SEE? ‘FRIENDS’ ARE ELECTRIC! / SP ALBUM UPDATE

So it’s done now, MONUMENTS FOR AN ELEGY that is; and what a relief. Only the master mix is left.

That aside, I reviewed the questions today for the AEGEA-RAVINIA Q + A, and noticed more than a few off topic (as in NOT about AEGEA or RAVINIA. Ahem! I guess rules no longer apply?). Apparently more that a few erstwhiles decided to ask whatever consumed them as whimsy. And I noticed more than a few were like: ‘Hey Billy, were all the albums this hard to make?’ The notion being that my posts here had conveyed, sadly, some adversity or hardship. Which is a shame, because I’d most hoped to convey the joy of creativity, and how with any artistic endeavor, when undertaken with friends, makes the journey is worthwhile. So, let me say for the record (which means nothing anymore. Double ahem!) that M2AE was one of the easiest and most pleasurable albums I’ve ever made. Yes, the lesser number of songs helped, as did the focus on material that was worthy of repeated effort. But as a process (I hate that word, but it applies here), making the album was a grand ‘ol time. Or as they used to say back in the day: making MONUMENTS TO AN ELEGY, we had a gay ‘ol time.

Overall, as stated previously, I’m kind of over making albums the way I once did; which says more about the culture than it does Mr. Me. ‘Cause I’m a traditionalist (if you can call a 60-70 year old art form tradition), and I did prefer a time when listening to an LP meant taking a trip.

Anyway, I’ll skip the geezer talk and get to the point. Which is, the kids always win. Long live the k-i-d-s!

So wrapping this up, I sang all the harmonies (and invented a few too I didn’t know were possible) on ONE AND ALL, and post that we wandered into the night, convinced all was done; yet today returned for a review of sorts; adding assorted bleeps and blurps, and even one new vocal harmony, but that was it. Finito!

Having heard the album through for a first time (in this, a finished form), I was taken aback. “It’s indescribable, that,” I told Shredder, meaning that what I heard (in the sum total of songs) was unlike anything I could recognize. Yet none of it was unfamiliar, either: big choruses, probing lyrics, odd twists of melody, and guitars, guitars for days; strange indeed…

I’d like to boast and say it’s some newly invented form, but more than likely it’s just a stripped compendium, that in its steeliness achieves some eager, brute modernity. Thank God we left in some genuine swagger, or it would be Howard’s record through and through and not mine. “Hey, I love swagger,” he’d say cracking open an ice cream bar, “it’s just that ‘they’ don’t anymore.”

But I remain convinced the k-i-d-s can always be convinced by what is genuine over what is patently false. So come one, come all to enjoy what’s left of our ripe, humble pie. If we’re lucky it’ll be out soon enough.

Here’s the (the as of now) track list, subject to changes and changes:

TIBERIUS/BEING BEIGE/ANAISE

ONE AND ALL/RUN2ME/DRUM AND FIFE

MONUMENTS/DORIAN/ANTI-HER0

OR: ROCKER/EPIC-ER/DISCO

ROCKER/EPIC-ER/TRIUMPH

DARKNESS/GOTHNESS/STOMPER

And that’s a wrap, number #10 (but who’s counting?)

W.P.C.