People Got Nothing

I hear people say "you are just playing the sterotype", or "just because your _____ doesn't mean I have to treat you any differently" or "it's still lazy, it's still incompetent, even though you are this color or that color". Yes, we should never judge someone by the color of their skin, but that's the problem. Skin color has nothing to do with people..it's just outer appearance. Culture, circumstance, patterns of behavior, are all things to consider when dealing with people. If someone is mentally handicapped you would not talk to them like you would someone that is a Harvard scholar, you treat them the same yes but the fact is they come from different backgrounds, they have lived very very different lives. It's ok to have sympathy for someone that is mentally handicapped and try to understand where they are coming from though it may be very difficult to do so. It does not mean you are feeling sorry for them but it just takes that much more to be able to understand them as they are from a completely different background than you are. I feel this goes the same way for someone from a different country or different area of town even. Everyone is different but deep down we are all exactly the same. We all want the same thing. This song is partly different stories that people I know have told me about their lives. The things that they went through, the places they come from, are very different from where I come from. I come from a middle class family and have lived in the suburbs up until I was 18-19. I knew only my surroundings and never saw really any crime at all. I went to school, I played violin, I ate dinner with my family, I played sports, I had good friends, I had a pretty good life. My upbringing has led me to be able to do really great things. My college was paid for by my parents, I have a bachelors degree, no debt, and play music for a living. I work very very hard to do so but I have always had really great support for the most part from my parents. I try to look at other people that may not have been so fortunate. Check out the song, let me know what ya think it's a work in progress.

People In The Streets

This song came to me when thinking about passing homeless people in the street, ignoring them, basically trying to feel some kind of empathy or at least sympathy for them. People tend to ignore these people or just pass them off like they don't matter and even treat them as just like..furniture or something to just totally leave out of mind. I am guilty of this and I often think about what their story is, what they did to get where they are. It might be drugs, it might be a mental illness, it could be abuse, and it could just be poor choices or even laziness. I tend to think most people that are homeless are probably not just lazy they have had a hard hand given to them. I am a total proponent of getting up and seizing the day, getting shit done, but sometimes if you have only been given horrible horrible circumstances and that lead you to do drugs, and then you are broke, and then on the street..it's not as easy as "get a job". If you have never been to that rock bottom or seen that side of life it's very hard to understand and I try really hard to understand everyone because we are all people in the end. Anyway, off my soap box..so that's kinda the idea of this song. Also watching intervention and what not kinda gave me some ideas on this.

Sinking Teeth new version!

Added a bridge and some crazy goofy vocals at the end which will be horns eventually, it's supposed to be a New Orleans sound I forget what it's called with all the horns playing at the same time. Hoodoo Soul Band at Rumba every Sunday does a great song with this in it and they march around the venue, good times. This song is really shaping up, getting it done..feels good today!

Side Note

Sorry I've been a little absent. I've been working on this with my team of awesome people, Please check it out and stay tuned for more posts!

Not Worth Fighting Anymore

Not Worth Fighting Anymore by efilsitra
 This is a song that the chorus has been floating around in my head for a while. Today I sat down at the keyboard and the chords and verse and lyrics just flowed out naturally, I love when that happens. The words really just laid right out, they may not be perfect yet but they feel good that's a start. Here are the words so far and the audio does not reflect all the words yet it's just really to get the feel. Here are essentially my working notes:

Verse

The very first time I saw you I was intriqued

F                                 Am   Dm

Following you around like some kind of creep

F                                 Am   Dm

You looked like someone I knew I had to meet

F A Bb

As the sun went down we talked and laughed and bathed our feet

F                                 Am   Dm

Verse

The fact that we met again I felt it must be fate

Darkness covered all of the park and I knew I was too late

With all these tangled wires insanity can   b break

But this time I knew it was the screen that saved

Chorus

lead in with C ?

When it isn't worth fighting anymore

F C

When it isn't worth the time that it was before

F C

When it takes everything in you not to bleed

Gm         C

That's when you know

                   Bb

That it's time to go

              C(7)            F

Verse

The years went by and I dove much further in

I became a master of disguise a pro at disconnection

Every time I'd cry I'd let that water roll down the drain

I knew there was something better but I could not break free

Bridge?

But you didn't come up to bed that fateful night

You had no fight left in you

I knew right then then it was over I had to make things right

I care too much I was done with what you put me through (something like that)

The Throat of Justice

So I really like the line, is it cheesy? "How can you lay your boot across the throat of justice?"

The other day I came up with this really cool chord progression and I started it as a love song and it was like a fast almost latin beat. Today I wanted to try something different with the progression and slowed it down to a groove that fit well with more of an r and b verse. Then I amped the same progression up for a chorus that was very shouty and it turned into a protest song. How'd I go from that extreme to the other? Ha, well I have been writing a lot of lovey dovey songs but at the same time in the background is this terrible police brutality going on with the Occupy Wallstreet movement. They said there was something like 4,000 cases of police brutality, one that got a lot of news was a ton of college students protesting high tuition. They locked arms and sat in their own court yard non violently and got sprayed with pepper spray in the face. It's a really scary/sad/crazy/intense video and you should watch it. Yes, they were warned but dude WTF? Why did the police have to spray them when they were just sitting there? It's really stupid, basically "they won't move and we told them they have to...so we spray them in the face with harmful chemicals". I don't get it, and I think that America needs to support protesting, first amendment rights, and speak out against the things that are not working. If we can not just speak out then what are our rights as citizens? College tuition has gone up every single year and it's so unaffordable not to mention the huge debt we go into after school. Anyway, rant aside I will be posting the song once I figure out which direction it's leaning toward. Here are some of the lyrics so far ...work in progress:

Bet you failed that test back in high school

You were busy pulling sleeves and haunting dreams

But now you've got a super man vest

Still doesn't make it right and you will never be cool

Why do people think they can lay force upon each other?

When someone's just attempting to change what isn't right

Just spray it in their eyes cuz they won't move when we tell them

Then it's home to kiss the wife and beat the kids

How can you lay your boot across the throat of justice?

How can you shake your fist at the site of (something?)

(insert clever line here)

(another line)

Chorus

Purple mountains majesty

And Amber waves of grain

We call it America

Home of the brave and land of the free

What do ya think?

Sinking Teeth demo

Sinking Teeth by efilsitra

I came up with this chorus as "I want to thank you for what you've given me" but I changed it to "I want to thank you for sinking teeth". I really like the chorus and harmonies, I came up with that tune and the idea that it would be this old school harmony feel right at the beginning so it felt natural recording it that way. I decided to do kind of a vamp verse just repeating the one chord and sliding up to it on a seven. I started recording just free verse over it and I really like the feel...trying to recreate it with real vocals is hard. I may just keep it how it is and it'll be free verse every time. I like the idea of when a girl finds you or hits on you she "sinks her teeth" into you. It's also something that kinda literally happened. Ask me some time I'll tell you the story.