing I've done so far is a really horrible tossed off chord progression with a super predictable and repetitive melody over it. Why would I want to do anything with that?

How can I not suck at music? What is the key? I don't always suck at music. Do I?

And lyrics, don't even get me started on lyrics. It seems like the problem with lyrics is just symptomatic of a bigger issue with life in general. In order to really write lyrics, something has to put fire in you to do such. My life is pretty much the opposite of fiery. All the conflicts in my life have the volume turned down to a dull whisper. That isn't to say they don't exist, but it's inordinately hard for me to really give a shit about anything enough to write about it.

Another problem is that I'm too smart to like the bad lyrics I come up with. Even in my current batch of Wood Burning Cat songs, there are lyrics that make me cringe. I have some that don't even make sense. Why would I want to write lyrics that I don't think are smart?

That's the rant for now. Hopefully I'll get over myself and work on something else later, but I think today has been a bust.

As sometimes happens when I record an idea late at night, in the morning I hated it. Well, "hate" is a strong word, but I didn't think it represented anything tremendously worth hanging onto. Still, however, I persevered and tried to do something similar. This is also in B major, but has two additional chords. While this is a fairly standard chord progression, it's not one that I personally have made much use of. Basically, it's B, E, C#m, F#, or 1 4 2 5. Additionally, I tried to park myself on each chord for longer before the change. The melody is the simple "repeating one lead over and over and over and over again" approach.

20110201-0616 by notjason