Things That Did Not Happen

Robert James

50/90 song number six.

A couple of experimental type things (for me, at least) on this song.

First: I mixed this through actual speakers. I feel a little giddy just typing that. I don’t think I’ve mixed anything through speakers since the early 90’s. I’ve been using headphones ever since. I did this on cheap little Logitech (I think) computer speakers so who knows how it actually sounds. It’s like playing the lottery. Maybe it’ll be a winner (but most likely not).

Second: I stole this idea and I don’t know who I stole it from. The first time my wife and I went out to a restaurant since Covid started was a little over a week ago. I was freaking out a little but there was this song playing that distracted me. It was some blues band, I don’t know who, and it struck me as interesting that the entire song consisted of the bass and drums playing the root note for the key. Just sitting there on that one note grooving away. The guitar and vocals were taking turns filling everything in on top of it, but the entire song just sat on one chord. Well hell, I can do that!

I set up a drums and bass loop and noodled around until I had a rough idea for verse/chorus/bridge and then I just started playing. I didn’t have a plan beyond the chorus would let the chords ring and the verse would only let them ring under the vocal and the bridge would be lots of noodles. That’s it. I threw it all down in eight bar chunks, wrote some bad lyrics to fill in the gaps and that was it. I probably should have played the guitar part live all the way through, and it should be one track instead of two (I have one rhythm track running all the way through and one lead coming in and out). Other than that I think I got what I wanted….

….and what I wanted was apparently a completely forgettable throw away song that I will likely never give a minute’s thought to once I finish uploading it.

All of the guitars are Les Paul Standard into a Ryra the Klone into a Wren and Cuff Super Russian into a Fender Bassbreaker 15. The only difference between lead and rhythm is the Super Russian has a built in boost which was off for the rhythm and on for the lead.

Verse 1
No telling what he wants to do
No telling if it will come true

Chorus 1 and 2
Don’t want to think about it
acknowledge that it exists
Don’t want to read the transcript
Don’t want to let them transmit

Don’t want to know what you think
Don’t care about your instinct
Don’t want to hear your logic
It isn’t patriotic

Verse 2
Don’t listen to what they all say
No chance that it happened that way