Jul 13, 2009

"My Kind Idea"








"My Kind Idea" is a love song. I guess you could also call it my idea of a good time. The lyrics were easy to write, because they simply describe some of my favorite things: drinking tea, staying in, and wandering outside.

Like many of my songs, the music came first, and the filler lyrics that went along with it were: "That old sun, lucky lucky lucky sun." (I wrote the music early February 2008, shortly after Brian Wilson debuted his new album That Lucky Old Sun in London.) The melody is strange and uses some difficult intervals, including a tritone during the "ooh" parts. It's definitely no nursery rhyme. And the chords are a bit chromatic----for example, the verses switch between A minor and G# major. I'm not sure what possessed me to write this kind of music.

The recording is pretty amazing. Please listen to it.

I would like the music video to portray the construction of a Lego set. Particularly this one. The idea is that building a Lego model is one of the coolest things you can do at home when you want to be away from the nightclubs, bars and disco lights.

Who played on the recording? Steven (lead vocals, guitar, percussion); Russ (mandolin); Hilary (cello); Molly (ukulele, backing vocals); Maya (viola); Devin (trumpet)

Lyrics:

As we walk into a room of freezing cold
You laugh and say hello my friend
My fear my kind idea
And I brew a kettle drumming tea for you
Yellow foggy silver blue
I feel its sweet appeal
And you in the armchair all alone
Ooh, tell me something about the past decade
Of blue and the monochrome tube
We can swing and rock till
We both have had our fill
Of time and of space and of fun
But we know we will never be done

The nightclubs and bars and disco lights
Ooh, don’t compel us
As much as our habit of
Staying up talking all night
As I fell into your arms
Fallen out of harm
The charm of a dream of mixed rhymes
And the fancied invention of lines

Later on, the sun is in the room again
Chased away the moon again
The mirror is frosty dear
In a daze, gentle wind a warm embrace
And everything is in its place
So near come for me here
The Sunday review is on the lawn
Ooh, we should go out, see what it’s all about
The bricks in the old custom house
We can stop and wonder
In front of a window of a shop
That is closed for the day
And the sights that we’ll see on the way

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