City Zoo

So we’re pretty much finished with recording W. I thought I’d take a couple (a relative term) lines to explain where this song came from.

When all five of us got in the room for the first time back in June, we did three things:

1.) Spontaneously broke into “Champagne Supernova” by Oasis

2.) Caused permanent hearing damage to all of us.

3.) Nick laid out the initial riff for W.

This song gets Daniel's seal of approval

The guys jammed on it for a while, then we moved on. One night shortly there after at Pete’s while the guys were working on it some more, the lyrics hit:

“Too many times have I tried to get your attention/You just stand there aloof, holding off all my advances” – I think it may have been the same night I claimed myself as the “rock n’ roll Jay-Z.” Let’s just say beer was involved (not Ciroc Vodka).

Things began simple enough, being about trying to get someone to notice…But since it was summer vacation for me, and I had been spending a lot of time in bars – the form of the song as a whole began to take shape.

It’s a drunken rant of some guy who wants to know why this bartender won’t give him the time of day when he wants, instead of just when she has an issue. They guy in the song is even screaming out by the time we get to the chorus, “Hold me down & twist my arm/Push my face down on the floor.” In other words, “I’ll do anything, just notice me for more than as a place to vent problems and shove drinks at.”

It's daylight. If you're the last one - GO HOME!

The “W” in W stands for the word Whore. They guy in the song is referring to himself as one. Because he knows he is one. He’s in the bar night after night, continuously coming back for what empty fulfillment he can get in hopes of something more.

In it’s original form, all we had was verse/chorus repeat repeat. However, this felt a bit stale in performance. “I felt it was a bit too vanilla,” Rory said of the original version, “and I didn’t want to just stick a bridge after one of the choruses because we do that in other songs and plus it would have made the song too long.”  So, Rory came up with a bridge that leads into a sick sounding break into a solo (while the rest of the band plays a variation on the main riff) which then offers a dramatic ascending two-chord progression back to the home chord (A major, for the curious). The band  then briefly cuts out at a fairly major line in the song: “You think by now I would have learned my lesson.” It’s pretty damn cool when everything kicks back in near the end of that line. But anyway, the guy doesn’t – he claims he’s going to leave, but like a true alcoholic, the final chorus ultimately seals his fate. He’ll “put back another shot.”

Soon, you guys will get to hear W in it’s newly reworked glory. Until then, take a listen to the original live version from Infants.

And don’t forget…you’ll get to see all our songs in their wondrous glory on Oct. 18th!

One more thing. We’ve come up with an name for the EP/whatever it is we’re recording: Some Days I’m Evolving. Soon, people…soon.

ST & RC from CZ