The 100 Days

I found these old-ish lyrics the other day. Decided to take some time this morning to turn them into a song. Any feedback would be great.

http://www.thirteenbirds.com/mp3/the100days.mp3

My father had a soldier's name

mine's borrowed from some dreamer

you might think it'd shake out fine

but it really ain't the same

last year I was a royal beast

a lion in the august sun

then they dumped me into the sea

bad luck, to say the least

i'm comin' right back at ya

at half-speed if I hafta

100 days of half-measures

100 days of hate

Me and Josie used to be the tops

all powder blue and gilded

you might think it'd shake out fine

but i'm down here in the slop

i'm comin' right back at ya

at half-speed if I hafta

100 days of half-measures

100 days of hate

I like your chords and the guitar seems like a nice backbone for the tune. There's at least one spot where the chords change direction in a pleasantly unexpected way. I'm thrown off by the structure of your verses which, on the page, appear to be spreading out the rhyme scheme to have line 1 rhyme with line 4. But your lines are sung with the expectation of rhyming the second and 4th lines. In the end, it feels there is no rhyme scheme at all.

I feel your chorus is a melodically a bit weak. Your vocal melody on the verses is strong and you stick to it but on the chorus you seem unsure of what notes are working for you.

This isn't the place to comment on production but I do feel the vocal is a little strident and at odds with the smoothness of the guitar strumming. I'd suggest giving your vocal a little halo of echo/delay to smooth it out a little. It's nothing against your voice specifically - I'd probably add a touch of delay for any singer tackling this song.

BTW, your voice strongly reminds me of our moderator's (blue2blue) singing voice.

Thanks. Interestingly enough, I usually put a little slapback on my vocals, but I recorded 'em and then noticed that the effect was off.

The chorus is definitely the "newest" part of the song v.s the verse I've been dragging around in my head for a couple years -- I'll give it another shot.

It's a very slight feel for the rhyme -- if I remember correctly, I wrote this as a way test of getting away from some cloying rhymeyness that overtaken a lot of what I'd been writing at the time.

I *just* rerecorded the vox and replaced the file, so...

Anybody else?

The rhythm on the electric guitar in the intro should be a more precise. Acoustic lead is nice but mixed too loud. Some weird volume things happening with the tremolo (especially in the chorus). A bunch of little mix things need to be automated/addressed. I really like the chord progression and the electric rhythm guitar part, and the words seem to fit nicely (I'm not really reading them as I listen).

seems like a great introduction to something else that is not there yet

i am thinking David Bowie, a-la Ziggy Startdust days

feels like something momentous is coming, but never gets there ...

yet

very nice

I can't tell you exactly why -- but I rather like this song. It breaks all kinds of very sensible rules. It challenges certain perfectly reasonable sensibilities. But I think I like it because it is so thoroughly itself.

I've been hearing -- and writing -- so much of the kind of thing I used to call pregurgitated, sort of already processed a couple times... ideas been through the system...

But this is... well... it plays by its own rules. That's for sure.

It doesn't sound anything like it's (as one of my old hi skool pals used to say about our fellow classmates) striving for normalcy.

And how can you not love a song that dangles the hideous line "i'm comin' right back at ya" in front of our horrified eyes and then immediately flips that over into the sublime with the follow-up line, "at half-speed if I hafta"? The term genius is overused but...

I like it. The guitar could be improved of course but you've created a very decent little track here with some great humanity to it -- very listenable. Lots of different textures in there...

Reminds me of Lou Reed.

Excellent job man!

I feel a little too much disconnect across the verses on this one. I'm again reminded of a meandering Robbie Robertson lyrical narrative, and I like the vagaries of such a thing but I never felt a comfortable starting point on this one to be sure of who/what is going on.

Your songs almost immediately fire up my imagination- you have an excellent vocabulary but you avoid the pretentious for the uniquely descriptive and that's what I like the most about your songs. Thumbs up for that.

I like the guitar much better on this one- nice and smooth and very interesting chord changes. A couple mix/production issues as prev. mentioned, but no major critique to add from me. Good song.

Thanks for all the nice comments. And to think, I'd mostly forgotten about these lyrics and found them on the floor under a pile of stuff. I'll try and fiddle with the mix this week -- I'm mixing on a pair of DJ cans (no monitors), so I'm sure that I'm mis-doing plenty of things.

If you're interested what these lyrics *might* be about, they slightly reference Napoleon's brief period of power after returning from exhile and before getting the boot for good -- but I think I was using that as a metaphor for someone or something that I was ticked at. The title is the way into the narrative, I suppose. Also, I remember being "intrigued" by some of the promo materials of that Marie Antoinette movie.

Well now it makes a LOT more sense. Maybe others got the reference but I totally missed it (and I'm a bit of a history buff too...) For me, just ONE fairly concrete reference would've made the connection for me. Elba, Waterloo, Paris... anything to jog my memory that way. I like it even more now.

I thought "Me and Josie..." (i.e., Josephine) was almost too obvious.