Song Stories -- Suburban Tragedy

This was another song that went through quite an evolution before it became what you hear now.

Suburban Tragedy

It began as a short little song I was writing for my son Sam, which was to be called "Dinosaurs."  I wanted it to be proggy from the beginning, but things did not go well for that iteration of the tune.  I got stuck for lyrics, and the sounds I chose were awful -- I actually had a falling bomb sound as an asteroid strike for the end of the dinosaurs, which came near the beginning of the song.

If that sounds intriguing, trust me, in execution it was terrible.  My son was disappointed when I didn't finish the song, but I was stuck in a bad place for it.  I wrote this at a time when I was working with a keyboard player on a project of his but for which I was contributing some material.  I felt his song selections were too idiosyncratic and, in a word, wimpy, and that we should drop many of them and attempt to write some new material.  Since he and I were both into progressive rock, I thought we should focus on prog tunes and I got busy trying to write some.  The fact the subject matter was dinosaurs and the keyboard sounds I used were so awful kept him from giving this song a second glance.

This song snippet also came from that time period, which must have been around 2003 or so I think.

Brighter than the sun (fragment)

That one provoked some interest, but he could not be moved from his planned project.  I think he was a perfectionist and once he started something, he could not be satisfied if he didn't finish it.

I, on the other hand, will abandon projects with, well, abandon, if I come to think they aren't worth the time I'm investing in them.

Interestingly enough, I had a dream at this time.  In it I was in a long line with other people, and the line was moving, but I was trying to pick up some crayon drawings that were strewn about on the floor.  I could see that I was going to lose my place in line if I didn't just let them go, and they weren't worth saving anyway.

And that is a good description of that project.  The keyboardist got angry with me for trying to introduce new songs to the project and stopped answering emails for a while, which gave me a graceful exit point.

Now back to "Suburban Tragedy," which was still a song about dinosaurs at this time, and I was pretty unhappy with it.

Later on, after I had left the project with the keyboardist, while thinking about the tune I heard the lyrics, "She could never have the things she wanted," over the melody, and it was a different vocal line than what was on there at the time.  I don't think a copy of that original tune survives, and I don't remember it.  But I was intrigued about why she couldn't have these things that she wanted.  I put my pen to paper, and in a short while I had the first two verses pretty well mapped out.

She could never have the things she wanted
The things she dreamed could never be
On account of cruel reality
So she waits like one looking in the window
Wishing for what she cannot have, [yeah]  

He could not stand his braindead day job
And so he'd retreat into his own world alone
When conflict arises, as it will
[Oh] it goes badly 

And that's where things stood for a while.   I knew that it needed something else and I wasn't sure what.  So I put it aside for a while, and during that time I sold the bass I had originally recorded it with and bought a Rickenbacker 4001c64S.  Then I "heard" a new middle section.  I thought it was brilliant and that it suited the song, and brought it to a new place.  There's just the Rick, a Gibson guitar, and drum loops behind the voice here.  The keyboards have all dropped out, but in context, you don't notice that.

They can't agree to disagree
And then she tells him how things will be
He doesn't listen, he turns away
Loses track of time in video games 

People have told me that they don't like the falsetto singing in this section of the song, but I felt like the song needed to sound precarious and delicate there.  I think a better singer could pull it off without it sounding bad.

Now here is where all that work I had done on the original prog tune worked for me.  I had some variations on the main theme mapped out, which I thought would actually serve well in a story song like this one.  And it is still vaguely proggy even after the changes.  To me the song's structure is kind of a new thing, though I'm very sure someone else, probably lots of people, have done this sort of thing before.  Certainly it's a spiritual successor to such songs as the Beatles "She's Leaving Home."

[Oh] she could not believe his callousness
And he thought that she was thing obsessed
[Oh] she wondered whether he was sane, yeah
To him everything was such a game 

They finally came to a decision
They split in two and never spoke again
Because they could not see it standing right before them
Thus was ended yet another sweet suburban dream

The return that begins with "she could not believe.." is the variation on the main theme that I was talking about.  It's been so long now, I can't even remember what made me think to do that, but I had planned it from when the song was about dinosaurs, and now it fit perfectly after the middle section.  So the song, written over three distinct periods, sounds like a unified whole, as if it had existed already and was simply waiting to be recovered from the "Dinosaurs" disaster.

Instrumentally, I did a lot of things in this song that I hadn't done before.  The extended acoustic fills and leads, though not technically difficult, were not something I had tried often.  I can think of only one previous song where I did something similar.  It's an example of that "Holy Ghost" descending on me, because I played those parts pretty quickly, without thinking much about it.

The bass line is interesting because it uses two different basses, at least.  It started with my first Warwick Corvette 5, which was such a versatile and beautiful instrument.  I got rid of it because it hurt my left hand to play it on account of the larger neck a 5 string requires, but truth be told I was getting used to it by the time I sold it.  The 2nd bass was the Rickenbacker.  That was a magnificent instrument and I'd love to have one of them again.  It truly gets the tone you want it to, but it costs way too much for a hobbyist like me to justify, so I sold it for what I originally paid for it (less shipping) and replaced it with another Warwick Corvette 5.  By this time I had realized my mistake in having let it go.  The new Warwick seems to have a slightly thinner neck and I've gotten used to it now.  It's truly a tone monster.  It can sound gritty and growly, sort of like a Rick, and also smooth and clean, or anything in between.

I was quite proud of this song when I was done, though I recognized that I couldn't really do it justice vocally.  I'd love to re-record it with a full band and good vocalist.  I think there's a lot of good still buried in it that could be revealed by a better treatment.

I also have considered making this song's structure a form and using it again on different tunes.  One thing I find attractive is that there's no chorus, but it still has hooks.  I like the way the cello starts the theme and then the guitar takes it -- it's this recurring figure that serves as the "chorus" of the song.  None of the words are repeated and I'm very attracted to this, because the repetition of words in a song gets pretty boring to me.  You may find that surprising, given how often I'll repeat a chorus at the end of a song..