Prefab Blues

Robert James

I should have named this song Double Meaning Blues. Allow me to explain.

My wife, step son, and I spent much of January and early February working on redesigning a couple of rooms in our house. A big part of the project involved putting together lots or pre-fabricated, IKEA style, furniture. In the literal sense, that is what the lyrics to this song are about. Get it? Well there is a double meaning as well! The song is a 12-bar blues and tries to hit most of the cliches associated to that song form. In a sense, the song itself is pre-fabricated. Get it?? Deep, huh?

But there’s another double meaning here too! Shocking! I put ambient sound effects onto a handful of the RPM Challenge songs this year. This song started out in January where all of the other sound effect songs were 100% February. I added the crowd noise to this song to make it feel more at home with the February songs. Nice of me, huh? The double meaning comes from the crowd noise itself. The crowd audio runs through the entire song, but there is no cheering. The sample was actually of a crowd just hanging out, waiting for a concert to start (https://freesound.org/people/joedeshon/sounds/487434/). There is no cheering, and there is no excitement. Why? Because the song is so boring it’s like they don’t even notice the band is playing. HA! I love it! The lyric says call it a throw away and the audience agrees! This may be the most genius moment of my entire musical life!

The guitars are all Gibson ES-335 Pro through a Vox AC15 and a Fender Bassbreaker 15. The rhythm used a Ryra The Klone pedal and the lead used the Ryra and a Wren and Cuff Super Russian.

Chorus
Call this a throw away
(a) throw away

Verse 1
instructions by numbers
its easy do what it says
(x2)
It all looks so simple
it’s prefab you can do it

Verse 2
It gives you the how to
provides you with everything
(x2)
the tools and components
are all provided to you