Corsair Affair

Corsair Lyrics

Corsair Press Kit

1. I Saw the Light (For Todd Rundgren) – Gentle Giant inspired ADD morphs into 90s L.A. snootiness during the part about L.A.
2. Sink – Trying to free the spirit of house by attacking it. Shortened by a minute and a half.
3. Berlin Again – Buzzcocks stomp, junkyard journey through Cold War romance.
4. Romantic Getaway Tiger – The proletariat uprising against the pop song. Revving engines and scissors on guitar strings.
5. Dog Day Afternoon – Andrew WK’s self-deprecating reverie.
6. Cross Colas – Rambling monologue with Rick Wakeman and Electro touches.
7. Josta – The pop epiphany, equal parts Jasmine, Wampum, and Lineage
8. Green Darts – The author’s fantasy about having the album fail and getting to hang out with Scritti Politti’s Green Gartside in some sort of creative torpor.
9. Miami – AM radio surf punk anthemic choruses, sung by everyone, part one of "Florida". Shared culture-shock terror.
10. Everglades – The inverse of “Miami”, sung by everyone, but focusing on Megan, part two of "Florida". Reaction to the crowd.
11. Beat by the Beach – Part three of "Florida". Marching band on the beach, reggae evasion, throwing beach balls up in the air.
12. Mohawk Mansion – Obscurity perpetuating obscurity. African guitar pop instrumental.
13. This Year Keeps Getting Heavier – Straight-forward guitar rocker.
14. I Won’t Fight Back – Water balloons and soda pop bottles punctuating heartbreak.

Corsair Evaluation

Its useless giving these things out. We need to be a dynamic force, there needs to be some sort of reason for people to listen to us, and we aren't dynamic to people who know us. "Tyler and Conner? Oh, there the guys that are always doing albums. Oh? This is one of their albums? I guess its pretty good". You guessed right, sister. Its pretty DANG good. DAMN good if I may be explicit. The deal is we don't play shows (if we could only find a guitarist that could wrap their brain around Jorge Ben or Fela Kuti we MIGHT be in business) but if we did play shows, they'd be damn dynamic. So pretend that we just played this show where I fired my guitarist for breaking a string and the drummer wouldn't stop playing so I ended up making up three weird songs on the spot. They were supposed to have audience participation sections, but the P.A. was kind of quiet.

I guess the reason everyone else gets away with making albums is so that their fans who go to see them live can have a blueprint of what the songs sound like so they won't be confused when they hear them live again. So if we aren't a live band, we're a static band, we're a dead language, like Latin. And nobody wants to learn their scientific names all over in James Rabbitese.

So just pretend that a good-looking person you know had a copy of our CD in their car. This is the best way to get close to them: share an interest in James Rabbit. Where did they get it? They e-mailed me, just like everybody else.

In Summary:
Rick Wakeman
No Guitarist
Hypothetical good-looking fans.

Corsair

Too tired to type, really. Let me tell you. Its done and out. There's a good chance you won't hear it. We aren't playing live.

Drank a Josta on the Bus

Albums always finish like this, me burning CD after CD of throwaways just so I can get the attack of the first vocal just right on track 7. Or in this case, chorus or not chorus? That is the question. I'll let you know when I'm actually finished. Its 3:50 am right now.

3:57 No, Not yet.
4:07 Yeah, I think this is it.

"Josta" one of my favorite songs on the album (one of my favorite albums) has been giving us a truckload of trouble. Okay, so my vocals have been giving us trouble. Sorry you haven't heard about this album. I'll be talking about it a lot as it goes. Thanks.

Arsenal

So its happening. I've just finished the final final of the quarter. Its winter now. Just 7 hours of sleep, four hours of work, an hour of packing and two to three of driving home and its winter. I've been writing songs nonstop since finals week began and I'm really happy with the results of my labor. I'm not going to count them, because that would make it a contest, lets just say that we could EASILY do another double album, but lord, when would we find the time. I'm happy just to do twelve really good songs. And if those twelve turn into twenty or thirty then there will be EPs. EPs, not second discs of a two disc set. We'll do three or four singles on this album, just so you know its good to buy.

Having said that, I can hear where my stuff is currently un-classic. There's a difference between passable and classic. Anyone can put four chords and vodka together and call themselves a band, but I want to get TO IT. !!!!! I'm feeling my brain skating through the motions of pop music, hopefully getting better as I go, and I can hear when its right, and I know what we aren't doing right, so when I write something and when we rehearse it, I just have to be really in to what it will could potentially sound like, so the recording process can be clarified in terms of 'oh, no, those drums need to sound like the last stand of a fire hydrant, not an egg carton'. I just know we're moving towards something.

One thing, I'm writing a lot of chord changes that I am uncomfortable with. Like whenever bands say they are Beatles influenced, that means that they'll put in a chord progression that you'll recognize. I'm trying to avoid this. If it comes up in recording, that I hear one of my songs sounding like a band you'd hear on the radio, I'm scrapping the song. Certain things seem cool, but don't feel right. Like a bunch of kids sitting on the playground and one kid comes up with cigarettes and its like 'oh yeah, John Wayne smoked' and they do it, despite the protest from their lungs. And last Wednesday's assembly. Its the same kind of feeling I get when I make a major a minor, CCCCCCCCFFFFFmFmFmFm. Oh god, its the sound of a lifetime of brittle nails and close explanations. If I have to explain anything it will be from a distance, thank you.

So yeah, stacks of songs. Air-drumming. A few final listens of things. Its raining outside right now.

The Fifteen Best Albums of 2004

Five Each Monday.

15. Bearsuit – Cat Spectacular
One song: “Hey Charlie Hey Chuck”. That was a great song. But that’s not on this album, it’s a single, when they reissue this album in ten years, it’ll be the reason that you buy it. This album is a bunch of semi-Hey Charlie Hey Chuck’s, lots of raging, lots of softness, never really appropriate. It goes from full-on almost punk to full-on Field Mice tribute from second to second from song to song. Its short too, which always looks better on albums.

14. Animal Collective – Sung Tongs
I feel I owe something to this CD, so its on the list. I wasn’t going to include it, but then I looked at it, all cute and warm and fuzzy and I said, fine, you get on the list but you aren’t going to be that high. I mean, I enjoy you when someone else is playing you, but you are in a folder on my computer named ‘boring’, which is the folder that I put things in that I am only keeping for other people and not myself. I like a lot of your ideas, don’t get me wrong, and a few songs are pretty sweet, but there’s so much extra. Extra in a way where you don’t feel you’re getting extra pie, you feel like you’re getting extra chores.

13. Arcade Fire – Funeral
So this is what it comes to. Putting these kinds of records on the list. Where these blowholes with bad pitch and dance beats think they can just waltz in here and take the coveted # 13 position. Mind you, this is #13. The thirteenth best album of the year. I’m sure most of the stuff I like on the album is an accident, a byproduct of so many sweaters in one room make all these styles that they’re attempting kind of static cling themselves together. The rhythm section is over-dynamic and there are a few probably not even that great melodies through the album. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.

12. Electrelane – The Power Out
Electrelane’s inclusion on this list is more because of a few songs and the general idea of the band than the actual album. “On Parade” kept me rocking throughout the early parts of the year and touched a special chord in us all when it was used on the O.C. (For the life of me I can’t remember what was happening when it was used, but I’m very sure it was special.) Other songs recall the Slits (which I’m not so sure is that great of a thing), but as the Pitchfork philosophy goes, if you sound like a formerly great band you could be the new incarnation of them.

11. Destroyer – Your Blues
This one gets the award for best hilarious intro song on an album. “Notorious Lightening” cracks you in the head like a baseball bat manufactured by Nerf. And I’m sure he meant it. There’s this interview with Dan Bejar, who is the Destroyer man himself, and he mentions that he didn’t know that the MIDI stuff sounded like MIDI stuff and that he was actually making a symphonic pop masterpiece. No, Dan. You were making a MIDI masterpiece. Once you get over laughing at all the sounds, and if you can handle his voice, and his sometimes funky lyrics (like ‘uh, looks like those drums could use some cymbals! Hit me!!!. No. Funky like this guy’s got an oil spill in his stream-of-consciousness), you’ve got yourself one heck of an album.

I had this dream last night that the Strokes were playing in some cafeteria on campus. Before they played they passed out this sheet of paper that had all of this information on upcoming live album releases with all new material. I was so happy, they were putting out like four new albums. When they came out they started playing one of their live albums through a cd and just stood there. Then one by one, they joined in playing their instruments along. Drums came in, then vocals, then guitars, then bass. The best part of the dream was that Julian Casablancas had grown a substantial beard and when he got close and yelled, he looked like a bear.

Also in the dream, it was this relatively normal amalgam-of-what-i-did thing, I'd be hanging out with someone from work in a house that I'd been in when all of a sudden, some kickboxer comes in and kicks me in the face and mentions that [this guy that works in the printmaking studio] hit him, but he couldn't find the guy to hit back, so he was hitting me. And then there was this other scene where this guy and I were walking on campus by the theater rooms and we could see into his apartment and his apartment was being trashed by this big guy/girl couple. We started running to help the rest of the apartment people and on the way I warned 'I'm not strong, and I can't fight very well'. As we ran we watched the apartment dwellers defeat the oversized couple and talked about it when we got there. But then a third guy came in and headed straight for me. He was coming on like a freight train and there was nothing I could do. He slapped me in the face, explaining that [print shop guy] hit him and he couldn't find him. I woke up later, really tired, thinking about how happy I was that I ate pizza before bed.