Hey.
So, it’s time for another present to put into the BRIGHTS BOX. What better time than now…A Bern & the Brights Thanks-Give-Away Tune!
You’ll need the password (get it from us on FACEBOOK) to download your tune here: Thanks-Give-Away Tune
We decided to post a “c-side,” if you will. The song is called “Metroland.” You will probably not ever be able to get this anywhere ever again, unless we step into some serious shit in the near future that enables us to record all day and night long.
One thing that’s kind of bittersweet about writing songs and recording music is that many times there are tunes that probably will not be heard by anybody outside of a tiny, tiny circle, songs that will never be added to an album or a live line-up because time just won’t have it. There are other songs being written all the while, and they take precedence, or we are driven to distraction and so on.
It is a dream of ours to wake up in the morning (with no plans to change out of our Hunter S. Thompson attire, pipes dangling from our mouths), and stroll into a music factory and produce as much as we can as often as we can and share it with you instantly. Perhaps it can happen, but for right now, we are still in the universe where things take time. (Multi-tasking is a bunch of bullshit. )
So, I’m glad we have this BRIGHTS BOX up. It’s actually the perfect place to share some of these random songs that are sitting in a box of their own. We hold quite a bit back from your ears, because naturally, we want the sonic experience to be earth shattering, multi-orgasmic, pro-tooled, glossy, click-tastic, up to that…standard, that…perfect…blah-di-di-blah blah. Why should we give you a primi who still needs to be in the incubator? You want a thriving, plump newborn, I know.
But, for this week, let’s throw the notion of perfection out the window. Besides, a good song should be able to come across in the simplest form, should it not? That means a melody, a lyric, and a shitty guitar from Walmart if that’s all you have. It’s like if a girl is pretty, really pretty, she’ll be pretty even in a potato sack.
So maybe demos are potato sacks, but potatoes are still good. Are they not? (Don’t diss potatoes. Especially if you are currently on a time travel excursion in Ireland during the famine.)
So here’s the potato. “Metroland.” I hope you think she’s pretty. She doesn’t have much on her. She never had the chance to be mixed. She never had the chance to have some more layers of instruments added to her. I had written the song probably a week or so before attempting to record it, and up to the last minute was tweaking lyrics. I don’t know if Bern & the Brights will resurrect this from the archives. But there is some Bern & the Brights synthesis happening here on this recording; this is a piece of the history of our band, and marks a moment in time for me where the inspiration to form Bern & the Brights was starting.
You see, the band began to shape-up in little separate clusters (that eventually came all together by happenstance for one show). One of the clusters was Nicole and me. Nicole was finishing her sound program at William Paterson University, and invited me in to be the artist for her project. We tried to tackle five songs or so (a lot for 6 weeks), and whenever we could, we squeezed sessions into late nights and wee mornings of a cold November and December of 2007. This track is one of the results of that time.
Nicole did a swell job recording with the few hours we had to work on this one. She had Dana, from Waking Lights, come in and do thunderous, epic timpany rolls (thanks Dana). I played drums (thanks Theo Metz for letting us use your kit), acoustic, and bass (that’s all there is on this).
But here’s the scene: we two are freezing, working with the knit hats on, propping ourselves up on coffee, (and the occasional cigarette), getting to know each other musically in the Studio Room A of Shea Auditorium at William Paterson Universtiy, sharing the building at this ungodly time of night with only Pablo, the benign but difficult-to-understand security guard who held our i.d.’s until the tender hour of 3a.m. Pablo—where ever you are—I think I can speak for both Nicole and myself—-a part of us is seriously bleak without your less-is-more grunt of a hello. We love you. I hope you have a wonderful Turkey Day.
This is for you, Pablo. Now go get her from that BRIGHTS BOX.
For realz, I hope b&tb fans enjoy this, and we are thankful for you guys.
<3 Bern
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