Detholz! demo – “Stasiland”

Note: Detholz! play tomorrow night (Thursday, 9/6) at Empty Bottle in Chicago w/Numbers from CA & Trin Tran. Show starts at 9. Y’all come!

Welcome to Detholz! Mp3 Blog Episode VII, and apologies for the late posting today. I was negotiating with the Russians.

Speaking of which, in this installment, we take a short jaunt back in time– and return to familiar Detholz! waters– with the song, “Stasiland.”

I. SONG CONCEPT

This song was directly inspired by 2 films, both of which I’d recommend highly:

1. Florian Henckel von Donnerskmark’s film, “The Lives of Others,” a fascinating– if sentimental– depiction of an officer of the Stasi, the secret police of the East German communist state, and,

2. Volker Schlöndorff’s “The Legend of Rita,” a fictional composite of events surrounding the activities of the Red Army Faction, a militant left-wing organization active in West Germany from 1970 – 1998 (and is also a little overwrought, but worth watching).

These two films were some of the first attempts to depict life in the East German state, a society where 1 in 6 people were either in the direct employ of, or volunteers for, the Stasi. Literally everyone was spying on one another. Each citizen had a Stasi file, all of which were made public after the reunification of Germany in 1989.*

*Incidentally, if you’re interested in the history of East German culture, you must read the story of Dean Reed, an failed American country musician who defected to the GDR and became a superstar as “Red Elvis.”

Can you imagine what it must have been like to exist in a nation that cultivated that degree of personal paranoia? If you live in the USA at the moment, I’ll bet you can! Though I try to steer clear of political subjects in Detholz! songs as a general rule, “Stasiland” could be considered a bona fide jab…. Can you say “Larry Craig?” Or “Patriot Act?” Those of you with a wide stance, beware!

These lyrics are throw-away as far as I’m concerned, and I’m not especially thrilled with them. Still, they serve the purpose of the song. Essentially, I wanted to write a bouncy, party song about a brutal Stasi interrogation. The disparity appealed to me.

The “Traitor” motifs– betrayal, blood, and animal imagery– are all present, as everything about the Stasi and East Germany encouraged betrayal in its varied forms: betrayal of family, betrayal of friends, betrayal of self– all for the benefit of the State which, ultimately, betrayed itself and its own people.

II. SONG COMPOSITION

“Death to the Traitor” (working title for the next record) thus far is rife with bleak, medium-tempo numbers, so Karl Doerfer (DH! guitarist) made the point that we needed some up-tempo songs to balance out the album.

“Stasiland” is essentially Detholz! meets “Beach Blanket Bingo”– an inside joke with myself, musically speaking, pretty much from start to finish.

The composition process began with the decidedly flatulent bass line, which is a MIDI contrabassoon (doubled with a few other things). It started as a bass synth line, but these days, I’ll substitute a sound I know sounds ridiculous just to keep things interesting.

The second element was the guitar. An old Detholz! trick is to stack two guitar parts– one playing quartal harmony, either in or out of the song’s key, and the other playing an ostinato that may also go outside the song’s tonality. In plain English, it sounds like there are “wrong” notes. This is a taste thing for me– but a little dissonance always puts some extra spring in my step. For a lesson in how to properly use dissonance without going completely atonal, listen to the chamber works of Stravinsky or, of course, any Bartok string quartet.

The 4-note “Traitor” motive occurs next as a centerpiece of the song, given all of the layers of betrayal referred to in the lyrics, and is hammered home by– my lands– a horn section! (Incidentally, it also reoccurs in the horns at the very end of the song in retrograde.)

This is the song that began the “to horn or not to horn” controversy in the band with respect to horn parts, as the horn break after the drum/vocal breakdown is admittedly out of place and absurd. It SOUNDS absurd since the horns are playing an (almost!) pentatonic line a major seventh apart in– again– a decidedly flatulent fashion.

This one was an adventure in orchestration. Choirs, bassoons, Chinese-sounding horn lines… my apologies to our die-hard fans. I was DEEP in the Zone on this one.

Even so, I’ve played this for a few people, and the reaction is always the same: a laugh, a smirk, or a slight shake of the head and a smile. Surprisingly, this has been by far the most popular demo of all of the new tunes with objective ears outside of the band. My girlfriend contends this is the sauciest tune yet. Go figure.

The jury’s still out as far as DH! go. We began working on this in rehearsal last week, and my deficiencies as a drummer were showing a little more than usual. Andrew has almost pronounced my drum part “unplayable.”

So, America, should this song be herded into an unmarked car by a group of shadowy men and mysteriously disappear? Or should it be left unharmed?

We’ll be watching.

III. LYRICS

One watching six
And six watching one

Wir brauchen Ihnen
Wir brauchen das Gefuhl
Genau

[We need you
We need the feeling
Exactly]

Someone is telling
On everyone

Wir beobachten
Wir haben das Gefuhl
Genau

[We are watching
We have the feeling
Exactly]

Knock, Knock
Open up
Oh my God
Shake it off
Makes no difference
So make it up
Friends are coming
To set you up

YOU WANT IT AND YOU NEED IT

Ha, ha, oh yeah
We got the feeling
Ha, ha, oh yeah
We got the feeling now
Ha, ha, oh yeah
Come with us now
Ha, ha, oh yeah
You want to come with us now

Komm jetzt mit uns
Komm jetzt mit uns
Genau

[Come with us
Come with us
Exactly]

Over the Wall and under the Wall and
Inside the Wall and outside the Wall and
Slammed up against the Wall and
Behind the Wall and behind the Wall and…

Small room
Hotline
Headphones
All the time
Watching me
Committing crimes
With bird’s eyes
Bird’s eyes!

Seize me
Bind me
Blind me
Shock me
Slice me
Sock me
Make me
Please make me

I WANT IT AND I NEED IT

Ha, ha, oh yeah
I got the feeling
Ha, ha, oh yeah
I got the feeling now
Ha, ha, oh yeah
I really got it now
Ha, ha, oh yeah
I’m gonna go with you now

I’m gonna go with you now

Detholz! demo – “Catherine Zeta-Jones”

Welcome to the Detholz! mp3 blog’s second installment! All of these blog postings are in two parts:

1. Song Concept for “lyrics” people, and
2. Song Composition for “music” people.

Feel free to skip around!

1. SONG CONCEPT

This week, a Detholz! demo presented in earnest for the next record: “Catherine Zeta-Jones” (I seem to be mired in Hollywood these days… well, who isn’t?)

In this case, ol’ Cath is incidental to the subject matter. As I mentioned last week, all of the songs on the new record deal with different aspects of betrayal. This song is about the sad case of American traitor, Robert Hanssen, an FBI employee who sold secrets to the Soviets for over 15 years. He holds the distinction of being the worst (the best?) spy in American history.

My interest in his story was piqued initially by Billy Ray’s recent film “Breach,” which I watched in the back of the Baby Teeth tour van a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, I don’t think the film does justice to the real Hanssen, as it presents him as a frustrated “super-spy” (though Chris Cooper’s performance in the role is exceptional). The truth is, Hanssen was a mediocre FBI agent that rose in the ranks primarily because the Bureau didn’t really know what to do with him. He was a textbook headcase, which is unusual for an FBI employee given their rigorous screening process.

Hanssen had undeniable technical skill and a superior memory. Unfortunately, these talents were overshadowed by a seeming inability to deal with people. He wore black suits daily, never smiled, and was referred to by his subordinates at the FBI as “Dr. Death.” At one point, he physically manhandled a female FBI support employee who refused to stay in a meeting and he was simply “brushed under the rug.” The Bureau didn’t fire him, they simply took him out of a supervisory role and transferred him to a solitary technical job. (Heh, sounds like a naughty priest. Ironic since Hanssen was a fanatic Catholic and a member of Opus Dei…)

[Sorry for the history lesson. I mean, hey, this is a music blog, right? To read the full account of Hanssen’s fascinating 20+ -year career in the FBI– incl. his espionage activities– the Dept. of Justice has posted an unclassified synopsis here. The USA Today article published at the time of his arrest is also available online here.]

History lessons aside, what struck me after reading this stuff was how Hanssen’s fantasy life consumed — and ultimately destroyed — him. THAT’S what this song is about: betrayal of self by fantasy. In Hanssen’s case, LAYERS upon LAYERS of fantasy.

Lyrically, this plays out a couple of ways:

1. Hanssen was obsessed with porn, and had an unhealthy fixation on Catherine Zeta-Jones. Evidently he’d carry around copies of Zeta-Jones movies in his briefcase (“Entrapment,” ironically). He would also regularly post sexual fantasies in graphic detail on the web– even using his wife’s real name. Additionally, he would secretly videotape he and his wife having sex, and then watch the tapes with a childhood friend. *shudder*

2. He was a fanatic Catholic, would attend Mass at least once a day, and was a supernumerary member of the ultra-conservative Opus Dei sect– mostly at his wife’s prompting. She caught him writing a letter to one of his Soviet contacts in the early 80’s, and insisted that he confess immediately to a priest. (!!)

These points are borne out in the second verse:

“I ate a bitter scroll
[a reference to Revelation 10:10, where the apostle John ingests the prophetic word of God, which is “bitter in his stomach”]
Inside my spider’s hole
I had my wife, the Blessed Virgin,
[an image that combines his wife with his Catholicism]
And whispered lies to her in Russian

And she’s on the screen
For the world to see
And now she’s Catherine Zeta-Jones
and I’m Catherine Zeta-Jones
[The idea that once his wife is on a TV screen, she transforms into his fantasy woman, and he likewise transforms into a fantasy of himself.]

And I bait the Bear
With locks of her hair”
[His fantasy of himself as “moral beyond morality” enables him to “bait the Bear,” the Bear doubling as a symbol for the Soviet regime and his imminent capture.]

The lyrical linchpin of the song, of course, is the repetition of “Touch me like that / Don’t touch me like that,” which refers to the dichotomy between fantasy and reality: “I WANT this thing / I cannot HAVE this thing.” Or, more rightly, “I WANT this thing / This thing does not EXIST.”

A quote from one of Hanssen’s last letters to his Soviet handlers sums this up well. When asked why he was betraying his country, he answers:

“Conclusion: One might propose that I am either insanely brave or quite insane. I’d answer neither. I’d say, insanely loyal. Take your pick. There is insanity in all the answers.”

The “insanely loyal” Hanssen is now serving a life sentence in a supermax federal penitentiary in Colorado and spends 23 hours a day in solitary confinement.

2. SONG COMPOSITION

Musically, the arrangement started with the opening bass line. [Well, I say “bass line,” but I’ve purposely NOT used a bass in recording recent demos as a personal challenge. Bass is the instrument on which I’m most comfortable, so it’s easy for me to fall in a creative rut if I overuse it. I think it’s important in songwriting to be uncomfortable sometimes, at least for me! What you’re hearing here is a guitar with fuzz and an octave effect using Native Instruments excellent “Guitar Rig” plugin.]

Second, the drum part! I wanted to keep the groove interesting– it would have perhaps been easier just to do a “4 on the floor” kind of part, but I wanted this song to have a jerky, fractured feel since it’s about a man splitting in half. The bass line bounces up and down off of an open G, and the drum part emphasizes the beats where said bass line hits those G’s, all on off-beats:

one-AND-two- AND-three-four-AND / one-two-AND-three-four

Though the bass line changes in the verse, this rhythmic pattern does not.

Thirdly, that ridiculous descending saxophone/guitar line which, as Jonny astutely pointed out in rehearsal, is in Dorian mode. Lately, just to keep things interesting for myself, I’ve been including at least one element that makes me laugh. The sax part is that element. You may notice that the pitch is horribly flat– when I tuned it up, it didn’t sound as good. Sometimes, for color, it works to leave instruments out of tune. Listen to some of those old Velvet Underground recordings and you’ll see what I mean.

The verse is antiphonal– call and response, i.e. bit of melody, answered by “Ze-Ze…Zeta-Jones!” This is a verse form I use ALL of the time (cf. verse of “IMA Believer,” “Club Oslo,” and others from “Cast Out Devils” – songs available for $0.89 download at www.detholz.com or on our MySpace page). I was reminded of the effectiveness of this songwriting device while listening to the The Angels’ song, “My Boyfriend’s Back” on oldies radio. What a great, catchy song! I directly attempted to copy that technique here.

The chorus continues my experimentation with “4-notes-or-less” chorus, and just as in “Tammy” (from last week), the chorus melody consist of just two notes, a perfect fifth apart.

The final element I’ll call attention to occurs during the break before the “out chorus.” There is a 4-note melody (in theoretical terms, a musical “motive”) in the synth that comes from “Death to the Traitor”– a song that is the centerpiece of the new record– and that “Traitor” motive occurs in almost every new song we’re doing. It is a sort of “cantus firmus” that holds this entire album together (though for you music nerds, it doesn’t technically function as a cantus firmus). I love albums that tell stories, and this spooky little “Traitor motive” is included as a reminder that someone, somewhere in the song, is being betrayed.

Listen for it again at the tail end of the song!

So-called “motivic composition”– esp. in larger pieces– is near and dear to my heart. I’ve done it before, most notably in a 45-minute electronic work I did in collaboration with big James (aka “Mister M”) in our side project, “Surrounded by Monarchs.” Look for movements from that piece on this blog in the near future.

As always, your comments and criticisms are welcome! We’ve started rehearsing this, but the jury’s still out. Should Catherine stay…or GO?

Tune in next Wednesday for the 3rd installment of the Detholz! Mp3 Blog… collect them all!

Thanks for tuning in!

Your pals,
Jim C. & Detholz!