Sci-Fi Songs: lap steel

Showing posts with label lap steel. Show all posts

Genre Break Song #4: The Ferris Wheel

To commemorate the end of summer, I offer this ode to the New Jersey Shore, The Garden State Parkway, and The Boardwalk. This song originally appeared on a CD that I released a few years ago. For more information on that album, click here.

I hope you enjoy it,

John Anealio

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The Ferris Wheel

by John Anealio

She works till 7:30

and I'm lured by this fair mermaid

We sail down the Parkway

and dock at Exit 98

We feel the sunset; a pink and orange glow

We taste the saline from the ocean's flow

We stroll down the boardwalk

and old wood creaks beneath our feet

Flashing lights surround us,

Trade winds blow in from the east

Shore air is heavy with humidity

Arcades are beeping like a symphony

The Ferris Wheel spins tonight

The carousel rings like chimes

Waves are crashing in lament

As Summer Ends

We take our shoes and socks off

our bare feet tread across the beach

The ground's a sandy mattress

The sky's a starry canopy

Salt water's freezing but her arms are warm

The night wind is singing like a troubadour

The Ferris Wheel spins tonight

The carousel rings like chimes

Waves are crashing in lament

As Summer Ends

Here are some of the tools that I used to create this track

Yamaha Acoustic Guitar in Standard Tuning, Capo at 5th Fret
Les Paul Studio Electric Guitar in Standard Tuning, Capo at 5th Fret
Washburn Electric Bass
Fender Mandolin
Chandler Lap Steel (Solo)
Sonor Glockenspiel
Tambourine
Drum Sounds from Roland JV-1010 Sound Module
Digi Design Pro Tools LE on a crumby old PC.

Genre Break Song #2: Hospital Girl

Hospital Girl.mp3

A few years ago, before I got into the lucrative world of writing songs about science fiction and fantasy novels, I released a fairly straight ahead singer/songwriter CD (read more about that here). In the time between that CD release and the start of Sci-Fi Songs, I composed a number of songs that have never seen the light of day.

Just as it is healthy to read books outside of the sci-fi/fantasy niche, I thought that it would be interesting to feature a song that isn't based on a speculative fiction novel once in a while. The first song in the Genre Break series was San Luis Obispo and you can download that for free right here .

A little over a year ago, I had to have some minor surgery. On the day of the surgery my doctor was running pretty late. I had to spend about two hours laying in my hospital gown while a few older ladies watched soap operas. I noticed a male nurse and a female nurse flirting. To pass the time, I started to make up a back story for these people. An idea for a song was born. When my surgery was completed, I promptly went home and finished writing the song.

Hope you enjoy it,

John

Hospital Girl

words and music by John Anealio

Nurse Kathy pulls on worn-out light blue scrubs

and ties her hair in a ponytail

She's exhausted from a night at the Dublin Pub

and composing a drunken e-mail

She slams her locker shut, says she's finally given up

Cause he'll never come back again

She is a Hospital Girl

Shies away from the rest of the world

She is a Hospital Girl

Does he need her like she needs him now?

Nurse Michael flirts with all of the girls at work

and Kathy doesn't say a thing

He steps out from the break room and swaggers down the hall like a jerk

and dismisses their love as just a fling

She slams the break room door, she can't take it anymore

cause he'll never come back again

Chorus

She was engaged in nursing school

but she was young and he was cruel. He's gone

but his name is still tattooed on her back

Chorus

Here are some of the tools that I used to record the track:

Martin Acoustic Guitar in Standard tuning, capo at the third fret
Gibson Les Paul Studio for the electric guitar parts
Washburn Bass Guitar
Trinity College Irish Bouzouki/Octave Mandolin
Chandler Lap Steel for the slide parts
Student Model Trumpet
Rode NT-3 microphone (to record the acoustic guitar and my vocals)
Apple Logic Pro 7 recording software
1. Yamaha Motif Keyboard for the drum, organ, and string sounds
2. Logic's included compressor, delay, and reverb plug-ins
3. The electric guitar parts were recorded through Logic's Guitar Amp Pro plug-in

Sci-Fi Song #9: Beautiful Vampire

Beautiful Vampire.mp3

As the season passes into October, I thought that it would be fitting to post a few songs that were influenced by the Gothic/Horror side of speculative fiction.

Beautiful Vampire was inspired by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Gothic novella "Carmilla". According to Wikipedia, the novella "tells the story of a young woman's susceptibility to the attentions of a female vampire named Carmilla."

I actually wrote this song about four or five years ago. I took the character of Carmilla and placed her in a modern setting, which in this case happens to be a goth club in New Jersey where she is working as a bartender.

This song was a staple of my live set for years. At the time, I was into using digital loop samplers. I would often create an ambient, reversed drone of a loop to set an atmosphere and I would improvise a solo using my lap steel (a string instrument played on the lap with a metal slide bar). That is exactly what I did for the intro of "Beautiful Vampire". In retrospect, I wish that I had cut the intro and placed it as a separate track on the CD, as it runs for about one minute and thirty seconds before the actual songs begin. If you get impatient listening to this piece, I recommend downloading it and skipping ahead to the '1:30' mark on the track.

I hope you enjoy it,
John

Here are the lyrics:

Beautiful Vampire
by John Anealio

With ample fear I descend into this dungeon paradise
The atmosphere is a haze of sweat and smoke and false black light
That illuminates the room into fluorescent shades of green
Elven queens and Gothic boys are high on Benzedrine
She's pulling on her vinyl dress

Carmilla reigns, dispensing drinks and supernatural stares
Mascara stains her ivory face and flowing chestnut hair
I'm captured in her regal glance

Now she wants to be alone with me, this Beautiful Vampire
She wants to be alone with me but I won't invite her in

As techno blares, she offers wine and immortality
As strobe lights flare, dark women act out sapphic fantasies
I'm clutching on my crucifix

Now she wants to be alone with me, this Beautiful Vampire
She wants to be alone with me but I won't invite her in

Her eternal life began in 1810
when she was bitten by an English nobleman
Just a farm girl who was young and innocent
And as the decades past she hasn't aged a bit

Now she wants to be alone with me, this Beautiful Vampire
She wants to be alone with me but I won't invite her in

Full disclosure:
I actually released this song on CD a few years ago. If you are interested in hearing the other songs on this CD, you can check it out here. When I started Sci-Fi Songs this summer, I decided to use a pen name. It is not much of a pen name though. John is my real first name and Anealio is my real middle name. I just dropped my last name. If you click on the links to my old CD, you will see my real last name with no mention of my middle name. I hope that isn't too confusing. I didn't want to receive an e-mail from someone telling me that I was ripping some other guy off when that other guy is me. :-) From this point on, I plan on using John Anealio for all of my music.

Here are the links:

Please don't feel pressured to buy anything. I am still going to release a new free song every two weeks here on the blog. I may even post some other songs from that CD here in the future if they are applicable to the sci-fi theme. I just thought that some people might be curious to hear some of my older work.