Psychographics, My Friend
Track #2: Family Drugs
http://agony-aunts.bandcamp.com/track/family-drugs
Agony Aunts began in late 2009 as an experimental collaborative effort; an un-moderated group of people writing songs anonymously on a Facebook page of which we were all admins and did not use our real names. Many of those anonymous songs became the basis of our debut album Greater Miranda. The page suspiciously disappeared sometime in 2011. To this day none of us knows who deleted it, or those who know will not admit it. "Family Drugs" dates back to the anonymous days, and until today I wasn't even sure who the authors were or what it was about. I had to interview my own band-mates to try to unearth the story.
1. So, Family Drugs - what are they?
Johnny The Space Commander: They are the things we do that make the loneliness of family life tolerable and manageable. Children until a certain age see themselves and parents as part of the same being. Each family member sees the rest of the family as THEM....It is about compromise and loneliness within a nuclear Family household. Maybe even feeling trapped, held back and compromised. The family drugs part of that song is the perversion that takes place because of that feeling and the things you must do to cope with those feelings.
Kaiser Buttonwillow: Verses are mostly nonsense, just to have that repeated-word motif. "How do you deal with your spaniel rage" is the only line I'd had all along, from years ago. "Each one of you is the royal them" is a pun on "royal we" - suggests that people are ganging up on you as a singular identity, I think. But yeah, 80% is nonsense.
JtSC: Verses are not nonsense. Please for this song or any, NEVER quote (Kaiser Buttonwillow) as saying lyrics are nonsense.
KB: Yes, please obey (Johnny The Space Commander) about which quotes of mine are fair game.
JtSC: Dude, you just can't ever say that....otherwise why would anyone want to listen to it or buy music from people that don't even care to have a song with any meaning. If I heard a band say that I would hate them.
KB: F*@% you.
JtSC: I'll F*&% you in the STREET! If you want to bring that attitude.
KB: I look forward to it.
JtSC: I WILL F*&@ YOU IN THE STREET! AGREED!
Ben E. Hana-Polaroid: By the way, since you asked, I deal with my Spaniel rage through fierce video game* and piano playing. I used to deal with it with booooooooozzzze.
2. I've heard that you got the idea from a metal box that you found in Chinatown. Is that true? How did that happen?
JtSC: It was at a white elephant gift exchange at my family's Christmas party. I had my aunt steal it from my dad so she could give it to me. Its also when I heavily started thinking about the above answer. (Editor's note: here's what the box looks like.)
KB: OK, attempt at coherent historiography:
I'd had the melody/chords/arrangement sitting idle for years...only thing missing was lyrics.
(Johnny The Space Commander) posts picture of the box...
Immediately I think of the first line...
about Family drugs...
and suggest to (Johnny The Space Commander) we write a song based on that first line.
I don't even remember if we embarked on that with him having heard the wordless demo version of it, but from there, he took the lyric ball and ran with it and I took his multiple paragraphs, and condensed it/changed it to fit the meter, and then he/we revised again, thru multiple iterations.
I remember him telling me what he thought it all meant...but i was never sure what he was talking about, or how it related to the final version of the lyrics.
But we both agreed that what we thought it MIGHT be about was pretty rad.
3. The song starts out in a strange time signature - what do you call that?
JtSC: Who knows or cares. We are all too shitty at music to discuss music at this level. All I know is there's a white soft rock reggae part, a world beat part and a rock part.
*BEHP is currently ranked in the top 100 of MLBs: The Show online players.
http://agony-aunts.bandcamp.com/track/family-drugs
Agony Aunts began in late 2009 as an experimental collaborative effort; an un-moderated group of people writing songs anonymously on a Facebook page of which we were all admins and did not use our real names. Many of those anonymous songs became the basis of our debut album Greater Miranda. The page suspiciously disappeared sometime in 2011. To this day none of us knows who deleted it, or those who know will not admit it. "Family Drugs" dates back to the anonymous days, and until today I wasn't even sure who the authors were or what it was about. I had to interview my own band-mates to try to unearth the story.
1. So, Family Drugs - what are they?
Johnny The Space Commander: They are the things we do that make the loneliness of family life tolerable and manageable. Children until a certain age see themselves and parents as part of the same being. Each family member sees the rest of the family as THEM....It is about compromise and loneliness within a nuclear Family household. Maybe even feeling trapped, held back and compromised. The family drugs part of that song is the perversion that takes place because of that feeling and the things you must do to cope with those feelings.
Kaiser Buttonwillow: Verses are mostly nonsense, just to have that repeated-word motif. "How do you deal with your spaniel rage" is the only line I'd had all along, from years ago. "Each one of you is the royal them" is a pun on "royal we" - suggests that people are ganging up on you as a singular identity, I think. But yeah, 80% is nonsense.
JtSC: Verses are not nonsense. Please for this song or any, NEVER quote (Kaiser Buttonwillow) as saying lyrics are nonsense.
KB: Yes, please obey (Johnny The Space Commander) about which quotes of mine are fair game.
JtSC: Dude, you just can't ever say that....otherwise why would anyone want to listen to it or buy music from people that don't even care to have a song with any meaning. If I heard a band say that I would hate them.
KB: F*@% you.
JtSC: I'll F*&% you in the STREET! If you want to bring that attitude.
KB: I look forward to it.
JtSC: I WILL F*&@ YOU IN THE STREET! AGREED!
Ben E. Hana-Polaroid: By the way, since you asked, I deal with my Spaniel rage through fierce video game* and piano playing. I used to deal with it with booooooooozzzze.
2. I've heard that you got the idea from a metal box that you found in Chinatown. Is that true? How did that happen?
JtSC: It was at a white elephant gift exchange at my family's Christmas party. I had my aunt steal it from my dad so she could give it to me. Its also when I heavily started thinking about the above answer. (Editor's note: here's what the box looks like.)
KB: OK, attempt at coherent historiography:
I'd had the melody/chords/arrangement sitting idle for years...only thing missing was lyrics.
(Johnny The Space Commander) posts picture of the box...
Immediately I think of the first line...
about Family drugs...
and suggest to (Johnny The Space Commander) we write a song based on that first line.
I don't even remember if we embarked on that with him having heard the wordless demo version of it, but from there, he took the lyric ball and ran with it and I took his multiple paragraphs, and condensed it/changed it to fit the meter, and then he/we revised again, thru multiple iterations.
I remember him telling me what he thought it all meant...but i was never sure what he was talking about, or how it related to the final version of the lyrics.
But we both agreed that what we thought it MIGHT be about was pretty rad.
3. The song starts out in a strange time signature - what do you call that?
JtSC: Who knows or cares. We are all too shitty at music to discuss music at this level. All I know is there's a white soft rock reggae part, a world beat part and a rock part.
*BEHP is currently ranked in the top 100 of MLBs: The Show online players.