Liner Notes - Darling - HD01

1. A Courting Rhythm
   One day I quickly jotted down three musically consonant melody lines on manuscript paper. Each one was based on sixteenth notes and four bars in length, but apart from that similarity, I had no idea what the parts would sound like together. I played them into a sequencer and experimented with orchestration, eventually assigning acoustic guitar, piano and sax to the three separate melodies. Some time and a bit of creative editing later, an outline of "A Courting Rhythm" emerged. The original arrangement and basic orchestration have survived, nearly intact, to the final.
   
   There is a lesson here, and I think that lesson is that one should never underestimate the potential impact of blind, pig-ignorant luck on the compositional process.
   
   This one is a personal favorite, and the tempo and overall feel of it seemed right for opening the album. The title refers to the idea of courtship as dance, or as in my case, a kind of loutish, ungainly prancing about.
   
   
2. The Writhen Plain
   When this was written, certain circumstances had me thinking a great deal about death and its implications. The cumulative effect of this death fixation eventually manifested itself in a genuinely terrifying nightmare. Pink lightning cut the darkness as I stood upon flat ground. The thrum of distant but enormous destructive force filled my ears. My sense of foreboding assumed a nearly tangible form. In all directions the ground began to curl and fold like a flag in the wind... "The Writhen Plain" is the music of this horror.
   
   This was the first piece of music I finished after I assembled my personal recording facility. The drum track was a first take and has a spontaneity that I wish I could achieve more often.
   
   This tune could just as easily be called "Hal Dreams about Death and Wets Himself".
   
   
3. Walking with Don
   Dedicated to the late Don Ellis. His magnificent, bizarre, genre bending music has been an inspiration to me since I was a boy. He made a regular practice of tossing aside the mantle of more traditional forms in favor of experimentation.
   
   The horn parts here are an experiment for me, that’s for sure. I hope I haven’t fractured the basic tenets of all wind driven musical devices too badly. The somewhat flatulent dual sax parts in the first section were written independently of each other and then layered to final effect. The bass part is really nothing more than a simple derivation of the sax leads. I like to think of the middle section as a mini-suite, with all movements playing simultaneously rather than consecutively. This is, of course, absolute idiocy. It gets a bit free form in here, so keep the antacid at arm’s length. Stomach flute is featured, and my drumming is inscrutable and flippantly excessive.
   
   At any rate, it’s for you Don, wherever you are.
   
   
4. The Ether Frolic
   A goofy song named after a stupid and dangerous recreational activity from the 19th century. Ether has anesthetic properties, of course, and it doesn’t take much imagination to see how these properties could be used to induce a state of euphoria. Like many intoxicants, just a little too much is lethal. Not to mention the fact that ether is highly explosive. You don’t want your friends to have to clean up grisly clumps of hair and tiny splinters of bone. Don’t do the ether frolic.
   
   A pastiche of dissimilar styles, this one bristles from brassy fanfare to afflicted delirium before it finally settles into a panoply of turgid debris. Tambourine and cymbal washes by the incredulous Bryce Darling.
   
   
5. End of the Beginning
   This one is an early composition, hence the title. Sounds like an early composition, doesn’t it? Early Paleolithic. If Java Man had a sequencer, he would have written this song.
   
   The various sections have little or no correlation. The tune lurches and lags from one banal passage to another. The orchestration is a train wreck and the arrangement is... well... crap.
   
   "End of the Beginning" is an exercise in the musically grotesque, and I suppose it had to be, considering my naiveté at the time of its creation. It taught me many things, foremost among them the realization that even a lower case primate can compose music, if he has the right equipment.
   
   I hope you enjoy it.
   
   
6. Country Wedding
   Written as a gift to my wife, Mary. There are no words that could ever say enough.
   
   
7. Seafarer’s Panties
   "Seafarer’s Panties" began its life as two completely separate song ideas, neither one satisfying enough to stand alone. I put them together in numerous galling and abortive forms until I struck upon the queasy abomination that resides here. Assorted instruments dally awkwardly with one melody or the other, and the whole thing ends up sounding quite silly. "Seafarer’s Panties" is not much like its brothers and sisters, and its inclusion here is a deliberate attempt to confound the listener into presuming that my musical skills are more far-reaching and robust than they actually are.
   
   Tiny bells and other twinky percussion by Bryce.
   
   
8. Snick-a-snee
   There’s a little something here for everyone. That is, as long as you don’t mind that musical continuity was flushed down the proverbial toilet in favor of brutal self-indulgence. The prescription here is humor and madness, and that’s just what you get. The synth bell sounds are conspicuously dated, and the song’s implicit mania is salient enough. I wanted to do something at a reasonably fast tempo that pushed hard at the constraints of the meter. If you listen to the snare drum carefully, (rumpa, pum, pum) you’ll notice that it changes emphasis in beguiling and intrepid ways that clearly illustrate this drummer’s lack of taste and decorum.
   
   The song title refers a knife fight. My brother ran across the term in a crossword one day. We don’t know much about fighting with knives, but we do play mumblety-peg quite a bit.
   
   
9. God’s Lunch Box
   Let’s see what we can find in here. Rhythms and counterrhythms twist atop a rather dense and greasy pancake of bowel rattling lows and clattering metallic nonsense. An elastic tempo underpins (perhaps I should say undermines) the middle section, serving to further confuse the proceedings. A nauseating little game show theme eventually develops, but is crushed by the histrionic pomposity of the final chords.
   
   You can think of this as avant-garde if you’d like. It certainly helps me to think of it that way.
   
   One note of marginal interest. See if you can find the spot in the middle section where the drums anticipate the emerging tempo from a nebulous conflagration of sound. It was a difficult part to learn. Okay, maybe I’m a slow learner.
   
   
10. Forever Again
    My brother Bryce wrote the theme of the middle section here. I wrote the introduction, the outro, and the solo, and I made the final decisions concerning the orchestration. I also had to correct all the mistakes in his (alleged) part. I did the mix too. And everything else. Being the bastard he is, Bryce demanded a song writing credit, so here it is. (See above for more detailed information).
    
    My original drum idea sank like spirits at a frat party when the light beer dries up, so we had to devise another part in a hurry. Shrouded in what must have been a dense fog of caffeine, we proceeded as if we actually had some vague notion of what to do. We multitracked four simple and discrete drum figures that come and go as the song progresses. Another one of Bryce’s fabulously innovative ideas. The resulting effect is not unlike that of an amazingly drunk high school marching band.
    
    We think this one is about being at war, but it might be about shaving one’s head with a cheese grater, we’re not sure.
    
    
11. 48 Ahornstrasse
    The basis theme of this one was written in Germany during the winter of 1987. Its holiday overtones are obvious perhaps, but I attempted to diminish its syrupy sweetness with an aggressive drum track and a rather dark middle section. Nonetheless, this tune is probably as close to "pop" as I’m ever likely to get. I had to punch in the last few bars as I committed a world class hog shortly after coming out of the solo. I can smell it from here. The utterly predictable and musically suspect double kick pattern is here only because I couldn’t think of anything smarter to play. The short drum solo near the end is a morass of hyperbolic brain cell incineration that amply demonstrates the adversity that I heroically endure just to please my miserable fans.