The Freshman Experiment

Hey guys, so here’s the chorus that kait and i currently have.  kait’s also got text for the first verse, but i haven’t set it yet.vermont is amazing, expect lots of juicy bad years videos soon.xo, b 

Brian and I are off to Vermont to work on Tales from the Bad Years at the Paramount Theatre. It will be us and the mountains for a few days. My hope is that (1) I will get to work on Last Week’s Alcohol once I finish off the work on my check list for Bad Years and (2) I have internet in order to post.

In the meantime, be jealous. I know I’m supposed to savor the sun for as long as I can and I’ll miss it come winter, but the idea of 70 during the day and 50 at night? Mmmm. That is some good sleeping weather. And we get to go swimming, which I LOVE. So I’ll try to write soon, but I just wanted to let everyone know. I haven’t forgotten about Last Week’s Alcohol. I’ve just been called away.  Right now I’m trying to structure out the story and it’s kind of messy. I can’t figure out how much time to spend at the parties and how much to spend on the top and bottom where they’re together. What do you guys think? Party? Right now I’m thinking party. I love the way it loops around and that the entire reason she goes back is because of all the drunken shinanigans around her.

Saw Vicky Christina Barcelona. While I don’t like the title, it is an incredibly fun place to be - both in location and plot. Reminded me of Superbad in that you could end it positively wherever but good job ending it at 90 minutes, Woody. It was lots of fun… And if acting were a sport with points, Penelope Cruz would have kicked everyone else’s ass. I would have given her a 6.2 for difficulty and a 7 for execution. According to the tepid and rambly reportage of the Olympics scoring system on MSNBC earlier today, that is very excellent.

All of the B and C sections that I have to write must be repeatable so I wanted to find two main ideas in the song. The song is about falling for someone even though you know you’re not supposed to but it’s also about watching yourself do it - almost like an out of body experience. If you were watching a movie of it, you would think the character was being stupid but there you are - in the movie - drunk, falling, and unable to stop it. So I listened to Last Week’s Alcohol Groove a gazillion times this morning and landed on these main ideas. I feel great about my C section. It’s a riff off of the other ideas I’ve had but this I wrote while listening to a specific section of the music (I marked what the timestamp was). I think ultimately, you probably want a little bit more of a build in the 3rd line but I love the way the “fall” hits.A
A
A
B
This is how it feels to fall in love.
This is how it feels to fall.
The weakness, the sadness, the sirens, the madness.
The urgency swarming in your chest,
Like you’re racing the streets in an ambulance.

C (I synced this at 1:44.)
I’m watching you.
I’m watching me.
I’m watching us
Fall. (This hits on the downbeat at about 2:04)
Fall.

A
C
I’m watching you.
I’m watching me.
I’m watching us
Fall. (The fall hits at 2:04 on the downbeat.)
Fall.

A
A1
A2 (ends with Last week’s alcohol.)
D (scans with the melody line from the piano accompaniment)
B
This is how it feels to fall in love.
This is how it feels to fall.
The weakness, the sadness, the sirens, the madness.
The urgency swarming in your chest,
Like you’re racing the streets in an ambulance.

C
I’m watching you.
I’m watching me.
I’m watching us
Fall.
Fall.

And imagine this last part extends. The cool thing about the way it’s built is that you can steal from the B or the C to extend it. You can take any of the individual lines or even sections of the lines from the B section or you could riff off of the word fall or just “I’m watching”.

The overall story is going to be about the sort of dance between falling for someone and going out for an evening of drinking and therefore flirting with the possibility of being with someone else and finally allowing yourself (because you’re drunk) to at least temporarily fall for that original person – not that that original person is right for you. On the contrary, he/she often is not. All the while you have this sense of impending doom – which CC so nicely represented with her ambulance. I think I made the ambulance work, by the way. Right? I’m going to talk to Brian on the phone today and see if this is something he can work from and then I’ll start tackling the verses. I’ve never built a song in this way before. It felt so epic and overwhelming when we began but now I’m beginning to wonder how I’ll fit it all in. I suppose I do have a lot of As and Aprimes to work with…

I culled all of ChristineCoke’s posts about the weekend that will make up Last Week’s Alcohol and I made something of a poem out of them. I took out some of the less singable words and more specific details that make it her life instead of the life of every college kid in the country. Then, I started changing the tense and the person. As much as Wishy is out of the picture - this is the weekend about them getting back together. That’s one of the cool things about the post - we begin with her telling us that they are trying to be friends, and the tension builds and the barriers break until finally they find each other again. It’s something every one of us have done - for better or worse.

But without really adding anything, I’ve edited down the details that CC wrote that I’m interested in trying to use. The only thing I drastically changed is the part in italics. It was originally: “This is how I felt when I began falling in love with The Ex. The first time it reminded me of those moments in movies when someone’s riding in the back of an ambulance holding the hand of her boyfriend or daughter or mother. It’s that mixture of sadness and affection and urgency that was swarming in my stomach.” I don’t know know if I can get that image of the ambulance into this song as well but I’d like to. It’s a hard thing to make work in a song because each word takes on such potency - I feel like the literal-ness of an ambulance could confuse the point but if it doesn’t, then it could be coo.

Here are CC’s details:

Making assholes of ourselves.

Drunks passing by just couldn’t catch our vibe

“Let me see your fingers.”

“I like your military hair.”

You come closer and we both forget that night when I yelled.

And we both forget about the girl from home.

It was just me and you in your small twin bed, your computer humming gently against my lap.

Angry, bitter tears fill up the bottom of my eyes

Slipping a mini skirt over tights

Give me a call and we’ll find each other.

As shots are being passed around, I draft a text.

“Sorry, I’m about to go to bed. Let’s get dinner tomorrow night?”

I wanted to send it to you later tonight.

We’re drinking last week’s alcohol.

It’s warm and sears our throats on the way down.

German techno

Their voices pound against my ears.

We are stumbling, laughing.

Our cell phones keep falling out of our hands onto the wet ground.

I’m happy drunk.

We catch up, both of us holding Natty’s in our hands.

Vodka paired with any juice you can find.

No one cares.

No one will remember but her.

She uses the wall to balance herself.

CALL FROM YOU blinks up at me.

I press ignore and feel his hand on my waist.

We don’t hook up because he stopped calling.

My lips brushing against his ear

I give him my cheek when he comes in for the kiss.

The alcohol is making my brain careen from side to side against my skull.

So we could stay, have fun, be happy drunk.

She wanted to make him jealous, I think.

Prying her off the lips of the random guy once again.

But I like you, the random guy says. I fucked things up, didn’t I?

I shake my head in disbelief.

I know his name, of course.

But we’d never spoken before.

I feel my phone vibrate again.

I flip it open to see CALL FROM YOU.

This time I pick up.

Yes, it is partly because of the Smirnoff and Bacardi we drank that I’m playing connect-the-dots with the freckles on your arms and ignoring the butterflies.

The feeling makes me suffocate.

But when I finally leave your room and climb into my own bed, I cry because I know I was willing.

This is how I feel when I begin falling in love.
A mixture of sadness, affection,
Of urgency swarming.