Category: Storyteller

The story behind the songs… Books, talks…

Joe & John

Many time melodies come to your mind with a voice. And when one can’t and shouldn’t sing (you gotta hear me to understand), it is very likely that the voice is coming from some singer that you fancy. And you hear the lyrics interpreted by that person that for some reason you identify the song with.

The main melody from John & Joe, accordion and piano at the end, was sung to me by Bob Dylan one day when I was working. And Lennon showed the rest of the song to me later that day. Suddenly The Band and The Plastic Ono Band got mixed in my mind, what a thrill.

And everything was going alright until in the middle of the recording Strummer and his Mescaleros claimed their part. Strummer’s cover impressed me almost as much as his Redemption Song cover from Bob Marley.

So I recorded the track, easy part, but then I had to decide who was going to sing this, Joe or John.

Cristal

Turning back home in the night, tired, wasted in the back seat of the car. Green and red reflections from the traffic lights, from the neons, and all the street lights distorted by the raindrops on the window.

An image is also a state of mind, a sensation; in other words, it has a meaning for the observer. And is this meaning what music has to seek and emphasize.

Working from what an image brings to our mind rather than the image itself allows us to save time creating a music library, to defocus from detail and to avoid being specific at the same time. This way the music theme can be extrapolated, generalized and applied to any scene that shares some meaning.

Cristal works with multiple situations despite its duration, its style, form and the fact that it comes from a memory. That’s what I like from it, it can communicate either sadness or joy depending on the moment. A simple and recursive melody, very few effects, lots of pad and echo, recorded in one take. The piano, random and insecure trying to reach the back seat in that car, the image, the melancholy, the meaning.

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