#because like practicing guitar working on songs practicing recording is all stuff i need to do to keep working towards my goals music wise

[mellotronmkll]

Think I've finally mastered she's an angel on accordion I'm so happy

[thesoundofmadness]

rc9gn au band hcs for @asterous09 sorry this took so long lol time is very cruel mistress

pre-band backstory

Randy and Howard meet Lavander in 9th grade during the whole 'kick out of the band' thing, but they don't actually become friends till college

Randy has been mind wiped and has no clue about the ninja. He knows he went to high school, and during it alot of 'something' happened, but he can't place it no matter how hard he tries. Doctors claim it's some sort of dissociative amnesia. They speculate that whatever this 'something' is, Randy couldn't handle it so he locked away whatever memory he has of it. Randy feels like that's not it, but he doesn't know what else it could be.

Howard remembers tho. He hates it a lot. They drift apart.

Despite what happened before, Lavander is still very serious about music. It's his dream to become a rockstar, so he studies everything about music. From playing instruments to production to distribution, everything. It helps a lot that his parents just so happen to be already involved in the scene, and super fucking rich.

They don't go to the same college. Randy meets Lavander one night when Randy randomly goes to a concert at a local bar. Lavander recognizes him and talks to him afterwards.

Randy still feels bad about 9th grade (even if he can't remember exactly what it was he feels so bad about), but luckily Lavander has mostly moved on and has no hard feelings about it.

They talk and start becoming friends.

Lavander ends up leaving his band. They have a huge dispute because, despite having all the instruments and skills needed, they don't have a lead singer. No record label is going to pick them up without a singer. It leads to the bassist telling Lavander he doesn't have the talent for it, and Lavander leaves.

While hanging out, Lavander vents to Randy about it. He says maybe he should just quit. Randy tells him something the nomicon once told him about being yourself, and says something like 'Who cares if they think you don't have the talent? If you want to do it, do it. At the end of it, you gotta do what makes you happy. Though... maybe I'm not the one to be telling you that...'

Lavander then suggests maybe they should pair up. 'You still know how to play the piano and keyboard, right? If you get some singing lessons....'

I like to think that Randy and Rachel also become friends bc they wind up working at the same movie theater. Rachel is also going into music, and wants to be an idol/popstar. After giving it A LOT of thought, Randy ends up asking her for singing lessons.

This whole time, Howard is off doing his own thing. Probably studying business or cooking. He won't talk to Randy at all. Won't answer texts, won't return his calls, just avoids him in general. He hates every second of it.

I kinda think maybe Heidi, Bucky and Lavander, Rachel kinda.... force Randy and Howard to make up. They see the toll it's taking on each of them, as much as they deny it. I mean, they've been glued to the hip since they were infants. Heidi decides 'okay i'm tired of you being depressed, go make friends with him again'. Nearly drags him to the game-hole herself

Somehow, it works. Randy and Howard make up, and they decide to band up with Lavander.

actual band stuff

slowly they become the most popular band in Norrisvile somehow.

Randy is main vocals/keyboard, Lavander plays the guitar and bass, and Howard does drums. They don't have a permanent bassist for their live shows, but thanks to Lavanders connections, finding one isn't hard.

Lavander takes care of everything musically. Song writing, composing, producing, taking care of their instruments, keeping them on track during practice, everything. He takes it extremely seriously and won't let them slack for even a second.

Howard is their manager for the most part. He maintains the fiances and gets them gigs.

Randy manages everything regarding the public. He's the main face of the band. He maintains their social media, and is the perfect MC for their performances. He used to have a ton of stage fright (mostly because of his ninja trauma) but gets over it quickly.

Randy kinda puts on a 'confident dumbass' persona in public. He's very charismatic, very funny, open and honest, even if he's kinda stupid sometimes. Exact opposite how he is in real life. Irl he's very reclusive, and anxious. He tries his hardest to be relaxed and chill, but that's difficult around strangers.

He HATES it whenever someone recognizes him out of the blue. Being the ninja, he had to keep his identity a secret to keep himself safe. Whenever a random fan recognizes him when he doesn't expect it, it triggers his paranoia and it takes him EVERYTHING not to hit them and run. He always wears a disguise whenever running errands.

Randy's usually the one who comes up with ideas for their shows and music videos. He knows quite a bit about directing and cameras. He can be a little demanding on set, always trying to get the absolute best shot, but treats everyone with respect.

Howard loves it tho. 100% always willing to give a random person an autograph when he's just getting snacks at the store. He's also more than a little demanding backstage, but Randy usually puts him in his place.

Lavander doesn't mind it either, but usually dresses up with Randy to help him feel better. He's very camera shy though. He doesn't mind letting Randy and Howard take care of interviews and such.

They're friends with Rhymes and his group. They have a few songs together.

They also have a few songs with Rachel. She's norrisviles biggest popstar (basically their equivlent to taylor swift). It's known that her and Randy have been friends for a long time. It's probably speculated they're dating.

Randy and Rachel don't mind it much. It keeps people from finding out about their actual relationships (Randy's with Theresa, Rachel has her own relationship).

I like to imagine the bros live together to save money. they got a weird gay thing going on.

Lavander and Howard probably drink alot. Randy not so much

I just know they probably have a ton of fangirls and simps. there's probably fandom wars on who's the best.

There's also a small bit of speculation that Randy is the ninja. I mean, he has a weird fascination with swords and martial arts, tends to wear black/red a lot, grew up in norrisvile, absolutely hates robots... Luckily the ninja has shown up a few times at their performances, immediately debunking the whole thing. Randy refuses to comment on it.

Lavander's old band is very popular too, and they have a weird rivalry going on on stage. It's fake of course, irl they get along well and there's no hard feelings, but Randy suggested they play up on the 'ex-band' thing for no reason and people absolutely ate it up.

Randy and Howard steams lets play sometimes. Lavander sometimes joins in too.

resentments hcs:

Their longest and most popular album is titled 'RESENTMENTS' and is about Randy and Howard's ninja trauma. It's double the length of a normal album, half of it is in japanese, (randy speaks it), and no one can figure out what the hell any of it means. Randy's said before it's meant to be a message to 'someone', (the nomicon), and that alot of it doesn't make sense to anyone besides him and Howard. not even Lavander knows what the hell is going on in it, and he produced it.

I have a bunch of ideas for what songs are on it, but one of them is called 'graduation'. It's about 10-12 minutes long. It's supposed to be Randy talking directly to the nomicon, telling it everything he meant to say before he mind wiped.

Another one is called 'Demons eye', and it's like, maybe 5-7 minutes long. It's about Howard recounting what it was like to be possessed by the tengu.

Not sure about the title, but another one was written by Lavander. Lavander doesn't know anything about the ninja, but he's seen the massive toll it's taken on Randy and Howard. He wants them to talk to him about it, so the song is just him telling them 'I'm here for you'.

One of them is called 'Secret Garden' and it's a love song about Theresa. It's one of their singles that released before the album, and Theresa absolutely adores it.

One of the first songs on the album is called 'Hornet's Nest' and it's a disstrack against McFist. McFist tried to sue them over it. The artwork for the song in the video is inspired by one of McFist's old advertisements. Tried to say it was defamation, but everything in the song is publicly available information you can find with the right google search. Then he tried to sue them for copyright for the artwork, but the judge ruled the artwork is transformative enough to not count. Which then led to an investigation of McFist's entire company, causing them to find out about his ninja destruction attempts. They got a fuckton of money out of it, and Randy absolutely LOVES to tell the story of it. (Ya know 'rat' by penelope scott? that's basically this one)

Another song is called 'Heroic Death' and is about leaving a legacy and like, if randy died as the ninja no one would really know. All of the album is emotional, but this one might be the most heavy hitter next to graduation. It's a sin in the fandom not to like this one.

i have thought too much about this

[spectrallik]

Specter Learns Guitar, the Hard Way

Big things often start small

I may have made a terrible mistake.

I’m a lifelong keyboardist. Not a great one, but an OK one. And I’m finally comfortable enough with the instrument to write my own music. Just one problem: the kind of music I want to make, the stuff that’s running through my head all the time, is on the dream pop/shoegaze end of post-punk. Now, keyboardists have a place in dream pop, and some of my favorite dream pop acts like Alvvays and Hatchie prominently feature synths. But any genre that descends from punk rock, even something this far-removed, is still fundamentally a guitarist’s genre. Plus, the songs in my head are less like Alvvays and more like The Joy Formidable - no keyboards there, unless you count getting on your hands and knees and playing your effects pedals like a keyboard.

My synth has guitar tones, but they come nowhere near replicating the real thing. And I have some guitar-playing family members who are willing to help me out, but I don’t really know how to communicate my ideas to a guitar player. They don’t read sheet music, they just play everything by ear. How could I communicate how to play a part, or even what tone I’m going for, when I didn’t really know how a guitar works?

The only halfway decent guitar tone on the Roland Fantom, and it only sounds good after you shove a fuckton of reverb and delay after it.

So, I decided that the only way to get that knowledge was to experience the guitar firsthand. I don’t want guitar to become my main instrument or anything, but I want to at least get comfortable with it. Once I understand how a guitar truly works, it will be much easier to write for it. 

Unfortunately, the guitar I want to get - a G&L Fallout - is backordered for a few months. So, in the meantime, I got a cheapo starter guitar to screw around with and hopefully get some of the basics down. I’ll trade it in for a pedal or something later.

This is the Eastrock 39, and it is a piece of shit. It barely stays in tune, the pickups sound thin and lifeless, and the frets are rough. You have to actively fight this thing to get the strings to ring properly. Some of my tone problems are because I still need to build finger strength, sure, but I’ve read reviews from veteran guitar players that say that this doesn’t play easily. Not great for a supposed “beginner” guitar. On the bright side, it came with a ton of extra stuff that doesn’t suck - a nice guitar bag, beginner picks, a solid capo, audio cables, and luthier tools to replace the strings and adjust the action. It even came with a practice amp, but I live in a studio apartment and have an audio interface for my synth, so I don’t have much use for it. 

So… goals. My first goal is to get the basic chords down, figure out how barres work, and learn ONE simple song. I’m not too worried right now about memorizing the fretboard - I’m not gonna do any solos anytime soon - but I need to understand chords to actually play songs. Luckily, guitar sheet music is more commonly written in an alternate form called tablature that is WAY EASIER TO UNDERSTAND THAN TRADITIONAL NOTATION, HOLY SHIT, WHY ISN’T THERE A VERSION OF THIS FOR PIANO!? I’m still not great at reading sheet music, despite my ClAsSiCaL SuZuKi MeThOd training, but it took all of 5 minutes to pick up TAB.

So, what’s my first song? Well, a few months ago, I got a picture of one of my characters playing air guitar and singing along to a song:

As it turns out, this song - Future Me Hates Me by The Beths - is very beginner friendly. 90% of the rhythm part is the same barred power chord shape, and the lead guitar part is pretty reserved and minimalistic by Jonathan Pearce standards. Plus, the guitar I'm waiting on is the exact same model that Liz Stokes played on that record. So it should sound perfect, especially once I get a RAT on my pedalboard.

So yeah, we'll see where this goes. I do want to keep track of my progress somewhere, and I'm planning on getting the fuck off Twitter once and for all, so I guess it will go here.

[tiikerikani]

People pointing (at things)

2024 Aug 31 – Kasarmitori, Helsinki

I guess they outgrew Allas Sea Pool so they're here instead.

This is the picture post - there's other stuff I want to say but it doesn't really fit into this post so it is a separate one.

I'm starting to get the hang of using the camera on the iPhone, but mostly took pictures during the first half. Can you tell which pictures in this post are taken with my normal phone? Hint: There are two.

I seem to have subconsciously leaned into "people pointing" pictures so I ran with it (although I do take a lot of them even normally). Here's some of my favorites.

Felt kind of compelled to film Samaan mutkaan kaatunut even though you can hear how they perform it with the same orchestration on the live album. So you can see the headbanging, I guess?

The daylight ruins the drama a bit (starting and ending in black with the lights out) but that's just how being outdoors works.

I prefer the way the piano intro goes on the studio recording (it's slightly different) so that's how I play it, but anyway…

I normally sing along to this but I swear I was only mouthing it this time so that's everybody else you hear. I do, however, often sing loudly to the songs I know best and fit in my range. Sorry to everybody else filming things from the middle of the first/second row.

I'll break it up here since there's even more pictures in this post.

Now for some non-pointing pictures

I love you toooooooo

Intense face:

Better reaction shot

(And OK wow his tattoos are really legible in this picture.)

To avenge my potato video of Kanto (and also the potato video from Joensuu the other week - which I didn't post), here's a not-potato video of the song from guitar solo onward, as good as Tumblr lets me upload it ->

There was a hotdog and burger stand, and they needed to get rid of the remaining food at the end of the evening so I got a cup of hotdog sausages for 4€ (normally 8€). I hadn't really eaten all day so I wasn't picky.

Practically as the stage lights turned off I saw the band van pull up to (presumably) whisk the players away. On the way out to catch the tram I passed by the stage entrance to the area and Jepa (and the other ladies) were talking to people. (They'd arrived as a separate group in the afternoon so I assume they were also leaving separately.) I stopped to wave at her before continuing on, and she stepped away from them and came to hug me and was like "hey nice to see you, I saw you were there but was a bit hard to see because Pate was in front of me". (Yeah one problem of me being right in the middle is that it's hard to see some people, like I can't see Teemu either when Senpai is singing, and I've never actually watched the trombone guy play.)

Anyway, this interaction was a bit perplexing because she could have also just waved back and left it at that, but she didn't. I can't tell how much is her just being polite and how much she genuinely cares. Because back in July I'd gone to one of her solo gigs at a cafe (I took down the set list but didn't write about it) and since she'd appreciated my miniature I'd asked if there was anything I could do as a calligraphy piece for her (totally for free) and she'd made a non-committal "I'll keep it in mind" when I told her that this was 100% a serious offer. (It is.) Or like the time she said that oh maybe Senpai will come talk to fans, when the gentlemen were quite confident that he wouldn't. This type of polite speech to avoid causing hurt feelings or disappointment is a perfectly normal reflex in Anglo-American culture, but isn't very Finnish (unless you're trying to make a salesperson go away, which is probably fairly universal).

Maailma palaa

Kohti sydänpeltoja

Huomenna kaduttaa

Jamesin takki

Kolme hyv��ä vinkkiä

Ilman mua

Tummilla teillä

Rodeo

Samaan mutkaan kaatunut

Exodus

Valot eteiseen

Kiljut riemusta

Faarao

Kanto

Nuoriherra

Hetken ikuinen

Turisti

// Ei voittajaa

// Kukaan ei koskaan

// Arlandan portailla

[Concert write-up archive and master calendar]

[pluvillion]

record store - AU - in which a scotsman and a british meet in one small place with the same interest. -

note: while i write stuff for myself personally, i have no clue how to share them online. i don't have anything fancy to add here other than a preface.

this is the first fanfiction i've written from my early years as a teenager that i saved in my documents and never looked at it again. recently i've been wanting to reopen them, rewrite everything, and share it with the public.

i'm a bit nervous about my first entry. please let me know what you think!

-

johnny always noticed him. how could he not?

the bells at the front of the door always signalled his entrance when he walked in, and johnny’s eyes always automatically darted up from his book or his phone, smiling slightly whenever he saw him.

he didn’t know his name, but he knew him so well.

he knew how he always had a cup of coffee in his hand in the winter months, and the markings on the cup would be the same as the ones on his table.

he knew how he liked coming alone because despite the endless notifications that kept vibrating from his phone, the record shop was a special place for him and he never picked up any calls until he was out the door.

he knew his favourite albums, his fingers tracing the same worn copies in the back that he so loved.

he knew his favourite songs; johnny played them on the speakers whenever he came in and he’d always get that small twang of satisfaction and happiness when he’d see the customer look up and smile slightly, tapping his foot to the beat of his favourite song as he walked along the aisles.

johnny knew his wish to play the guitar from the way he stared longingly at the acoustic guitars hanging on the wall in the back, and how his eyes lingered on the beginner’s books for learning how to play the guitar, blushing furiously when his coworker asked him if he needed any help.

johnny knew all these things about him — small pieces of the guy who captured his attention with his bright eyes and pursed lips that he dreamed about — but he didn’t know his name.

he tried to work up the courage to talk to him on multiple occasions — practicing what he would say to him, how he’d sweep him off his feet with his knowledge of the newest album that came out from the band they both liked, even if johnny knew he was twice his size — but his words died on his tongue every time and the customer always left before he could steer himself to try again, the bells that he looked forward to when they signalled his entrance suddenly echoing his failures when he left.

“next time,” he’d always tell himself, but there’s that creeping fear at the back of his mind that one day he wouldn’t come back to the little record store he worked at every day… or worse, that one day the customer would stroll into the store with another person on his arms who got all his favourite bands wrong and scrunched up his nose in distaste when he played one of his favourite songs on the speakers.

johnny knew that he couldn’t just pine after him from behind the counter — at the very worst, he would turn johnny down or think of him as a loser and he’ll get over him.

and at best? well… johnny has had enough idle daydreams about that.

he’s afraid to come up to the customer, to give him more than a feeble “have a good day!” after johnny checks out the albums he places in front of the cash register, because he’s nothing but a boy with a minimum wage job and a tacky nametag — hardly attractive, and he’s sure his nervous stutters wouldn’t make things any better, especially how he’s a scotsman.

he’s certain he’ll make a fool of himself; that he’d probably end up scaring the customer off from the shop forever…

…but there’s something in his eyes and the way they glitter when he walks in that johnny cannot keep away from.

-

he’s even lovelier up close.

johnny is not sure how he managed to pluck up the courage to come up to the customer, but whatever courage he had was used up in the steps from the counter to him.

he admires the way the customer brushes his blonde hair and the way his fingers trace the records with such a delicate touch; how focused he is with the names of the bands and songs that johnny’s certain he’s read a thousand times before.

but then he notices johnny next to him, and he gives a little jump when he realizes someone’s there; a faint blush blossoming the scot’s cheeks.

johnny opens his mouth, but no words come out — he’s certain he looks like a creep with his wide eyes and unspeaking mouth, looking up at him. he can already feel the embarrassment and humiliation creeping into his veins, and it takes everything in him not to turn the other way and dash into the storage room until the customer left.

“hi… uh, i’m… uh…” he stutters. “i’m john.”

he juts out his hand mechanically, almost comedic as he extends his veiny arm towards him.

johnny’s already mentally berating himself for being such a doofus and giving the customer a hand to shake — who does that these days? — but it’s too late to pull it back and he’s left standing there, awkwardly holding out his hand to him like some kind of a dog.

the customer finds it charmingly adorable, a small smile emerging on his lips at the clearly-nervous boy in front of him.

he takes his hand and gives it a little shake, beaming as he introduces himself.

“simon,” he starts. “i’m simon.”

johnny’s too mesmerized by the way simon’s voice says his name — obviously british — and the smoothness of his big palm against his that he almost misses his name.

but when he shakes his head a little and backtracks a few seconds to remember, johnny thinks that simon’s beautiful name is a perfect fit for his lovely smile.

it’s the one he won’t be forgetting anytime soon.

there’s a moment of awkward silence before johnny finds his voice again, though it comes out a little higher due to his nervousness.

“so, um, you like bands, right?”

he’s already screaming internally at his stupidity the moment the words leave his lips.

“stupid, stupid, stupid john — OF COURSE he likes bands, he’s at your stupid music shop on a weekly basis you idiot!”

but simon smiles and tells him about how he was actually starting to get into this new band, STARSET, that he discovered a few days ago.

johnny’s eyes light up a little at the mention of the band — he’s been following them since dustin bates, the band’s lead, was still performing for Downplay, his previous band — and he’s thrilled that simon likes them too.

he’s spitting out albums, tour dates, and his experiences with a concert he went to not long ago at some big venue. he’s giving him song suggestions of his favourites sprinkled with some facts about the music he’s sure simon doesn’t care about.

johnny’s rambling again. he stops the moment he realizes he is; cutting his sentence short.

simon’s watching him with amused eyes; grinning at the shorter mohawked boy whose blue eyes seem to sparkle with enthusiasm and passion, hands waving into large, wild gestures to explain his point.

johnny’s abrupt stop catches simon by surprise — the flushing patches of red on his cheeks tell him why.

“no, go on. tell me more.”

simon’s words are soft and encouraging but johnny’s are a mutter when they leave his lips; refusing to meet the brit’s eyes in embarrassment.

“no, you don’t really want to know about all that,” johnny frowns. “i’m sorry, i just got a bit carried away and i-i ramble a bit– a lot. sorry.”

he’s playing around with his shoes and slumping over — making him even shorter in that form — and simon didn’t have to see his face to guess the blush that would undeniably be on his cheeks.

“i do. i promise,” simon reassures. “what album would you recommend?”

and johnny’s eyes slowly lift towards simon’s; a small smile on his lips as he begins to talk again.

slowly, johnny’s gestures become more animated and his words become more lively until the both of them are laughing and sharing vivid stories while the other listens with wide eyes and enthusiastic nods.

they barely realize how much time has passed until another co-worker call johnny to start closing up.

they were both rattled out of the little world of music and conversation that they build around them, and johnny’s eyes are tinted with sadness when they look at simon again after he tells his co-worker he’ll be right on it.

“the shop’s closing so… i guess you should be leaving.”

“yeah. it was nice talking to you, johnny.”

simon is turning around to leave when johnny calls out his name; stopping him in his tracks. he turns back to him and he’s frozen in his spot, taken aback by him once again.

“it’s becoming a habit,” he thinks.

he manages to spit them out.

“i… uh… i was wondering if… um… you wanted to… erm… er… wanted to learn how to play the guitar?”

his words are stuttering at first before they all tumble out of his lips like a waterfall - the last half of his sentence coming out of his mouth like scrabble pieces.

but simon catches all of his nervous words and he unravels them patiently with a smile.

“i’ve been meaning to learn for a while, actually.”

“do you… do you want me to teach you?”

his smile is hopeful. his chin scar moving up with his mouth.

“are you any good?”

“i mean, i guess i’m alright?” he was uncertain with his words. “i can play, well, a few of my favourite songs and uh, i wrote a few songs too. but they’re just simple stuff but i suppose you could say i’m rather decent at it, i mean–”

simon laughs a little at his nervous rant; finding it adorable how he scrunches up his nose and pinches his eyebrows when he begins to consider his skills seriously.

“hey, i’m just kidding. i’d love to learn from you. i’m sure you’re amazing.”

johnny whole figure lights up with the biggest smile at simon’s words; eyes glimmering with disbelief and excitement.

“really?”

“of course,” he gestures johnny to him. “come here. do you have a pen?”

“yep, hold on for a moment,” johnny runs back to the counter and grabs a black pen from his table.

he shuffles towards simon and simon hastily scrawls his phone number on johnny’s arm; running over the veins and muscles of his forearm and leaving little bumps in his neat number.

“call me sometime? we can work out a lesson plan and all that over coffee or something.”

johnny’s positively giddy at the thought of coffee with simon — his cup with the same markings as his — and the ink that marks his skin feels a lot like a promise.

“sure thing. it’s a date.”

the words slip out of johnny’s mouth before he can think it through and he blushes furiously at the realization of what he just implied.

but like always, simon grinned at him as he handed back the pen; laughing slightly at the red blush that stands prominent on his skin.

“a date it is then! i can’t wait.”

simon says a quick goodbye and he leaves before johnny can say another word - the familiar bells jingling as they signalled his absence yet again.

johnny is still standing, dazed at simon’s casual words and easy smile.

“a date.”

he’s not sure how he managed to get a date with his overenthusiastic ramblings, awkward sentences, and overall dorkiness, but perhaps that is what simon liked the most about him.

the smile lingers on johnny long after simon leaves; the thought of his eyes and the prospect of a “date” is enough to make him dance a little victory shuffle as he sweeps the floor to the beat of the song the two of them loved.

end.

[revolutionsingingintherainnn]

Luke got his first guitar when he was seven years old. His ADHD therapist had recommended that he pick up a hobby as a fixation to redirect all his energy instead of doing something that could potentially harm him. Emily and Mitch had tried a lot of things at first. Cooking, drawing, basketball, running, everything that a seven year old would find interesting. But, as soon as Luke got his first guitar from his parents, he knew he had found his passion.

Emily and Mitch thought it was his fixation. Luke knew that music was the love of his life.

Two years into playing everyday, trying to practice chords from his favourite songs, and making new riffs just to see if he could make a decent song. He could, for a nine year old. His love for music was also how he met his best friends, Reggie, Alex, and Bobby. The Patersons had assumed that the boys had bonded over their hobby of creating music, or just playing covers of songs they liked. They never realised how much more important music was to them than they let it show.

Mitch and Emily did not seem to have a problem with the guitar and the lyrics and the music going on constantly. As long as Luke didn’t do anything that could harm him, they were fine. And when, at twelve, Luke started talking about making a career for himself in music, he started talking about being the best Rock band to ever exist, Emily and Mitch didn’t pay much attention at that time either.

But then, Luke got into high school, and he still spoke about creating music as a career for himself, and he still practised more with his band than doing homework or studying, and the Patterson couple couldn’t ignore it anymore. They knew that their son was very much serious about his choices.

So, they tried to explain it to him gently at first. Tried to tell him all the cons of being a musician. Instability in finance, no privacy, constant pressure, ‘all or nothing’ mentality, and the list went on and on and on. But Luke kept repeating to them, day after day, night after night, “I’ll do all of the bad stuff if it means that I can feel connected to the rest of the world through music. I’ll do all of it if I could just make people feel understood and valid, and alive.”

And Mitch would always just say, “That’s not your job, Luke. Leave it for someone else. You should focus on being able to provide for yourself and your family.”

And it went for months, and those months turned into years, and their gentle explanations turned to screaming and taunting and making comments about his choices. In the start, Luke would escape to Alex’s house, or Reggie’s, or Bobby’s. They’d never ask him to explain, and just cuddle with him and pretend not to notice when he cried, because they knew Luke would tell them when he was ready to.

By the time Luke was sixteen, he felt like he was immune to his parents’ words. It was the same thing over and over, like a broken record, and Luke had lost the will in him to fight his parents, to beg for their support and love. He just sat on the couch and listened as his parents screamed at him from behind.

“The boy never listens to me. He doesn’t understand that he needs to do something productive with his life.” Emily screamed.

“I worked so hard and paid so much money to get you into a good school, Luke, and you’re just going to waste it all away.” Mitch said.

“I mean, at least, think about your future family. No one will want to be a broke so-called rock star who’s scraping through life. Think of how you’ll provide for us when we’re old. Or are you going to make your father work all his life?” Emily yelled at him.

“Honestly, Emily, I think we should start keeping money aside for retirement. We shouldn’t trust him to be able to provide for us, if he won’t be able to provide for himself. We can’t be dependent on him if he’s going to have a very unstable job.” Mitch said.

And with all the screaming and taunts and the words echoing in Luke’s brain, he was surprised when his parents heard him. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but he said it before he could stop himself.

“Pay attention to me, please.”

Emily and Mitch turned towards him so fast, but he remained seated on the couch, staring out the window. “What?”

“Pay attention to me, please.” Luke said, louder.

He stood up, turning to his parents, “For once in your life, please, just pay attention to me. Pay attention to what I want to do, and support me and love me for it. Listen to what I’m trying to say. Listen to what my vision, my goal in life is, instead of putting your goals on mine. Listen to what I’m thinking and what I’m trying to plan, keeping everyone in the loop, instead of throwing assumptions about what could be.

Please, just pay attention to the words I’m screaming so quietly at you.”

The Pattersons did not respond well to what Luke had said. Luke ran away for the first time that night, coming back after the police caught him three weeks later. And then at seventeen, he left for good. They never paid attention to him. They never listened to him.

In 2020, after Luke, Reggie, and Alex had become humans, and Julie had told Ray the full truth, Ray had enrolled them in Julie’s school. He had asked the boys to select the courses they would enjoy.

Luke wanted to choose music, and he knew he could, but his parents’s words stopped him. Because, what if they didn’t make it big? What if he was barely above the water? What if he couldn’t take care of Julie, of Alex, of Reggie? What if he failed his family?

Luke chose a programme he would never be happy in.

When he’d given his sheet to Ray, Ray had looked at his selections, and just said, “Are you sure, mijo?”

Luke nodded, though his eyes told a different story. His twisting fingers told a different story. His bouncing feet told a different story.

Ray had nodded, and pulled out his laptop to file it in.

When school had started, and Luke got his schedule, his eyes filled with tears when he saw the classes for the music programme instead of the sucky one he had chosen. Julie had hugged him, and Alex and Reggie wrapped themselves around him without a word. Maybe they knew. Maybe they didn’t. Luke was just happy in that moment.

That night, when Luke got a moment alone with Ray, he whispered, “Thank you.”

Ray knew what he was talking about and he said, “I’ve gotten good at paying attention to silent screams. You can be who you want in this house. No restrictions.”

Luke hugged Ray, sobbing uncontrollably.

Someone finally paid attention to him.

[indecentpause]

Find the Word

jumping on an open tag from @idreamonpaper! thank!

the words are stumble, grip, pride and trace!

from The Black & Blues

stumble:

You get lost in the music. You could be playing for hours, but you know you’re not, because the song is barely two minutes long. When you’re done, you let the strings thrum to a stop underneath your palm, and you look when you and Danny lock eyes, he looks absolutely in awe, like you just did something special.

“Like… like I said,” you stumble. “It’s a work in progress. It needs fine tuning. It’s–”

“It’s awesome,” Danny grins. “Holy shit, Meara, that’s the first thing you’ve ever written on your own, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” You grin back. Your face flushes a little at the praise.

“Dude, that gives me some ideas. Here,” he says, and he plugs in his bass and picks at it for a few minutes as he works out the accompaniment in his head. Eventually, he looks back up at you and says, “Okay, I think I’ve got it. Play it again?”

grip:

Josselin throws his arms around you and buries his face in your shoulder. “I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you. I don’t–”

“You don’t have to worry about it.” You wrap your arms back around him, one hand, gentle, at the back of his head. “Nothing did happen. Everyone’s okay, okay? He was all talk. You saw how easy he folded. They’re almost always all talk.”

“But what about when they aren’t?”

“Then you knock ‘em to the ground and get the hell out of there.”

Josselin’s hands grip tighter to your shirt. “Meara, I mean it.”

“So do I,” you say gently. “If you can get yourself inside almost any business, they’re not gonna be dumb enough to follow you. The store will have a landline you can use to call someone.”

He nods, sniffles, face still buried in your chest.

“We’re okay, okay? Everything’s okay.”

pride:

You bring it up again at your next after practice meeting: “Guys, I want to cover a Pansy Division song.”

Their reaction is much the same as Danny’s. Everyone looks at each other like they’re not quite sure who you are. “Are you sure?” Kris asks.

Your hands itch for your guitar, to give them something to do while you talk. “Yeah. It doesn’t have to be one of their really racy ones. It could be a tame one. Like Fem in a Black Leather Jacket or Vicious Beauty. I’m open to covering other bands, too. But I want to do one that’s explicitly queer.”

Josephine and Morgan share a nervous look. They’re out to the rest of the band now, but nobody else.

“Meara, I respect that,” Josephine says, “but. Like, if my parents come across our page and figure me out, I’m really, really screwed.”

“We don’t have to record it. We can just do it live. Just once. Just to see the reaction.”

“You want to write a whole cover arrangement for a song we’ll only play once?” Sara asks skeptically.

“You know what I mean,” you say. “Just for special occasions. Gay bars. Pride concerts. Stuff like that.”

trace line:

As she digs through it, she says, “You two are idiots so I’m just gonna spell it out. Josselin and I are in an open relationship, Josselin is bi, he thinks you’re really cute and talented, and I’ve been trying to get one of you to ask the other on a date for like. A half hour.”

“Frankie!” Josselin squeaks. If your face weren’t already red and ruddy from the cold, your blush would be doing it for you.

“W-what?” you ask.

She finds what she’s looking for and pulls out a card. She hands it to you and says, “I don’t have a pen. Here’s his business card. E-mail him and swap phone numbers. You idiots.” She takes Josselin’s arm and says, “We’ve gotta catch our train so we can get to our bus. But e-mail him!”

He smiles at you, and as she tugs him away, he finally says, “I would really like to hear from you.”

You stand there, dumbstruck, as they start walking in the direction of the blue line. When they reach the corner, Josselin and Frankie turn around and wave, and then they’re gone.

For a few long moments, you stare at the empty corner, until Danny gently bumps his shoulder against yours.

“You’re gonna e-mail him, right?” he asks.

And it feels stupid to say anything other than, “Yeah.”

tagging @kaiusvnoir @winterandwords @authoralexharvey @vcaudley @magic-is-something-we-create and anyone else who wants to to find the words green, old, heal, and spray!

[the1975attheirverybest]

no because i wanna sit in the studio with them so fucking badly and listen to demos and fuck around because i did a music tec club thing aaaaages ago now where we could record covers and mess around with plugins and stuff for fun and i was a bit clueless as im not that good a musician at all but it was so fun and i would wanna do that with them so bad especially because whenever i remember to pick up my guitar after like months of not playing i love to just play random chords and mess about with sounds because it just feels nice but doing that with more instruments and synths and people who know what they're doing would be so fun - 🐸

Omg SAMEEEE. I play the guitar too. Not super well. I’d probably be better if my ADHD didn’t prevent me from being disciplined about practice. But I know the basics. As Matty always says, all you really need is the pentatonic scale. And I had an uncle who worked in music for a while before he lost the necessary patience needed to get into the industry properly and he went and became a pilot so now he flies planes for a living. I probably remember like two of the things that he taught me lol.

But I’d wanna act dumb so that George and Matty could teach me. Like I’d keep asking shit like “what’s this button do?” And “what happens if I turn this dial all the way up?” And “could I have a turn on George’s software after he’s done? He’s hogged it for hours.”

Or simply sit silently and record everything they do and say just so I could analyze and study it later. And pinpoint the exact moment that shit like “I’m a racist and you’re some kind of slag” entered the creative orbit hahahaha. Honestly sound fun.

You know these little videos they used to post when some songs had different lyrics? Like I’m sooo curious about that shit ugh

[hospitalterrorizer]

diary161

2/22-23/2024

thursday - friday

day after tomorrow , i workkkkkkkk.

and omg, next week i'm working 3 days, that, like, blows kinda. whatever, not long shifts especially. tomorrow i'm gonna get bank stuff set up i think, too, so i'll finally be able to order my dumb clothes and whatever else i think i need and stuff.

anyway, today, today was busy and weird. i recorded vocals for 2 songs, i haven't listened back i think maybe i should wait a bit. i have to listen to the song i was having an issue w/ last night just to see what i might wanna do about it tomorrow, and if maybe i want to record vocals tomorrow for another song.

the problem song rn just has a weird guitar tone but i like it, maybe i keep the narrow frequencies i'm liking in it, as a bandpass, and have another tone as a layer w/ that? have that one i like that's got this kind of idk, squelchy organic-ish sound to it, as organic as it is synthetic, it's very like, it's got a lot in common with a guitar's strings and that brightness /shimmer on the attacks of notes but it also sounds very uhh, resonant and weird, it's good. i just keep that maybe and have that panned wide and then another thing that's more normal maybe in the middle-ish. that'd mean 2 guitar layers for much of the song and 3 at certain points, which could get to be too much, so i might have to fool around w/ that, but hopefully the bandpass idea would remove a lot of the volume / give more headroom so the other tone could have more presence, and then maybe i have that other tone lacking whatever the freqs i like in this one i have are. the new tone should be something a bit, idk, like this:

ideally there'd be enough weird no-wavey character coming from the other tone, so it might add a nice squeal beside this more regular sound, but idk, this kinda sound also happens w/ power chords and this song has weird chords making up the main riff, it does have power chord bits though.

i'll just have to figure that out when it comes to doing it i suppose.

seeing my friend was really good, we kind of talked a while, as i played elden ring for him, i beat a boss he was stuck on and went and found stuff for him around places he missed. we showed eachother music, he wanted to show me what's going on w/ his album but we didn't get to. my gf and his gf went out to dinner together and hung out in town square, which is like, a goofy shopping zone in vegas. it's very okay but apparently the ramen place they went to was rlly good, i'd like to try it one day.

when they came back, we went to this rave that was going on, my friend wanted to go and could cuz band practice was cancelled for him, because the other 2 members of his band wanted to go, we got to see another friend and while everyone (but me) got drunk in the parking lot, off mixing soju w/ like, sprite, perrier, and coconut pedialyte (that's at least what my gf did (it smelled like cum (specifically the cum of guys who say they just eat pineapple and drink pineapple juice all the time to 'improve the flavor' and probably tasted like that)). my friend's gf got sugar free soju, and apparently it was awful, i said to her that if you want 'diet alcohol' you're just better off not drinking cuz it seems like all alcohol is just going to blast you w/ unwanted and pointless calories (i'm not above pointless calories (i drank some soda tonight...feels sort of awful tbh i hate soda mostly but it tastes good sometimes and i guess tonight was an indulgence or whatever. i like candy too but little handfuls feel more manageable to me than like soda idk). she was like, yeah, but, you know, basically, and like, obviously yeah. if you wanna get drunk you wanna get drunk. so my advice = worthless, but it was just me being 'catty' for fun, as a bit, i guess. idk why i'm going so into this, it wasn't a bad interaction for either of us, i guess it's just funny to look at it this closely. anyway, they all got drunk and my other friend and i wandered into a smith's grocery store, right before closing, in the middle of construction, very strange. and when we got to the doors of the venue, my gf and the other 2 had already been let in and we weren't gonna be able to get in for free so easily, we walked into a nearby casino, which we'd been kicked out of in the past but nobody cared while we were there this time and we were just kicked out because another rave in another nearby venue was using that place to piss. anyway, we sat in there a bit, my friend gambled 2 dollars away because we knew if we looked like we were doing something we'd not get kicked out, i'd just like, look like some girl(thing(ish(whatever))) with some kind of gambler, like i was a good luck charm.

obv, he won nothing, he was reduced to 12 cents, from 2 dollars. so we just were out of the cold for a bit until my gf got us onto the list, and we waited in the karaoke place/venue (lol), eventually being let in by our friend who was putting on the show, and when we got into the venue the first thing i noticed was how bad the sound was, it was like, blown out, and quiet, too bassy, and too much high end, basically cuz of this really violent limiting on all the speakers which cuts off at the exact same point across all frequency bands, it was an awful sound, you couldn't really make anything out, the kicks were so puffy and weak sounding and the high hats really didn't have the high end to connect but were obviously shrill and peaking around like, 3k, i'd guess. it was insane.

anyways, the party clearly sucked, and there were almost no people even there, it was low turnout, the crowd had no energy, which makes sense when the music 1) sounds the same as always and 2) has the novelty of now sounding horrifically bad. people were kind of dancing and acting like it was awesome, but it was not.

basically we just kind of hung around, kind of just absorbing this awful thing, and then left, but as we were being driven home, my friend realized she left her phone at the place, so we had to go back, she drove a little crazy, but we had people there still who went and got it for us as we returned, when we got back her bf went in to get it for her, and as we waited in the parking lot, this guy who irritated me earlier in the night (by calling me a nickname which i hate/always hated, some people don't offend me when they do it, but i never like it, anyways when he did i just kind of said 'don't call me that' and withdrew my hand from a handshake we were abt to commence, when he asked why i just said i don't like it, and then shook his hand (maybe it was too much but he just irritates me so much honestly)) and he bothered my friend by just like, when my friend ran out to return the phone and then ran back inside, he took the phone and asked my other friend to play rock paper scissors for it back. he is a drunken child.

when my other friend came back from inside/saying all the long goodbyes he was trying to avoid, he was like, mad, because the guy who ran the thing was like 'oh we were gonna ask you to play, and like, you have a right to do it but like, you need to play different stuff, you know, you can't play the same stuff every time,' which came as a shock to my friend who has never heard this before and all these people play music that sounds identical to itself and the sets sound no different from any other, he's the only one who you can really tell has any personality when he performs stuff, and it's because largely he spins his original music, which he keeps in rotation yeah but it's all stuff that works, and he brings new tracks and tests them on crowds to see how they take it/like it, they usually always like them, he has grown fans from just doing things how he does. but idk, this really pissed him off, obviously, it bothers me even, idk why these rave people take this shit seriously to the point of mostly playing the most monotone and boring shit ever, they've really just kind of made all the kind of hardcore dance music less fun, even in home listening, it just reminds me, when it's good, of what i could hear on the dancefloors, but i never do, it's just the same sounds all the time. breaks feel so fucked to me, they just put up some kind of guard in me now whenever i hear them. it's sad but idk, it at least means there's something i can imagine in myself about another way out/around what these people are spinning.

ultimately they just dig thru soundcloud, find identical sounding songs, and play them to keep a vibe up, it's irritating, none of the interest in the dancefloor as transformative, instead it's about making the space something solid, reifying/writing what it is w/ signifiers like 'cold techno' and 'clattering hihats' or even '10 seconds of acid before the song becomes nothing again'. very boring stuff at the end of the day.

anyway, i am tired, i need to sleep now, tomorrow is errands day but since we don't have to do laundry anymore, it won't be bad, it'll be nice even.

so,

byebye!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[todaysthinks]

White Runtz Strain pt. 2. (The TLDR)

The first-time user review of White Runtz from 3 weeks ago can be found

here

TL;DR

It is important to have an intention for this strain, and to not plan to go anywhere. If you are especially susceptible to paranoia, I'd *really* consider how bad you want the creative and motivated effects that come afterward. It's GREAT for thinking or tasks that require focus. To me, the benefits FAR outweigh the first 1/3 of the high.

The Sequence of Events

First thing, I get a head rush, and then again whenever I stand up, and then a dull headache/headiness (hard to decipher) for about two hours. Half the time I've had to pop an ibuprofen before bed.

I panic about having a panic attack, and as a result start thinking about all the terrible tragedy scenarios that could befall me and my family and *cause* a panic attack. I've reconciled that with this strain, good stuff comes after but I have to suffer through 30 minutes of this stuff first.

My body turns nummy from the chest outward and I remind myself I am definitely *not* having a heart attack.

Whoa! Suddenly I have to do something creative. My face is warm and tingly, eyelids heavy, gentle swaying back and forth but for some reason I switch to belly breathing instead of chest breathing and I thank myself for it later after I've been sitting for three hours.

I put on a youtube video and challenge myself to set up my keyboard, computer, guitar, pedals, computer, etc. before the video ends. I feel "play".

Two nights ago, I wrote a 4:40-minute song in about 3 hours, and it's *awesome*. Yesterday, I tidied up two separate songs, wrote a blog post, and spent a couple hours practicing different ways to use glitter. It's massively thinky. White Runtz is worth all the panic because of this part.

The Overall Wrap-up:

Try to do something that doesn't require a lot of moving. A concert would suck, sports would suck, walking a lot sucks. The head rushes happen when blood pressure is low. Possibly doing any of these would alleviate the headrush problem after some time, but I'm not willing to try it. (Like maybe stretching or some low-intensity movement would be nice with this strain?)

For music, I was pumped full of ideas, and more importantly, motivation to finish the project! I usually get stuck at 90% on everything I do, usually I have the rough draft recorded and I need to re-record the entire thing and send it to a collaborator or Soundcloud. But I never get around to that part. This strain leads me effortlessly to the final 10% and the "a-ha" moments. I go to bed proud, not sick of my song, and pleased with whatever weird-sounding shit I just came up with. That finishing off does WONDERS for my self-esteem and also creates another instance of owning whatever my strange brain just created and not caring a CENT whether or not people like it, it's gonna be released.

With art, It provokes experimentation. I had a moment yesterday where I tried out something super weird with a piece of work, LOVED it, said, "you know what? I'm just gonna wipe it and see what happens," LOVED IT... and then got overzealous and ruined it. But then! I did about 7 glitter experiments and I'm confident I'll find a way to cover up my shameful spot. It was a lesson in constraint. I don't have to have constraint with music because I can delete and re-record a hundred times if I want. But with art I gotta learn when to stop! Eventually I will edit this spot to include a hyperlink to Society6 when my picture is completed, scanned, tidied up.

It's a nice strain for gardening or pulling weeds, or doing gentle outside stuff. Playing with dogs is hysterical. My vision is normal, I sway back and forth a little bit, I breathe properly, sit up straight. My thinking is clear, I get more "into" whatever I'm doing, I have breakthroughs about insecurities, profound ideology shifts, or finding out-of-the-box solutions for problems.

Taking the opportunity to insert this bit of wisdom: I will never EVER drive high, and half the time won't be a passenger, either. I don't ever want to be in an emergency situation and not have total control of myself, so I use cannabis *only* after all my driving is done for the night. Some of you need to please chill out on that. People don't care on the road, more and more it seems, and your likelihood of having to use your reflexes are increasing daily because of -other people that may not be you- and you don't know what your motor skills and response time are like until you have to use them. Don't be high. If you've ever had a tiny voice in your mind that says, "Dude you know you don't need to be high to drive home," heed it.

This being said, being a passenger is kind of freaky if a person overdoes it on the WR. You gotta just be glad someone else is driving because you would NOT have seen that car if you were the driver right now. But if you're with someone you trust, enjoy your pretty surroundings and take a good look at them!! You'll notice new details and feel a fresh sense of excitement about your cool city.

After about two hours, I pass the heck out. So I have to time it right. I can't watch baseball or anything low-movement because I'll fall asleep, and I can't be in the heat gardening for too long because... I'll fall asleep. If I have steady focus, like an art project, outside thing, playing with pets, or a blog idea, I'll procrastinate taking a nap and get a second wind when it wears off.

Controversial thought for moms and dads, but I would use this if I were still in college doing homework. I'm currently writing all of this under its influence. However, it might make a difference to me whether or not I like the material. It's a strain that can coax you into getting "sucked in" but you have to care about it. If you don't care about it, you'll get distracted often. I would NOT use it in public. This needs to be after you worked on something all day, took a break for dinner and decompressing, and need to nail the final stretch of your thing for the night. You've got about 2 hours of deep focus until a "spread" creeps across your face and makes your eyelids heavy.

I also credit this strain with the a-ha moment that made me realize I should write this kind of content and create art with it, and perhaps growers or dispensaries would pay me for an in-depth break-down, videos, and custom artsy stuff.

[leweekendrock]

A Le Weekend Retrospective - Part 1

Like the night sky, the band Le Weekend has been around more than 15 years. While the night sky lazed around and contributed nothing to anyone, the band used the time to write songs, play shows, and put out recordings at what couldn't be called a breakneck pace. Responding to a fantasy where there was popular demand to hear our story, please enjoy–or failing that, read–a retrospective in some number of parts.

So this is the first part. It covers 2006 to 2008, in which we formed the band, released our first EP, and sadly parted ways with two founding members.

SOUNDTRACK: https://leweekend.bandcamp.com/album/suite

DISCLAIMERS: 

The writing is mostly Matt. Don’t blame the whole band for what follows.

This isn’t supposed to be (slash hopefully isn’t) a nostalgia trip. Those are for things that are over. We’re just demonstrating some ongoing history behind this thing we do and keep doing for some reason.

I’ve tried to avoid the social media pose of pretending to be an Important Band. It’s hard to avoid entirely when writing anything, as suggesting something is worth your time is already bold. But we’re merely a Good Local Band in the sense of all three words, and mean well.

Finally, if you’re looking for Salacious Details(!!), you’ve come to the wrong band. Here are the three most shocking excerpts from the whole thing:

The booking agent hoped I wasn’t miffed. Miffed?! I was downright perturbed!

“Looks like you’re going to the Grammys!” our manager exclaimed, turning the laptop screen our way. “This Photoshop stuff is really something.”

And THAT, my dude, PROVES Kurt Cobain and Anthony Kiedis were talking about the same bridge!

And those are all from my correspondence course How To Write Shocking Excerpts.

The year was 2006. I was out of my 20’s, and my last band (Hotel Motel, now ending) had gotten together through alt.music.chapel-hill. It was time to put the next band together through Gmail, which was the style at the time. The phrase “jam sandwich” appeared in an acceptance email that also warned me “That was your out.”

We got Robert Biggers on drums, because I played with him in Audubon Park, knew him to be gifted on various instruments, and we were friends going all the way back to the 20th Century.

Through my good friend David Nahm, we got connected with Ben Ridings on lead guitar, and Ben introduced us to Missy Thangs on keyboards and vocals. Both hailed from the excellent early aughts Asheville band Piedmont Charisma.

At this point we needed bass which meant Bob Wall. I’d only recently learned he played bass (knowing him for guitar and drums) when during downtime at a Hotel Motel practice he whipped out Steely Dan’s “The Boston Rag." They say you learn everything you need to know about a bassist when they play ‘The Boston Rag’ on the couch, and they're right!

So now we were formed. And such well dressed people.

(Photo by Ben Spiker. l-r, front row: Missy Thangs, Robert Biggers, Ben Ridings; back row: Bob Wall, Matt Kalb)

We started with a few songs I’d already written in the sense that I write songs, which means a clear idea of structure, chord progression, and my guitar part–at the level of a good working draft–combined with vague-to-no ideas for the rest of the band’s parts. As in, I’m open to hearing what they'll bring, and zeroing in on it without a predefined landing place. That’s both HOW I WANT TO DO IT, but also something I worry about being NOT THE REAL WAY TO DO IT.

Because, yep, when creating music, one of the things I love doing most, imposter syndrome is in full effect much of / most of the time! I also didn’t know Missy or Ben very well, and in my usual (overly literal) way of interpreting their feedback about looking for more direction, I swung over to giving way too much direction, arbitrarily filling in the blanks I’d have rather left for the band, because I thought that was what was being asked. We figured it all out, of course.

In bands with this individual freedom and responsibility, sometimes everyone effectively (if unconsciously) wants everyone else to be all done with their experimentation, presenting an unwavering idea while their own experimentation continues. Sartre talks about this and didn’t even have a band, I’m pretty sure. Plus the songs were, as rock/pop goes, fairly complicated, lending themselves to situations where one person could be learning how it goes while another is past that and working in tweaks and changes, which throw off the first person, rinse/repeat. But we figured out how to get through that too, of course. To me, every new song feels like the one that will never get learned, and every one’s gotten learned so far.

Within a few months we had several songs together and played our first show, a WXDU thing at the Duke Coffeehouse, thanks to the unseen or possibly seen (I couldn’t find my emails for this) hand of Ross Grady. That made things feel more real, as it usually does for bands starting out. We did a cover of “Hold The Line,” which we learned that day and never returned to. It was more of a fun-for-the-first-show kind of thing.

About a year after that we started working on our debut recording, Suite, with our friend Nick Petersen at Go! Studios. This was the first of many great recording experiences the band would have with Nick over the years.

My favorite memory from these sessions is from "Blinded Me With Silence", which is also my favorite song from the EP. I wanted two layers of disorganized improvisation from several guest musicians, mostly playing marching band type instruments. I explained what we were doing, threw my arms wide shouting “Go!”, pulled them back in shouting “Stop!”, and we repeated once more. At which point Robert helpfully weighed in over the PA, “Your music is dumb!”

Credits for 13 SECONDS OF NOISE x2

Crowmeat Bob Pence (trombone)

Dave Cantwell (parade bass drum)

Kerry Cantwell (parade snare drum)

Chuck Johnson (Ben's guitar)

Jeff Herrick (trumpet)

Rob Koegler (toy percussion)

The centerpiece of the album, kind of the theme song of the band at this point, was "Le Weekend Suite". It came from a self-assigned writing exercise, after Robert mentioned his college songs tended to move from part to new part to new part, etc., going off in many interesting directions and often back to part 1 for an end (“snake style”), but he’d wanted to write something that folds back in on itself.

I considerately stole the idea and made it work in the most natural way possible: forcing in advance that it just had to work because that’s how the song goes. The song, progressing through parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 (‘the great divide”), then rewinding through new versions of 4, 3, 2, and 1, was slowly and (for my patient band mates) excruciatingly born. As in, this one took quite a while to write, arrange, and learn. But I definitely think it’s a highlight of the EP.

By the way, alternate iterations of a part would itself become a recurring theme, explored at full song level on our 2nd album, aka the one that got ALL THE ATTENTION, and at the part (shared across multiple songs) level on our 6th album, aka the one that got ALL THE PANDEMIC. It had a small role in our 4th and 5th ones as well. What can I say? I’ve had one idea and it wasn't fully mine to begin with.

I can’t remember which song led to Bob internally debating which single held note he used to play and/or should play, but I think it might have been “Le Weekend Suite” as well. Recapped in the famous line “Bob’s changed his mind about his notes” in our next album.

The CD design came from our friend Lincoln Hancock using photos from Ben Spiker, the start of another very fruitful tradition for the band. I mean, look at this thing.

(Layout by Lincoln Hancock, photo by Ben Spiker)

And we got a very nice review from Grayson Currin at the Indy.

Unfortunately, at this time Ben and Missy decided it would be best to step away from the band after our release show at the Nightlight. This was on very friendly terms, and they encouraged the three of us to continue. We opened with the trio playing “Lower yr action” (soon to be part of our first LP) as a nod to what was coming next, then played our last show as a quintet. To thunderous applause, at least in my own head.

We’re very grateful to Missy and Ben for their contributions to the early life of the band, and for encouraging us to keep going. While they’ve each got great performances all over Suite, one of my favorites is the middle section of "Rock staple, scissors". Just listen for the ON FIRE keyboard lick and you’re there!

During the time frame of this installment, we played these shows.

11/11/06 - Duke Coffeehouse - DEBUT OF LW - WXDU FALL BENEFIT w/ Grappling Hook, Noncanon, Natasha, Scene of the Crime Rovers

03/01/07 - The Reservoir - w/Darker Brighter and Goner

05/24/07 - The Cave - w/Audubon Park 

07/30/07 - Bull City HQ - w/Mahasamatman and Minchia 

08/23/07 - Nightlight - w/Grappling Hook 

09/25/07 - Duke Coffeehouse - w/Dirty Projectors and Ecstatic Sunshine

10/16/08 - Bull City HQ - w/Cantwell Gomez & Jordan and Impossible Arms

11/06/08 - Duke Coffeehouse - TROIKA 2008 w/Red Collar, Sorry About Dresden, Pink Flag, and Sequoya

12/04/08 - Nightlight - CD RELEASE FOR SUITE w/Actual Persons Living or Dead, Crash, and dj NASTY BOOTS

And that’s all you get! For now.

[estradasphere]

ESTRADASPHERE FACTS:

Jason and Timb first met in an elementary school bathroom. They do not elaborate on this

The band had an informal shirtless contest. Dave immediately won (Timb: "it was obvious at the time who had the nicest chest, there was no contest")

Tim has made music for more games we don't know about... he just says "one for gameboy, one for a cellphone"

A fan gave Timb a Dillinger Escape Plan shirt (you can see it very briefly in the dvd, it's of the Irony Is a Dead Scene cover i think?) , he wore it around and ppl would compliment him on it but he didn't actually start listening to them until later ("turns out they're really good")

They stopped playing The Princes of Xibalba after 2002 because they lost the sheet music for it

speaking of Princes, the songs are named after some books Tim just happened to be reading at the time he was writing them ("felt i needed to contrive some connection to something deep")

Tim alleges that Mike Patton stole a bassline from him to use on California. I doubt this is true but it's really really funny

Tim and Jason were childhood friends, playing guitar together in their parents' houses and stuff. According to Tim they had a huge public falling-out which (allegedly) resulted in Jason moving and going to a private school. They made up though obviously. Pretty much all the band members met in school at one point or another, which I guess makes sense considering how young they were lol, they'd only graduated college a few years prior

Timb and Jason's first time hanging out, Jason invited him to his house and sat him down and played him a lot of CDs of really fast guitar shredding lol

for Buck Fever and Quadropus, the drums were recorded first in a nice studio and the rest of the recording was done later in various places (other studios, their houses, etc). Most of the process is done in software called Digital Performer. Also apparently they procrastinated really hard on doing recording for Quadropus

the album version of Bodyslam was mostly recorded live, but with some parts overdubbed later ("with like 5 more guitars or something")

for the album version of Crystal Blue they maaaay have recorded all their parts at once together (I'm unsure). They tried playing together for the recording of Hardball too but it didn't work (you can see an unused take in the DVD). Also they refer to Crystal Blue as "Sunset" which is presumably its old working title

There's an old version of the Quadropus cover art briefly visible in the DVD, with a purple background

Mekapses Yitonisa is a traditional Greek tune, they found it via a vinyl record their roommate gave to them

Tim used to work at a pizza place. He also says he's a nurse (and he still is, according to his website's bio)

They played Danse of Tosho & Slavi at John's senior recital (1998), wherein the accordionist Aaron Seeman was in bondage gear, Timb was dressed in overalls and a tie-dyed jester hat, and John was in an Egyptian robe. Timb: "That was the first time I played a sit-down concert with no underwear on". Literally anything happens in this fucking band

also, Tosho & Slavi was written by Jason as a homework assignment on atonal composition, originally for violin + percussion + classical guitar

They talk about their SXSW show being filmed by MTV ("So now we can be on a Pepsi commercial!"), they say MTV did actually use like 5 seconds of their show footage. This is probably referring to the MTV2 SXSW bumper included as a bonus on the DVD. (Timb: "I practice violin for 20 years and I get on TV because I can fucking crab dance. I knew it would happen this way")

if i have the willpower i'll transcribe the commentary tracks too (they say some interesting things and I don't feel like scrubbing through ~4 hours of audio every time I need to find smth someone said.) The band say "bro" and "dude" so much lol they are SO fucking Californian

[slavghoul]

Interview from Guitar DE 4/2022

This one focuses on the more technical side of Ghost’s recording process, very cool if you’re interested in what happens behind the scenes 🧐 

Tobias, the fans are finally holding the new Ghost album Impera in their hands. The assumption is that the album has been ready for a while, but the pandemic delayed the release...

Tobias Forge: That's right. It's a pity that we have to talk about the business side a lot these days, but hopefully I can make the fans understand what's going on with us and many others. On the one hand, this pandemic is of course enormously frightening for us as people, but on the other hand it is also extremely damaging for business. If you're currently trying to get an album pressed and you're planning a March release, you basically have to have the finished recordings in the press by September of the year before. It just takes so long to make the vinyl records because it feels like every musician, every band - dead or alive - is putting out either special editions or reissues of old albums. So we made our album and then we waited.

How long did the recordings take in total?

That depends a bit on when you start measuring, (laughs) I already started recording demos for the new songs in March 2020. And the way demos work these days, you're already in studio mode anyway. So what ends up on the finished album are at least partly tracks from these demos. But putting everything together into finished songs, re-recording the guitars, drums and so on - we started doing that in April 2021. At that point we went into a bigger, "real" studio and really got going. We were out again by the end of July, so about four months in total. Which honestly was still pretty ambitious of us, because we're fucking perfectionists. (laughs)

Do you record the guitar parts yourself when you are in the studio, or do the guitar ghouls do it?

On the demos I actually play every instrument myself. The way the drums come out is of course dictated by my style and my manageable skills. I'm a passable drummer, in theory I know how to play the drums. But as it is with any physical activity, you really need a lot of practice and routine. So we've always, for all the albums we've done, had a drummer in the studio and I've basically played everything else on most of the recordings. I want everything that happens to go over my "desk" once. I have a certain way of playing and I want it to sound the way I imagine it in the end.

I started playing guitar when I was seven years old, played an incredible amount in my teens, when I was around twenty I was probably at the top of my game. But at the latest since we've been touring so much with Ghost, I've only played guitar periodically - I come back from a tour, for example, and suddenly start playing again for five hours a day because I'm in the studio. That makes your fingers hurt quickly, and every time I think to myself: Wow, your hands have become even stiffer. Of course, after a few weeks it gets better, you loosen up and it works again.

I'm pretty good at tracking guitars, recording multiple tracks on top of each other and all that, but I'm really not a shredder. My solo style is very precise because I overdub everything, even the solos. All my solos have at least one or two overdubs, often in different octaves and gimmicks like that. But this time I thought: OK, I've refined my demos to the best of my ability, but what if instead of just being satisfied with it and leaving it like that I ask my buddy Fredrik (Åkesson, Opeth - author's note) to give me a hand? Fredrik is an absolute master who has been practising for five hours every day his whole life. He rips off the stuff on the guitar just like that. So since we wanted to re-record all the guitars anyway, which took a lot of time, we "hired" him to do it. That was very effective.

How did you go about the final guitar recordings to find a sound that works?

Firstly, I want the one sound that works for the whole album. I want the panning to be exactly the same everywhere, the same drum sound everywhere, the same bass sound ... The variety should come from the arrangements. That might not always work, some songs need a bit more "oomph" or a special sound to make a certain part really pop. I'm very tuned to drums and bass, on this album I also played the basses again. And I want to make the drums and bass very central in the mix - a bit like The Smiths, Guns N Roses or Rush. The drums and bass are the backbone of the music, the guitars play more of a supporting role. That alone took a lot of time and was not so easy to organise. Fredrik was in his own little room and re-recorded all the guitars, eight hours a day. And I was in another room with our drummer, tweaking the new drum tracks and playing bass. So basically we were in two studios at the same time. Klas (Åhlund, producer - author's note) and I were running back and forth all the time. But that was really necessary in order to be able to make the album at all, otherwise it would have taken eight months.

(left: Lead guitar ghoul’s Strats / right: “You can never enough spare strings on tour with you!” - TF)

One song that really stands out is "Twenties". Can you tell us how this song came about?

Years ago I saw this Brazilian rapper on Swedish TV who played a kind of reggaeton hardcore hip-hop. His songs were incredibly aggressive and I just thought to myself, that's a really cool style, a special vibe. I remember saying to myself, 'I bet I can write a really cool metal song along those lines that captures that same aggressive energy, but with guitars going all the way through'. I had this idea for years, and when I came up with the lyrics to "Twenties", it fit like a glove. During the recording of that song I said to the others: Imagine this… Slayer covering Missy Elliot! (laughs).

With "Griftwood" you can hear completely different influences. The song sounds very eighties, Van Halen and the like.

Oh, we are definitely influenced by Van Halen, we always have been. And this song is clearly an ode to Los Angeles. The interesting thing about this song is that it changes very suddenly in the middle to a completely different part. That's something that probably no eighties band would have done. It felt to me like a good way to surprise the listeners and break out of the eighties blueprint a little bit. And having that part in the song allowed us to bring out the more stereotypical Sunset Strip vibe all the more.

(left: the command center behind the scenes / right: Fender basses which Ghost have relied on for years)

What gear was used for the recordings? At your current live shows you see one of the Ghouls with a Stratocaster instead of the Hagstrom Fantomen you usually use. Is that also on the album?

Yeah, that's been the case on the last couple of albums as well, using a combination of different Gibson guitars and my Fender Strat, which I like a lot. I like the combination of those sounds, so the guitar tracks on our songs are usually four different guitars that have been run through at least four different amps. This time we recorded everything through a Kemper first and then re-amped it again. It was just more practical for us, because our studio here in Stockholm has this gigantic, high room - it's an old cinema, where ABBA also recorded a lot of their hits. Studio A is a really big hall, you have a lot of space, the acoustics are amazing and it smells like an old library - absolutely fantastic. In this room I was with the drummer, there we had the piano and everything for which you need these great acoustics. And Fredrik recorded the guitars in Studio B - a smaller room without a separate recording room. So we had to set up the amps in Studio A as well. Fredrik was busy all day with the Kemper recording the guitars in Studio B, and when we were done with our stuff in the evening, we took the guitar tracks and re-amped them in Studio A through the amps. So the last hours of our working day were just for the amps to replay the recorded guitars of the day. So we could listen to this gigantic symphony of guitar tracks just banging, (laughs) So we used the wonders of modern technology to emulate the sound we wanted and still ended up recording everything with real amps, mics and pedals.

Have you profiled these sounds and do you also use the Kemper on tour?

No, we use Fractals there. On tour, it's always about what's most practical. You already mentioned the Fantomen, and it's like that: The Fantomen are really cool guitars, but at the end of the day they're also just the tools that I give my musicians to do their job. And at some point the ghoul who plays most of the leads came up to me and said: I'm really struggling with the Fantomen. It's ergonomically problematic for me and I feel like I'm not playing as well as I could. So I asked him what he would rather play and he said Fender. Now we already have an endorsement with Fender because our bass player plays their basses. And I didn't want anyone to feel like they couldn't play their best, so we changed guitars. The other guitarist didn't have any problems with the Fantomen, so he stayed with it.

It's interesting to hear how much effort you put in to make everyone feel comfortable and then to see your new costumes, which I'm sure make playing live a lot more difficult.

Damn right! It's all part of the torture! Oh, so you want a new guitar all of a sudden? Here, have a helmet with tubes on it. See how well you can play now! (laughs) But seriously, here's how it works with the costumes: We work with a designer called Bea Åkerlund. We are good friends and have similar tastes when it comes to what we think is cool. However, she comes from the world of fashion tailoring and there are sometimes a few hurdles between what looks good in a photo shoot, for example, and what is comfortable to work with. She mainly has the role of designer and doesn't sit in the sewing room herself to make our costumes. What we wear on stage is a collaborative effort of many different people, where one makes the crosses, one makes the belts, one makes the trousers and so on. You work with a lot of people who all want to contribute creatively, and only when we have everything in one room can we think about whether something will work live. What you see as a visitor at our concerts, especially at the first concerts of a tour, is still the experimentation phase, during which we change things and discard ideas again. If you want something that's just practical, you should put on a jumpsuit and a pair of Chucks, but that's not our thing. But believe me, if I ever start another band, I'll go on stage in a fucking onesie.

[jade-04]

Dove (Part 5)

first part | part 4 | part 6

Eddie Munson x fem!Henderson!reader and Steve Harrington x fem!Henderson!reader

Summary: Dustin Henderson’s older sister finds herself in a predicament having to choose between Steve “the Hair” Harrington and Eddie “the Freak” Munson

a/n: Okay so basically I recommend listening to Rock You Like A Hurricane and Talk Dirty To Me on repeat because theyre bangers but also it really puts you into the story. Also this part is really long too, but i literally didnt want to break 1 day into like 3 parts, so yea. I’m still trying to decide whos gonna be endgame with this fic, but right now it looks like y/n is leaning towards Eddie, but well see…

Warnings: swearing, fluff 

taglist: @happiejoon @simonsbluee @nervouslaught3r

------

“Okay, Eddie.” You said walking inside. “I’ve got two questions. What song are we rehearsing and why are there so many damn mugs on the wall?” You asked the last question with a laugh. You felt better than you did a few minutes ago.

“Okay, darlin’, to the first question there’s actually 2 songs. I want you to start the show with a solo and then we’re gonna do a duet later on.” He said while shrugging his jacket off and placing it on a hook by the door.  “ To the second question, I have no fucking clue.” He answered with a smirk. 

You giggled a bit. “Okay Munson, what two songs?” 

“For your opening solo m’lady, you’ll be singing ‘Rock You Like A Hurricane’ and for our duet…um… ‘Talk Dirty To Me’” Eddie was obviously very embarassed to say the name of the duet song to you. You could see it from the blush spreading across his cheeks and the way he wouldnt look at you and honestly you didnt know how to react either.

“What?” You said with a cough. It took you a second to register that he was talking about the song and not asking you to, well, talk dirty to him.

“THE SONG! The song.” He said, eyes wide. “I uh mean the song.” He said coughing in a similar way to you.

Your face was red now too, but you thought the way he was embarrassed over the title of the song was super cute. You gave him a smile an decided to move the conversation. “So, lets get started. Do you want to work on the solo or duet first?” 

“Solo. Definitely the solo.” He straightened up a bit. “Ill go grab a mic and my guitar from my room and I’ll be right back.” He said motioning towards his room and then eventually heading down the narrow hall to go grab his stuff

In the short amount of time it took for Eddie to grab his equipment and set up, you really thought about his offer for a dinner date. You ended up coming to the decision that you wanted it to be a date. Obviously, you weren't expecting anything to sprout between the two of you, but you figured why not test the waters. Just then, Eddie clapped rubbing his hands together, bringing you out of your thoughts.

“Okay, princess. I want you to really perform with this one okay. It’s the first song and you need to captivate the audience. So, practice like you're performing.” He said with a smile holding out a hand to help you up from the couch. 

“You got it, Eds.” You said taking his hand and returning the smile. “Let’s do this.” 

------

Somehow Eddie got a cassette tape of the karaoke version of Rock You Like A Hurricane, but you didnt question it. He put the tape into the player and turned the volume all the way up. Even though the recording had the guitar, he still decided to play his guitar with it, but instead of standing next to you, he stood in front of you while it played. 

As the music started you began to sway your hips to the beat of the drum and as the music builds you started to tap your foot and move your upper body with it. You were really enjoying yourself and Eddie was enjoying the show too. His guitar solo was starting to die out and you rolled your head back before starting to sing

It’s early morning, 

The sun comes out

Last night was shaking

And pretty loud 

My cat is purring

It scratches my skin

So what is wrong

With another sin?

Eddie loved the way your voice sounded whenever you sang, especially in a song like this. You had a slight rasp in your voice, but it was still very sultry. Every time you sang, he fell for you more, you were like a siren. He couldn't help but stare at you the whole time, he watched your eyes and the way that you made them so that they were half open. He watched your lips and the way they touched the microphone occasionally depending on the words you were singing and how sometimes you would lick your lips in a break between lyrics. He watched how you would roll your shoulders with the music and sway your hips and tap your foot to the beat. He thought you looked super sexy when you sang, which is why he chose the songs he wanted you to sing. 

The bitch is hungry 

She needs to tell

So give her inches

And feed her well

More days to come

New places to go

I’ve got to leave

It’s time for a show

You made sure that the whole time you were singing, you kept eye contact with Eddie. He was mesmerized by you and you loved to see it, you also loved to see the way his face would get red while singing certain lyrics. There was a bit of a smirk playing on your lips the whole time you were singing too. You were trying your best to look sexy and you were hoping it was working. As the music builds up to the chorus, you took the microphone off of the stand and moved so that you were mere inches away from Eddie’s face and the whole time, you never took your eyes off of eachother. 

Here I am, rock you like a hurricane

Here I am, rock you like a hurricane

Eddie leaned in so that your foreheads were almost touching, still never breaking contact. You had to admit, this was really hot and for a second you almost forgot that you were practicing. You thought about stopping and kissing him, but then, as the music started to fade to leave room for the second verse you took a hand off the microphone and put a bit of room between you and Eddie. 

My body is burning

It starts to shout

Desire is coming

It breaks out loud

Lust is in cages

Till storm breaks loose

Just have to make it

With someone I choose

At the end of this verse, you looked Eddie up and down as if to say “I choose you.” You really did want to choose him at the moment, you couldnt tell what had taken over you in the past 24 hours making you begin to fall for Eddie Munson, but you couldnt say you didnt love it. 

The night is calling

I have to go

The wolf is hungry

He runs the show

He's licking his lips

He's ready to win

On the hunt tonight

For love at first sting

As the music starts to build into the chorus again you grabbed Eddie’s necklaces and closed the gap you put between, your foreheads almost touching once again. 

Here I am

Rock you like a hurricane (Are you ready, baby?)

Here I am

Rock you like a hurricane

Here I am

Rock you like a hurricane (Come on, come on, baby)

Here I am

Rock you like a hurricane

You were caught off guard when Eddie started to sing parts of the music (a/n: he’s singing the stuff thats in parentheses at y/n). You couldn't deny the fact that him doing this really turned you on. If an outsider looked in on you guys right now, they would think you two were about to fuck right then and there, but neither of you could tell if that was what you wanted. You finished up the last half of the song in that exact position. Your foreheads were millimeters away from touching and you were clinging to his necklace. It was only at the end of the song that you let go of his necklace and he pulled away. 

“I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say this, (Y/N), but that was really, really hot.” Eddie said with a deep breath.

Your face turned almost as red as a tomato. ‘Did he just call me hot?’ you thought to yourself. You blinked a couple times to bring yourself back into reality. “Thanks, but why wouldn’t you be allowed to say that?”

“Oh well, y’know youre Dustin’s sister and he basically tells all of Hellfire that you’re off limits. It’s super protective.” He said while wiping the sweat from his forehead and placing a hand on his hip. 

“That little shit.” You chuckled a bit. You loved that Dustin cared, but damn, telling all his friends that you were off limits was a dick move. You understood, though. It would be weird if one of your friends was dating your sister.

“Yeah, it’s kinda funny actually.” Eddie let out a small breathy laugh. “But I think that we should start practicing the next song.” He changed the subject before turning around to switch to the next song on the tape before pausing it. “I think that you should sing the first verse, I’ll sing the second, and we’ll sing the chorus and 3rd verse together.” 

“Works for me, Munson.”  You put the microphone back on the stand and motioned for him to hit play. 

As Eddie started to strum the intro to the song, you closed your head and nodded along to the music, eventually moving your head to the beat of the drums. You wrapped your hands around the microphone and started to sing. 

You know I never

I never seen you look so good

You never act the way you should

But I like it

And I know you like it too

The way that I want you

I gotta have you

Oh yes, I do

You sang the whole first verse with a smile on your face, never taking your eyes off Eddie. As you finished your verse, he made his way up to the microphone and you turned it towards him. You kinda held it out to him while he sang, the whole time both of you were keeping eye contact with each other.

You know I never

I never ever stay out late

You know that I can hardly wait

Just to see you

And I know you cannot wait

Wait to see me too

I gotta touch you

There was no denying it, Eddie looked super hot when he was singing. Especially, when he was signing to you. Wait, was he singing to you? You honestly couldn’t tell, but the look in his eyes really made it seem like he was singing all of those lyrics at you. The lyrics were starting to seem truthful too, just today, you couldn’t wait to see him after work. You needed to snap out of your thoughts, the chorus was coming up. You jumped back in and started singing with Eddie.

Cause baby, we'll be

At the drive-in

In the old man's Ford

Behind the bushes

Till I'm screaming for more

Down the basement

Lock the cellar door

And baby

Talk dirty to me

The whole time, Eddie was mesmerized by you just as he was when you were singing your solo before. He loved the way that you smiled and shimmied your shoulders to the music. He loved the way that you would scrunch your nose while singing certain lyrics. Eddie was living his dream, singing with you while he shreds on the guitar. He was hoping he could live this forever.

You know I call you

I call you on the telephone

I'm only hoping that you're home

So I can hear you

When you say those words to me

And whisper so softly

I gotta hear you

You mimed speaking on the telephone with your free hand causing a smile to spread across Eddie face. This was probably the most fun you’ve had in a while and you were honestly surprised, yet pleased, that you were having this much fun with Eddie Munson. You coudlnt keep the smile off your face and Eddie matched your smile with his own. You repeated the chorus together again before Eddie started his guitar solo. 

Eddie, pick up that guitar and talk to me

You changed the ad lib a little bit, but it fit and you loved the way Eddie smiled when you sang it. Eddie loved that you added that and how were now dancing around his living room while he did his solo. This was pure bliss for both of you. You were letting loose and truly enjoying yourself. You had no care in the world and it felt great. You made your way back to Eddie so that you guys could finish up the song together as his guitar solo started coming to an end. 

Cause baby we'll be

At the drive-in

In the old man's Ford

Behind the bushes

Till I'm screaming for more more more

Down the basement

Lock the cellar door

And baby

Talk dirty to me

And baby 

Talk dirty to me

And baby 

Talk dirty to me

While you guys were singing you both moved very close to the point where your foreheads were touching and your hand was on Eddie's shoulder. As Eddie finished the first guitar riff at the end of the song, you leaned in and gave him a quick kiss on the lips. It surprised both of you, neither of you expecting the kiss, but to you, it just felt right. You could see the shock on Eddies face as you leaned back with a smile. 

“I think you should perform it just like that, Henderson.” He said, his face lit up with a smile.

You couldnt get your smile to go away. You hated to admit it to yourself, but you were really starting to like Eddie and you could already tell he really liked you. “Oh, shut up, Munson.” You said with an eye roll and breathy laugh. 

“Make me.” He leaned in towards you with a smirk. 

You shook your head before grabbing his face and kissing him again. He let go of his guitar, leaving it to hang from the strap around his shoulder, so that he could put his hands around your waist and bring you in closer. Obviously, the guitar was in the way a bit, but neither of you cared. You could feel Eddie smiling into the kiss and you couldn't help but do the same. It was a simple kiss, but it didnt feel simple to either of you. For you, this was the release of the built-up emotions from the last few hours, but for Eddie this was what he's wanted for the past 6 months. After a minute or two, you both pulled away, your hands around Eddie’s neck and his around your waist. 

“So… does this make dinner a date or…?” Eddie asked with a smirk. 

A cheeky smile spread across your face. “That depends, Munson. Do you want it to be?” You repeated the words he had said to you earlier in the day. 

��I’ll take that as a yes. Where are we goin’?” He had let go of you so that he could set his guitar down. You began to head towards the couch and plopped down. 

You tapped your chin pensively. “How about Ben’s Diner? It's about 10 minutes from here.” Really, you didnt care where you went, but chicken tenders from Ben’s Diner sounded absolutely delicious right now. 

“Sounds great to me. Im gonna get my jacket on and then we can head out.” He moved away from his guitar and now towards the coat rack. You followed behind him before heading out to the car. 

------

Before long, you guys were pulling into the parking lot of Ben’s Diner. Eddie got out of the car first and raised around to open your door before you hopped out. As soon as you got out, Eddie slung his arm around your shoulder. You walked in side by side, a smile unable to leave both of your faces as you made your way to a booth, but before you could sit down a voice called out to you. 

“(Y/N)?” 

You turned around to see who it was. 

“Oh! Hey Steve!” You said with a little wave. “Didn’t know you were gonna be here.”

“Yea.” His eyes shot between you and Eddie. “We decided this was gonna be our pre-movie dinner.” He said motioning to the girl across from him in the booth. 

“Oh. You must be Beth?” You question leaving from under Eddie’s arm and going to say hi to the girl. “Steve has been talking about his date with you for like the past 48 hours. It’s nice to meet you.” You held a hand out to the girl hoping she’d take it to shake. ‘She’s really pretty, how did Steve score that?’ you thought to yourself. The girl, Beth, had light brown hair and some wire-framed round glasses. She seemed pretty chill, but definitely nothing near Steve’s type. Beth took your hand to shake it.

“It’s nice to meet you too!” Beth said back. “I hear you're one of Steve’s best friends?” She had a smile on her face, but you could tell she was hoping that you and Steve weren’t super close, making sure nothing was going on between you two. 

You shook your head with a little laugh. “Oh no, that’s my little brother, Dustin. Those two are thick as thieves.” You smiled back at her with reassurance. “Well anyways, I’ll let you two get back to it. Me and Eddie are gonna go ahead and sit down.” You smiled before turning back to Eddie. 

Eddie was quick to wrap his arm back around your shoulder. The two of you made your way to a seat quickly and started looking at the menu. You were already dead set on what you wanted : chicken tenders and a chocolate shake. You always got that when you would come here with Dustin and he would get the same. You could see on Eddie’s face that he was struggling to decide what to get.

“Do you think they’d let me order pancakes at 5 o’clock at night?” He looked up at you like a child.

“I would think so, but there's no harm in asking.” You shot him a little smile before readjusting to sit with your legs crossed in the seat. 

“You look like a child right now, Sweetheart.” He said laughing at the way you were sitting. 

“Ohhh okay, Mr. pancakes for dinner.” A sly grin making its way across your face.

“And may I ask what you’re ordering?” He leaned forward so his chin could rest in his hands.

You blushed a little before responding in a whisper. “...chicken tenders…” 

“And you call me the child, little miss chicken tenders.” He mocked your voice a little while saying chicken tenders making you laugh a little. 

Steve couldn't help but notice the way you and Eddie were chuckling from across the restaurant. You looked super happy, but he just wished it was him making you laugh and feel happy rather than Eddie. He couldn't be mad though, he felt he had no right to be. He had never confessed his feelings to you, even though Robin always pesters him about it. Steve didn't even try to make it seem like he was interested, he was out just about every other night with a different girl. To you and to everyone but Robin, it seemed like he was just playing the field. In reality, he was just distracting himself from you in hopes his crush would die out, but with every date with a girl that wasn't you, his infatuation just grew stronger. He snapped out of his trance when he realized it was time for him and Beth to leave or else they would be late for the movie.

When it came time for you and Eddie to order, you both said what you wanted, both giggling at what each other was ordering. Your food was out soon and both you and Eddie scarfed down your meals. You offered to pay, but Eddie wouldn’t let you. He was such a gentlemen, you couldnt ask for better. The way he would open doors for you and just tonight when he paid for your meal sent your heart aflutter. After paying, you both walked out to Eddie’s car so that he could take you home. The drive wasn’t super long, as Ben’s Diner was about a 5 minute drive from your house. It wasnt long until he was pulled onto the curb in front of your house.

“Can I walk you to your door, (Y/N)?” Eddie said with puppy dog eyes, waiting to move to open your door for you. 

“Um…” You moved your head to look at the driveway seeing your mom still wasn't home yet. “Sure.” You said with a smile.

Eddie quickly got out of the car and opened up the door for you. This tie, once you got out, he opted for holding your hand to lead you to the door rather than an arm around your shoulder. You both hiked up the hill to your house and stopped at the porch. The two of you turned to face each other, him taking both of your hands in his. 

“Eddie, tonight was genuinely the most fun I’ve had in a while.” You smiled, meeting his eyes. “My mom is pretty strict with me and so I can just barely get by sneaking out to parties maybe once a month…but this,” You looked at his hands then back up at him, “this was better than a party.” 

“Oh, so what i’m hearing is that spending time with me is better than a party?” Eddie said quirking his eyebrows. 

“Oh shut up, Eddie.” You said before pulling him in for a quick chaste kiss. 

“I had a great time with you too, Henderson.” Eddie said quickly after pulling away from the kiss. “Now you better get inside before that brother of yours catches us.” He said with a chuckle before letting go of your hands to walk back to his car. 

You turned over your shoulder to unlock your front door, but before you entered, you turned back around. “Goodnight, Eds.” You yelled to him as he walked down to the street.

“Night, Sweetheart.” He said back. You smiled at the pet name he gave you.

You turned back and closed the door, surprisingly, you were the only one home. Mom must’ve still been out running errands and Dustin must’ve been at the Wheelers. You decided to take this time you had to just shower and get into your pajamas. It was nowhere near late, you just wanted to be out of your jeans. So, you took a shower and changed and made your way back downstairs with a book. You had finally given in to all of Dustin’s peer pressuring and decided to read the Lord of the Rings series. You found it quite boring and felt you could hardly stay awake while reading it. That really seemed to prove itself true when you woke up the next morning sprawled across the couch with the book resting on your face. 

[asterlark]

ok. samwell college of music au. i wrote all four years let's go babey

eric bittle is this lovely southern tenor (sounds kinda like mitch grassi or ben j pierce) who posts covers (& sometimes originals, but always with neutral or no pronouns because he can't post anything that says he or him ☹) on his youtube channel and has major stage fright but is very talented; he also plays ukulele

he got into samwell college of music on a voice scholarship and his dad doesn’t exactly approve but eric was never the 6′2″ masculine football player he wanted anyway so why not go for his dreams

he auditions for the very competitive samwell men’s contemporary chorus (there’s like 20 choirs; chamber choir, jazz choir, a cappella groups (lax bros do a cappella), combined choirs, etc- smcc does contemporary pop/rock music) and while he’s very very nervous and shaky as he auditions, directors hall & murray see a lot of potential in him (with major grumbling from student director jack)

(the rest of this ridiculously long au under the cut)

the group is small, for a chorus, because the point of the group is not a wall of sound but a focus on all of the very talented guys’ voices coming together in these gorgeous harmonies and basically they’re like one of the best choruses on campus and all the male singers want in

so there’s jack zimmermann, who of course eric knows because everyone knows who he is, he’s the son of bob and alicia zimmermann, both incredibly talented and famous musicians, and basically those genes were in his favor because he’s mega fucking talented

(jack was supposed to sign a recording contract to be in a band with his best friend kent parson when he was 17 but something happened between them and the pressure was too much and jack overdosed on something- there’s so many rumors no one knows what’s real- and kent signed solo in LA & went on to win grammys for his albums about a mysterious ex and jack disappeared for a few years to be a counselor at a music camp and reappears at samwell, knocking everyone’s socks off again like he’d never left, except with a renewed vigor and intenseness that freaks everyone out)

jack is a contemporary writing & production major, freaky talented and sings like a modern day frank sinatra, and he plays like 20 instruments and can read music like breathing air and writes songs like if he stopped he’d die; his music is folksy and mournful and he plays all the instruments on his tracks himself- guitar, piano, strings, drums- it sounds like a full band but nope. just jack. he’s intense

“we all get nicknames in this choir,” justin informs eric on his first day, “we’re those kinda guys.” so he’s bitty, which he finds vaguely offensive (bc he’s not that short!) but still cute, & the rest of the group is introduced to him:

“shitty” knight (voice like colyer) is a musical education major and an enigma of a singer with this awesome, earthy, raspy voice that’s really interesting to listen to and a very.... unique style & look; he writes cheesy but shockingly good raps about social justice topics and he will sing-lecture you if you’ve said something offensive (he also plays banjo)

justin “ransom” oluransi is a music business & management major with an angelic voice you can’t help but listen to; he’s sultry and has an incredible range and does runs like nobody’s business (with a voice like daniel caesar or leslie odom jr UGH)

adam “holster” birkholtz is a voice performance major, wants to be on broadway and it’s all he ever goddamn talks about basically, he’s a belter and has a lot of charisma and starpower and he’ll charm the pants off of you within one note; can also play piano and irritates everyone constantly because his regular volume is like a level 11 (voice like the frontman of my brothers and i combined w/ x ambassadors lead singer)

larissa “lardo” duan is at the local art institute because performing arts is not her jam and she’d much rather paint; she’s a barista at annie’s and supervises open mic nights and keeps the annoying choir dudes from driving away all her patrons

“i’m not even in your dumbass choir,” she says when the group gave her her nickname. holster just told her that she was an honorary member and then started sing-shouting a song at her about how good she is

bitty’s first year is hard because he’s talented and he works hard but he shies away when anyone asks him to sing outside the group and like, he can sing to a camera by himself but being on a stage with everyone looking at you and the sole responsibility of the song on your shoulders is terrifying and no thanks

jack does not. understand this. he’s been performing practically since he came out of the womb and he doesn’t really get performance nerves (what he gets is anxiety about how he did after he gets off stage that follows him home and makes it so he can’t sleep) - so he bothers bitty about it constantly like “you just need practice, you just have to sing by yourself a lot and then you’ll get over it” which like.... that’s true but it’s also hella scary and bitty’s like “no thanks!!!!”

but jack’s annoying and intense so he makes bitty do open mic with him every saturday night and it’s going okay and bitty loves his choir and loves his school and these new friends he’s making and he finally feels comfortable enough to come out to them during his second term

then during their spring choral showcase at the end of his freshman year bitty has a solo and he’s worked really hard on it and he’s feeling good- okay he’s completely freaked out but he’s trying to feel good- but when he gets up on stage there’s so many people and the stage lights are so hot on his face and he flips out a little and maybe he passes out from anxiety and stress right on stage and it’s terrible and he’s so embarrassed and ashamed that he ruined their set at the showcase

of course jack blames himself because “we shouldn’t have given you a solo before you were ready, i misjudged it, i’m sorry” - and they all feel kinda bad bc holy fuck they didn’t know his stage fright was that bad like they didn’t know someone could pass out just by being anxious to sing

he practices all the time over the summer and goes to his local open mic at jack’s insistence and it actually helps a lot because instead of a sea of strangers judging him it’s a bunch of people he knows and they’re all smiling at him and when he finishes his song they cheer for him and it boosts his self-confidence a lot

his sophomore year they have three new members- chris ”chowder” chow (voice like ieuan), an excitable music education major with impressive rapping skills, derek "nursey" nurse (frank ocean or leon bridges type), a songwriting major who can also play violin and guitar, and will ”dex” poindexter (like tom west), a production & engineering major who tried out with chowder bc he needed moral support and didn't expect to get in but impressed the directors with his voice

the year’s going pretty good, bitty’s still pretty scared of singing alone but more confident now and the open mic nights with jack haven’t stopped, so he’s getting better. and one night they’re hanging out at annie’s after closing waiting for lardo to be done so they can walk her home, and bitty suggests that jack sing with him one of these nights, and jack says he doesn’t know any of bitty’s songs and bitty says they can write one together half jokingly but then jack is like “yes.” with that Intense Look

SO they get together a couple days later in jack’s room at the house they all live in together (bitty moved in at the beginning of the year after previous smcc member john johnson called him- how’d he get his number?- and told him he could take his room if he wanted), jack with his guitar and bitty with his ukulele, and it’s a little awkward until bitty says jack should play him one of his songs

and, okay, he doesn’t really know what to expect because the only music jack ever released to the public was that one single he did with kent parson when they were 17 so bitty doesn’t even know if he has anything to play him, but he does- he starts playing these soft, sad notes on the guitar and opens his mouth and sings about being lonely and scared and unsure, about false starts and shaky ground and not knowing where you stand with someone, about expectations and lying awake at night and wishing so hard you were someone else, and bitty watches him sing and just kind of... realizes he’s head over heels for this boy and internally Freaks Out a little

he tries to put that aside and they start to write this song, at first it’s weird because jack’s like “all your songs are love songs i can’t really relate to happy love songs” and bitty’s like “listen... i’ve never even had a boyfriend i just write a bunch of sappy love stuff because it’s not about me it’s about whoever’s listening to it, they’re gonna project their own experiences on my music anyway so it doesn’t matter if it’s my real life or not” and jack’s like “alright while fake af that’s smart and i respect you” (what bitty doesn't say is that he writes about what he really wants which is to fall in love & be in a happy relationship)

they say they’re just gonna write this kinda vague sad song but they both secretly write lines about their actual lives so it ends up being really personal and real and raw for the both of them

they sing the song at open mic that saturday and the crowd at annie’s is never that big but they’ve never got a standing ovation here before, and some girl shouts “MAKE AN ALBUM” (it may or may not be lardo) and they both blush furiously and bitty’s like “... that was really nice, jack” and jack’s like “... yeah it was good good job you’re really getting some confidence out there nice work” (bitty: “THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT AAAAH”)

around this time jack’s really thinking about what he’s gonna do when he’s done at samwell, talking with his parents and his agent and looking into different record companies and deciding if he wants to sign with anyone or possibly start his own company- the head of a small company called falcon records in rhode island has been talking to him a lot, and jack talks to bitty about how he thinks it’d be nice to start small, and the record exec georgia and the producer marty had both been really nice and welcoming, and bitty’s so happy for him but also just... sad that he won’t be around jack every day after he graduates

THEN at a haus party celebrating their win of a local choral competition, who shows up but none other than pop star kent parson to Ruin The Fun

bitty sees the way jack pales when kent walks in, notices them disappear upstairs together and feels a little sick worrying about jack but chalks it up to the highly alcoholic concoction shitty and lardo had cooked up but nonetheless decides he’s sick of the party and goes up to his room and hears.... a little too much

and YIKES he’s standing right there and kent parson, pop star, two-time grammy winner, is looking a little rumpled and staring right at him and he puts his hat on and clears his throat and snaps at jack- “hey. well. call me if you reconsider. but good luck with rhode island. ...i’m sure that’ll make your parents proud.” and jack’s shaking, and bitty doesn’t know what to do but jack goes back into his room and bitty’s just kind of standing there like What The Fuck

so.... he kind of stews over winter break but tries not to think about it too much and he and jack text a bit and jack tells him to practice and bitty’s like “oh, you” and jack’s like “im serious” and bitty’s like “>:( it’s christmas”

spring semester starts and they're doing well in competitions and they go to semifinals and then finals for a prestigious collegiate choir competition and the pressure is mounting but they all are so optimistic and really feel like they're on the same page and bitty’s confidence is better than ever and then.... they don't win

jack especially takes it very hard, but then he also has signing to worry about, which everyone helps him with and he decides to sign with falcon records and start work on an album after graduation

speaking of graduation, shitty and jack graduate and it's hard for them but harder for bitty who feels like he's losing jack in a way, he knows how intense jack gets when he's making music and it doesn't feel like he'll have any time for bitty anymore so when they say goodbye bitty goes back to the haus and listens to his and jack's song and just cries

but, like in canon, dadbob has words of wisdom to impart and jack has an "oh" moment and races across campus to kiss bitty

they get together and the next few months are spent with jack working nonstop on his album (which tbh, he'd had many of the songs written already so it's mostly recording and producing) and texting bitty constantly and coming to visit him and playing him demos of all the songs

jack also asks bitty if they can record the song they wrote together & have it as a bonus track on his album & bitty says of course, so when jack visits they set up an impromptu studio and record vocals in the guest bedroom and this deeply personal song they wrote before they were ever together means so much more to them now

and bitty is so happy but so scared and sad too because jack is playing him these songs telling him "they're all for you bits, & a lot of them are about you" and he just doesn't know how he's going to keep all this love inside even though it feels like jack's career is at stake

he tries to shove it down and stay strong though, especially since he's now an upperclassman and they're taking on new members- connor "whiskey" whisk (voice like finneas or the male singer in valley), a music business/ management major who seems to hate bitty's guts and tony "tango" tangredi (like chaz cardigan), a jazz composition major who astounds everybody with his endless questions but also his ridiculously impressive composition skills & naturally perfect pitch (he can also play saxophone??)

i want ford in this au so fuck it she is a composition major with dreams to write scores for musicals and she stars training as a barista at annie's (aka training to corral the smcc)

the pressure of it all proves to be a lot and bitty and jack have their hi, honey moment where bitty's like i can't be this deep in the closet!!! and so they tell the smcc and also jack's label that they're together and that eases things a bit

jack's album comes out to much critical acclaim and shouting in the groupchat ("#1 ON ITUNES BRAHHHHH!!!!!!!!") and several months later, when smcc has already been eliminated from choral competition in an earlier round, jack is nominated for SEVERAL grammys including best album, song of the year, and best new artist

when the time comes he takes his parents and bitty on the red carpet which, everyone keeps being like "who are you here with jack?" and he's like "my family and my good friend :)" and yes it is awkward

jack wins... all three awards. it's the comeback everyone is stoked to see and when his third win is announced, he and bitty are so elated that they kiss before he goes to accept the award

his speech is basically just "um... wow. thank you. i just kissed my boyfriend on live tv. this is amazing and i'm so humbled. i'd like to thank my boyfriend and georgia and marty and my parents and my friends and my boyfriend"

obviously the press has a FIELD DAY with this but bitty & jack are honestly vibing and so happy that it doesn't matter untiiiillll bitty's mom calls and he has to tell her "mama i'm gay and i'm going on tour with jack this summer okloveyoubye"

the last few months of bitty's junior year pass quickly and he's voted student director which is a huge honor considering how much he struggled with stage fright and confidence & how he'll now be stepping into ransom & holster's shoes

r&h and lardo all graduate (the smcc basically crashes the art school graduation and all scream when lardo gets her diploma lmao), which is a bittersweet occasion and they all do a bit of tearing up

that summer bitty goes on tour across the u.s. & canada with jack and his touring band (snowy is a bassist, tater is a drummer and poots does backing guitar, he also brings nursey to play violin on a few songs) as well as georgia who's there to manage logistics

and tour is so fun & chaotic with many bi and rainbow flags in the audience that end up thrown on stage and draped around jack's neck and they spend so many nights in the bus drinking and laughing and fooling around on the guitars and bitty's uke and exploring new cities bitty has never been to before and it's the freest bitty has felt in a long time

summer ends though, and jack leaves for the uk/europe leg of the tour, and with the new school year brings a few new members- river "bully" bullard (voice like gregory alan isakov), a music therapy major who draws his own cover art for his songs, lukas "louis" landmann (like jr jr), an electronic production and design major with a penchant for EDM, and johnathan "hops" hopper (like keiynan lonsdale), a film scoring major who wants to write music for movies and video games

bitty meets and befriends some of the other student directors- shruti, sd of the women’s contemporary chorus; sharon, sd of the chamber choir; and edgar, sd of jazz ensemble (even chad l., sd of the all-male a cappella group)

senior year passes similarly to the comic; coach visits and sees one of bitty’s competitions, jack comes to madison for christmas, smcc does well in competition and goes to regionals etc

however… bitty keeps putting off and putting off gathering the songs for his senior recital

he has a hard time doing that because he’s so focused on the group and making sure they’re performing well and as they advance in competition, everything else starts to fall away

eventually the rest of the smcc has to lock away his uke and change his youtube password and FORCE him to choose songs for it and start preparing because he cannot graduate without doing this recital and doing well on it

he chooses (of course) a beyonce song, a few of his own songs, an ellie goulding song, and an adele song

with all that his breath hitches and his hands shake before he goes on stage, he does really well and his voice instructor prof atley tears up a little in the audience as does his mom

meanwhile smcc goes to semifinals, then finals, of the national collegiate choral competition they participate in

and i imagine bitty faces somewhat less homophobia in this au because i mean, he’s in the performing arts, but i think it’s still there and he also faces a good amount of classism from richer students and performers who think they’re better because they had the resources and money to be performing professionally from a very young age, and he has been practicing via filming himself on a shitty camcorder and posting it to youtube

but they still get there! and the national finals are fucking HUGE and a big deal and a little overwhelming

bitty’s stage fright is Present because this is the biggest stage and the biggest stakes he's ever had and he has a big solo in one of their songs so if he fucks up, he fucks up a national championship for his whole group and school

luckily though, when he steps on the stage with his best friends and sees his boyfriend and family and smcc alums in the audience and they perform their first song, a high-energy pop medley that always gets the crowd going, everything seems to melt away and it's just him living in this moment and singing his heart out

when it gets to the next song and his solo, he forgets to be nervous and belts it out, getting screams of approval from the audience when he finishes

(dex and nursey do have a duet together that they had to practice for many long nights in the practice rooms alone but that's neither here nor there)

their time on stage seems to last both hours and no time at all and then they're done, the crowd gives them a standing ovation and it's at least 30% r&h & shitty's hooting and hollering and jack's enthusiastic clapping that makes bitty & the others beam with pride

then it's just waiting, giddy and nervous beyond belief in their green room, for the judging to be over

after what feels like forever they're back on stage, arms linked together waiting and hoping for their name to be called and it is, they win and it feels like years have built up to this moment, and bitty tears up because years ago when he was fainting from anxiety at having to perform in front of people he never could've imagined that he'd do this, that he'd be the student director that led them to a championship

they get the trophy and a ridiculous amount of flowers from their loved ones and they all are just in giddy disbelief that this is happening, they're national champs!!! they are the best choir boys in the nation!!

they come home and the rest of the school year passes by so quickly that it's very suddenly graduation and bitty can't believe his college career at samwell is over 😢

(he and ollie and wicky take pictures together, o&w talk about how excited they are to devote full time attention to their band & wedding planning and bitty's just like wait you're gay??)

bitty got plenty of offers from record companies but he likes his freedom of creativity and he has a built in fanbase from doing youtube all these years so he decides to make an album independently (jack helps him produce & master it 🥰)

when bitty's album comes out about a year later, full of bops about being gay and in love and having struggled but come out the other side more confident than ever, it doesn't get any grammy nominations- and he didn't expect or need that.

what it does do is it resonates. it makes the rounds in youtube and queer internet circles; people his age reach out to him saying this is the music they wish they had as a kid and kids reach out to him saying he's a role model and they're so glad to have his music to listen to. his album is written about as an underrated gem that shines with queer brilliance and is sure to start a party when it comes on.

his parents may not fully understand the road he's chosen for himself but they're still so proud and promote the album as hard as any of his loyal fans (especially the one country-inspired song on the album that he wrote and dedicated to them).

and jack, jack who saw this album from its infancy to its release date, who took the film photo that ended up being the album cover, who worked with bitty to make sure his vision was realized exactly how he wanted it to be, is proud beyond words.

jack starts using his semi-abandoned twitter again to tweet "stream [album name]" every day and bitty retweets them sometimes, with just a "this boy. ❤"

and they're happy. they're good. they have come so far and they are reaping the rewards of all the hard work they put in to make the music that they truly love.

the end :)

[path-of-my-childhood]

Musicians On Musicians: Paul McCartney & Taylor Swift

By: Patrick Doyle for Rolling Stone Date: November 13th 2020

On songwriting secrets, making albums at home, and what they’ve learned during the pandemic.

Taylor Swift arrived early to Paul McCartney’s London office in October, “mask on, brimming with excitement.” “I mostly work from home these days,” she writes about that day, “and today feels like a rare school field trip that you actually want to go on.”

Swift showed up without a team, doing her own hair and makeup. In addition to being two of the most famous pop songwriters in the world, Swift and McCartney have spent the past year on similar journeys. McCartney, isolated at home in the U.K., recorded McCartney III. Like his first solo album, in 1970, he played nearly all of the instruments himself, resulting in some of his most wildly ambitious songs in a long time. Swift also took some new chances, writing over email with the National’s Aaron Dessner and recording the raw Folklore, which abandons arena pop entirely in favor of rich character songs. It’s the bestselling album of 2020.

Swift listened to McCartney III as she prepared for today’s conversation; McCartney delved into Folkore. Before the photo shoot, Swift caught up with his daughters Mary (who would be photographing them) and Stella (who designed Swift’s clothes; the two are close friends). “I’ve met Paul a few times, mostly onstage at parties, but we’ll get to that later,” Swift writes. “Soon he walks in with his wife, Nancy. They’re a sunny and playful pair, and I immediately feel like this will be a good day. During the shoot, Paul dances and takes almost none of it too seriously and sings along to Motown songs playing from the speakers. A few times Mary scolds, ‘Daaad, try to stand still!’ And it feels like a window into a pretty awesome family dynamic. We walk into his office for a chat, and after I make a nervous request, Paul is kind enough to handwrite my favorite lyric of his and sign it. He makes a joke about me selling it, and I laugh because it’s something I know I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. That’s around the time when we start talking about music.”

Taylor Swift: I think it’s important to note that if this year had gone the way that we thought it was going to go, you and I would have played Glastonbury this year, and instead, you and I both made albums in isolation.

Paul McCartney: Yeah!

Swift: And I remember thinking it would have been so much fun because the times that I’ve run into you, I correlate with being some of the most fun nights of my life. I was at a party with you, when everybody just started playing music. And it was Dave Grohl playing, and you...

McCartney: You were playing one of his songs, weren’t you?

Swift: Yes, I was playing his song called “Best of You,” but I was playing it on piano, and he didn’t recognize it until about halfway through. I just remember thinking, “Are you the catalyst for the most fun times ever?” Is it your willingness to get up and play music that makes everyone feel like this is a thing that can happen tonight?

McCartney: I mean, I think it’s a bit of everything, isn’t it? I’ll tell you who was very... Reese Witherspoon was like, “Are you going to sing?” I said “Oh, I don’t know.” She said, “You’ve got to, yeah!” She’s bossing me around. So I said, “Whoa,” so it’s a bit of that.

Swift: I love that person, because the party does not turn musical without that person.

McCartney: Yeah, that’s true.

Swift: If nobody says, “Can you guys play music?” we’re not going to invite ourselves up onstage at whatever living-room party it is.

McCartney: I seem to remember Woody Harrelson got on the piano, and he starts playing “Let It Be,” and I’m thinking, “I can do that better.” So I said, “Come on, move over, Woody.” So we’re both playing it. It was really nice... I love people like Dan Aykroyd, who’s just full of energy and he loves his music so much, but he’s not necessarily a musician, but he just wanders around the room, just saying, “You got to get up, got to get up, do some stuff.”

Swift: I listened to your new record. And I loved a lot of things about it, but it really did feel like kind of a flex to write, produce, and play every instrument on every track. To me, that’s like flexing a muscle and saying, “I can do all this on my own if I have to.”

McCartney: Well, I don’t think like that, I must admit. I just picked up some of these instruments over the years. We had a piano at home that my dad played, so I picked around on that. I wrote the melody to “When I’m 64” when I was, you know, a teenager.

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: When the Beatles went to Hamburg, there were always drum kits knocking around, so when there was a quiet moment, I’d say, “Do you mind if I have a knock around?” So I was able to practice, you know, without practicing. That’s why I play right-handed. Guitar was just the first instrument I got. Guitar turned to bass; it also turned into ukulele, mandolin. Suddenly, it’s like, “Wow,” but it’s really only two or three instruments.

Swift: Well, I think that’s downplaying it a little bit. In my mind, it came with a visual of you being in the country, kind of absorbing the sort of do-it-yourself [quality] that has had to come with the quarantine and this pandemic. I found that I’ve adapted a do-it-yourself mentality to a lot of things in my career that I used to outsource.  I’m just wondering what a day of recording in the pandemic looked like for you.

McCartney: Well, I’m very lucky because I have a studio that’s, like, 20 minutes away from where I live. We were in lockdown on a farm, a sheep farm with my daughter Mary and her four kids and her husband. So I had four of my grandkids, I had Mary, who’s a great cook, so I would just drive myself to the studio. And there were two other guys that could come in and we’d be very careful and distanced and everything: my engineer Steve, and then my equipment guy Keith. So the three of us made the record, and I just started off. I had to do a little bit of film music - I had to do an instrumental for a film thing - so I did that. And I just kept going, and that turned into the opening track on the album. I would just come in, say, “Oh, yeah, what are we gonna do?” [Then] have some sort of idea, and start doing it. Normally, I’d start with the instrument I wrote it on, either piano or guitar, and then probably add some drums and then a bit of bass till it started to sound like a record, and then just gradually layer it all up. It was fun.

Swift: That’s so cool.

McCartney: What about yours? You’re playing guitar and piano on yours.

Swift: Yeah, on some of it, but a lot of it was made with Aaron Dessner, who’s in a band called the National that I really love. And I had met him at a concert a year before, and I had a conversation with him, asking him how he writes. It’s my favorite thing to ask people who I’m a fan of. And he had an interesting answer. He said, “All the band members live in different parts of the world. So I make tracks. And I send them to our lead singer, Matt, and he writes the top line.” I just remember thinking, “That is really efficient.” And I kind of stored it in my brain as a future idea for a project. You know, how you have these ideas... “Maybe one day I’ll do this.” I always had in my head: “Maybe one day I’ll work with Aaron Dessner.”

So when lockdown happened, I was in L.A., and we kind of got stuck there. It’s not a terrible place to be stuck. We were there for four months maybe, and during that time, I sent an email to Aaron Dessner and I said, “Do you think you would want to work during this time? Because my brain is all scrambled, and I need to make something, even if we’re just kind of making songs that we don’t know what will happen...”

McCartney: Yeah, that was the thing. You could do stuff -  you didn’t really worry it was going to turn into anything.

Swift: Yeah, and it turned out he had been writing instrumental tracks to keep from absolutely going crazy during the pandemic as well, so he sends me this file of probably 30 instrumentals, and the first one I opened ended up being a song called “Cardigan,” and it really happened rapid-fire like that. He’d send me a track; he’d make new tracks, add to the folder; I would write the entire top line for a song, and he wouldn’t know what the song would be about, what it was going to be called, where I was going to put the chorus. I had originally thought, “Maybe I’ll make an album in the next year, and put it out in January or something,” but it ended up being done and we put it out in July. And I just thought there are no rules anymore, because I used to put all these parameters on myself, like, “How will this song sound in a stadium? How will this song sound on radio?” If you take away all the parameters, what do you make? And I guess the answer is Folklore.

McCartney: And it’s more music for yourself than music that’s got to go do a job. My thing was similar to that: After having done this little bit of film music, I had a lot of stuff that I had been working on, but I’d said, “I’m just going home now,” and it’d be left half-finished. So I just started saying, “Well, what about that? I never finished that.” So we’d pull it out, and we said, “Oh, well, this could be good.” And because it didn’t have to amount to anything, I would say, “Ah, I really want to do tape loops. I don’t care if they fit on this song, I just want to do some.” So I go and make some tape loops, and put them in the song, just really trying to do stuff that I fancy.

I had no idea it would end up as an album; I may have been a bit less indulgent, but if a track was eight minutes long, to tell you the truth, what I thought was, “I’ll be taking it home tonight, Mary will be cooking, the grandkids will all be there running around, and someone, maybe Simon, Mary’s husband, is going to say, ‘What did you do today?’ And I’m going to go, ‘Oh,’ and then get my phone and play it for them.” So this became the ritual.

Swift: That’s the coziest thing I’ve ever heard.

McCartney: Well, it’s like eight minutes long, and I said, “I hate it when I’m playing someone something and it finishes after three minutes.” I kind of like that it just [continues] on.

Swift: You want to stay in the zone.

McCartney: It just keeps going on. I would just come home, “Well, what did you do today?” “Oh, well, I did this. I’m halfway through this,” or, “We finished this.”

Swift: I was wondering about the numerology element to McCartney III. McCartney I, II, and III have all come out on years with zeroes.

McCartney: Ends of decades.

Swift: Was that important?

McCartney: Yeah, well, this was being done in 2020, and I didn’t really think about it. I think everyone expected great things of 2020. “It’s gonna be great! Look at that number! 2020! Auspicious!” Then suddenly Covid hit, and it was like, “That’s gonna be auspicious all right, but maybe for the wrong reasons.” Someone said to me, “Well, you put out McCartney right after the Beatles broke up, and that was 1970, and then you did McCartney II in 1980.” And I said, “Oh, I’m going to release this in 2020 just for whatever you call it, the numerology...”

Swift: The numerology, the kind of look, the symbolism. I love numbers. Numbers kind of rule my whole world. The numbers 13... 89 is a big one. I have a few others that I find...

McCartney: Thirteen is lucky for some.

Swift: Yeah, it’s lucky for me. It’s my birthday. It’s all these weird coincidences of good things that have happened. Now, when I see it places, I look at it as a sign that things are going the way they’re supposed to. They may not be good now, they could be painful now, but things are on a track. I don’t know, I love the numerology.

McCartney: It’s spooky, Taylor. It’s very spooky. Now wait a minute: Where’d you get 89?

Swift: That’s when I was born, in 1989, and so I see it in different places and I just think it’s...

McCartney: No, it’s good. I like that, where certain things you attach yourself to, and you get a good feeling off them. I think that’s great.

Swift: Yeah, one of my favorite artists, Bon Iver, he has this thing with the number 22. But I was also wondering: You have always kind of seeked out a band or a communal atmosphere with like, you know, the Beatles and Wings, and then Egypt Station. I thought it was interesting when I realized you had made a record with no one else. I just wondered, did that feel natural?

McCartney: It’s one of the things I’ve done. Like with McCartney, because the Beatles had broken up, there was no alternative but to get a drum kit at home, get a guitar, get an amp, get a bass, and just make something for myself. So on that album, which I didn’t really expect to do very well, I don’t think it did. But people sort of say, “I like that. It was a very casual album.” It didn’t really have to mean anything. So I’ve done that, the play-everything-myself thing. And then I discovered synths and stuff, and sequencers, so I had a few of those at home. I just thought I’m going to play around with this and record it, so that became McCartney II. But it’s a thing I do. Certain people can do it. Stevie Wonder can do it. Stevie Winwood, I believe, has done it. So there are certain people quite like that.

When you’re working with someone else, you have to worry about their variances. Whereas your own variance, you kind of know it. It’s just something I’ve grown to like. Once you can do it, it becomes a little bit addictive. I actually made some records under the name the Fireman.

Swift: Love a pseudonym.

McCartney: Yeah, for the fun! But, you know, let’s face it, you crave fame and attention when you’re young. And I just remembered the other day, I was the guy in the Beatles that would write to journalists and say [speaks in a formal voice]: “We are a semiprofessional rock combo, and I’d think you’d like [us]... We’ve written over 100 songs (which was a lie), my friend John and I. If you mention us in your newspaper...” You know, I was always, like, craving the attention.

Swift: The hustle! That’s so great, though.

McCartney: Well, yeah, you need that.

Swift: Yeah, I think, when a pseudonym comes in is when you still have a love for making the work and you don’t want the work to become overshadowed by this thing that’s been built around you, based on what people know about you. And that’s when it’s really fun to create fake names and write under them.

McCartney: Do you ever do that?

Swift: Oh, yeah.

McCartney: Oh, yeah? Oh, well, we didn’t know that! Is that a widely known fact?

Swift: I think it is now, but it wasn’t. I wrote under the name Nils Sjöberg because those are two of the most popular names of Swedish males. I wrote this song called “This Is What You Came For” that Rihanna ended up singing. And nobody knew for a while. I remembered always hearing that when Prince wrote “Manic Monday,” they didn’t reveal it for a couple of months.

McCartney: Yeah, it also proves you can do something without the fame tag. I did something for Peter and Gordon; my girlfriend’s brother and his mate were in a band called Peter and Gordon. And I used to write under the name Bernard Webb.

Swift: [Laughs.] That’s a good one! I love it.

McCartney: As Americans call it, Ber-nard Webb. I did the Fireman thing. I worked with a producer, a guy called Youth, who’s this real cool dude. We got along great. He did a mix for me early on, and we got friendly. I would just go into the studio, and he would say, “Hey, what about this groove?” and he’d just made me have a little groove going. He’d say, “You ought to put some bass on it. Put some drums on it.” I’d just spend the whole day putting stuff on it. And we’d make these tracks, and nobody knew who Fireman was for a while. We must have sold all of 15 copies.

Swift: Thrilling, absolutely thrilling.

McCartney: And we didn’t mind, you know?

Swift: I think it’s so cool that you do projects that are just for you. Because I went with my family to see you in concert in 2010 or 2011, and the thing I took away from the show most was that it was the most selfless set list I had ever seen. It was completely geared toward what it would thrill us to hear. It had new stuff, but it had every hit we wanted to hear, every song we’d ever cried to, every song people had gotten married to, or been brokenhearted to. And I just remembered thinking, “I’ve got to remember that,” that you do that set list for your fans.

McCartney: You do that, do you?

Swift: I do now. I think that learning that lesson from you taught me at a really important stage in my career that if people want to hear “Love Story” and “Shake It Off,” and I’ve played them 300 million times, play them the 300-millionth-and-first time. I think there are times to be selfish in your career, and times to be selfless, and sometimes they line up.

McCartney: I always remembered going to concerts as a kid, completely before the Beatles, and I really hoped they would play the ones I loved. And if they didn’t, it was kind of disappointing. I had no money, and the family wasn’t wealthy. So this would be a big deal for me, to save up for months to afford the concert ticket.

Swift: Yeah, it feels like a bond. It feels like that person on the stage has given something, and it makes you as a crowd want to give even more back, in terms of applause, in terms of dedication. And I just remembered feeling that bond in the crowd, and thinking, “He’s up there playing these Beatles songs, my dad is crying, my mom is trying to figure out how to work her phone because her hands are shaking so much.” Because seeing the excitement course through not only me, but my family and the entire crowd in Nashville, it just was really special. I love learning lessons and not having to learn them the hard way. Like learning nice lessons I really value.

McCartney: Well, that’s great, and I’m glad that set you on that path. I understand people who don’t want to do that, and if you do, they’ll say, “Oh, it’s a jukebox show.” I hear what they’re saying. But I think it’s a bit of a cheat, because the people who come to our shows have spent a lot of money. We can afford to go to a couple of shows and it doesn’t make much difference. But a lot of ordinary working folks... it’s a big event in their life, and so I try and deliver. I also, like you say, try and put in a few weirdos.

Swift: That’s the best. I want to hear current things, too, to update me on where the artist is. I was wondering about lyrics, and where you were lyrically when you were making this record. Because when I was making Folklore, I went lyrically in a total direction of escapism and romanticism. And I wrote songs imagining I was, like, a pioneer woman in a forbidden love affair [laughs]. I was completely...

McCartney: Was this “I want to give you a child”? Is that one of the lines?

Swift: Oh, that’s a song called “Peace.”

McCartney: “Peace,” I like that one.

Swift: “Peace” is actually more rooted in my personal life. I know you have done a really excellent job of this in your personal life: carving out a human life within a public life, and how scary that can be when you do fall in love and you meet someone, especially if you’ve met someone who has a very grounded, normal way of living. I, oftentimes, in my anxieties, can control how I am as a person and how normal I act and rationalize things, but I cannot control if there are 20 photographers outside in the bushes and what they do and if they follow our car and if they interrupt our lives. I can’t control if there’s going to be a fake weird headline about us in the news tomorrow.

McCartney: So how does that go? Does your partner sympathize with that and understand?

Swift: Oh, absolutely.

McCartney: They have to, don’t they?

Swift: But I think that in knowing him and being in the relationship I am in now, I have definitely made decisions that have made my life feel more like a real life and less like just a storyline to be commented on in tabloids. Whether that’s deciding where to live, who to hang out with, when to not take a picture - the idea of privacy feels so strange to try to explain, but it’s really just trying to find bits of normalcy. That’s what that song “Peace” is talking about. Like, would it be enough if I could never fully achieve the normalcy that we both crave? Stella always tells me that she had as normal a childhood as she could ever hope for under the circumstances.

McCartney: Yeah, it was very important to us to try and keep their feet on the ground amongst the craziness.

Swift: She went to a regular school...

McCartney: Yeah, she did.

Swift: And you would go trick-or-treating with them, wearing masks.

McCartney: All of them did, yeah. It was important, but it worked pretty well, because when they kind of reached adulthood, they would meet other kids who might have gone to private schools, who were a little less grounded.

And they could be the budding mothers to [kids]. I remember Mary had a friend, Orlando. Not Bloom. She used to really counsel him. And it’s ’cause she’d gone through that. Obviously, they got made fun of, my kids. They’d come in the classroom and somebody would sing, “Na na na na,” you know, one of the songs. And they’d have to handle that. They’d have to front it out.

Swift: Did that give you a lot of anxiety when you had kids, when you felt like all this pressure that’s been put on me is spilling over onto them, that they didn’t sign up for it? Was that hard for you?

McCartney: Yeah, a little bit, but it wasn’t like it is now. You know, we were just living a kind of semi-hippie life, where we withdrew from a lot of stuff. The kids would be doing all the ordinary things, and their school friends would be coming up to the house and having parties, and it was just great. I remember one lovely evening when it was Stella’s birthday, and she brought a bunch of school kids up. And, you know, they’d all ignore me. It happens very quickly. At first they’re like, “Oh, yeah, he’s like a famous guy,” and then it’s like [yawns]. I like that. I go in the other room and suddenly I hear this music going on. And one of the kids, his name was Luke, and he’s doing break dancing.

Swift: Ohhh!

McCartney: He was a really good break dancer, so all the kids are hanging out. That allowed them to be kind of normal with those kids. The other thing is, I don’t live fancy. I really don’t. Sometimes it’s a little bit of an embarrassment, if I’ve got someone coming to visit me, or who I know…

Swift: Cares about that stuff?

McCartney: Who’s got a nice big house, you know. Quincy Jones came to see me and I’m, like, making him a veggie burger or something. I’m doing some cooking. This was after I’d lost Linda, in between there. But the point I’m making is that I’m very consciously thinking, “Oh, God, Quincy’s got to be thinking, ‘What is this guy on? He hasn’t got big things going on. It’s not a fancy house at all. And we’re eating in the kitchen! He’s not even got the dining room going,’” you know?

Swift: I think that sounds like a perfect day.

McCartney: But that’s me. I’m awkward like that. That’s my kind of thing. Maybe I should have, like, a big stately home. Maybe I should get a staff. But I think I couldn’t do that. I’d be so embarrassed. I’d want to walk around dressed as I want to walk around, or naked, if I wanted to.

Swift: That can’t happen in Downton Abbey.

McCartney: [Laughs.] Exactly.

Swift: I remember what I wanted to know about, which is lyrics. Like, when you’re in this kind of strange, unparalleled time, and you’re making this record, are lyrics first? Or is it when you get a little melodic idea?

McCartney: It was a bit of both. As it kind of always is with me. There’s no fixed way. People used to ask me and John, “Well, who does the words, who does the music?” I used to say, “We both do both.” We used to say we don’t have a formula, and we don’t want one. Because the minute we get a formula, we should rip it up. I will sometimes, as I did with a couple of songs on this album, sit down at the piano and just start noodling around, and I’ll get a little idea and start to fill that out. So the lyrics - for me, it’s following a trail. I’ll start [sings “Find My Way,” a song from “McCartney III”]: “I can find my way. I know my left from right, da da da.” And I’ll just sort of fill it in. Like, we know this song, and I’m trying to remember the lyrics. Sometimes I’ll just be inspired by something. I had a little book which was all about the constellations and the stars and the orbits of Venus and...

Swift: Oh, I know that song - “The Kiss of Venus”?

McCartney: Yeah, “The Kiss of Venus.” And I just thought, “That’s a nice phrase.” So I was actually just taking phrases out of the book, harmonic sounds. And the book is talking about the maths of the universe, and how when things orbit around each other, and if you trace all the patterns, it becomes like a lotus flower.

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: It’s very magical.

Swift: That is magical. I definitely relate to needing to find magical things in this very not-magical time, needing to read more books and learn to sew, and watch movies that take place hundreds of years ago. In a time where, if you look at the news, you just want to have a panic attack - I really relate to the idea that you are thinking about stars and constellations.

McCartney: Did you do that on Folklore?

Swift: Yes. I was reading so much more than I ever did, and watching so many more films.

McCartney: What stuff were you reading?

Swift: I was reading, you know, books like Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, which I highly recommend, and books that dealt with times past, a world that doesn’t exist anymore. I was also using words I always wanted to use - kind of bigger, flowerier, prettier words, like “epiphany,” in songs. I always thought, “Well, that’ll never track on pop radio,” but when I was making this record, I thought, “What tracks? Nothing makes sense anymore. If there’s chaos everywhere, why don’t I just use the damn word I want to use in the song?”

McCartney: Exactly. So you’d see the word in a book and think, “I love that word”?

Swift: Yeah, I have favorite words, like “elegies” and “epiphany” and “divorcée,” and just words that I think sound beautiful, and I have lists and lists of them.

McCartney: How about “marzipan”?

Swift: Love “marzipan.”

McCartney: The other day, I was remembering when we wrote “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”: “kaleidoscope.”

Swift: “Kaleidoscope” is one of mine! I have a song on 1989, a song called “Welcome to New York,” that I put the word “kaleidoscope” in just because I’m obsessed with the word.

McCartney: I think a love of words is a great thing, particularly if you’re going to try to write a lyric, and for me, it’s like, “What is this going to say to that person?” I often feel like I’m writing to someone who is not doing so well. So I’m trying to write songs that might help. Not in a goody-goody, crusading kind of way, but just thinking there have been so many times in my life when I’ve heard a song and felt so much better. I think that’s the angle I want, that inspirational thing.

I remember once, a friend of mine from Liverpool, we were teenagers and we were going to a fairground. He was a schoolmate, and we had these jackets that had a little fleck in the material, which was the cool thing at the time.

Swift: We should have done matching jackets for this photo shoot.

McCartney: Find me a fleck, I’m in. But we went to the fair, and I just remember - this is what happens with songs - there was this girl at the fair. This is just a little Liverpool fair - it was in a place called Sefton Park - and there was this girl, who was so beautiful. She wasn’t a star. She was so beautiful. Everyone was following her, and it’s like, “Wow.” It’s like a magical scene, you know? But all this gave me a headache, so I ended up going back to his house - I didn’t normally get headaches. And we thought, “What can we do?” So we put on the Elvis song “All Shook Up.” By the end of that song, my headache had gone. I thought, you know, “That’s powerful.”

Swift: That really is powerful.

McCartney: I love that, when people stop me in the street and say, “Oh, I was going through an illness and I listened to a lot of your stuff, and I’m better now and it got me through,” or kids will say, “It got me through exams.” You know, they’re studying, they’re going crazy, but they put your music on. I’m sure it happens with a lot of your fans. It inspires them, you know?

Swift: Yeah, I definitely think about that as a goal. There’s so much stress everywhere you turn that I kind of wanted to make an album that felt sort of like a hug, or like your favorite sweater that makes you feel like you want to put it on.

McCartney: What, a “cardigan”?

Swift: Like a good cardigan, a good, worn-in cardigan. Or something that makes you reminisce on your childhood. I think sadness can be cozy. It can obviously be traumatic and stressful, too, but I kind of was trying to lean into sadness that feels like somehow enveloping in not such a scary way - like nostalgia and whimsy incorporated into a feeling like you’re not all right. Because I don’t think anybody was really feeling like they were in their prime this year. Isolation can mean escaping into your imagination in a way that’s kind of nice.

McCartney: I think a lot of people have found that. I would say to people, “I feel a bit guilty about saying I’m actually enjoying this quarantine thing,” and people go, “Yeah, I know, don’t say it to anyone.” A lot of people are really suffering.

Swift: Because there’s a lot in life that’s arbitrary. Completely and totally arbitrary. And [the quarantine] is really shining a light on that, and also a lot of things we have that we outsource that you can actually do yourself.

McCartney: I love that. This is why I said I live simply. That’s, like, at the core of it. With so many things, something goes wrong and you go, “Oh, I’ll get somebody to fix that.” And then it’s like, “No, let me have a look at it...”

Swift: Get a hammer and a nail.

McCartney: “Maybe I can put that picture up.” It’s not rocket science. The period after the Beatles, when we went to live in Scotland on a really - talk about dumpy - little farm. I mean, I see pictures of it now and I’m not ashamed, but I’m almost ashamed. Because it’s like, “God, nobody’s cleaned up around here.”

But it was really a relief. Because when I was with the Beatles, we’d formed Apple Records, and if I wanted a Christmas tree, someone would just buy it. And I thought, after a while, “No, you know what? I really would like to go and buy our Christmas tree. Because that’s what everyone does.” So you go down - “I’ll have that one” - and you carried it back. I mean, it’s little, but it’s huge at the same time.

I needed a table in Scotland and I was looking through a catalog and I thought, “I could make one. I did woodwork in school, so I know what a dovetail joint is.” So I just figured it out. I’m just sitting in the kitchen, and I’m whittling away at this wood and I made this little joint. There was no nail technology - it was glue. And I was scared to put it together. I said, “It’s not going to fit,” but one day, I got my woodwork glue and thought, “There’s no going back.” But it turned out to be a real nice little table I was very proud of. It was that sense of achievement.

The weird thing was, Stella went up to Scotland recently and I said, “Isn’t it there?” and she said, “No.” Anyway, I searched for it. Nobody remembered it. Somebody said, “Well, there’s a pile of wood in the corner of one of the barns, maybe that’s it. Maybe they used it for firewood.” I said, “No, it’s not firewood.” Anyway, we found it, and do you know how joyous that was for me? I was like, “You found my table?!” Somebody might say that’s a bit boring.

Swift: No, it’s cool!

McCartney: But it was a real sort of great thing for me to be able to do stuff for yourself. You were talking about sewing. I mean normally, in your position, you’ve got any amount of tailors.

Swift: Well, there’s been a bit of a baby boom recently; several of my friends have gotten pregnant.

McCartney: Oh, yeah, you’re at the age.

Swift: And I was just thinking, “I really want to spend time with my hands, making something for their children.” So I made this really cool flying-squirrel stuffed animal that I sent to one of my friends. I sent a teddy bear to another one, and I started making these little silk baby blankets with embroidery. It’s gotten pretty fancy. And I’ve been painting a lot.

McCartney: What do you paint? Watercolors?

Swift: Acrylic or oil. Whenever I do watercolor, all I paint is flowers. When I have oil, I really like to do landscapes. I always kind of return to painting a lonely little cottage on a hill.

McCartney: It’s a bit of a romantic dream. I agree with you, though, I think you’ve got to have dreams, particularly this year. You’ve got to have something to escape to. When you say “escapism,” it sounds like a dirty word, but this year, it definitely wasn’t. And in the books you’re reading, you’ve gone into that world. That’s, I think, a great thing. Then you come back out. I normally will read a lot before I go to bed. So I’ll come back out, then I’ll go to sleep, so I think it really is nice to have those dreams that can be fantasies or stuff you want to achieve.

Swift: You’re creating characters. This was the first album where I ever created characters, or wrote about the life of a real-life person. There’s a song called “The Last Great American Dynasty” that’s about this real-life heiress who lived just an absolutely chaotic, hectic...

McCartney: She’s a fantasy character?

Swift: She’s a real person. Who lived in the house that I live in.

McCartney: She’s a real person? I listened to that and I thought, “Who is this?”

Swift: Her name was Rebekah Harkness. And she lived in the house that I ended up buying in Rhode Island. That’s how I learned about her. But she was a woman who was very, very talked about, and everything she did was scandalous. I found a connection in that. But I also was thinking about how you write “Eleanor Rigby” and go into that whole story about what all these people in this town are doing and how their lives intersect, and I hadn’t really done that in a very long time with my music. It had always been so microscope personal.

McCartney: Yeah, ’cause you were writing breakup songs like they were going out of style.

Swift: I was, before my luck changed [laughs]. I still write breakup songs. I love a good breakup song. Because somewhere in the world, I always have a friend going through a breakup, and that will make me write one.

McCartney: Yeah, this goes back to this thing of me and John: When you’ve got a formula, break it. I don’t have a formula. It’s the mood I’m in. So I love the idea of writing a character. And, you know, trying to think, “What am I basing this on?” So “Eleanor Rigby” was based on old ladies I knew as a kid. For some reason or other, I got great relationships with a couple of local old ladies. I was thinking the other day, I don’t know how I met them, it wasn’t like they were family. I’d just run into them, and I’d do their shopping for them.

Swift: That’s amazing.

McCartney: It just felt good to me. I would sit and talk, and they’d have amazing stories. That’s what I liked. They would have stories from the wartime - because I was born actually in the war - and so these old ladies, they were participating in the war. This one lady I used to sort of just hang out with, she had a crystal radio that I found very magical. In the war, a lot of people made their own radios - you’d make them out of crystals [sings “The Twilight Zone” theme].

Swift: How did I not know this? That sounds like something I would have tried to learn about.

McCartney: It’s interesting, because there is a lot of parallels with the virus and lockdowns and wartime. It happened to everyone. Like, this isn’t HIV, or SARS, or Avian flu, which happened to others, generally. This has happened to everyone, all around the world. That’s the defining thing about this particular virus. And, you know, my parents... it happened to everyone in Britain, including the queen and Churchill. War happened. So they were all part of this thing, and they all had to figure out a way through it. So you figured out Folklore. I figured out McCartney III.

Swift: And a lot of people have been baking sourdough bread. Whatever gets you through!

McCartney: Some people used to make radios. And they’d take a crystal - we should look it up, but it actually is a crystal. I thought, “Oh, no, they just called it a crystal radio,” but it’s actually crystals like we know and love.

Swift: Wow.

McCartney: And somehow they get the radio waves - this crystal attracts them - they tune it in, and that’s how they used to get their news. Back to “Eleanor Rigby,” so I would think of her and think of what she’s doing and then just try to get lyrical, just try to bring poetry into it, words you love, just try to get images like “picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been,” and Father McKenzie “is darning his socks in the night.” You know, he’s a religious man, so I could’ve said, you know, “preparing his Bible,” which would have been more obvious. But “darning his socks” kind of says more about him. So you get into this lovely fantasy. And that’s the magic of songs, you know. It’s a black hole, and then you start doing this process, and then there’s this beautiful little flower that you’ve just made. So it is very like embroidery, making something.

Swift: Making a table.

McCartney: Making a table.

Swift: Wow, it would’ve been so fun to play Glastonbury for the 50th anniversary together.

McCartney: It would’ve been great, wouldn’t it? And I was going to be asking you to play with me.

Swift: Were you going to invite me? I was hoping that you would. I was going to ask you.

McCartney: I would’ve done “Shake It Off.”

Swift: Oh, my God, that would have been amazing.

McCartney: I know it, it’s in C!

Swift: One thing I just find so cool about you is that you really do seem to have the joy of it, still, just no matter what. You seem to have the purest sense of joy of playing an instrument and making music, and that’s just the best, I think.

McCartney: Well, we’re just so lucky, aren’t we?

Swift: We’re really lucky.

McCartney: I don’t know if it ever happens to you, but with me, it’s like, “Oh, my god, I’ve ended up as a musician.”

Swift: Yeah, I can’t believe it’s my job.

McCartney: I must tell you a story I told Mary the other day, which is just one of my favorite little sort of Beatles stories. We were in a terrible, big blizzard, going from London to Liverpool, which we always did. We’d be working in London and then drive back in the van, just the four of us with our roadie, who would be driving. And this was a blizzard. You couldn’t see the road. At one point, it slid off and it went down an embankment. So it was “Ahhh,” a bunch of yelling. We ended up at the bottom. It didn’t flip, luckily, but so there we are, and then it’s like, “Oh, how are we going to get back up? We’re in a van. It’s snowing, and there’s no way.” We’re all standing around in a little circle, and thinking, “What are we going to do?” And one of us said, “Well, something will happen.” And I thought that was just the greatest. I love that, that’s a philosophy.

Swift: “Something will happen.”

McCartney: And it did. We sort of went up the bank, we thumbed a lift, we got the lorry driver to take us, and Mal, our roadie, sorted the van and everything. So that was kind of our career. And I suppose that’s like how I ended up being a musician and a songwriter: “Something will happen.”

Swift: That’s the best.

McCartney: It’s so stupid it’s brilliant. It’s great if you’re ever in that sort of panic attack: “Oh, my God,” or, “Ahhh, what am I going to do?”

Swift: “Something will happen.”

McCartney: All right then, thanks for doing this, and this was, you know, a lot of fun.

Swift: You’re the best. This was so awesome. Those were some quality stories!