This week's A-side "God's Last Words" is one of the best songs I've written, although I'm not sure if that comes through in the recording. It would probably be a controversial song if the wrong people (or right people??) heard it because it does the unthinkable by suggesting that "god" is wrong. I could probably write a thesis on my feelings and frustrations concerning organized religion but I feel your attention span already starting to drift so I'll keep it brief. In the little I've learned about the foundations of the major religions, I've seen a pretty clear unifying theme of love and brotherhood which is thrown around all the time and used as a recruiting tool by all sides but NOT practiced. Supposedly "god" loves everyone (except people that don't abide by whatever strict and ridiculous rules set by that religion's higher-ups of course). To quote myself (someone has to) from an earlier song from this challenge, "who knew unconditional love had so many strings attached?" Oh the hypocrisy of it all.
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| blah blah blah |
To me, the most offensive and horrifying religious idea is that of the Christian judgement day. I've known actual living, breathing human-beings that believe this part (and every other event) of the bible to be absolutely 100% factual. That the "loving god" who cares for us so much, the one that drowned every living thing on the planet once, the one that commanded a father to murder his son just to see if he'd do it, that that guy is on his way to smite the "non-believers" and take those "he" deems worthy back up to heaven leaving any one left over to rot and burn down below. What's even more disgusting is these people find some sort of sick comfort in this. Fuck that! And fuck them! (I'm studying French) When a parent seriously threatens and hurts their child, they are punished and the child is taken away. I think the same ideas should be applied to religion. If our "creator" causes us pain and suffering, we should take ourselves away from that "creator". Because it is US that matter. We are here and "god" is not. We need to "serve" and love each other, not a myth.
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| Mandolin! |
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| The Epiphone! |
I know I've already written far too much about this seemingly simple 2 minute and 20 second song but there's more... Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's All-Star Superman is one of my all time favorite comic books and definitely the best Superman story ever told. In the story, one of Lex Luthor's evil plans finally works and Superman is dying. In the final issue, something changes in Lex Luthor who has found a way to give himself all of Superman's powers. He starts to see the invisible threads that bind us all. He says "This is how he sees all the time, every day. Like it's all just us, in here together. And we're all we've got." That line was a major inspiration for this song and how I view the world in general.
Last week an animated movie adaptation of All-Star Superman was released on DVD. I was lucky enough to get to attend the world premiere screening where I got to meet and talk to the movie's screenwriter Dwayne McDuffie. A few days later, Dwayne died from surgical complications. Besides doing a wonderful job adapting Grant Morrison's story to the screen, Dwayne McDuffie was a tremendous writer in his own right. He scripted the majority of the best episodes of the instant classic animated Justice League Unlimited series. His Fantastic Four run was one of the comics that got me into going to the comic shop every week. Instead of wasting energy complaining about the lack of ethnic diversity in super hero comics as some creators do, in the early 90's he took matters into his own hands and founded his own comic company Milestone Media with the goal of employing great black comic creators (and any other race too) to create characters that they could identify with with problems that mattered to them. When I met him he was a heck of a nice guy and very receptive of fans. He was a giant in both real life and his industry and will be greatly missed.
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| Me with the late, great DwayneMcDuffie |
Oh, I should discuss the song on the B-side too! "What You're thinking" is a much much much simpler song about how frustrating it can be to try to get through to or please some people. There are just some people that are for whatever reason impossible to deal with and no matter what you do for them, they don't appreciate it. There's no solution offered because there is no solution. This recording was also very easy. It's a simple song so I kept it simple using only 3 elements: vocals guitar and my new Hohner Melodica! If you don't know what a melodica is, it's pretty much just a small keyboard with a hose you blow into to make sound. it has a great almost accordion-like sound that really enhances the mood of the song. I'll be using it more in the future.
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| Melodica! |
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| before I fooled with it |
That's it! Hopefully next week (this week actually because this blog is verrrry late!) won't be as painful.
8 down, 44 to go!
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MJM
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