I posted about this the other day, but this is the Christmas-y carol, Oh Holy Night (my childhood fave), that I did for Al Crisafulli’s Signal to Noise show last night on WFDU, it’s his end-of-year one which he modestly bills as the Second-Best Holiday Show on College Radio (pitting himself after Jon Solomon's 25-hour marathon one on the equally wonderful WPRB in Princeton)
The entire show is now archived here and also features exclusive-to-the-show songs & messages from Sohrab Habibion (Savak), Nick & Lysa (of Radiant Point/Mr. Payday/Silence On The Other End), & a bunch of others, as well as a ten-lords-a-leaping’s-worth of great holiday songs, largely of the rockish persuasion. I’m only listening now myself - Sunday night was a little...wait, is Sunday only last night? I guess that shows how Sunday night was..
But also putting mine up separately (w/ disclaimer - ha) because, well really just because, since the 10-year-belabored album’s done, it was actually almost fun (almost) to be able to say ‘yes’ to something, to something else, and more importantly, be able to whip through it in two evenings last week (more on that via the link below). In part, I was able to do it quickly (for me) ‘cause I’d already been doing this song in any solo show that fell within like two months either side of the holiday season for years. And admittedly, ‘cause Oh Holy Night was written in 1847, so much of the heavy time-intensive lifting was already done for me (or looked at another way, even this one cover took me 173 years).
Anyway, here it is [cues archangels].
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The longer, boring-er aside here is that when I do this live, I usually play the Outro to one of the ‘new’ songs (i.e. from this now-long-completed still-pending album), which finishes with a guitar part in a separate loop, drop that loop to half-speed, then play Oh Holy Night over that slowed loop. The geekily fun part for me is that the album song’s in 4/4, the carol’s in 3/4 and shifting gears in the rusty machine as it goes from 4/4 to 3/4, I’ll always like.
So I figured I’d just record the way I usually do it live and so last Sunday (the 13th) tracked the solo/live/looped v. of my song & connected it into Oh Holy Night as one does, and then, for speed’s sake, had decided to track the vocals separately, i.e. not ‘live’ with the loops as it would be, um, live.
What I hadn’t considered is that I literally have not sung a note in about 11 months, since playing at the closing show for the wonderful artist Beth Campbell back in January. Plus, I was on a tight-for-me deadline of tracking those vocals last Sunday eve, while the youngsters were out w/ mommy. What I brought to the mic in those few hours that night was so preposterously iffy that it, for the thousandth time in almost as many years, had me question why I ever consider myself ‘musical’ - ha. It also meant that I didn’t even get to track vocals or finish the version of that first ‘new’ song.
So what you hear on this final v., is a fade into a weird looped v. of the new song, then the loop’s faded (live) down to the connector-guitar part, that’s looped in turn, dropped to half-speed, and the holiday magic unfolds from there (ha). If any of that makes sense...
Anyway, beyond that, and more importantly, I hope your holidays are a peaceful & loving delight. You deserve it.
charles
[I can’t post a recent photo ‘cause the phone’s broken so here’s one of the home studio in 2013 when it was newly re-set-up post-the-family-move (still in Brooklyn) and a mere 3 years into the album - ha].