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! demos – “Minnesota Nice” I/II

Welcome to Episode IV of the Detholz! Mp3 Blog – a 2-parter this week.

I originally intended this song to be posted last week, but it was met with such controversy from other band members that I decided to rustle up an alternate, “Detholz!-friendly” arrangement.

So, here are both versions:

“Minnesota Nice” – new, DH!-friendly version
For those who aren’t interested in music geekery, this is the one to download.

“Minnesota Nice” – original version

Today’s song necessitates an apology to any Minnesotan listeners: I have nothing against the great state of Minnesota, or any of its residents. You all had the good sense to elect Jesse “The Mind” a few years back, and that cannot be overlooked. He’s the source of my favorite summation from any political figure, in reference to MN ice-fishing restrictions in early Spring: “You can’t legislate stupidity.”

Also: “I ain’t got time to bleed.”

So, on with the show!

1. SONG CONCEPT

Unlike the previous 2 posts, today’s ditty, “Minnesota Nice,” came totally out of left field. Also unlike the previous two posts, I really didn’t know what this song was about until more than a week after I’d written it.

Unless you’ve been away skinning rabbits in a cave, you know there was a terrible accident in Minneapolis 2 weeks ago where a bridge over the Mississippi River collapsed in the teeth of the rush hour, causing dozens of cars to plummet into the water. Six people were killed and many more went missing. This is a stretch of road I’ve traveled over many times on tour, and when I heard the story on the radio and saw the pictures on the news, I was saddened and a little creeped out.

I guess these lyrics are collections of images stemming from the bridge accident and from recent conversations with an old friend that’s had a hard time in Minnesota, mostly owing to circumstances beyond her control. Subsequently, “Minnesota” serves as a metaphor for death, stagnation or fate.

[Again, angry Minnesotans: it could have just as easily been Ohio or New Jersey… pick a state. Yours happens to have a pleasant sequence of phonemes.]

The plastic smiles of death and/or fate inexorably turn to all of us, regardless of what we wish for. So perhaps this song is about the fear of fate and the loss of control. In that spirit, I’ll leave the final determination up to you:

“I don’t want to live in Minnesota
I don’t want to float with the dead
I don’t want to go to your funeral
Minnesota Nice up ahead”

[complete lyrics below this post]

2. SONG COMPOSITION

(It was hard for me to discuss this one without lapsing into some music theory. If you have questions about any of these ideas or the terminology, don’t hesitate to ask. For the record, I’m going to try and avoid forced rides on Music School Bus as much as possible on this thing…)

Despite the grisly subject matter, this song was a barrel of fun to construct! It’s an experiment in phase-shifting– one of my favorite musical devices– based on the 4-note fuzz bass line that doesn’t change much throughout the song. In other words, the downbeat shifts. (Downbeat = 1st beat of a musical measure, for any greenhorns out there)

The bass line occupies 4 eighth notes. During the choruses, the downbeat is on the first note of the pattern (imagine me crooning at you here): “BOM-bom-bom-bom.”

During the verse, the downbeat shifts to the THIRD note in the pattern: “bom-bom-BOM-bom.”

I recorded bass first, then drums, then vocals. The downbeat shift between chorus and verse was initially too difficult for my poor pea brain to sing, so I had to mute the drum part to record the vocals. Once I un-muted the drum part, presto! A dramatic change in feel between verse and chorus! Whether it’s effective or not, I’ll leave up to you, but I think it will have interesting possibilities if the band can pull it off live.

I decided to add horn parts next, which I knew would be controversial within the band. And man, oh man, were they ever! There’s a growing debate in Detholz! as to whether or not horns fit within our particular… mileu. After my years of servitude in Baby Teeth and Bobby Conn’s band, I’ve become enamored with a more organic sound, and am attempting to steer the new DH! record in THAT direction. Sorry, folks, but I think it’s time to veer away from the paper-thin synths of our dorkalicious past. There’s some major disagreement on that topic in Kamp Detholz.

Here’s what a few other Holz had to say about the original version of this song:

Jonny: “The bridge is compositionally pretty cool…minus the bird noises. 🙂 I think that’s what cheezes it for me. Also, i’m still not used to the idea of a ‘sax section’ in the detholz. it still doesn’t make sense to my ear.”

(BTW, don’t miss Jonny’s own songwriting blog, jonsteinmeier.wordpress.com)

Ben: “I’m with Jon on the horns and crow sounds. What I dislike with the horns is replacing crazy synth parts for crazy horn parts. It’s good to get out of “New Wave” land, but to jump into ‘Ska-ish/Radiohead with Horns’ land might be worse. I don’t object to using horns, but I would like to see them be soulful, noisy and dare I say smooth. I think these motives would do better with the plastic touch of the synth.”

(And Ben’s delightfully weird music can be heard at www.tinytron.com)

Thing is, I didn’t include horns for their own sake, or to make a point. I think they genuinely serve the purpose of this song. It freely borrows structurally from Fela Kuti, whose music I’ve obsessed over for a while now. The horns are an important part of the rhythm section in this arrangement. They add a blanket of polyrhythms to the drum part that turns it from a standard “Wurlitzer-home-organ samba” into something more convoluted and interesting, at least to me. It’s often difficult to place where the downbeat falls in Fela’s music, as he plays around constantly with phase shifting and polyrhythmic patterns, most of which repeat over long periods of time. While this is nothing new, that’s territory that we’ve never explored before in Detholz! and we’re having some success at it in rehearsal.

In any case, I took Ben’s and Jonny’s recommendations to heart in the DH!-friendly version and substituted the horns with a distorted synth clav. Here’s what Jonny said about the 2nd version:

“This tune is growing on me a lot. I think part of thing with this new arrangement is that i found myself focusing more on the composition than on the sounds, which is a good thing. The writing is really cool. I DID end up liking the horns over the clav i think though. I know, I’m eating my words here. but I missed ’em.”

Jonny brings up an excellent rule of thumb: the orchestration/arrangement of a song should NEVER distract from the song itself. In this world of gadgetry and innumerable options, I have a major blind spot with respect to “over-arranging.” I really wrestled with that this time. Esp. given the weighty subject matter– this was no occasion to be riding the “Gimmick Train.”

Which leads us to the most difficult part of this composition– and one I agonized for hours over– the bridge. Originally, I opted for the standard “Jim Cooper Bridge” = meandering harmonic changes, no strong melody, plenty of room for either goofy narration or a novelty sound effect (cf. “Heather via JC” on Baby Teeth’s “For the Heathers” EP, “Jukebox of the Dead” theme song from the post-college camp era– click links for free downloads on both) Though I attempted to paint a picture of the aftermath of the bridge accident, I’m not sure I succeeded in doing much more than pasting part of a bad Danny Elfman movie score in the middle of a song that, as DH!/Baby Teeth producer Blue Hawaii would say, is “pretty OK” (meaning “pretty bad”)

In the DH!-friendly version, the bridge accomplishes its compositional function between the A and B sections more effectively, and introduces a flute line that reoccurs near the end of the song. It also reduces the “goof” factor quite a bit. The guitar effect is heisted from the end of the Shuggie Otis song, “Strawberry Letter 23,” from his album, “Inspiration Information” which is forever burned in my brain as the death-song of one of the characters from HBO’s Six Feet Under. While the original bridge with the prominent crow samples was a valiant attempt to conjure images of a death-laden ravine, I’m afraid it lapsed into pure frippery.

The chorus, as you’ll notice from the start of the song, consists of 4 notes in keeping with my “less-is-more” approach to chorus melodies (see the “Tammy” post below for more on that subject). In keeping with themes of fate and tragedy, the rhythm is unrelenting and the background vocals more primal: “Minnesota…ahhh, ahhh!”

The verse vocal is not improvised– mainly because I’m a terrible improviser– but the melody purposely darts in and around a strong tonal center, giving it an improvisatory flavor. The harmony is mostly static, and the changes are simple to leave room for all of the rhythmic interplay between the groups of instruments.

Lyrically, the song contains two of the three images I’m trying to include in every song on the new record: blood, animals, and betrayal. The “betrayal” element is missing this time, so I left the “Traitor” motive out (see the “Catherine Zeta-Jones” post below). However, the flute parts use the same descending intervals as the “Traitor” motive, so it’s referenced indirectly. A great device to unify a number of songs or movements, incidentally, is use of the same intervallic material.

So, doughty readers, which version do YOU prefer?

I think the newer version is cleaner, though I miss the horns and the dulcimer (the stringy sounding instrument) from the original. The horns also strike me as more chaotic-sounding, which I prefer.

For some reason, the dulcimer evokes images of the snowy Northern reaches of Minnesota, where the ghosts of Scandinavian ancestors roam the countryside, hooting spookily in their native tongues.

Thanks for reading, friendly ghosts… and, as always, thanks for listening!

3. LYRICS

I don’t want to live in Minnesota
I don’t want to talk to the dead
I don’t want to drown in the water
Minnesota Nice up ahead

Brutalized by the 3rd degree
Stuck in traffic, in the heat of the heat
I saw you smile
Before you were exploded
Your guts spilling over my feet
The sight of your blood–
I really thought I could, but–

I don’t want to live in Minnesota
I don’t want to talk to the dead
I don’t want to drown in the water
Minnesota Nice up ahead

Minnesota, ah!

Don’t forget your water wings
on the Overpass over watery things
A stream full of eyes
They’re sinking ever deeper
Their bloated bodies doing nothing
You’re crossing a bridge
A bridge that won’t hold you
And then it’s over
Over Minnesota
Drowning in the heart of town

I don’t want to live in Minnesota
I don’t want to float with the dead
I don’t want to go to your funeral
Minnesota Nice up ahead

I don’t want to die like a monkey
I don’t want to die in your stead
I don’t want to live in Minnesota
I don’t want to talk to the dead

Minnesota, ah!

I don’t want to talk to the dead

Detholz! demo – “Death to the Traitor”

Welcome to Episode III of the Detholz! Mp3 Blog, and apologies for the late posting today!

Note: The song I had planned for this week was met with a good deal of controversy when presented to the band yesterday, so tune in next week for a 2-part episode as I post 2 different versions of that song: the original version + a “Detholz!-friendly” version. Prepare for the fur to fly!

Since this week’s song is still percolating in our magic hat, I’m posting the linchpin of the new record, “Death to the Traitor,” which is already in regular rotation in the Detholz! set.

1. SONG CONCEPT

“Death to the Traitor” is the song from whence the entire new Detholz! record springs, thematically and musically.

Thematically, it contains three images, all of which reoccur in every song:

1. Blood and/or Execution
2. Animals
3. Betrayal of self, or of others

Where “Cast Out Devils” was a record about a loss of faith, “Death to the Traitor” is about a return to faith– through some pretty murky, subterranean territory. These two albums are indelibly linked. Once “Traitor” is finished, they should be listened to back-to-back.

The scene depicted in the song is a familiar one: an unrepentant traitor is led to the scaffold in front of an angry mob. There are a few aberrations from the usual “guillotine” scenario, however:

a) The traitor is completely ambivalent about his/her fate, and b) the mob is faceless, demanding only brutal violence in the name of no particular god or creed. See complete lyrics below:

Eggs and bacon
A breakfast like any meal
Walk the hallway
Up the stairs to the steel
Apparatus
Hear the roar of the mob
Think about it
Think out loud as they shout:

“Death to the Traitor!
We’ll have him hung!
Show him no mercy!
Cut out his tongue!
White or black messiah
Please save us from
A lapse in commitment!
Let loose the hounds
To lap up the blood!”

Sold your brother out
And sold your sister out

Don’t tell your mother
She has the face of a queen
She won’t remember
Your name upon the marquee/marquis
You’re sick and tired
Of this damnable crowd
Don’t feel nothing
Yawn and stretch as they shout out:

“Death to the Traitor!
Death to his lies!
We find him guilty!
Pluck out his eyes!
Thank God in heaven
Or the gods below
At last we found him
At last we know!”

No, No

“Yes, Death to the Traitor!
Led us on for years!
Bring out a hot iron!
Burn out his ears!
Death to the Traitor!
Cut off his head!
God save the Traitor
The Traitor is dead!”

Death to the Traitor!
The Traitor is dead!

***

I wrote this during a period of intense self-loathing, so initially the violence in the song was self-directed. (No worries. I have no plans to guillotine myself anytime soon.) I didn’t realize when I set out to write it that it would become a panacea for the entire record, so as the song has matured, it’s come to mean something entirely different to me.

The “Traitor” figure represents the baser aspects of one’s nature. For those of you who hold the “Players with Christianity Club” card, he is the Pauline “Old Man” mentioned in the 3rd chapter of the book of Colossians:

“Lie not to one another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.”
– Col. 3:10, King James Version (because the Bible just sounds better in Elizabethan English)

So, this record delves deep into the heart of the Old Man. There will be some grotesque scenery along the way.

ADDENDUM:

So I never have to say this again: NO, DAMN IT, DETHOLZ! IS NOT A CHRISTIAN ROCK BAND. Though I am “of the Body” myself, and subsequently often use religious/spiritual imagery in my songs, I hope that it’s self-evident that I have absolutely no interest in persuading you to believe in anything, one way or the other. Frankly, when I’m writing songs, the last thing I want to think about is what you may/may not believe. Sorry.

If you want to hear me play Christian music, come to the church where I work as a music director, not to a Detholz! show.

2. SONG COMPOSITION

This song– and basically the whole record– is a result of one comment made by our friend, Bobby Conn, after Halloween last year when we were on tour with him.

As many of you know, Detholz! does an all-cover show in Chicago every year on Halloween where we deconstruct and reassemble old pop songs. At the time, our rendition of “Conga” by Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine was in rotation. Bobby complimented us on the arrangement, and suggested that we push some more Latin rhythms through the Detholz! strainer. I had been searching for a way out of the “New Wave Redux” corner we’d painted ourselves into, so I jumped on the idea. Thanks, Bobby!

A couple of random notes about constructing this song:

1. The drumbeat for “Death to the Traitor” had been a running joke in the band, as Karl Doerfer, our guitar player, can’t stand the sound of it. [In Chicago, you can step outside just about any door and hear it thumping away in the nearest tricked-out, spolier-clad Honda Civic.] So, of course, I had to use it.

2. This is the first occurrence of the “Traitor” motive (see previous post), the four-note pattern in the synth that enters after the guitar begins the song. It occurs again at the end.

3. As you’ll notice immediately, the vocal melody consists of one note throughout the song (with the exception of one teensy break in the middle). I found this to be an excellent limitation, as it forced me to concentrate almost entirely on the rhythmic arrangement. The vocal itself is simply a part of the rhythm section. (Nothing new, as hardcore and hip-hop groups have done this since time immemorial. I had never tried it, though.)

Where a vocal is melody-free, it becomes easier to focus on the lyrics, in my opinion. I wanted these lyrics driven home– especially the more unpleasant images.

4. There’s a surprise when the drums come in due to one of my favorite musical devices, Ye Olde Phase Shift! The guitar begins the song on beat 2, so for the first few measures, it’s difficult to tell where the downbeat is (“downbeat” = first beat in a measure of music, for any greenhorns). More on phase shifting next week…

5. The guitar break before the end is worth mentioning. This is an expansion of an idea used in the guitar break “Chapel of Love,” a song from our previous record “Cast Out Devils,” (download from our website or MySpace page, if you like) where the guitars/keyboards are playing in different 3-against-2 polyrhythmic patterns, so the downbeat (or the “1”) is lost in a shimmering, hypnotic haze.

I got this idea from Wilco when Detholz! opened for them on their “Ghost is Born” tour. I can’t say that I own any Wilco records but they are truly an astounding live band– and wonderful people– and played at least one song that utilized this technique that I thought was electrifying.

The idea solidified when I began listening obsessively to Fela Kuti shortly thereafter. His songs are vast expanses of polyrhythms, and he has no problem sitting on one layered, “downbeat-free” groove for 4 or 5 minutes at a stretch. Also, I’ve always been fascinated by minimalist composers like Steve Reich and Terry Riley, and have come to love so-called “phase music,” where passages repeat with very little change over long periods of time.

The guitar break is a small example of that kind of writing, where the main hook (played by the clavinet) is embellished by polyrhythmic patterns in the guitars.

***

“Death to the Traitor” is already in rotation, so it’s not up for a vote, but as always, your comments/criticisms, love and/or hate mail are welcome!

Apologies that this post is a little more fractured, but I had to write it in a hurry. The new song intended for this week was the matter of heated debate last night at rehearsal, so I’ll be posting two versions of it next week for your vote. And airing some of our dirty laundry, of course.

Expecting the call from Bill Kurtis any minute now.

Tune in next Wednesday for the continuing melodrama!

Detholz! demo – “Tammy”

Greetings, Blog-ites! Welcome to the first official posting of the Detholz! Mp3 blog!Today’s posting, “Tammy,” (click link to download free mp3) is a song about the recently departed Tammy Faye Messner (aka Bakker), whose death last weekend affected me more deeply than I thought it would.

The newest Detholz! record uses a motif of betrayal as a backdrop for most of the songs. And what figure in recent pop history better illustrates the mechanics of betrayal than Tammy Faye?

She’d been on both sides of the equation:

1. BAD TAMMY

With her husband, Jim Bakker, she co-hosted the “Jim and Tammy Show” on PTL, an organization that bilked its faithful out of millions of dollars, primarily through phony sales of timeshares at their spectacular Christian theme park, “Heritage U.S.A.” At the time, rumors of their gaudy, lavish lifestyle were staples in the tabloids: heat-controlled doghouses, golden bathroom fixtures, Rolls Royce’s, PLUS they once had PTL buy over $100 worth of cinnamon rolls to have in their hotel room simply so they could enjoy the smell. What a concept.

I love the quote about them on Jim Bakker’s Wikipedia page (a quick & great read):

“[The Bakkers] epitomized the excesses of the 1980s; the greed, the love of glitz, and the shamelessness; which in their case was so pure as to almost amount to a kind of innocence.” – Frances Fitzgerald, The New Yorker, 1987

Someone whose “greed and love of glitz” became a divine birthright, whose excesses were indulged without question as “gifts from God”… These are ideas I tried to incorporate into this song: Faith betrayed by greed and conversely, greed betrayed by faith!

2. GOOD TAMMY

Post-PTL, and after she was betrayed by Jim with Jessica Hahn, she rediscovered the forgiveness she’d experienced in the faith of her youth. She made it her business to forgive and build bridges. Even during the extravagance of the PTL years in the 80’s, she managed to become the first fundamentalist broadcaster to dialogue with the gay community. Since it was the early 80’s and AIDS was viewed as a largely “gay disease,” she would regularly welcome gay AIDS activists onto her show, flying directly in the face of the religious culture in which she thrived.

On her ridiculous stint on “The Surreal Life,” she managed to become a positive mother figure in the lives of the people in the cast. She publicly forgave Jim Bakker on a number of occasions– they reconciled their friendship and remained on good terms until the end. She eventually even publicly forgave blustery ol’ Jerry Falwell for stealing her TV network in the wake of the Jessica Hahn scandal (though that one took the longest).

Whatever one may think of her freakishness, Tammy Faye was a vibrant, charismatic person that inspired millions of people. To think that someone who refused even to go into SURGERY without her makeup on could reach so many people is… staggering.

So, in this song, I refer to her as “God’s puppet,” which is both a literal and figurative image. (!) This verse refers to the idealism and zeal of her early career as compared to her gaudy days at PTL:

“I heard a singing voice
Behind a puppet, not by choice
Before the two tattoos
Before the King of the Jews”

The “two tattoos” refers to her eyebrows, which were eventually tattooed onto her forehead. And, the line that closes the song:

“As all God’s puppets know
This world is not our home”

Though it’s easy to dismiss her as a garish religious cartoon, I think “there was more THERE there,” as the saying goes….hers is a great redemption story. Who in America doesn’t love a great redemption story?

Speaking for myself, I felt a catch in my throat when I read she’d died. Rest in peace, Tammy Faye.

[If you’re interested, I would highly recommend the excellent 1999 documentary, “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” (narrated, appropriately by RuPaul) which delves extensively into Tammy Faye’s life post-PTL, and was a large part of the inspiration behind this song.]

***

Musically, this song continues current Detholz! experimentation with repetitive rhythmic patterns. I wanted to write a “Hall & Oates” drum part. So many of their #1 hits have drum patterns that don’t change at all (cf. “Private Eyes,” or more obviously, “Maneater”). Harmonically, I love how the chord changes weave in and out of phase with the regular, boring 4/4 pulse from the drums. There’s tension, but you never stop bobbing your head…

Of late I’ve also been subscribing to the idea that the LESS notes in a chorus melody, the better. I suppose I could be accused of relying too much on the accompaniment to carry the form, but if one limits the amount of notes in a chorus, it lends a song a more anthemic quality (cf. the 5-note chorus of “We Will Rock You” by Queen ; the 4-note chorus of “Hey Yah” by Outkast, or any chorus by Minor Threat). Historically, Detholz! melodies have been over-complicated and I’m desperately trying to avoid that on the next record.

In the wake of Tammy Faye’s passing, I feel like she deserves a song where two eternal rows of cheerleaders in extra-long skirts and thick brown hose could kick up their heels in time while she parades into the Pearly Gates carrying a plate of piping hot cinnamon rolls. I hope I’ve done her justice.

What do YOU think?

Thanks for reading, America! Tune in next Wednesday for the second installment of the Detholz! Mp3 Blog…

Collect them all!

-Jim C. & Detholz!

Welcome, weary traveler…

…to the Detholz! Mp3 Blog!

Detholz! is a Chicago-based musical ensemble that has encompassed more than just its music– an entire community of musicians and artists can be traced back to Detholz! over its 11-year history, and the now-famous (infamous?) house where the band still rehearses and resides, MAPLEWOOD, in the North Center neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side.

This blog is a repository for the music and art of the Detholz! and Maplewood community. Here, you will find not only new projects, brainchildren, and side projects of Detholz!, but of their colleagues and associates as well, UPDATED EVERY WEDNESDAY! Tune in every week for free music and/or art with commentary by the musician/artist. Please comment, vote and review what you hear and see– this blog will serve to help Detholz! construct their next record!

Thank you for visiting, and let us know of your love, hate, admiration, disdain or any other appropriate adjective. We’d love to hear from you!

Your pals,

Detholz!