The True Believer Sessions, Day Eight

I know what you're thinking. What happened to Day Seven? Well, Day Seven was last Tuesday, and all it entailed was bumping up the vocal on what was the final mix of "Not This Time," and realizing that the acoustic version I had tracked previously was sorely needing a pop filter on the vocal microphone if it was going to be usable.

Somewhere in there, I created the MySpace page, and now both versions -- I tracked a decent acoustic version tonight -- are either up, or will be shortly.

Then, I sorta hit a wall. I cued up the open D tune, and started noodling on electric over it, but I'm not hearing anything terribly compelling. Maybe it needs to stay acoustic. Maybe I need to get some lyrics in place and the texture will come out of that. I don't know yet. Once I realized that wasn't going anywhere, I started playing the song that started its life called "This Is For Andrea" -- and again, I don't remember why for the life of me -- to see how close it might be to having an arrangement.

I definitely like the verse and chorus. It still needs a bridge, and it's going to take a lot of willpower not to rip off the vocals from Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" at some point. Of course, maybe I just need to run with that, because I'm also hearing something from Sparta's last record that would render the Gabriel influence hopefully unrecognizable.

Which touches on something I've known about my drumming for years and years. It's like the old saying about one source being plagiarism and two sources being research. For me, it's more about stealing from unlikely and/or obscure sources than trying to be original. Not that Peter Gabriel is obscure, but Sparta doesn't exactly tear up the Billboard charts, so if I put it in that context, it might just work.