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Thursday, January 27, 2011

315. "C4(Ever)" by The Exploding Ninjas




This is one of a number of pieces which has been on deck and partially finished for a while now... multiple projects are well and truly leapfrogging one another on 39-40 in its last days. "C4(Ever)" dates back a couple weeks to my stint teaching at band camp. On one of the last days I taught an impromptu songwriting class. It resulted in a complete song that a bunch of the kids were able to perform at the final concert. The funny part was that the song was basically about explosions and disasters and grisly deaths. That's apparently what you get from a bunch of boys that age... I'm far more familiar with the female side of things, which really isn't universally girly, its just... I don't know, less single-minded about these things, perhaps? In any case, I was able to get the guys to frame their images of mayhem and destruction as something vaguely recognizable as a mirror to an emotional state. Sort of. I'm not sure if it mattered.

The "original" recording is the final live performance of the song at Burbank Music Academy. I started out my "cover" of it hoping to create something which sounded sort of like the demo for the song, a sort of backward-engineered faux 4-track. It didn't quite stay that way; toward the end I was just basically trying to make sure nothing sounded like a "real" rock band. I wanted to reserve that glory for the kids who rocked it on stage that week.

The personnel on the original were Austin on lead vocals, Marco on drums, Stephan (who wrote most of the riffage) on bass, and a whole bunch of other kids pitching in on vocals and auxiliary instruments, with me filling in the guitar.

Personnel (on the cover version): Rex

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