Same love, different audience

You've probably heard "Same Love," a song that advocates for gay rights. If not, take a listen:

Cool, right? Hip hop has a history of homophobia. It's nice that someone is using the genre to speak out against discrimination. Not everyone is feeling the love, though. Tyler Coates, a gay rapper, finds the whole thing kind of annoying.

I know it's OK to be gay. Most of those I know in the LGBT community know it's ok to be queer, too. And here’s a surprise for the heterosexual world: most of us didn't learn from you anything about understanding and appreciating ourselves.

It's understandable, his frustration. The gay community hardly needs Macklemore's validation. On the other hand—and Coates acknowledges this throughout his piece—"Same Love" isn't for out-and-proud gay people. "Same Love" is for heteros with homophobic tendencies. Bigots are generally more open to a message that opposes bigotry when it comes from somebody they consider to be one of their own.

I don't know how many people "Same Love" has reached. I don't know if anyone ever reconsiders strongly held prejudices because of a song. I do hope that at the very least, it will encourage straight allies to be more outspoken when they encounter bigotry.

Viola surprise

Today's rehearsal was a little different. A violist named Rose sat in and jammed with us. On viola.

Every now and again I'll be writing a song and think, "This would sound better on acoustic guitar than piano." Or, "We could really ramp this part up with bass." Less frequently I'll think organ, electric guitar, maybe even cello. I do my best to come up with a decent arrangement on keyboard for live performances, and I file away the arrangements I hear in my head for when we record and bring in some session players.

Up until a couple weeks ago, I'd never thought, "I wonder how that would sound with viola."

But Rose heard us at our last gig, liked us a bunch, and asked if we'd like to play on the album she's recording. She also said that if we had any songs we thought she could contribute to, she'd be happy to do it.

So, viola. Viola? OK. I pondered everything we've written and made a list of songs that could maybe ... possibly ... be enhanced by that particular instrument. Couldn't hurt to try.

We did. Wow.

Viola, it turns out, adds a beautiful, rich texture to piano and drums. I guess I knew that already from listening to other people's stuff, but I'd never thought it could work for ours.

The jam reminded me of how, once you write a song and release it to the world, it's not entirely yours anymore. It can do things you never thought about, go in directions you hadn't imagined.

Viola.

Wow.

Hold Me in Your Arms

I usually don't write love songs. Though I have nothing against them in principle, I tend to be drawn more to conflict in my own work. It's hard for me to do anything interesting with "You're awesome" or "romance is cool."

Besides, with a gazillion love songs out there, I doubt I have anything new to say.

Among my few exceptions is "Hold Me in Your Arms," which I wrote in 2008. It holds the record for my most quickly written tune. I was able to crank it out in less than 24 hours because it's very simple, with lots of repetition. I like it, but I haven't considered it my best work.

When we did Paws in the Plaza this Saturday, we put "Hold Me in Your Arms" on the set list for the first time in a long while. And the people who were listening liked it. They seemed to like us in general, but they really liked this one. You know you're in when your audience is swaying.

Maybe I need to get over the idea that complex, hard-to-write songs are superior. Sometimes people just want to hear nice and simple.

So, in honor of Valentine's Day, here's a little scratch recording of "Hold Me in Your Arms," made in Ron the Drummer's living room. If you absolutely hate Valentine's Day, give it a chance anyway. It's not too sappy and I promise it won't tell you to buy stuff.

Hold Me in Your Arms

lyrics by Susan Wenger
music by Susan Wenger and Ron Amistadi

Light is fading
Sun going down
Won't you hold me in your arms
Nothing between us
No one else around
Won't you hold me in your arms

Put down your battle plans
Put down your ammunition
They will be here waiting
At the coming of the dawn
The world outside is no more real
Than what I offer you tonight

Moment lingers
Ours alone to claim
Will you sing to me your song
A melody to cut through
All the noise and all the pain
Will you sing to me your song

I'll put down my strategies
And blueprints for the future
They will be here waiting
At the coming of the dawn
The world outside is no more real
Than what I want from you tonight

Why don't you hold me in your arms


Moonlight streaming
Through the window above
Won't you hold me in your arms
The struggles that define us
They can't kill the things we love
When you hold me in your arms

Pick up our lost dreams
And our visions for a brighter day
We will surely need them
At the coming of the dawn
These are the gifts we give each other
To sustain us through the night

Why don't you hold me in your arms
Why don't you hold me in your arms
Why don't you hold me in your arms
Why don't you hold me

----------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2010 Cinder Bridge. All rights reserved.

Famine bad. Snow good.

Remember "Do They Know It's Christmas" by Band Aid? Written to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia? Big hit in 1984 and trotted out every year thereafter?

Turns out Bob Geldof—who cowrote the song with Midge Ure—absolutely hates it now.

From the Daily Telegraph:

"I am responsible for two of the worst songs in history," [Geldof] said.

"The other one is We Are The World. Any day soon, I will go to the supermarket, head to the meat counter and it will be playing. Every f ... ing Christmas."

I have to say, I liked "Do They Know It's Christmas" when it first came out, and not just because most other Christmas music sucked by comparison. The song was catchy, had a satisfying build-up, and was chock full of protesty goodness. What wasn't to like?

Then I started listening more closely to the lyrics. In particular:

And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time
The greatest gift they'll get this year is life

Even at the tender age of 15, this struck me as odd. Yes, there was much evil afoot in Ethiopia. Hundreds of thousands starving due to scarcity, indifference, bad government. But ... snow? A great injustice was being perpetrated on the Ethiopian people because there wouldn't be snow in Africa?

Still catchy and all, but that pretty much did it for my ability to take the song seriously.

Music on the sidebar!

After two years of posting here, I've finally figured out how to put our tunes on the sidebar. What a concept—music on a band blog!

If you glance at the top right, you'll see a player for a bunch of Cinder Bridge songs. "Everybody Knows About Me," about somebody living with undiagnosed ME/CFS, is downloadable. The rest are streaming only, and available for purchase at CD Baby.

Hat tip to Jeff Shattuck of Cerebellum Blues for hooking me up with ReverbNation, which provided the handy player widget.

Now You See Us

A little over a year ago, I wrote an ME/CFS protest song called "Now You See Us." It's full of righteous indignation, but also giddy and optimistic. I'm posting it here tonight in celebration of the long-awaited release of the Alter paper.

(This is a low-res home recording, so if you're listening on itty bitty laptop speakers, you may need to crank the volume up to max.)

This goes out to everyone at the Whittemore Peterson Institute for getting the ball rolling. It also goes out to Alter et al for discovering another important piece to the puzzle, and for dealing with a lot of political crap they likely never expected. And to all of us, for surviving the wait.

If you like it, share it with anyone else you think will like it too! Lyrics are below.




NOW YOU SEE US

Lyrics by Susan Wenger
Music by Susan Wenger & Ron Amistadi

Day they came
Did their worst
Felt like I might die of thirst
Not a drop of water to be found
Seasons pass
Years go by
Never knew the reason why
They always kick you hardest when you're down

Chase the money trail
And you begin to realize
There's shady people cleaning out the store

CHORUS
Someone's got to keep the faith
Someone's got to hold the line
I can build a mighty fortress
With the power of my mind
I'll do anything it takes
Gonna take back what is mine
And there's no stopping us this time


Alone we are divisible
Silent and invisible
Without the strength to get a message through
Find each other one by one
Get together
Get it done
Keep each other going 'til we do

They can call us crazy
See how much time that buys
But we will not believe them anymore

CHORUS
Someone's got to keep the faith
Someone's got to hold the line
I can build a bridge between us
With the power of my mind
I'll do anything it takes
Gonna take back what is mine, mine, mine
And there's no stopping us this time


Results of their analysis
Hysterical paralysis
The more things change the more they stay the same
But closer now
To the truth
And they cannot deny the proof
By trying to call it by a different name

CHORUS
Someone's got to keep the faith
Someone's got to hold the line
I can build a better future
With the power of my mind
I'll do anything it takes
Gonna take back what is mine, mine, mine

And you and me will be just fine

---------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2009 Cinder Bridge. All rights reserved.

Best That I Can Do

Hey, remember that song I was writing a few months ago? The one I was trying to find a rhyme for? The one where I couldn't decide whether there should be a bridge?

I finished "Best That I Can Do" back in June. Ron the Drummer and I recorded it in his living room a few weeks ago. And I figured out how to post songs on the blog today. Yip!

For anyone who was remotely curious as to how "Best That I Can Do" turned out, here it is. It doubles as an apology for my pathetically low posting output of late and goes out to anyone who's been feeling a little overextended. Lyrics are below.

Again, this is a low-res home recording, so if you're listening on dinky computer speakers, you may have to turn the volume all the way up to hear anything.




BEST THAT I CAN DO

Lyrics by Susan Wenger
Music by Susan Wenger & Ron Amistadi

Clock alarm declares a brand new morning
Hazy plans are forming
How shall I use the day
I'm staring down the frontiers yet uncharted
Projects barely started
The dues I have to pay

Make a list of what I must accomplish
Lacking any knowledge
Of how to get it done
All the tiny pieces of the mission
Are fighting for position
Then merging into one

Well it's built to last
And it's piling on so fast
I cannot slow it down

Have to cut some corners
More than just a few
Some days that's the best that I can do


Crossed off half the tasks on my to-do list
But I'm not getting through this
The day is almost gone
I keep thinking just a little longer
But it keeps coming stronger
On and on and on

Still I hear your plea
Everything depends on me
I cannot let you down

Making up the answers
When I haven't got a clue
Some days that's the best that I can do


Lock the bathroom door
Turn on the faucet
Nothing's gonna cross it
This barrier I made
Flowing drowns out every sound around me
Washes out the memory
Of dues I haven't paid

Well, the water's fine
Though I cannot spare the time
To wind this body down

Something got neglected
And I think that it was you
Some days that's the best that I can do

© 2010 Cinder Bridge. All rights reserved.

* * *

Got feedback? Glowing praise? Constructive criticism? Destructive criticism? Comments are thataway!

Hemlines and ballads

Ever hear of the hemline index? An economist named George Taylor came up with this in the 1920s, noting that hemlines were shorter during good times. As the economy slowed, skirts got longer.

Since then, economists have found all sorts of funky correlations like this. According to a recent New York Times article, you're likelier to see more mature-looking Playboy playmates, higher sales of laxatives, and decreased deodorant use during a bad economy.

My favorite indicator had to do -- of course -- with music.

Looking at Billboard No. 1 songs from 1955 to 2003 for a study to be published in the journal Psychology of Music, [psychology professor Terry F. Pettijohn II] found that in uncertain times, people tend to prefer songs that are longer, slower, with more meaningful themes.

“It’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water,’ and ‘That’s What Friends Are For,’ ” he said. “In better times, it’s more likely to be faster, upbeat songs like ‘At the Hop’ or ‘My Sharona.’”

If there's anything to this, Cinder Bridge could totally cash in on the current messed-up economy. We've got TONS of slow tunes with meaningful themes. I feel a tagline coming on ...

Cinder Bridge: Downbeat songs for the coming recession.

Oh yeah. We'll have to beat the club owners off with a stick.

But it sounds cool

When I was a senior in high school, a friend of mine dashed off some lyrics to a piano riff I'd been playing with. The resulting song -- all about the evils of materialism -- was quite good. All it needed were a couple of lines at the end, something that would rhyme with "... never is enough." I volunteered the following:

You bribed yourself with trinkets
And now the world has called your bluff

Larry liked my little contribution, so it stayed. I was pretty pleased with it myself. Just one thing bugged me. The lines sounded cool, you know, like they meant something profound. But when I really thought about it, the "bribed" part didn't make any sense. Bribed yourself to do what? What I was really getting at was something like "distracted," but that word didn't scan.

No one else seemed to notice when Larry and I played the song for them, though. Because it sounded cool.

I thought of this earlier today while listening to Porcupine Tree's In Absentia. During previous plays I'd never paid much attention to their lyrics, which sort of got lost in the gestalt of the band's engrossing and echo-y prog rock sound. This time around I had headphones on, and I decided to see if the words would be easier to make out.

They were. I found myself grooving to the chorus of "Blackest Eyes":

I got wiring loose inside my head
I got books that I never, ever read
I got secrets in my garden shed
I got a scar where all my urges bled
I got people underneath my bed
I got a place where all my dreams are dead
Swim with me into your blackest eyes

I love that last line! I also am not entirely sure what it means. In the context of the song I can come up with a couple of vague ideas, but I don't know if either of them are correct.

Had I never attempted writing lyrics, I would hope that I'd someday become clever and sophisticated enough to decipher the meaning of these deep words. Now I wonder if Steven Wilson, the songwriter, even knows. Maybe he just thought it sounded cool.

The acoustic guitar of happiness

A couple of years ago, toward the end of a coffeehouse gig, I asked the friends who'd come out to see us if they'd like to hear a sad song or a happy song next. One of them piped up, "You have happy songs?"

I've acquired a rep for musical angst. Though there are several reasons for this, my theory is that listeners' impressions would be different if I played guitar rather than keyboard. It's entirely possible to write cheerful songs on piano and depressing ones on guitar, of course. But all things equal, there's something so much more optimistic about the acoustic guitar sound.

Ron the Drummer has never been convinced. As far as he's concerned, you create the sound you want with whatever you have at your disposal -- period. And I have to admit, we've been able to pull off a lot of "guitar songs" without a guitar.

* * *

A year and a half ago we recorded a demo of "Everybody Knows About Me" to raise awareness about CFIDS/ME. The song is pretty damn depressing. Drew Raison, who produced our album a few years back, mixed it down for free, and he's been putting down other instruments to flesh it out, make it sound more professional, less demo-ish.

Last I heard, Drew had found a guitarist willing to help us out. The session had gone well. The guitar track was beautiful. Drew decided not to use it. Beautiful or not, the sound was just wrong. It was ... too happy.

For some reason this amuses me.

Who hasn't done nothing?

I was driving around, running some errands, when "You Haven't Done Nothing" came on the radio. Soon I was singing along best I could, even though the only words I knew were the refrain and the parts where Stevie Wonder goes "Dooooooo de wop."

I've always loved this song. The lyrics (which I've since googled) are so biting and accusatory:

But we are sick and tired of hearing your song
Telling how you are gonna change right from wrong
'Cause if you really want to hear our views
You haven't done nothing

I'd always imagined that his accusation was leveled at people like me: well-intentioned liberals who pay lip service to defeating social injustice, then flip open the TV Guide to see if there's anything good on. Hearing it this time around, though, I began to wonder if Mr. Stevie had another target in mind:

We are amazed but not amused
By all the things you say that you'll do
Though much concerned but not involved
With decisions that are made by you

Yeah, seems likely that he's talking about the powers that be rather than our lethargic citizenry. Probably it was guilt over my own tendency toward inaction that made me misinterpret the lyrics when I first started paying attention to them. Possibly it was my current frustration over the state of health care in this country that got me to listen more closely.

In any case, it's funny how much of our own baggage we bring to the songs we hear.

More awareness for everyone

Thanks to everyone who linked back to either the CFIDS Awareness Day post here or "Everybody Knows About Me" on Myspace: I Learned Something Today, Molly.com, RachelCreative, Saving My Sanity, and Songs to a Midnight Sky. If you're interested in learning more about what CFIDS is like from someone who has it, RachelCreative wrote an essay about it for Awareness Day and linked to many others who did the same.

The responses to "Everybody Knows About Me" have been extremely positive. This is ... a relief. Anytime I write a song, I fret about making the lyrics as good as they can be, but the truth is that getting it wrong doesn't generally have substantial consequences. It's just a song, right? Writing about the devastating effects of a widely misunderstood illness I've witnessed but never experienced, that kicks the level of importance up a few dozen notches. Fail to convey some essential piece I was going for, and the song could do more harm than good.

Someone I know who has CFIDS did give EKAM a pass before it saw the light of day. Nevertheless, it's reassuring to get good reactions from people who don't know me personally.

A Song for CFIDS: Everybody Knows About Me

Today is CFIDS Awareness Day. To mark the occasion, we've uploaded a song called "Everybody Knows About Me" to our Myspace page. I wrote this from the perspective of someone suffering from undiagnosed CFIDS, though it could also easily apply to undiagnosed fibromyalgia, MCS/environmental injury, lyme disease, or many other so-called invisible illnesses.

You can find the song here. (Click the "Everybody Knows About Me" link if it doesn't start playing immediately.)

You may be thinking, "CFIDS? What the heck is that?" I'll answer that question and others in a handy FAQ format:

CFIDS? What the heck is that?

It stands for chronic fatigue and immune dysfunction syndrome. Symptoms vary from person to person, but commonly include:

• chronic, debilitating pain
  
• post-exertional malaise -- symptoms get worse after physical or mental exertion and require an extended recovery period
  
• flu-like symptoms, such as joint and muscle pain
  
• cognitive impairment, including problems with short-term memory
  
• crushing fatigue, which is not relieved by rest
  

Other common symptoms include cardiac arrhythmias, chemical sensitivities, food sensitivities, blurry vision, eye pain, irritable bowel syndrome, and a host of other conditions that are nasty in their own right.

CFIDS is also known by the name myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). You've most likely heard it referred to as chronic fatigue syndrome.

Oh, chronic fatigue syndrome! Yeah, I've heard of that. A friend of mine says she has it, but every time I see her, she seems fine. I think she's just a hypochondriac.

Probably not. It's typical for sufferers to have good days and bad days (though a "good day" can still be pretty bad from a healthy person's perspective). If you see someone with CFIDS out and about, you've probably caught them on a good day. You don't see them lying flat on their back for the rest of the week, in the privacy of their own home, recovering from their trip to the grocery store.

I don't have CFIDS, but I have seen more than a few bad days up close. They're not pretty.

Is there a cure?

No. And at the rate research for a cure is being funded, it's going to be a while. In 2007, more money went to research on hay fever than CFIDS.

Damn.

Yeah. If you'd like to donate to an organization whose primary purpose is finding a cure, go here.

How else can I help?

Write your congressman. If you have a friend with CFIDS, make an effort to keep in touch. Your friend may not have the energy to call you, but he or she would probably love to hear from you. Listen. Sympathize. If someone you know makes a comment about how chronic fatigue syndrome is just laziness, don't let it pass. Explain that CFIDS involves serious pain and real impairment, not just greater-than-average tiredness.

Oh, and if you know anyone who might benefit from hearing "Everybody Knows About Me," send the link. But please don't send it to absolutely everyone in your e-mail address book. Spam is annoying, no matter how noble the cause.

Thanks for listening.

Missing Persons

Earlier this week I did a long-overdue culling of our mailing list. It's around 30 obsolete e-mail addresses lighter now. I don't know who most of the purged people are; a couple, however, stand out.

Megan Mitcher. The first singer I ever worked with, back before I could sing or even thought I could learn. She had a low, lovely voice and the kind of self-effacing yet utterly cool demeanor that made you want to hang around for as long as she'd let you. I did a search on her name after taking her e-mail off the list. Can't find her. It's like she never existed.

Vanessa Zuber, a Tucson folksinger. I liked all of her songs, but one in particular stuck with me, a heartbreakingly gorgeous tune called "Hands Touching the Sky." I requested it a lot. When I google Vanessa, a bunch of shows from 2001 come up. Nothing current. I can't find the song anywhere either.

I think I've been spoiled by the Internet. I've grown so accustomed to being able to access any piece of information whenever I've got a computer within arm's reach, it surprises me when the people I lose touch with are actually gone.

Megan and Vanessa: If you happen upon this post while idly searching for your own names, drop me a line. I'd love to know how you're doing.