Niveous’ Songfight 200 of 2004:

 

Preface:

 

This surely has been a labour of love. First I listened to ever single songfight song (and coverfight song) of 2004 and then compiled my rankings then I started gathering quotes from all the songfighters regarding their songs. Then if that weren’t enough I started building a website for it. But then problems kept befalling the project. I got sick, I had family issues and geocities repeatedly mangled the pages. Now I’m here. A simple document based 200. It’s not about the flashy website anyway. It’s about the music and the people behind it. Gathering these quotes has been an incredible experience and has made the whole thing worthwhile and hope everyone enjoys reading this as much as I enjoyed compiling it.

 

Niveous

 

NIVEOUS’ SF 200 of 2004

 

200. “Massive Intelligence Failure” by Southwest Statistic

"Usually, no matter what the title is for a given week, I can write a song that talks about most any subject and manage to work it into the context that I aim for. "Massive Intelligence Failure" was about a good friend of mine named Sarah. Her boyfriend had just broken up with her and she called the first person she thought she could get a hold of. She was emotionally destroyed - convinced that the reason her boyfriend broke up with her was her fault. Sarah is a beautiful, both inside and out. I told her that maybe sometimes people are just blind to the things that really matter and get hung up on the things that don't."- Southwest Statistic

 

199. “Fight the Sea” by Heuristics Inc

"Back when I was in grad school in Virginia we went to a museum there, called the Virginia Living Museum, I believe. They had an interactive touchscreen program, where they would show little acted-out news reports talking about the problems associated with erosion from ocean action. Then, playing a policymaker, you could choose which of several options you would like to try to prevent the erosion. More news reports would be shown, explaining what had been done and what the results were. It was interesting to see how some very good-sounding ideas backfired, and just how difficult it was to prevent erosion. This thing stuck with me, and when "Fight the Sea" came up as a title, I thought of that "game" pretty quickly. I wanted to write a song about erosion and the problems it caused. So I went looking around on the Net for articles about it and actually put a bunch of scientific facts into the song. Science is fun!"- Heuristics Inc.

 

198. “Chaos & Order” by Squirrel Damage

“Chaos vs Order is about one person's quest for meaning in a ridiculous, oversaturated world. The protagonist asks vaious alleged authorities about the meaning of life.”- Tony Asbestos of Squirrel Damage

 

197. “Pass/Fail” by Michael Maas

"I was brainstorming ideas for the title, and came up with the idea of a relationship in which one person is always "keeping score." So I wrote it from the persective of the other person. I had recently watched "Punch Drunk Love," in which Adam Sandler's character says near the end something like "I have a love in my life now, and that makes me stronger than you'll ever know." So I added the element of danger to the chorus ("twice the man I was the night before I met you / think I could kill with just a look")"- Michael Maas

 

196. “Lizard Wizard” by W2 & The Temps

"The potluck project was harder than I thought it was going to be. Everyone was really supportive and enthusiastic, but the problem was the all-inclusive nature of it. Because everyone who wanted to be in it could be, it was like a Rubik's cube getting everyone in and covering all the instrumental bases. Some people only wanted to do guitar, for example, and so it was hard not having 12 guitars in the song. The second potluck, Lizard Wizard, came out much better, I thought, because it was a smaller group of people. It was an intersting experiment, though, and I think everyone, including me, had a blast doing it."- Jim of Seattle

 

195. “Less of You” by Glorious Mono

 

194. “She’s On My Mind” by Josh Woodward

“I wrote this at the same time I produced it. The verse riff came first, and it was going to be a smooth jazz song at first. But as I assembled the percussion parts, it was getting a harder sound, so I wrote the chorus with more edge. The lyrics came because, well.. I'm twisted.”- Josh Woodward

 

193. “As Icons of my youth fall silent” by Son of Supercar

 

192. “Paper Cuts and Spilling Guts” by The Voice Inside Your Head

“yeah, there was a fun song :-) that title just kind of screamed out to be given the splattercore death metal treatment.  so while i was in my car (the day before it was due) and just thinking about the title, and the idea of juxtaposing an accountant (paper cuts) and a serial killer (spilling guts) occurred to me-- and all the lyrics (in my opinion, the best lyrics i have ever written by far!) wrote themselves in about ten minutes.  i had to hurry home so i could write them down!  then late that night i was driving around again, and listening to all my relapse records samplers for inspiration.  got home sometime in the morning and started learning how to use my new USB recording interface, and put all the tracks together (it was especially fun playing the drum part -- it was done on a keyboard but i played it live rather than programming it -- all those double-bass hits at 250 bpm:-)) -- since i had to learn how to use the equipment while i was recording, that 38 second song took me 6 hours to record!  right up to the deadline, actually.”- TVIYH

 

191. “Zombie Son” by Level Nivelo

“Zombie Son came about becuase I'd been wanting to do a swing number, and since "Big Bad Voodoo Daddies" are in the genre, I thought zombies would be a good topic (there's an obvious shout-out to BBVD in the lyrics).”- Duncan of Level Nivelo

 

190. “Brother in Law” by Location, Location, Location

“Oh my, Brother in Law was a collaboration between me and Ryan. He plays the fancy guitar in Mosswoodians. We wanted to get a School of Fish sound on that one. Remember 3 Strange Days? Anyway, we started with drum loops and distorted guitar. Then started writing lyrics. Ryan came up with the basic story about taking your sister's fiance to a strip club before they got married because he was kind of a geek. We then started thinking about how perhaps this was part two of MC Frontalot's Yellow Lasers, as if your sister was the Princess Leia character and the fiance was the good MC. Se we added in some references and MC Frontalot samples. I think that is about it. I guess it could have just as easily been a Freedom Fries song. I originally wanted to call the band Freedom Friends, but decided to keep things simple for the archive.”- Ken Mahru

 

189. “Cur” by R. Mosquito vs. Blind Mime Ensemble

“Working with the Great Mime was fantastic. I was kind of worried that he would say no. This was probably a reasonable fear considering that I was -- in essence -- asking for a blessing to cut up and destroy his otherwise tuneful tunes... as well as asking him to break out the mic and bust me out some "curs." But he promptly replied with yes and offered up even more tunes for me to dig my scalpel into. (His expansive, high quality songfight output was plenty, though!) And I must say, when I heard the curs he recorded, I nearly pooped my pants with glee. When I was done with the re-assemblage, I sent it back to him for a final chance to say "dude... I don't want my name associated with this..." and also to tell him what bits came from where. He didn't recognize anything, which I figured was probably an indication of a mash-up job well done. That and he didn't mind me tarring his name with fed-back noise.”- R. Mosquito

 

188. “The Martians are Going to Eat us” by Dylan Nau

“I was sitting in my basement studio and was trying to come up with something slow and sad. I have a tendancy to write upbeat happy songs. After i found a cool piano patch I just started layering things trying to create a lot of space and a real plodding rhythm. I experimented with the drums a bit. i had a kick and snare mic, then i put another mic in a different room, compressed the hell out of it and it gave me this huge drum sound. just in recording this song I learned alot about trying different things and not sticking to a formula. I think this song is heavily influenced by Pink Floyd, especially the stuff they did on Live at Pompeii. After most of the song was done I knew it needed the slide gtr, I think thats what really makes this song. The lyrics just kind of write themselves, they arent too great but they fit the mood of the song. i like the ending part when the guy decides to bury himself alive rather than get eaten by the Martians.”- Dylan Nau

 

187. “Troublemaker” by Puce

“The first song I submitted to SongFight was alright (although I don’t think anyone shared my definition of what a ‘Chuck’ was), but the second one I did was not-so-good. A lurker on the forums named Megalocephaly decided to call me out by making an entire thread to berate me with. “Whoever Puce is, they need to get their shit together.” He was complaining about my style-switching, over-use of falsetto, and other things. The thread was quickly Nevada’d, but his criticisms stuck with me. My next song, Troublemaker, focused on putting a somewhat humorous spin on these (and a few of my own) criticisms. I think every SongFight regular has to write a song about songwriting at some point; this is mine. Listening again I’m cringing at the mix, and I realize my vocal delivery makes the song sound much more angry and serious than it’s supposed to. I do however, still like the last 10 or so seconds of the song. If you listen to just the vocal track for that segment you can hear neighborhood dogs barking in the background”- Puce

 

186. “Wrath of God” by Fifteen Years

“"Wrath of God" was with Anita, my girlfriend here at med school. It was composed in less than 2 hours, and mostly a distraction from studying. I was going for a trance-like prayer, and a lot of people on the boards didn't get that she was asking God to kill her. I imagined her in the woods, on her knees, and begging God to strike her down.”- Lonbobby

 

185. “New Sex” by Redcar

“New Sex is pretty much about The Hip Cola (mixmaster) in many ways and words written by Leaf. It was strange to use another's words. I'm much more into writing in a stream of consciousness performance concept whereby I write as I sing. Just something I do in general. I feel very strongly towards phoenetics with poetry and feel that words sometimes written ahead are harder to lay into music. I felt it was a happy accident in many extremes. Leaf didn't like my initial approach with the words but The Hip Cola aka PinV made it all that much more worth while with his excellent mixing skills. Three way collab cross the world is not easy to do in a week while satisfying the other players in an artistic shared vision. I think we did great and I like the song, but I was pretty bummed with certain performance moments of my vocal that I would have liked to have redone. Awesome mix though.”- Tonetripper

 

“Tonetripper and I started discussing this right after my remix activity with Jute Gyte and we decided that something remixish would be a great way to tackle this fight. Simultaneously, Leaf and I were discussing entering the fight, and were in the "lemme know if you come up with something" stages... BAM, Leaf sent me lyrics, which I sent to TT. He sent me back some structured bits using those lyrics and some drum loopy stuff and I went to town. I employed all my bag of tricks on this track. Once we had some semblance of the final product down, I fired it off to Leaf for some of his magic skin work. He had problems and delays (and 6 other collabs on the go for this fight...SLUT!), finally culminating in a power outage, causing the final mix with his live drumming to have to use an mp3 file of his tracks. It actually worked out well as the mix was intended to be grainy anyways. The track was longer than most SF tracks, and mixing it was really involved. I really enjoy how redcar can move in just about any musical direction it wants to without too much trouble. I'm really lucky to work with such professional and talented doOds. And I'm guilty of getting off topic easily....”- The Hip Cola

 

184. “Upcoming Downtime” by Josh Woodward

“Upcoming Downtime was my attempt at a song about the suicide of a computer peripheral. In retrospect, I wish I'd have gone a more electronic route with the song, because the organic music doesn't really hint at who the character is.”- Josh Woodward

 

183. “That’s Not What I Need” by Baby in the Corner

 

182. “Crinkle Binkle” by Octothorpe

“We wanted to record a song, but didn't have time to get lyrics from Stubs. It's not like it used to be, he is in New York now, and we are still in Seattle. He used to have lyrics for us within minutes of the song title being posted, but now we are lucky to get in touch with him. That means that Mad Dog ended up writing it. If you know anything about Mad Dog, that means it was going to have political content. I mean come on. There's a war on. It's an election year, etc., etc. Musically, the idea came from the "unecessary closeup" spots from Wayne's World. And yes, I admit it, fluffy is correct, I played no instruments whatsoever during those choruses. It's a stock program on the good old DD55. That drum machine is the only guitar we got, generally.”- Spud

 

181. “Spalding Gray is Missing” by The Modern Alternatives

 

180. “Dinga Da Donga” by Redcar

“Dinga Da Donga I love. The verses were made by the Hip Cola and they are the cornerstone of the tune. The chorus was written by me in my head and then transferred to the recorded medium. Catchy and fun with no ambition for story or song. HC actually took a stab at me in the verses. Something we do all the time in creation. We like to needle each other. I played the kit and put the chorus together while he worked the verse. I arranged and he mixed. This was pre-Leaf. HC and I are the nucleus of Redcar, but now that Leaf is in the picture it's hard to work without his awesome skill set. I loved Dinga Da Donga. Power and pop with no real story. Just hooks. Good song from a top 40 perspective. Blue may disagree. ”- Tonetripper

 

“Well that's a funny story. As I recall it, TT kept telling me he's got this great song worked out, it's gonna kick yadda yadda yadda...and all I'll need to do is add some guitar and mix it. When he finally sends it to me, it's like this one part over and over, jammed out over 3 minutes. Now to be fair, the part is awesome and I'm really impressed. But this is like, Saturday night, fight due Monday morning kind of thing, and I have a job, he didn't. So I was pretty pissed off to say the least. I knew that while he had a great moment for a song, it didn't make a song. So I figured out what key it was in, and started playing around with chord progressions that would resolve to his part as a chorus. Finally I figured it out. So I performed some editing/mixing mad magic on his work to encapsulate it as a chorus and outro, then tracked my verses ad-hoc, stream of conciousness vocalizing. I comped them into something sensible, gave TT a "shot" in the process, and sent it back to him to add his voice for the 2nd verse for balance. Then I mixed the whole thing late into Sunday night and voila! It turned out to be a great track that still could use another part. Sometimes for redcar we have sacrifice the elusive 3rd part/bridge in a song to ensure that the production quality is good. I'd say that production is a big priority for us.”- The Hip Cola

“In general Redcar is about stretching. Each song a new challenge in songwriting and performance. If you listen to each track we have done for SF they are all very much different. We always wanted to explore the art of Songwriting through SF while beefing up the chops in the technical end.”- Tonetripper

 

179. “Mission Accomplished” by Jack Shite

“The idea for "mission accomplished" pretty much came from that dumb banner the navy hung on that aircraft carrier that George Bush landed on, declaring an "end to the war in Iraq". As it's obviously hardly the end of the war in Iraq, I wanted to point out the presumptious and cavalier attitude of the Bush administration. I used a number of samples of Bush and Cheney to illustrate the fallacy of the spin these particular players were feeding the world. I even included a line that John Kerry used after returning from Vietnam ("who'll be the last to die for this mistake?"). Musically, i wanted to keep it pretty spare with the mandolin and congas. the reversed guitar track gives it that sort of eerie, edgy, sort of war feel (like CCR's "run through the jungle" does....)”- Jack Shite

 

178. “As Icons of My Youth Fall Silent” by Boomstick

“Boomstick's me and Freudian Slip, we'd wanted to do a collaboration, and the title was grotesque enough to appeal to both of our twisted sensibilities. She wrote some heartbreaking lyrics, I worked out the music, and we both cried our eyes out on the final mix. Well, okay, I did, at least. Mad about her, though we've never met IRL. Too much damned country in between us.

Not really much to do with process in that... hmmm. Okey...
1) expressed interest, and got a go for it from FS
2) roughed out the guitar line after pondering the mysteries of time signatures
3) shipped it off to FS for vocal roughs
4) learned crickets are really loud in Pennsylvania, heh.
5) bounced various phrasings and intonations back and forth with FS
6) got her final vox and (after de-cricketing, heh) laid mine down, still to the rough guitar--which stayed in the mix
7) completely out of order, laid down the drum track, trying to get the velocity sensors on the little Roland pad to make the brush swish *not* sound like crashing waves in a storm
8 ) final mix, bawled my eyes out”- Rabid Garfunkle

177. “Lavender Splendour” by The White Hat

“As far as what went into Lavender Splendor, I recall that it started with the main fingerpicking riff that I'd had knocking around in my head for awhile. I used my Guitar Grimoire to find some chord forms to provide counterpoint to the main riff. Note that this was at a time where I was recording exclusively through my Dell PC Mic, so all the way along I was battling with clipping and all that. I think that the lyrics came after that. Listening to it now, I suppose I was not in the happiest state of mind at the time. Anyway, once I had all of that down, I threw in some more embellishments where things seemed thin. Six tracks, one set of strings, and 54 takes later, I'd come to the end of another week and another Songfight! If I were to choose a song to rerecord now that I have better technology/guitars, this would be it.”- The White Hat

 

176. “Brown Boxes” by Personnel

 

175. “Red Zero” by Fishboy Rex

“red zero was one of those rare moments for me that was more of the song writing itself than me writing the song. i was just the guy moving the pen. i just picked up the guitar and started strumming a little bit and liked where it was going. the words started coming to me so i wrote down whatever came. for some reason the whole time i was writing the words, i was hearing a british voice singing it. so i sang with a british accent. a lot of people gave me a hard time about that and said i was trying to imitate david bowie, but that really wasn't the case at all - at least not on purpose. i was just recording that song that my brain wrote without me. that's still one of my favorite songs i've ever done. i need to re-record it one day. i really like that song, and it's rare that i like one of my own songs like that.”- Fishboy Rex

 

174. “In the Ditch” by the Hell Yeahs

““In the Ditch” is by far the most "evil" of all the Hell Yeahs songs. The title just seemed to cry out for a song about grave robbing! We had that basic idea and then Phil ran with it, crafting it into a truly wonderful and wicked tune. I remember when I was doing the vocals, Phil told me to really feel the lyrics, to get down in that grave and take back what was mine (and to sound really bitchy while doing it). Of course, my favorite part of this song is the "Bitch I want it back" part. I felt like such a bad-ass rock goddess singing those lines!”- Heather Redmon

 

173. “Half a Stone” by Ken’s Super Duper Band n Stuff

“Half a Stone was based on the line "Cooking is Chemistry, Love is a Mystery." The rest kind of just fell into place after that. I wanted to paint the picture of lovers lying in bed and talking all night.”- Ken

 

172. “Back from Brazil” by Urine Luck

 

171. “Motor Psycho” by Sonofsupercar

 

170. “Puppet’s Dream’ by Johnny Cashpoint

“'Puppet's Dream' is on one level inspired by 'Asylum', a brit horror portmanteau film of the 1970s (i think). It was also inspired by the success of my previous week's entry, Snooter!”- J$

 

169. “Hey Ruth” by Loyalty Day

“Hey Ruth was a Cardigans rip off musically. I came up with the verse riff and chorus chords and we built the song around them.”- Ken

 

168. “From This Day On” by the Unknones

“The unknones came about when I mentioned that I planned on doing the 1/4/5/ song challenge same week Johnny Ramone died. It just seemed like the right time to do a Ramone's tribute song the same week Johnny Ramone died and following the 1/4/5 challenge was just simply the appropriate way to do it.”- Hoblit

 

167. “Crinkle Binkle” by Transatlantic Fight Club

“Crinkle Binkle was a song I wrote with Niveous in mind. I had this crunching guitar progression that I knew would sound great with his voice on top. And it did.”- J$

 

"J$ brought me this great beat to work with and it inspired me to try and 'call' on the song like Maxim Reality of the Prodigy. Doing a drug song seemed to be the best way to go with the title and I thought it fit with the Maxim Reality tough guy bit. Even though my wife heckled me the whole time I recorded."- Niveous

 

166. “Can’t Take Our Love Away” by Binded Ages

 

165. “Gift With Purchase” by Kimmy D

“Gift with Purchase is one woman's lust for an unidentified patron at the makeup counter.”- Tony Asbestos (Kimmy’s husband)

 

164. “Rabies” by Baby in the Corner

“I miss Paul. I really do. I think he added a neat feel to both of those songs. Same with Coffee Shop Girl, available on somesongs. Paul is a very quiet and laidback guy, but he added a neat vibe to the songs he worked on. He is also a very cryptic guy. We don't know why he is no longer available, he just had some personal issues and said that he was not going to be able to jam with us for a long time. Now the Half Racks are Don on bass, Justin on drums, and myself on guitar/vocals (Chad recently quit the band.) We could use a good guy like Paul on lead guitar. I am actually holding on to the hopes that Hoblit is going to move to Spokane and become our lead guitarist once his lease ends in February!”- Glenn Case

 

163. “Between the Rain” by Hostess Mostess

“"Between the Rain" was our first entry in a long time. We worked with the new digital recording system I'd gotten for Xmas last year; it was the first Hostess Mostess song done entirely digitally. The recording is simple: 2 classical guitar tracks, 2 lead vocal tracks, 4 or 5 backing vocals at any given time. The lyrics (like most HM lyrics) are largely meaningless, but they play on the concept of dualism (that physical stuff is entirely seperate from mental stuff). As neuro-cognitive psychologists, we strongly disbelieve in dualism, and see many of people's modern psychological and social troubles stemming from their (our) inability to completely reject dualistic thinking. So the song is kind of a riff on that: "Between my hands and my soul is a covenant of trust" speaks to the idea that while seperate, they work together and so are not really seperate at all. Same with the "spirit reaching down" to "touch the ground", and the "moment I first heard my voice" which splits action and perception in an obviously false way.

The music is very straightforward except for the bridge, which was written almost as improv: the guitar tracks played a nearly randomly chosen progression, then I recorded a bunch of melodies until I found one that strung the chords together fairly logically. A fun trick for when I run out of musical ideas. The backing vocals are very soft and very reverb-y because they are out of tune and warbly. But they work as they are, I think. They sound childrens-choir-ish, which I like.”- Hostess Mostess

 

162. “Danger Bus” by Loaded Lobster & the MCB

 

161. “The Ballad of Poncho & Lefty” by Roy Castle

 

160. “Brown Boxes” by Pompeii

 

159. “Crinkle Binkle” by Spy vs. Pie

“When me and Brian saw this title, we were all, you know "what the fuck?" We tried for a while to come up with an idea, but it was slim pickins. we decided to divide it up and each write 45 seconds of material, me with Crinkle, him with Binkle. Neither of us expected them to be so different! After I got both chunks, I tried a variety of chop-n-mix styles, like switching tracks every line, or every other line... We decided it'd be best if his song was the bridge in mine. To me, this song is all about that guiro sample.”- Phil Redmon

 

158. “Lucky Man” by Abominominous

“Another jolt of Steve Martin inspiration, this time from the movie "Leap Of Faith." There's 14 tracks of backup hooting, all recorded one right after the other in my kitchen. The drums, piano, and flute are all programmed with a mouse. Yeah!”- Abom

 

157. “In the Gutter” by The Voice in Johnnys Head

“TVIYH has an absolutely fantastic voice. I love it. The stuff we did together tended to be very easy because I had the song finished before he stepped in to lend his gorgeous Leonard Cohen-seque tones, so it was just a question of mixing.”-J$

 

“this was the second song johnny wrote that week, and he liked his other one better and he couldn't submit both of them... i liked this song too much to let him waste it, so i volunteered to sing it for him.  sadly, i didn't have much time for recording, so i ran through a couple quick takes and then recorded what i had.  i think if i'd spent more time with it and gotten more comfortable with the song i could have made it more my own style and it might've sounded better, but as it was it seems to me i was just trying to emulate the demo part johnny had recorded...”- TVIYH

 

156. “Dark All Day” by Bjam!

“I'd just finished my world cultures clas, where we had been talking about the Middle East, specifically the Israel-Palestine clash. We'd seen a slide show about the intifadas, and when I sat down at the computer next period I just started typing, and eventually something that resembles the final song came out. “- Bjam!

155. “Danger Bus” by Pompeii

 

154. “Say the Word” by Jon Eric

“I resolved the week previous that I'd only do Red Fights, to retain the original spirit of Songfight - that if you don't like a title, either get creative or don't compete. I wasn't too keen on "Say the Word" at first, but then I realized that the effect could be striking if I used random voices and random words, before coming across The Word, which is of course "Love." Musically, I was trying to emulate Puerco, actually. His song "Purple Eve" completely floored me when I first heard it, and it uses a similar trick. Ditto that for the vocals. That's why I tried double-tracking them, and I think it worked. I did about a thousand vocal takes to get each line just right, and that usually pays off.”- Jon Eric

 

153. “Please the Pig” by Charcoal

“"Please the pig" was a lot of fun live, and I think the crowd had a lot to do with that. The place was full of people and energy, which wasn't the case for my first set (early on day one). And I knew it was a funny song but I didn't expect it to go over as well as it did. The Austin show was the first time in almost a decade that I'd played to a live audience, so I was pretty nervous at the start. By the end of the song I was almost ready to dance, even; I had thought it would have been funny to turn around near the end and shake my butt at the audience a la George Michael but in the end I didn't have the guts. Perhaps next time I will start drinking earlier than noon and maybe that will help.”- Charcoal

 

152. “Fight the Sea” by Josh Woodward

“Fight the Sea was one of those songs that just happened. Something deep in my brain wrote that one by itself, and the rest of it is still trying to figure out what it means.”- Woodward

 

151. “Moscow, Idaho” by Sonofsupercar

 

150. “That’s Not What I Need” by Abominominous

“When Songfight went to 3 songs, i entered all three as Abominominous. I wrote & recorded all threee songs in an 8 hour stretch after I got home from work on the last day to do them. This one only stands out to me because of the "talkin' bout ra-na-na-ra-na-na-ra" part.”- Abom

 

149. “Firebomb” by 15-16 Puzzle

“"Firebomb" was a really cool thing, too. It was a joint venture between me and the John Benjamin Band. He came up with the idea of each of us recording a demo, swapping, and then each of us recording a full blown song of the other's demo for songfight. I knew he'd done this before with Add to great results, so I was in. I think we gave ourselves 3 days to write and 4 days to record. I was very very pleased with the results of both of the songs I was involved with. My favorite part was that no one really suspected that we had written each other's songs. John sent me this very sweet bouncy acoustic guitar song, which I really liked. I always feel the need to change a coversong that I'm doing, to give it something to differentiate it from the original. So I slowed it way down and played it with electric guitars. Despite me messing up some of the cool meter-things John had in the song, I think it came out really well.”- 15-16 Puzzle

 

148. “Wrath of God” by Jon Benjamin Band

“"Wrath of God" is about forbidden love. I came up with the repeated line "I'll face the wrath of God to be with you" first. So then I had to think of a situation where the wrath of God would be involved. I started out just thinking of a basic story where a man falls in love with a nun. But it just wasn't coming to me. All the beginnings I came up with were too obvious and "storylike" for my taste. So I scouted around the 'net for some inspiration and found the story of Abelard and Heloise. That sparked something in my head, but rather than just set their story down in lyrics, I took the feelings I got from their story (which is something less than romantic, and kind of pissed me off at Abelard a little to be honest) and added some elements of that to the lyrics. If you examine the lyrics (not that I expect anyone to), you'll probably notice that the "story" of the song isn't quite as straightforward as I might be making it out to be. But I like having layers of meaning in my lyrics, and I don't want to spoil everything by explaining too much. Some of what goes into the lyrics I write is probably a subconscious agenda that I'm not even aware of. I hope you can read more than one thing into the song, I believe that whatever meaning comes to you from the lyrics is as valid as any other.”- Jon Benjamin

147. “I am Tempted” by Humbert

“A few months back I wrote a real sensitive, heartfelt songfight entry (House in my head). It was a pretty heavy emotional investment writing it and I kind of felt I stuck my neck out with the sensitive guy lyrics. In retrospect I suppose it was a bit foolish to send in that type of song into SF because the reaction I got was, "Er...dude, what's with the soppy lyrics?" It didn't do too well. So tempted was the new, cynical entry which is basically a satire on that previous song and the response from my friends. I did it for a laugh but really deep down I think there was some lingering insecurity related to the himh debacle.”- Humbert

 

146. “Zero 2 Phantom” by the Befores

“I don't know what inspired Z to do the lyrics but for me, right from the beginning I wanted to create a sound that would highlight her beautiful voice; so I started with a soft upright bass sound and strings and went from there. Unlike aditl which was a cookie cutter production, I wanted to push the envelope with the production values here. I won't go into the details but there are about fifty tracks on that song! I turned into a real production monster.”- Humbert

 

145. “Boarding Call” by the Idiot Kings

“boarding call was written after a week in oxford and paris. i took iceland air both ways; that's the only significance of the intro. i pieced the song together from loops and fragments i recorded. the vocals were largely edited together from different takes done with different nuances and whatnot, and the ring modulated bass is actually a baritone guitar. about the only thing i really like about this song these days is the solo. “- Idiot Kings

144. “WTF” by MC Baccarat

“I suggested FAL do a "WTF," but Glenn and Drew were both busy, so it didn't feel right. I did think up some funny lines at the last minute, though (I'd been listening to a lot of TV ont he Radio in the car, and I caught myself freestyling to the music), so I whipped up an MC Bac track in something like two days. I was maybe a little less than pleased with the finished product, but you should have seen me when Future Boy offered to remix it! I couldn't quit grinning!”- Jon “MC Baccarat” Eric

 

143. “Five Minutes” by Twisted Kingdom

“The inspiration was really just the title.  I sat down and came up with the riff and such, then I played around writing lyrics with various themes, and then finally I found one that I liked - the idea that everything can change in just five minutes.  Most of my songs just sort of come out like that, a random gestation while I'm messing around with lyrics.”- Twisted Kingdom

 

142. “Moscow, Idaho” by Lonbobby & Evan

“Moscow Idaho is just a "fun" song, through and through. Evan and I were completely tongue in cheek with almost every aspect of the song -- instrumentally, vocally, lyrically. It's something that doesn't necessarily come across according the board's reactions, but I had an amazing time doing it.”- Lonbobby

 

141. “Gin or Ginseng” by Feldspar

“"Gin or Ginseng" was inspired by accident. I actually started working on it about an hour before the song was due. I wrote the melody while randomly riffing on my keyboard, and I intended it to be for a different song. But it was really late at night, and I didn't want to forget it. So I kept playing the same eight notes, over and over, hoping to drill it into my memory so that I could start working in the morning. Then, I started putting words on top of the notes. I checked the clock, and figured that I had about forty-five minutes in which to work. I had the lyrics pretty much written in my head, so I turned on my computer and started working. I recorded the piano, then laid the vocals on top of that. I made up the words to the chorus on the spot. I added the guitar because it sounded too boring without it. I added distortion to make it "jump" out of the mix. I don't remember how I wrote the part that I ended up playing, but I know that it took like ten attempts to get the whole guitar part out on a single track. I finished with like ten mintues to spare.”- Feldspar

 

140. “Promise is a Promise” by Loyalty Day

“Promise is a Promise was an early collaboration where we would hang out at David's house and have dinner, drink and jam. The best part is the the bridge when the synth and guitar play together.”- Ken

 

139. “Deuce” by Revel Yth

“what inspired deuce:
the definition.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
deuce 2 (ds, dys) Informal
n.
1. The devil: "Love is a bodily infirmity . . . which breaks out the deuce knows how or why" Thackeray.
2. An outstanding example, especially of something difficult or bad: had a deuce of a time getting out of town; a deuce of a family row”- Yth

 

138. “A Very Unlikely Occurrence” by Max the Cat

“"A very Unlikely occurance" Besides trying to work backwards from the hook. I wanted to be sneeky political. I seem to be good at going down in flames with a song on my lips.”- Max the Cat

 

137. “Romantic Cheapskate” by MC Frontalot

“My version of Romantic Cheapskate was inspired by the title. It is the main way to do song fights, as far as I can tell. By the way, Romantic Cheapskate is an awesome title and whoever came up with it rules. I guess that in addition to the title there were a couple of things going on: 1) I had heard songs on song fight that were about song fight, and I wanted to point out that it is not a good idea to do a song about song fight and then post it on song fight. It is too much like masturbating when you should instead be putting on a live sex show! I am not sure why I decided to illustrate how bad an idea that is by doing it myself. And also 2) I think that those kind of raps where the rapper disses people and talks about what a relatively awesome rapper he or she is are the lamest possible raps, plus it has always been irritating to me that when I try to tell certain people about song fight they say, "oh, so like it is a battle rapping web site?" and then I realized that POW there's another terrible idea for a song fight song RIGHT THERE! As for why I choose terrible ideas when perfectly good ideas are readily available, I cannot explain (see #1).”- MC Frontalot

 

136. “3 Day Waiting Period” by Charcoal

“"Three-day waiting period" is a pretty typical "charcoal" song: slow, depressing, and not quite in tune. It also has a lot of the "atmosphere" noise that is, I think, a key part of my style. There are a bunch of weird sounds mixed in very softly, so that it's hard to pick any one thing out of the mix- the end result is kind of eerie. At least, that's the idea.”- Charcoal

 

135. “Save a Pony from the Factory” by Lonbobby & Yaruss

 

134. “Please the Pig” by Abecedarian

“One of the Chinese students in the lab next to me sent his child to school wearing a 'porn star' shirt and he got sent home. Ever since then I've wanted to do a song that pokes fun at people who use things from other langauges that means something a little more off-colour than what they think it means. 'Plaisir la Porc', literally translates to 'pleasure the pig'. The rest of the lyrics came pretty easily and take grinning pot-shots at rap musicians, the police, and people who write music in languages that they don't quite understand. On the other hand there are some really cool ways of saying things in other languages don't have the same effect in English, like the phrase: 'Il faut s'y faire' (pronounced 'eel foe see fair') means "we must" but has much more of a compelling punch to it than any way I could say it in English.”- Abecedarian

 

133. “I Don’t Like Eggplant” by Dreamy Mo & the Commoners

“Heheh! Inside jokes are not for everyone, but I love them as long as I am in on it! The whole Dreamy Mo thing is like the joke that should have died long ago, but keeps getting resurrected somehow. It was kinda old to begin with, and we keep running it into the ground. I also like collabing with Hoblit, Drew, Voice, and Ken. Mo's responses to all of this madness also tends to crack me up. Mo really is one of my favorite songfighters that I have not met, but to set the record straight, there is no romantic interest in Mo (Or any male for that matter.) I have always been crazy about girls, and I found the one that I chose to marry nearly 10 years ago. I think that is another part of what makes this project a kick in the pants for me.”- Glenn Case

 

“"i don't like eggplant" happened because we decided we wanted to add some more to the 'dreamy mo' legacy, and the title was too goofy to pass up.  again, drew and glenn both did some lyrics, glenn recorded a demo version, i added bass (it has become a lot easier because he's decided to follow a real similar progression and rhythm and stuff as kind of a running gag in all the DMatC songs) and hoblit did lead guitar again, and also the backing vocals (which i think really make that song!)”- TVIYH

 

132. “In Full Effect” by Ten Feet Tall

“Elle is amazing -- so emotional and sultry with her voice. I love working with her, and she is one of my best friends.”- Lonbobby

 

131. “Pass/Fail” by All Night Bakery

 

130. “The Martians Are Going To Eat Mo” by SonofSupercar

 

129. “Upcoming Downtime” by State Shirt

 

128. “Pass/Fail” by Abominominous

“Written not extremely long after seeing Bowling For Columbine. This song pretty much sums up how I felt for much of high school, i.e. "I'm gonna fuckin' blow." Also: Lisa Frank, as you may or may not know, designed all of those unicorn folders & stickers back inna 80's.”- Abom

127. “Firebomb” by Carol Cleveland Sings

 

126. “Between the Rain” by ADD

“The inspiration was the title itself I guess. Between the rain and something else. Tears are like rain, years rhymes with tears, etc. Simple free-association.”- ADD

 

125. “Silent Pipe” by Redcar

“Basically, my desire to lay down some rap. I'd been thinking for awhile that I needed to get the rap out of me, and this seemed to click into place to set that up. I created a character, Pavlov's Dawg, and told his story, his continued fight against the craving for crack. I was goin' for a semblance of Gangsta's Paradise in terms of feel and flo. This one I pretty much drove musically, except for the great ending musicating by my brotha TT. I would say that while I really enjoyed this track creatively and sonically, it does not really represent redcar well. But then again, it does, because the beauty of redcar is that when we move in a direction, those that can, do.. Those that can't, either don't or find something that they can and do that. It's not always an equal 50/50 or 33/33/33 (with Leaf now) split on writing. In one week that is almost impossible. Great lessons are learned in collaberating this way, humility is a must. Ego's must be checked at the door. Finally, he who mixeth haveth the powereth. So we try to rotate those duties....”- The Hip Cola

 

124. “Less of You” by C. Layne & Revel Yth

“working with yth was very nice. it was something we had been wanting to do for a while, but for one reason or another hadn't gotten around to accomplishing just yet. she had sent me a short clip of a song she had started writing, and i liked it so much i asked her for the source so i could play with it. pretty soon after that i had the entire song finished musically, and decided to go ahead and write a verse and chorus with it. i wasn't sure if we'd have the time to work out a duet verse, so i figured i'd write a melody that would mesh well over top of the one she had already sung, and it turned out much better than i had imagined. after about 12 hours of sending files back and forth i packaged it up and sent it into songfight. she never felt it was a complete song, but to me it's still one of the favorite songs i've ever worked on, and from what i can tell a lot of people really loved it. so that's the story on that”- c Layne

 

“he keeps it real, yo.”- Yth

 

123. “Race To Seven” by Novox the Robot

“Race to Seven didn't really come from anything. I just sort of put it together. The lyrics are basically just to fit the melody, etc.
Novox The Robot on the other hand has a whole long and complicated history. Basically, though, he's inspired by the book/movie "The Count of Monte Cristo". If you're familier at all with that story, then imagine that instead of being sent to prison, Fernand KILLS Dantes. OK...then Dantes soul is miraculously transferred into the body of a robot. He christens himself "Novox" because he has not the words to describe the pain that he's been through. Just like Dantes, then, he vows revenge, ends up killing Fernand. Then he's confronted with his lover, who thinks he's some kind of monster or ghost. He trys to convince her that it's really him, just as a robot. When finally she begins to accept him, he has an epiphany, a total melt down, and realizes that he's not really a robot, but one processor out of millions in the world's biggest super computer located in Brazil. The entire story starting from the moment he was killed by Fernand was all just a sort of defense mechanism that his consciousness came up with to help him make the transition from human to processor. So basically, he was killed by his best friend who then marries the woman he loves, and he's not a robot, didn't get revenge, but instead has to live out the rest of his life as a processor in a giant super computer. I'm not really goog at explaining this. You gotta hear some of the music. It's going to be a puppet opera.”- 40 Second Songs (Novox’s creator)

 

122. “Hands Up’ by Johnny Cahspoint

“Hands Up was originally written for the other fight, baba ganoush, but a very hot day, and a trip with my beloved to Richmond Park, and I had a better lyric ....”- J$

 

121. “The Martians Are Going To Eat Us” by Lonbobby & Yaruss

“Yaruss has an INCREDIBLE voice, and a keen musical instict. All the harmonies in Martians were written by him, and they are unbelievable.”- Lonbobby

120. “Don’t Forget to Come to my house on Wednesday” by Michael Maas

“I was happy to get the J$ assignment, because I've always heard a little bit of new wave, 80's pop influence in his stuff. And I love that stuff. Plus our vocal styles are very different, so I thought it would be great to just play the song straight, but with the extra pop cheese at the end. It was a lot of fun.”- Maas

119. “Elvira” by Starfinger

“I didn't realize what a dumb, repetitive song it was until I started working on it”- Starfinger

 

118. “Hold This For Me” by Suave Noise Youth

“'Hold This for Me' was one of the most grueling collaborations I've ever attempted. Not coincidentally, it's probably the only long-distance one that was ever completed.”- Starfinger

 

“I remember doing a lot more for that project than I was originally supposed to. I recorded an electric guitar track, and asked SNY collectively to do some drums and bass - I was thinking straight-up Rolling Stones rock and roll - and Starfinger stepped up. Totally didn't see that coming. I loved what he did with it, but then there was nobody to sing my lyrics, so I had to try not to sound like a teenager with a high voice on the very last evening. Maybe it didn't quite work out.”- Jon Eric

 

117. “So Kind Stacey” by The Hell Yeahs

“I love this song almost as much as Johnny Cashpoint does! It is based on a co-worker or mine who’s real name is Kimberly. She is exactly as this song describes her, right down to the bug eyes. The creation of this one was easy from start to finish. It seems like most of our best songs come out of a lyrical collaboration. Phil had me do a stream of consciousness type thing to describe Kimmy and then he added in some of his own impressions of her. The lyrics keep with the then evolving “bad girl” or “bitch” persona of the main character (I love playing that role when I sing these songs! I’m actually a fairly nice and peaceful person). The “Hey, hey Stacey” bits were intentionally meant to sound like “bitchy cheerleaders” and were fun to do over and over for multiple tracks. When Phil wanted me to really ham it up, he’d tell me that the next take should be the “Head Cheerleader”. I really loved playing bass to this song and Phil’s guitar, piano and drums rock! Gratuitous cussing is fun!”- Heather Redmon

116. “Brown Boxes” by Pompeii

 

115. “Gin or Ginseng” by Suave Noise Youth

"This song was inspired by my fascination with the idea of fight clubs. HInc first came up with some pieces for it, then Johnny Cashpoint formed it into something more cohesive. I was dreadfully sick that week and literally used every last drop of voice I had to sing it and then Starfinger mixed it all. In the end, it became something out of this world."- Niveous

 

114. “Red Skates” by The Loose Laces

“Red Skates is the collision in creative inclination between Future Boy, widely known for his post-theatric electro-pop singalongs, and Randy Smith, who wanted desperately to inject some noise, venom, and malice into the toothache-inducing sweetness of Future Boy's work.  Moboid usurped the vocals in a desperate attempt to reconcile the miscommunicated lyrical intent between the two composers.”- Loose Laces

 

113. “Troublemaker” by Doscientos

 

112. “Firebomb” by Piltdown

“The "Firebomb" songfight coincided with a particularly stressful week at work, and since most of my songs are about my job, I knew I could come up with some appropriate lyrical content. The opening section is a little cheesy, and I'm no rapper by any stretch of the imagination, but it did provide a nice contrast with the 3-part harmonies that followed in the speedpunk section. I had strep throat the night I recorded the vocals and could only manage to sing the chorus twice, so that was my first experience with copying and pasting on the digital 8-track. I did my best to maintain a steady tempo on the instruments, but there were a few slight tempo variations between the instrumental tracks and pasted vocal tracks. I probably should "fire my drummer" like one reviewer said, but since I play all the instruments, I guess I'm stuck with him! “- Piltdown

111. “Here Comes My Dragon” by Doscientos

 

110. “She’s On My Mind” by Lonbobby

“Before "She's On My Mind," I was composing a lot of electronic music so I wanted to step back from that for a while. It's kind of a "back to my roots" kind of song, since I used to compose just piano music.”- Lonbobby

 

109. “Snooter” by Josh Woodward

“Snooter was written at the height of my Postal Service addiction. They opened my eyes to the production potential of sparseness to make room for the mix.”-Woodward

 

108. “Lavender Splendour” by Lonbobby & Maiko

“Maiko is awesome, and very musically savvy”- Lonbobby

 

107. “I am Tempted” by Silent E

“this one was a little softer and folkier than the previous silent e songs, i liked it a whole lot, and didn't really want to muck it up much so i just put in the bassline and some backing vocals, because i really liked the way it was with just you and your guitar.  sadly, though, when i started doing stuff with the mp3s you sent me i was getting a lot of strange noises and had to use a bunch of nosie reduction and eq and stuff which made your parts sound pretty faraway and i think took away a lot from how great they sounded to begin with.  even still, i like that song a lot, but i wish i could hear a version of it without my crappy mixing job on it”- TVIYH

 

"This was inspired by the 2004 Elections and how a lot of people I know were tempted to leave the United States. Despite some production difficulties, I love how this came out. It has a lot of charm with Voice's great basswork and my lyrics- that someone called 'too serious' which is a great compliment"- Niveous

 

106. “Don’t Forget To Come To My House On Wednesday” by Johnny Cashpoint

 

105. “The Martians are Going To Eat Us” by Frontalittle Squad

“In general, Frontalittle tracks tend to be a blur when they happen. Trying to organize these entries is not an easy task in the least. We try to keep a storyline where everyone will be on the same page. That part of things seldom works. What I try to do, is get a beat together, or enough of a beat for people to rap over it. Then the raps are made, sent to me, and I send them off to whoever is mixing that time. I am sad that the Frontalittle website isn't up and running right now, but it won't stay that way. It will return someday ”- Glenn Case

 

104. “As Icons of my Youth Fall Silent (Hard Drive Failure)” by Hentai Kitty Death

 

103. “Left/Right” by Josh Woodward

“Left/Right was a just a little poke at the indier-than-thou crowd. Because they're fun to poke at. :) “- Woodward

102. “Half a Stone” by Johnny Cashpoint

“Absolutely fantastic. I am a performer first and foremost, something which SF.org doesn't really allow me to express very well. My aim in joining was to play live and to win a fight within a year. I didn't realise I would do both at once!”- J$ (on winning SF UK)

 

101. “WTF (Songfight Swampilicious)” by King Arthur

“the guitars would be a '57 Strat through a Digitech (?) RP-3 effects box, direct in to the 1/4" tape 8-track machine. I just dialed in a bunch more distortion than I usually do because most of the big bands who show up at an SFL event tend to be the harder rocking bands.”- King Arthur (on making the sound of WTF)

 

100. “Upcoming Downtime” by Leaf 62

“I wanted to achieve a few things with this one... I wanted something that would hopefully be fun to sing along to, with a bit of a U2 vibe in it, and something that was heavy without sounding heavy. That's why I didn't use any overdrive or distortion on the guitars, but let the bass carry the weight of the tune. I've had complaints from friends and internet people about that! I want to redo that song, I think it's a good tune, and I really feel like I hit on an inpsiration in the lyrics... I really believe in what I'm saying there... just that frustration in life of slaving away your good years so you can retire old...potentially unable to enjoy "the fruits of your labour". I can't stand the intro. It's too overbearing, and ruins the song for me... I'm not sure if I should redo it in a gentler tone, or rewrite the intro... the rest of it works well for me. I was listening to it with a friend two nights ago when he came up to visit from Vancouver.. a lot of the tune reminds me of early Faith No More with the original lead singer, Chuck [Mosley]... I loved that album "introduce yourself".... although I wasn't conciously "channelling" that vibe. I should mention that this song was recorded on an 8 track roland vsr-880... so I recorded the drums first, to 6 channels, then bounced them to a stereo channel, and basically had to do a bounce recording , so it was mixed as it went. Now that I'm working in Cubase, I will never go back to that system!! Roland stuff kinda sucks in my opinion... not much flexibility...”- Leaf

 

99. “A Day in the Life” by the Befores

“the sound for that came together with me coming up with the keyboard part, drum loops and bass to start off with. I emailed the mp3 over to Zareen and she wrote the lyrics and melody. Then a couple of days later we go together at mine and Blue's studio; Z put down the vocals (one take! she's amazing) and was gone out the door in less than an hour. I then twisted Blue's arm into playing some smooth jazz drums, which isn't the way he likes to play but he did a great job anyway. I even made him play my pristine jazz ride rather than his loud rock crash which caused some consternation. I also asked Stephen (sonofsupercar bass player) to add some guitar licks as he's a great guitar player. Finally I overdubbed a couple of synth parts and the heavy guitar chords in the bridge.”- Humbert

 

98. “Lavender Splendour” by Voxdiinsectdelecti

“It began with a b flat clarinet riff (which, an afterthought, sounds eerily like a riff in Eddie Money's Baker Street, ew), which had to be digitally tuned after laying the track (weather had warped the bitch) and the sound came out like a sax - NOICE. TVIYH did the bass and bgvs, Dave Zhavue did the lead guitar, drums and master, Racine did the clarinet, keys, lead and some bgv vocals and composition. The lyrics are about, of course, unrequited love.  It's about the secret of Racine being enamoured of someone in a superior social position that she meets once a year for lunch downtown - its about the slow progression of getting to know a person yet holding back the internal fire while silently wanting so much more - kind of a calculated waiting game - the tune is kinda slow and sad, like a "slow September rain".  The verse melody (ha ha - coffee's comin' out my nose) unfortunately, seems to fit the words to the Gilligan's Island theme perfectly.  Try singing along..."Jes' sit right down and you'll hear a ta-a-a-le...".  We realized this prior to submission, and nobody caught it.  COO.”- Racine

“this was the first time i'd done an internet collaboration, and it was a pretty unique experience for me.  racine (of yummy bug) had contacted me wanting to collab, and she wrote those lyrics the very next day, and sent me a midi file of approximately how she imagined the melody would sound.  so i created the drum and bass tracks, and recorded a vocal part (and a harmony part) showing how it would fit together, and sent it back.  they added a bunch of guitar parts, and her vocals, and a bit of clarinet, and mixed it all together.  i was really happy with how it turned out, and that kind of left me itching for more collab experiences...”- TVIYH

 

97. “Red Zero” by Niveous

“I had found an old soundclip CD and tossed the sounds into my Leafdrums and fell in love with the shrill chime and built a song arund it. I used my favorite song theme- the apocalypse and ran with it. Added some jangly guitar bits to fill the space and ended up with something more than the sum of its parts."- Niveous

 

96. “Hold This For Me” by the Idiot Kings

“i had almost gotten into a car accident and was talking to my then-girlfriend about it after the fact. we had the typical lovey dovey "i can't live without you" talk, and afterwards i realized if anything did happen to me, all that would be left of me beyond material possessions and photographs is the music i've written. i wrote "hold this for me" as a way of telling her and other people i care/cared about that i will always be with them through my music.”- The Idiot Kings

 

95. “Laugh Riot” by Loyalty Day

“Laugh Riot, lyrically for me, was a message to songfight at a time when I felt we were getting ignored in the reviews while other, in my opinion, less deserving bands were being praised. “- Ken

94. “Massive Intelligence Failure” by Likely Lads

“It was inspired by the news that the floor I work on was to be closed down. Everyone was offered the choice of relocation or redundancy. I think with that in mind the title explains what I thought of the decision.”- Gareth D.

 

“As far as I know though what basically happened was that on the Thursday of that week both me and Gareth got told that we were being made redundant along with 12 of our friends and colleagues at the company we work for. this was a big shock and very disappointing, and lots of us felt in a spin about what to do next, should we go for jobs at other companies doing the same thing or take this opportunity as a chance to do something completely different? That's basically what the song is about, I think Gareth has posted the lyrics in the Archive so they should make a little more sense now!

Gareth wrote the song and played the guitar on the track, it would have been his Squier Jagmaster mic'd with a dynamic close and far condensor mic and fed into his computer which is running Sonar. I think some Chorus was applied to the guitar on the PC. He also sang all the parts, lead and backing, on this song, creating that big drunken singalong chorus as an uplifting change from the quite sad verse. I came along and added the little guitar part at the start with the Jagmaster and a little distortion, before laying down my bass part, DI'd from my Squier Jazz Bass. We were especially happy with the way it all sounded, and only regretted not adding drums to the song, which is the way we play it live now we've found a drummer.”- Mike L.

 

93. “Firebomb” by Spy vs. Pie

“Mega Man, to the max. The intro "I got him" bits are all references to imaginary Mega Man villains, and the vocals from the lead game characters perspective. This one was tricky, as I wrote the lyrics, sent them to brian with the music, and he conjured the vocal melody and sent them back to me. He didn't send me a mixed version, so I just kinda cut it up and synced em where I though they sounded cool. My favorite part of this song is the pure ocsillator keyboard bit that dances around various videogame cliches. I love videogames.”- Phil Redmon

 

92. “Race To Seven” by Jana & the Trombones

 

91. “The Spirit World” by The Hell Yeahs

“I used to cash my paycheck at a liquor store called the Jolly Jug. This song is pure inspiration, and I hope we catch this fire again. The screams, the bitterly spat spoken section... This was before we really firmed up the idea of our "rock" sound, so it's pretty keyboard heavy. One for the ages, etc! “- Phil Redmon

“Ugh! “Spirit World”! When I look back at that song, half of me cringes and the other half is so very proud. It was the first Hell Yeahs song and it kind of sticks out like a sore thumb. I’ll never forget the reviews for that fight. “Stop screaming”… “More screaming”. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what went into creating that song! Phil wrote the lyrics (out of my vocal range, grrr), wrote and played all of the music, did all the mixing and fixing. There almost wasn’t a Hell Yeahs after that one…I was very “mic shy” and didn’t believe that I could sing. There was a lot of crying, quitting, starting over, and frustration. When it came to the screaming parts, I let all of that out and the result is the infamous “Dumb, drunk and ugly, keep your hands offa me!.” I like the spoken word part, but my voice sounds so deep, it’s hard for me to listen to it! I’d love to re-record this one, I think I could nail it and put more feeling into it.”- Heather Redmon

90. “I Thought I Loved You” by Poor June

“was this girl that i went out with for like i suppose around 8 months or so... the relationship was awesome... and then everything just went sour like real fast... and we just lost touch... and she got married and has a kid now and stuff... and just recently started talking again and stuff just as friends... and the song title came up while i was on the phone with her... and she was well drunk and passed out... so while i was doin' shit on the phone... i decided to write to it... just playin' around on my piano... and that's how i got it...”- Poor June

89. “Troublemaker” by Ten Foot Tall

 

88. “Say the Word” by Def Author

“Collecting the "WORD" parts from various Frontalot VSP members was a rewarding experience. Here is the exact wording of how I requested the help...

"I am working on a songfight track for "Say the word". I request MC Hawking's permission to take a couple samples from his hilarious commercial, and I also ask for the participation of any VSP members who would be intersted in the following: If you would like to be included in my track, I ask that you Scream out "Word!" in a mp3 or wav file and then post that audio file in this thread. Anyone who does this by the Monday deadline will have their "Word!" used in the track as part of a crowd of voices.”- Glenn “Def Author” Case

 

87. “Five Minutes” by c Hack

“I was walking down Landsdowne St. wearing my prophecy of doom sandwich board one Saturday night when I was struck by something I overheard a young college student say. She was headed to an Usher show, and she said to her friend "C'mon, walk faster -- we only got five minutes." Isn't that the truth? Isn't that all we have? Just five short minutes, in which to live a life full of hopes, desires, accomplishments, failures, and yes, love. Then I got home and checked in with my team of monkeys with typewriters, and this song is what they'd come up with. I thought, "Wow, what a coincidence!" So I recorded it and posted it. Seriously, This song is largely influenced by Modest Mouse and Blind Willie Johnson, and it "samples" lyrics from both of them.”

 

86. “So Kind Stacey” by Pompeii

 

85. “Between the Rain” by Johnny Cashpoint

“BTR was my first attempt, and still possibly my best, at expressing my utter love of 1978 punk. It's worth remembering that the original entry was by 'Johnny Cashpoint vs – 1978'.”- J$

 

84. “”Brown Boxes” by Carol Cleveland Sings

“About a year before recording this song, we had acquired a Fender Rhodes electric piano that had just been sitting around, so we decided to make it the star of “Brown Boxes”. We always loved the low notes of these electric pianos, so the rhythm was probably four or five multitracked Rhodes all hitting 8th notes and such. For some reason, people were saying that this song sounded too midi-esque, but in actuality, there was nothing of the sort.”- CCS

 

83. “Across the Dusty Plains” by Henrietta & the Hostage

“Well, as soon as I read "Across the Dusty Plains" I thought "road trip!" A few years back I packed up as much of my life as could fit into my car and drove from Massachusetts down across the south and back up to Colorado. At the time I had just graduated college and ended a pretty significant relationship. I felt kinda lost and directionless, and that a big change was exactly what I needed to recover myself. The final day of the trip was the drive from Tulsa to Denver. The route went through Oklahoma, Kansas, and eastern Colorado where there's not much other than blue sky, the ground, and your thoughts. Leaving home to "start over" someplace new (and driving through Oklahoma to get there) was the inspiration for the song.”- Henrietta

 

82. “Here Comes My Dragon” by Lunkhead

 

81. “Goodbye Monster” by Frontalittle Squad

 

80. “Are You Having Fun?” by Loyalty Day

“Erin really took the lead on "Are You Having Fun." She had the whole song in her head and basically just told us all what to do. Luckily it all worked out.”- Ken

79. “Beautiful World” by Lunkhead

 

78. “From This Day On” by the Hell Yeahs

“I really wanted to do “Franny” that week and base the lyrics on the character Frannie from Frannie and Zooey by JD Salinger. After a quick re-read of the book we couldn’t come up with anything good. I was laying in bed, trying to fall asleep, pretty bummed out, when it hit me that “From This Day On” was definitely a workable title. The Hell Yeahs have an unmistakable themes of violence, crime and mayhem in most songs, and it seemed like this title would work perfectly. I wanted to come up with an original spin and the idea of witnessing a mob hit and going into Witness Protection seemed perfect. The name Emily Sinclair just popped into my head (it was catchy and rhymed with stuff too!)and the idea of changing my life forever ‘from this day on’ was great. I got up and told Phil. He had me brainstorm ideas for the lyrical content. He used pretty much everything I came up with and put his lyrical magic to work. The result is an awesome song! I really like the keyboards in this one and the call and response is fun. My favorite lines are “Sure it’s uncharacteristic, but I ran and told the Police – the bacony, beefy blue line”. This lyric is great because the main character in most of the Hell Yeahs songs is usually on the wrong side of the law, but this time she has to side with the pigs to save her ass.”- Heather Redmon

 

“This song was heavily inspired by My Blue Heaven with Steve Martin, arguably the best movie ever written about government relocation. This whole song hinges on one line, "because they murdered Maroni....," which I thought was a mobbish enough name to justify relocation. I think it sounds as bittersweet as we were hoping.”- Phil Redmon

77. “Tri-State Area” by Southwest Statistic

“Tri-State Area was about a girl I met in “Borders Books and Music” named Lauren. I had just walked in the door of the building, holding a nice warm cup of Starbucks coffee in my left hand. I was looking around the room, trying to choose what area I would browse first. I started walking forward toward the “Computers/Software” section, when a very attractive girl who appeared to be around my age asked me if she could snap my photograph. Caught off card I said “Sure” and she immediately took my picture and walked away. Well, naturally, this was just a wee bit too strange for me to just let go. I asked her “Hey, wait, what was that all about?” “Oh,” she said, “it's for my photography class. We are taking pictures of people in their 'Natural States' and comparing them with pictures of people in their 'Photo-Ready States'. I took one picture of you as you walked into the door without you knowing, and the other picture of you after I asked you if I could take one.” And with that explanation she walked away.

I tried to keep my mind off this girl, but there was something about her that I couldn't stop thinking about. She looked very very VERY similar to my Ex-Girlfriend from down south in Georgia. Actually, Laruin looked so similar that when I first saw her I actually asked myself “What is Jessica doing all the way up here in Michigan?” It was very confusing for my mind. I had been in love with Jess and she had dumped me. Now, I had the chance to get her back. I got up the courage to ask her if she wanted to go somewhere with me to get a cup of Coffee – my treat. She smiled, and said that she usually didn't do that kind of thing with people she just met, but in my case she would make an exception.
The night went very well. We had a nice long conversation about a great many artistic subjects (her being a photographer and me being a musician). She gave me her phone numbers, email addresses, and other contact information. In the end, after that night, I never called her or emailed her. I decided not to pursue a relationship with her because I knew that my heart would fall in love with her for the wrong reason. I would fall in love with her because she looked like my ex. As soon as I saw the “Tri State Area” title on songfight, I knew I had to write a song for it.”- Southwest Statistic

 

76. “Dark All Day” by Andre Was Here At Midnight

“the song was pretty much written and recorded a couple of hours before the due time, I’d say around 1am... it was late, and i was doodling with my acoustic capo up 2nd fret and drop D tuning, and just started strumming Am-E and it grew from there.. now listening to it, i'd remember it was a lousy day (Sunday if am correct).. as its the first lines in the song "another crummy afternoon one day" yeahh it was a really rummy/shitty/boarding Sunday. the song was complete within 2 1/2 hours, as it was 3:30 Monday morning, and I’d need it to go to work at 8am. lyrically is about a conversation between two. one is in depression and wants it to be dark all day, the other one is trying to convince him that you "gotta be happy someday", and that’s really about it.”- Andre

 

75. “The Martians Are Going To Eat Us” by Roy Castle

“'Martians are Going to Eat Us' is, predictably, written about an impending invasion from space. I quite like the bouncy feel, talk-sung verses, reasonably catchy chorus and the bridge section that has 'wobble' sounds that nobody seemed to care about. However, as someone said in their review, it seems a bit minor and ineffectual. Someone else, who had evidently never heard a country song, described it as 'too country for me'. The best part is certainly 'the strange language they spoke amongst themselves', which makes no attempt to hide the fact it's a backwards guitar solo.”-Roy Castle

 

74. “Blueberry Hassle” by Level Nivelo

“Blueberry Hassle happened when I wanted to do a Clarence Carter homage (like his famous Strokin'). I decided to make it a story song, knew it had to be about getting hassled over blueberries, and the lyrics just wrote themselves- I changed very little of the story from my first draft of it, just a couple of words here and there to get a better flow.”- Level Nivelo

 

73. “Texas” by Diode

“Thanks for considering me for your best of. When I wrote Texas it was my first ever songfight admission although I've been playing music for over 12 years. I wrote the lyrics before the music which is backwards from how I normally write. The song was inspired by some family turmoil with my father at the time.”- Diode

 

72. “Spalding Gray is Missing” by Abominominous

“Humph. I really liked Spalding Gray, and I thought it was a tacky-ass title, and I still do. It was written directly at Songfight. That's a birdcall record into my dad's line 6 delay modeler on two tracks, btw.”- Abom

71. “Sincerity Machine” by ‘Fro Envy

“Working with Blue Lang is pretty damned cool in my book. There was a time when Blue and I were just chilling at the Octothorpe Rehearsal Barn, and just goofing around on the instruments in there. A good part of me wishes we had gotten to business and tried to write some material in there, I think the outcome would have been very unique. I initially had no intention of cursing in the track, but Blue recommended it. Heh. This was fun, seriously. Blue had already worked out the music, and I think there is another member of sonofsupercar involved with the music, but I don't remember whom. I just added my vocals to it really, I seem to remember writing the lyrics, but don't quote me on that. This was one of those tracks where I just kinda threw something out there and went with it.”- Glenn Case

 

70. ‘That’s Not What I Need” by Max the Cat

“"Not what I need," like all my Song Fight songs, came out of the required title. I love trying to write songs from fragments of ideas. I used to play a game where you scribble on a piece of paper and then try to make something out of it. Needless to say, I loved that game. SF is a challange for me to find something that really rises organically out of each weeks title.I thought it was romantic to find no joy in 'absense making the heart grow fonder."- Max the Cat

 

69. “Say the Word” by Future Boy

“Well, let's see. With 'Say The Word' I was simply going for the image of a really pathetic high school kid who idolized a really popular kid to the point of absurdity. I think the gospel arrangement plays off of that vibe because it gives the song a seriousness and 'holiness' that totally does not jibe with the lyrical content. The result, I hope, is somewhat disturbing.”- Future Boy

 

68. “Troublemaker” by Abominominous

“I constructed these drums out of a sliced drum loop, and was definately inspired by The Darkness when singing the vocals. I don't know how many times I tried to nail that guitar part. One thing people don't know about me is that I almost never do any punch ins or edits on the main guitar track in my songs. With all of the programmed drums & stuff, I figure that's the one spot that I should really try and nail the performance. Playin' a 68 Jaguar on this one. Writing negative songs about america is like shootin' fish in a barrel.”- Abom

 

67. “She’s On My Mind” by Sonofsupercar

 

66. “Save a Pony From The Glue Factory” by Johnny Cashpoint

“"Save a pony ..." is about the fact that I am far too old, in media terms, and that 'kids today' won't ever get me. 'Logan's Run' is a brit SF thing about people getting killed when they turn 30 (about to remade as 'The Island', fact fans). 'The Wicker Man' is a great brit film about a repressed old englishman getting sacrificed by open-minded, sexualised scottish islanders. Progeria (which I mispronounce throughout the song as Progenia for some reason) is a medical condition where people age at an accelerated rate. The opening line, 'Never trust anyone who's over 21' comes from an early issue of Impulse (#7 I think).”- J$

 

65. “Spalding Gray is Missing” by The Ice Weasels

“That was only my second songfight, and when I first looked at the title, it was "Spalding Gray Is Dead", so the lyrics were written about how I thought maybe it was premature to call him dead before we were sure. After they backed down and used "Spalding Gray Is Missing", I tweaked the lyrics to be about how the mystery is usually preferrable to knowing the awful truth. Those lyrics turned out to be better anyway. The music for the chorus kinda grew in my head as I was walking home from work one day. I wanted it to sound vaguely like Sarah McLaughlin (seriously), at least in chord changes. The other half of the Ice Weasels (who mostly stays reclusive) came up and played with the piano melody that ties it together. Because I don't know how to play any instruments competently, I just used an acoustic guitar and hoped for the best.”- Ice Weasels

 

64. “Brown Boxes” by Stuff ‘n’ Nonsense

 

63. “Gin or Ginseng” by Buffalo Speedway

“For "Gin and Ginseng" I had a bassline and riff going through my head that I recorded and sent to JD who added lyrics about sexual orientation ambivalence that fit really well. We set up the project in Garage Band, as all of the Buffalo Speedway projects have been to this point, and put down the bass and rhythm tracks. The main guitar riff was recorded on my Grestch Electromatic though a Hot Rod Deluxe amp. Odnarb helped out with a great many things including a great solo in the bridge recorded from his Les Paul though a combo amp of some sort. Originally this was intended as more of a punk song but the vocal performances weren't coming together well. Odnarb had the idea to back off a bit and have J~ whisper the verses, which works really well.”- Freddielove

 

62. “ABCD Puppies” by Bjam!

“It was my Dad's actually. We'd been trying to think all week about a song that could be about "ABCD Puppies", he finlly came up with the idea of a Dad getting all annoyed with his daugther playing pop music by this "ABCD Puppies" fictional group.(which is totally untrue, I went through a Spice Girls phase and tht was my ONLY pop music as a child. And maybe a teeny tiny NSync period too...) So I countered his lyrics with this daughter lusting and fangirling the same group. It all mingled together fashionably late in the week, but ended up sounding pretty okay.”- Bjam!

 

61. “Let it Be” by Yoko Oh No

“johnny cashpoint is awesome to work with. of all the people i've collaborated with from songfight, he's one of my favorite folks to work with and it shows. let it be was the first one we did together and now i think we're up to 5 songs together as johnny in the corner. it's great as it's one of those working arrangements where there's really no expectation for more. it just happens once in a while and thats what makes it special. i think johnny is one of the most talented folks (and one of the best lyricists....my weak point i think) here so it's a real treat to be able to work with him.”-Jack Shite

 

“Jack Shite I think is a genius, because he totally gets, with minimum time, what i am trying to achieve anf finds the perfect compliment to bring it out. Plus he encourages me at every turn, which is what i need, despite what my internet persona suggests. A tip of the glass to him!”- J$

 

60. “Hey Ruth” by The Sober Irishman

 

59. “Jimmy Hat” by Big Sad Eden

 

58. “Hold This For Me” by Sissyfist

“"Hold This For Me" is cool because it has this monster intro which really builds up to this one janky chord, and then the song starts. Unfortunately, it takes like 2.5 minutes to get there, so I thought it needed something there to keep the listener's interest. I wanted to have something there about how people are basically evil and untrustworthy, since the rest of the song is about how this one guy should trust this other guy. I also wanted the intro to sound epic with a labored, old-time way of talking. So it was either the Bible or Shakespeare, because there was no way that I could write something like that which sounded natural. I think I found an online search engine for the Bible, so it ended up winning out. Working with Sissyfist is always cool because (and this sounds horrible) I get sent these great songs where all I have to do is write some words and sing them. I get a chance to write and sing rock melodies and emote, so that's cool too”.- Erik of Sissyfist

 

57. “Moscow, Idaho” by Arcati Crisis

I had been writing a sort of punkish song about the actual town of Moscow - i even looked up stuff like the average temperature. It was going to be very fact-based. Then, a few days before the fight, Arcati walked into my room and played me her version, and I immediately fell in love. For the recording, we began with one guitar track that was matched up to a click, and then added a scratch vocal. From there, it was quite an adventure: Arcati is very different than me when it comes to mixing - whereas i tend to spend hours trying to get one small piece of harmony right, she can pick up a new instrument and ad lib a different inspired addition on every take. We captured a lot of the piano with this sort of technique - i think we recorded four tracks of keyboard for every section of the song, with me later picking the best parts. This lead to the most inspired bit of the song, which was the outro harmony. Arcati hadn't quite decided what the melody of that section would be, so we had our typical four-takes go at recording it. Subsequently, i discovered that her attempts had been so varied that they made an incredible interlocking run of counterpoint. We never had the time to go back and re-record any of it (it was Thursday, at this point), so there are some imperfections, but I love it exactly how it is. I added additional keyboards to the prechorus and almost all of the guitar overnight. A lot of the cool guitar riffs were created quite accidentally as i tried to fill in spaces in the second verse; it was quite a pain to have to go back to learn them for when we performed the song live. Moscow Idaho was a great experience for us, because it proved that we really could co-write, co-perform, and co-produce together and come out with an actual recorded result. I feel like it really solidified our realization that playing together could be more than just fucking around at parties.”- Krisis

 

56. “I Don’t Like Eggplant” by Madi

“Eggplant happened because we had time to work on it that week. Whereas Martians was pretty much a collaboration, with her leading the way, Eggplant was pretty much all hers. She even played the parts on the keyboard and chose the patches and everything. All I did on that one was act as engineer and supply my part of the vocals, of course (the dialogue was entirely improvised). The microwave was my only other contribution. I'm pretty proud of that, even though it's the only part of the song that's all my idea.”- Jim of Seattle

 

55. “Why Try Flying” by Redcar

“Tonetripper and Leaf both were discussing the title and through that discussion, Why Try Flying was born...Although the entire inspiration was brought about by thehipcola with his awesome guitar riff. TT wanted the acronym to not mean what everyone knew it to mean or imply a variation on the theme. He thought about the Wright brothers or any other kamikaze lunatic who wants to fly without knowing the consequences and just jumping. A metaphor for life.”- The Hip Cola

 

“Working in Redcar is very interesting, and has a few dynamics to it. The most significant element is that I'm working on stuff with my good friend from my highschool days, who goes under the psuedonym "PinV" or "The Hip Cola". We grew up in the same town, went to the same schools, sang in the same choir. He was in my sister's grade, so we didn't really become buddies until I recruited him to be the singer in our band. We played together, and recorded an "album" with our band BacktoFront while in highschool. I briefly drummed for his band in London Ont, but it was a four hour commute. When I moved out west, he drove out here with me and spent to summer on Quadra Island. Now, ten years later, we are playing music together again!
The process is simple: we decide to enter a fight, someone starts a "seed" be it lyrics, a riff, or a whole song, and then each player adds something to the process. Arrnagements can change, parts can be added, and usually HC mixes, although Tonetripper has mixed one I believe... It can be difficult colloborating online and via the phone, because you just have to take ideas as they come, you really don't have time to see if they gel, or experiment or just jam on them to get some kind of comfort.... anyway, I enjoy it, and we seem to do well together, but it can be tough at times!”- Leaf

 

54. “Cellar Door’ by Loyalty Day f/ King Arthur

“I love meeting other songfighters. I had met KA before, but it was fun to play with him. He really has a sharp mind when it comes to arrangement. I remember he tracked his guitar separate from everyone else, and did like two takes and just nailed his part.”- Ken

 

53. “That’s Not What I Need” by Octothorpe

“The story behind "That's Not What I Need" is the same as almost every other Octothorpe song. In other words, I have no idea. Our enigmatic lyricist Stubs wrote this one, as usual, and generally does not explain to anyone, not even us. I have no idea what a PQB is. For some reason that I can't recall, I am pretty sure that the Jim of the story is neither Jim of Seattle or any other songfighting Jim. Mad Dog and I think it is a rat named Jim. Or maybe a cat. Does it matter?”- Spud

 

52. “There Are So Many Possibilities” by Sober Irishman

 

51. “Spalding Gray is Missing” by Roy Castle

 

50. “Piece of my Heat” by the Hell Yeahs

“We had loads of time to work on “Piece of My Heat”! It was such a luxury. I record vocals in the kitchen with the door shut and usually jump up and down, kick, swing my arms, pull my shirt, etc. and I’m too embarrassed to have Phil see me! We normally don’t have time for me to learn the vocals by heart, but with this one, we recorded a rough track with me singing all the way through (except for the second set of vocals on the chorus, that was done on another take). Phil sent me the MP3 at work and I listened to it over and over and over again. What would have been a series of horrible tongue twisters and botched lines, became second nature and made the actual recording go very smoothly. I really felt those “Dammit’s”! It was fun to just shake my fists and yell. Phil is a great coach and he told me when to “sound sexy” (the slow parts) and when to wail (the fast chorus). There were plans for harmonies and more vocal parts, but those got scrapped because what we recorded sounded great the way it was. There are some faint vocal harmonies done by Phil! There is also a reference to “Hold This For Me” with mention of my Katie Spade. “- Heather Redmon

“Crime again! It's such a fun escapist topic to write about! I'm not sure I really settled on a realistic crime-to-punishment ratio, but I'll use the excuse of stressed-out lead character. I did do some research about the differences between a felony and a misdemeanor, because the whole concept of the song was based on one character taking enough blame to knock the other characters sentance down. I LOVE this song, and we spent almost the entire week on it, a little here and there. The compression on the vocals on the fast part really give it a crazy vertigo feeling, as the ends of lines don't trail off volume-wise, the keep, you know, kind of "snruuuub, myoooobes, bmweeeent" all over the beginning of the next line. It's almost exhausting to listen to! Captures the feeling we were after, again.”- Phil Redmon

 

49. “Under the Horse” by Dollar Bill & the Inkpoints

“UTH was a very different process than usual for DB&TIP. Normally I write a vocal and guitar for the song, and Bill fattens it up at the arrangement stage. UTh was a j$ country song that I couldn't finish, and Bill wrote some absolutely fantastic words that he couldn't find a tune for. We combined the two to, I have to say, pretty damn fine effect. Still needs a bridge, though”- J$

 

“Ah, science once again! Well, I'll talk about inspirations first. I had originally planned this as a solo song. For the title "Under the Horse" I don't remember how quickly I arrived at the idea behind the song story... I usually have a "story" in mind when I'm writing a song with lyrics. I have a strong interest in astronomy, and this has gotten stronger lately because I'm engaged to an astronomer. And I've always been a big fan of science fiction. So these two things combined in my head, with the "horse" of the title making me think of the Horsehead Nebula, and a "generation ship" destined for a star "underneath" it (from the point of view of the Earth). I did a little research on some star catalogues, to make sure that there was a G-type (Sun-like) star in that general area that's not too far away to be believable (There is. I wrote down what it was called but I think I've misplaced that piece of paper). I enlisted a bit of help from my fiancee on this one, and on some parts of the lyrics. Then I finished up the lyrics and started working on the music. Problem was, none of it was working right. For the words I'd written I needed a better sense of melody than I have, so I turned to Johnny Cashpoint. He's the melodic soul of Dollar Bill & the Inkpoints. Turns out he had, by a stroke of luck, this music he'd made for the title but his words weren't working with it. He sent me a sample, and it was perfect. Exactly the kind of feel that I was looking for! I'm amazed at how well the whole thing worked together. I sang my words to his music, and did the final arrangement of parts, adding a sound or two to them. I'm very pleased with the results. Normally in DB&tI, J$ does the singing because his voice is generally considered to be better than mine, but since I'd written the words I was hoping to be able to sing them myself. You can tell my voice has a few pitch problems and a bit of hesitancy, but that kind of fits in with my character in the song, who's a father who's not really sure if he's doing the right thing for the children on the generation ship. I feel like the vocals fit this character... maybe that's just me”- Heuristics Inc

 

48. “Take A Pill” by Tonetripper

“First time I recorded a drum kit with me drumming (not a drummer) on my computer which I only got months earlier. Real learning curve. First time I recorded on my own without any assistance from other musicians as well. Was fun, but I was pretty worried how people would react to my darker, more psychadaelic approach to music and the fact that the song essentially was one bass line throughout with only vocal improv and guitar movements to drive it. I like it. Was very happy with the energy of the tune. My major criticism is that I would have liked to not jam so hard and written a little harder. An approach that is pretty indicative of my personal writing style. Sometimes music is better just let go instead of contrived, but sometimes the words take a beating to the feeling and you are still left with magic just maybe not as magical if the words were a little more brought out. Was my first or second take on a jammed vocal. I liked it, so I lived with it. Songfight! To be honest most of the tune was brought about on the one to two take scheme. The mix was a faders up mix cuz I wasn't also too sure of automation in cubase, so that might have been something I would have changed. All in all I listened to it a bunch and have played it for friends and colleagues and they have dug it, so in the end I enjoyed the process with the end result.”- Tonetripper

47. “Thanks for Coming” by Doscientos

 

46. “Big Disco” by Miss Teen Universe

“It was great working with Senor Mosquito. He did all of the instrumentation and production on this one and he wrote the lyrics for the first verse. So he deserves most of the credit. I think he's a brilliant, underrated songfighter. His "Quentin Tarantino" is one of my favorite songfight songs of all time. He has a very open mind and I think our styles compliment each other nicely so he's awesome to work with. Hopefully, one day, there will be more rock from Miss Teen Universe.”- Dan

 

45. “Fight the Sea” by MC Shatner Boy & the Suave Noise Youth

“I love rapping. I really love that song, but I felt a bit shown up by the far superior MC Menasor. That entire song was born on the 'Out of tune Bob Dylan' line. I remember being really pissed off that people were slagging off my singing voice. The same people who now sing my praises, mind”- Johnny  “MC Shatner Boy” Cashpoint

 

“this week there was an optional challenge to feature a guest, and this was also right after bill made the comment about j$ rapping (calling him "mc shatner boy") so j$ asked us if we wanted to contribute anything to the song he was writing -- based on a brief sample of it that he posted online, i grabbed my guitar and started noodling around a bit.  then i recorded a weird spacey echoey solo thing for him to add to it.  johnny seemed to like it, and compared it to John McGeoch.”- TVIYH aka “Amateur Drunken Samurai”

 

“I had never tried rapping on a track before. Other than some random incidents of freestyling, I had no experience. But after I heard J$’ original track, I couldn’t resist. I ran with the MC Menasor persona and did the rap about 3 times. In between the times I recorded it, I rambled on just to stay in persona- doing calls like “MC Shatner Boy!,” etc. Little did I know J$ would take those same calls and work them into the song.”- Niveous aka “MC Menasor”

 

44. “Direct To Helmet” by Carol Cleveland Sings

“I think we might have been trying to cram as many instruments as we could onto this song. The consistent rhythm is provided by stringed acoustic instruments like guitars, ukuleles, and banjos. The percussion section was made up of one floor tom and a snare drum. A multitude of synthesizers, tremolo-laden electric guitars, subtle bass, touches of orchestra bells, and two harmonizing singing saws filled in the blanks.”- CCS

43. “That’s Not What I Need” by His Name Is Dan

“I think it came about in the same way as "Martians" except I didn't go insane with it. I went to the other extreme. I don't really like the idea of doing depressing songs so this goes against what I would normally do with music. I'm not particularly fond of it, but it felt good to get it out of me. It was a very cathartic song to record.”- Dan

42. “As Icons of My Youth Fall Silent” by Max the Cat

“"Icons" was a slam poem that I wrote for a Nuyrican Cafe poetry slam. It was originally an answer to a poet who patronized me, in a kind way, about being kinda of old to be doing slams. It morphed into a good bye 60's thing.I think it was about survival....mine”- Max the Cat

 

41. “Chainsaw” by Airkick Pigeon Band

 

40. “The Martians are going to eat us” by Madi

““Working with Madi is of course, a ton of fun. It's a challenge in patience, because she had to sing every line about a thousand times to get it right, and because I had to filter out a lot of her not-so-brilliant ideas. We actually worked on half a dozen SF songs over the year, but most of them never got finished in time. With Martians, I had no intention of doing anything with her, and I happened to mention the title at breakfast one day, and she piped in with "Ha ha, it ought to go like this...." and she basically sang the song exactly the way it is heard in the final version. So that one was pretty organic. You can filter this htrough fatherly pride, but the truth is she has a remarkable amount of musical talent, and her instincts constantly surprise me. As she gets older I'm probably going to step further and further back and let her take over, cuz she's got some scary chops.”- Jim of Seattle

 

39. “Say the Word” by Doscientos

 

38. “The Spirit World” by Transatlantic Fight Club

“'Spirit World' was a weird one. I had this great chord sequence from him. I looped a few bars and jammed out some guitar and bass, then picked the best bits and made them into a song. Then real life got in the way, and I had to come up with a melody at the eleventh hour. It came out alright, but I'd still love to hear his version.”- J$

 

“I like this song a lot because it shifted so much from being a regular Niveous song (a song about death and witchcraft, two themes I use frequently) with accents from J$ to being a mix of both of our styles. He changed the vocal style, adjusted lyrics and pumped up the song. It became a completely different beast from the prior two TFC songs and I loved it.”- Niveous

 

37. “I Don’t Like Eggplant (The Ballad of the Royal Fruit)” by Sonofsupercar

 

36. “Massive Intelligence Failure” by Freddielove

“I had some ideas in my head during the week for "Massive Intelligence Failure" but didn't get around to putting anything together until the day before the due date (as is often the case with our stuff). Because of the late date and time, I was limited with what I could do. My vocals were actually recorded first to a click track at JD's where I could sing a yell loudly. The instrumentation was added later. This was entire Garage Band project. All of the drums and synths came from Garage Band and the guitars were recorded though line-ins with distortion added though amp simulator effects filters. I can't remember whether I kept J~ up late or woke her up early to record her part (done both) for the chorus and bridge. I liked the idea of having a second voice to comment as though from outside the narration given by the verse vocals.”- Freddielove

 

35. “Brown Boxes” by Abominominous

“I'm mr. clever, eh?”- Abom

 

34. “Troublemaker” by King Arthur

“"Troublemaker" was about the war in Iraq, and the idea that for all the talk about how evil Sadaam Hussein was, a lot of the world seemed to feel like the U.S. was the bad guy. As I told our financial advisor the other day, my wife and I are among the 49% of Americans who are convinced that our current president is insane, so the song was just about trying to take a balanced look at that situation and wondering whether it really was us or them who was the bad guy. I don't know if it struck anybody else this way, but the line in that song about "Star Spangled Banners briskly flapping" always hits me as a very strong, clear image... that line just makes the song for me.”- King Arthur

 

33. “Cellar Door” by Puce

“When I wrote Cellar Door I was still working with my old computer from circa 1996. The last song I had done on that computer was There Are So Many Possibilities, and though it turned out OK the process of recording a song with full production was frustrating and sapped all my strength. I vowed not to do any full-band arrangement songs again until I upgraded my PC. The title Cellar Door reminded my strongly of the movie Donnie Darko, more specifically Gary Jules’ cover of Mad World by Tears For Fears, which was done with a piano and a cello. I kicked myself twice because I recently got rid of the cello I had, before deciding to do a piano only song for the fight. If I did the song today it would be sampled, sequenced piano that I could play on my keyboard at half speed and tweak until it’s perfect; unfortunately I didn’t have that luxury, so I dusted off my grade 2 practice books, set up a couple mics (I had no idea how to record an upright piano), and played the piano for the first time since I was twelve. About twenty takes later (I had forgotten how very frustrating playing the piano can be) I had the song. The lyrics were written with a friend who was (and, arguably, still is) the founder and solitary member of the Puce fan club. The response to the song was lukewarm, but I’m glad I did it.”- Puce

 

32. “Spalding Gray is Missing” by Lunkhead

 

31. “Fear is Free” by Silent E

“for this one [Niveous] wrote the guitar part and a couple verses and sent them to me... told me to write a chorus and another verse and relate it to one of that week's titles somehow.  i wasn't feeling very creative at the time (i'm really bad at writing lyrics anyway) so i put together what i could for a chorus (which i think turned out kinda crappy) and then added that and the bass and some distorty electric guitar onto the heavier chorus parts (which i also think didn't turn out so great), and instead of doing a third verse i played the totally whacked-out guitar solo at the end (which got even more whacked-out at the end of the solo because when i stepped on the wah pedal to change the setting i accidentally turned the wah off which made it sound all kinds of goofy.  i liked it though.)”- TVIYH

“That's funny b/c I love the wacked solo in FIF. I think it was the best guitar solo I heard in SF all year. And I dig your chorus. I thought you pulled the song together very well.”- Niveous

“well thanks.. i thought i could have done better (with the choruses i mean) but it was the only thing i could come up with at the time.”- TVIYH

 

30. “The Martians are Going To Eat Us” by His Name Is Dan

“I did "Martians" at a time when I was driving to school everyday. It was an hour each way and i really didn't have much contact with anyone outside of class and home. I needed something to keep me sane so a lot of my songs around that time were just ridiculously goofy. This is one of those. It's probably the goofiest. If I end up in hell, it will be because of this song.”- Dan

 

29. “Elvis In Space” by Abominominous

“These vocals were recorded before work on the day the song was due. It's a pretty straight forward take on the title, and I love elvis ever so much.”- Abom

 

28. “I Don’t Like Eggplant” by Starfinger

“I feel retardedly compelled to rap about food”- Starfinger

 

27. “Chainsaw” by The Frontalittle Squad

“I was suprised no one had thought to rhyme Frontalittle and Political before. Glenn told me what my verse needed to mention and I wrote a rhyme about it.”- Ken

“They were all fairly similar. Glenn, Drew, and I, sometimes others, would get together in IRC and think about the plot and roster. Ponch helped out on all three of these, I think. And I think Glenn played less of a part in the plot for "Chainsaw," but spent more time than usual on the beat, which I still think is our best. After that, I had until the day before the deadline or so to work on my verse. After that, it's out of my hands. Sometimes I feel like, with FAL, it's all on me, because usually when I record a verse I'm particularly proud of, the song turns out as one of our best.”- Jon Eric

26. “Secrets” by Loyalty Day

“We talked about what we were going to do with it for a while before we got down to recording. The Suzies' version of that song was a good influence as well as the original. Erin and I sat down one night and figured out how to make it our own, then started building the track up from the Rhodes track. It was my production goal to have something different happening during every verse. This song is one of my best mixes of the year I think. I was also lucky enough to talk to Erik about the song in LA, which influenced us as well.”- Ken

 

25. “There Are So Many Possibilities” by Puce

“Ahh, that song is my favorite SongFight submission. It’s just so upfront and in your face. And you can tell that for once I was trying to draw attention to the lyrics; I sing nonstop all the way through from about the 10 second mark ‘till the end. The subject matter, biological determinism, is easily the scholarly topic that interests me the most. I’m a college student, and I had just completed a class on the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence. The kind of blind ignorance I encountered during that course was staggering. One common (and inane) postulate is: “If I do not have freewill then you can’t hold me accountable for my actions, which means I am therefore free to do whatever I want.” Not only is this infuriating when presented as an argument, I found it ironic that anyone who makes this claim always ends up supporting the opposite side of the debate then they intended. The lyrics just present this argument in an essay format: hypothesis, supporting examples, ironic conclusion.

At the time I wrote the song I had recently sold my computer, leaving me with just an old Pentium 1 that had previously housed dust in my closet. With only old versions of Fruity Loops and Cool Edit at my disposal, I was pretty disappointed by my limitations, as I had no way to do any realistic drum sequencing and all the synth sounds I could produce where underwhelming. Thankfully, I had been recently listening to a bunch of Marilyn Manson and the lesser known band Mindless Self Indulgence, and I realized that cheap, spastic beats and ghetto synths could sound good (or at least interesting) in a rock song. The computer could barely play one track and record at the same time, and the latency was really bad, so I had to play/sing along with a metronome (which is why there is less singing and more rapping) and keep mixing down the track every time I recorded anything. I am amazed that it came out as well as it did.”- Puce

 

24. “Snooter” by Johnny Cashpoint

“Snooter was inspired by a desire to do Tom Waits.”- J$

 

23. “Violet Wants It Her Way” by Glenn Case

“The first thing I did when I was listening to the original and reading the lyrics was going ".....How the HELL am I supposed to fit all of those syllables in?!?!?!" When approaching any cover, there is normally some sort of process where you decide to either keep true to the original, or completely turn it upside down. I'm not sure that I consciously think about what route I am going with covers, but I tend to try to meet somewhere in the middle, Keeping true to the original in some ways, while bringing my own mark to it also. I honestly thought that no one was going to like this except for maybe Jute Gyte. I was thinking "If Jute likes it, that's what counts". I liked it, though. I still do. The mix isn't terrific, but mixing is one of my weaknesses, so if I get good sounding mixes.... It's normally by chance anyway!”- Glenn Case

 

“I love it. It's brutal to the point of incomprehensibility. I'm a big Glenn Case fan anyway, so I was really happy to find out that he was going to cover one of my songs. It turned out really well.”- Jute Gyte

 

22. “As Icons of My Youth Fall Silent” by 40 Seconds Songs

“"Icons" is just all about my childhood. My mother really did take away the Nintendo once, becuase Micah (my brother) and I had been fighting. The next line is about my dog Henry. When he was outside and there was a thunder storm, he'd get really scared and break through the screen door to be inside. We had to replace it so many times, the guy at the door store knew our whole family by name. The "Luigi jumps high..." section is all about Super Mario Bros. 2. The next verse is about the old TV show "Thundercats" (Lion-o, the sword of omens, etc), and how at my best friend's house there was mark on the cellar door that looked just like a sword, so we used to pretend that was some sort of omen or something. Then, the Ninja Turles, etc. The bridge-ish section is about how my dad could never figure out how to transform Transformers, but it was like second nature to me. Bascially, I'm still really obsessed with my childhood and I don't want to let it go, even though I'm 22 and trying to get my "life" started.”- 40 Second Songs

21. “In the Ditch” by ~)*|*(~

“My parents got divorced a while ago, and then my mom started bringing this other guy home all the time, and he started living there. Thing is, she didn't tell my dad about it because she was violating a portion of their divorce agreement by doing so (my little brother still lives with her, and my dad was still paying alimony--two things that made it illegal for her to live with a significant other). When Dad found out in casual conversation, the guy had been living there for about two years, and Dad had been paying illegitimate alimony all this time. So my dad went beserk, and so did my mom, and my brothers and I had to endure lots of strife between the parents. Dad took her to court, Mom accused him of stalking her and spying on her (he was), they fought over the kids, bla bla bla. Around the climax of all this, my mom told me that she had applied for a handgun license and was going to buy a gun. This was for the express purpose of "protecting" herself from my crazy father. So basically, she bought a gun to shoot my dad with, if he came too close. This was also right when the "In the Ditch" title came out, so I ran with it.
It's what I would sing to my dad if my mom had killed him. How's that for fucked up?

As for ~)*|*(~, I dunno, it just looks cool, like an evil iron mask with horns. There's no story behind it. I pronounce it "korftmenk," also for tenuous reasons. It just sounds cool, like the way you might pronounce something that looks like an evil iron mask with horns.”- Mogosagatai

20. “Twelve Monkeys” by Suave Noise Youth

“as you know this was the week we decided to try to work on 3 suave/noise/youth songs simultaneously.  i'm pretty sure johnny wrote most of this one, and i didn't really have much to do with it except i played the bassline he wrote.  and also the spoken vocal bit towards the end where the judge speaks.”- TVIYH

 

19. “Can’t Take Our Love Away” by Jute Gyte

“I decided that the week before I went away to school I should do one more songfight, and that it should be metal. Basically my idea was to incorporate some ideas from "Happy Machine Ankle", my first songfight entry, that I hadn't used since that song into my normal metal style. In practice this just means that I added a wandering solo and forced myself to use different drum samples. I also tried to include more overtly melodic elements in the riffs. I had to leave for college so I didn't quite get the full week to work on it, so there are some bits that could use improvement, but I'm relatively happy with the end result.”- Jute Gyte

 

18. “Puppet’s Dream” by King Arthur

“"The Puppet's Dream" is kind of autobiographical; there are people who make their own way through life, make decisions and see things happen, and then there are those of us who are, for the most part, content to go with whatever flow life offers us. I don't remember what the specific situation was, but I think at the time the title came out, I was feeling bad about being this way, about being so easily led around - but I also remember thinking that _everybody_ was going to be doing a song about how most people are just puppets, controlled by the Big Whatever, and so I was specifcially trying for the other side of that story, a song by someone who realizes that he's pretty easily led around but is, for the most part, comfortable with that and accepts it. I was hoping to come up with something a bit better than the "self esteem" line in the chorus, but that's the problem with only having a week on these things. Actually, that song was recorded in the big studio at school on a Wednesday, and I think the titles didn't actually get posted until Monday morning, so it was a bit of a rush job to get the song written, with no opportunity to go back later and make lyric tweaks...”- King Arthur

 

17. “The Chair We Share” by Johnny Cashpoint

“TCWS was inspired by my despair at the death penalty, and the chords from the Clash's Stay Free.”- J$

 

16. “Getting All Sweaty” by Johnny Cashpoint

“I didn't like the original very much. I couldn't play that guitar part and there was no help forthcoming on the chords, so I had to do what I could. I took my favourite parts and treated them as a remix. That seemed to help. And a liberal dash of the Streets, which I guess is pretty obvious!”- J$

 

15. “Gin or Ginseng” by Abominominous

“My old explination from the review thread:
"My song is based on Daniel T. Benedetto's auto-biography, "Heartspeaker." (you might be able to get it on amazon or half.com) Benedetto was a near constant abuser of absinth, and was one of the magor contributors to its' recent revival, of sorts. When I read the title "Gin or Ginseng," it made me think of absinth, since it's kind of a combination of herbs and booze. So, that's how I arrived at my particular muse, and I pretty much just mirrored his (Benedetto's) writing style for my lyrics. Tonetripper was kinda close with the art v commerce guess, as much of Dan's book related to his struggles as a (failed) pop artist.(Lichtenstein-style, not musically.)"
The truth is, the lyrics were purely stream of conciousness, an attempt at some Mars Volta-like impenetrable lyrics. So the book n' benedetto are totally made up.”- Abom

 

14. “Hold This For Me” by the Hell Yeahs

“I love how crass Heather comes across in this song. I love songs with lists, and I wanted it to gradually go from innocuous to totally sinister. I am a purse rack in real life sometimes, and I sometimes pretend to give her crap about it. I am completely in love with all things Kate Spade, she's got such a great design sense, and is just ruthless around the price tag! She is such the opposite of her brother, well, of the character her brother always plays.”- Phil Redmon

 

“This song came from a brainstorming session where Phil kept saying “who’s holding what?” I finally replied with the idea that a guy was holding a girl’s purse while she did various things. This is the first real emergence of the idea that the girl character is bad, or on the wrong side of the law. As far as lyrical choices, we decided that the first verse would be about this guy not wanting to hold her purse for fear of ridicule, but then snooping around to find what in it: a chorus comprised of a list of really girly things. Again, Phil had me write stuff down and I came up with typical junk that might be in a girls purse, a lot of it in mine. Some of the words were chosen for their rhythmical nature and others just for their meaning. With the lead in to the second chorus with the last item (pepper spray) from the first one, the second half of the song is made to make you understand that the girl is not all bubble gum and lip gloss. She is a crook who cares about getting away from the cops, knifes, guns and poison, not to mention beating down other girls. It’s a kind of double agent or angel/devil idea. I love the way Phil can take basic ideas and shape them into awesome lyrics and stories. The subtle “yeah, yeahs” paired with the monotone punk rock vocals and kickass guitars and drums make this such a classic Hell Yeahs tune! An interesting side note to the lyrical choices question… Phil really likes Kate Spade handbags and developed this interested after watching a documentary about her (did you know she’s David Spade’s sister?). I don’t really own a Kate Spade handbag, the average price for one is between $300-$500, but this the first of two Katie Spade references so far.”- Heather Redmon

 

13. “Dinga Da Donga” by Dreamy Mo & The Commoners

“this started as a joke in irc.. well there was the long running "is mo dreamy" thing, but one day mo was in irc, and somebody (i think ken but don't quote me on that) came in and said something to the effect of "hello dreamy mo... and all the rest of you commoners"... and somebody suggested that there was the making of an awesome band name.  glenn case and drew tetz were both there, and they started making plans.  i volunteered to play bass, and soon after, drew had written some lyrics, glenn recorded a quick demo for it and sent it to me.  i loved what he'd recorded, and based on the chord progression i started fooling around on the bass, and came up with that bassline pretty quickly (nobody else has ever said anything about it, but to me it sounds like the brass part in chicago's "saturday in the park") ... at the very end of the song i dropped down to some pretty low notes, and glenn liked that part a lot so he suggested i expand on that and use it for both choruses.  (originally he wanted sven mullet to play guitar but he wasn't around or something, and prayformojo was going to sing but he had recording problems, so we stuck with glenn's demo vocal track (which i actually like a lot) and hoblit threw some quick lead guitar on there.  and also glenn sampled the "goddamn incompetant fools" bit from mo's part in the frontalittle squad's "martians are going to eat us")”- TVIYH

 

12. “Under the Horse” by Sonofsupercar

 

11. “I Want To Get Better” by W2 & the Temps

“Well, the W2 song was strange because I had music to write to, but I wasn't in charge of the melody, just the lyrics. Only half the lyrics, in fact, because Denyer had to do something, too. Even worse, I had only a couple of days to do it in, and I had some stuff going on in my life at that point, too. I distinctly recall sitting in my friend David's room scribbling lyrics for "I Want to Get Better" while he was in the shower. “- Jon Eric

“I had forgotten all about that song. I like how it turned out, though, as well as the idea of the 'potluck' itself. I did the 'noise' portion, which is pretty low in the mix. If I recall correctly, I sampled my massively, grotesquely squealing drum stool for that one. I also played some software turntables very badly.”- Jute Gyte

 

10. “Sincerity Machine” by Michael Maas

“The first thought I had for this title was "a walking Sinceretiy Machine," which is a rather sarcastic remark. I pulled from an experience I had with a religious person I know. We're not friends anymore because of his attitude, and so I used some of that to set up the conflict in the song. “- Michael Maas

9. “Can’t Take Our Love Away” by Johnny Cashpoint

“i felt very awkward singing them actually. It's been a long time since I was a first year student (and 'keggers' are a totally alien concept to us brits) but I picked up on a lunatic stalker element that appealed to me ”- J$ on singing Jon Eric’s lyrics

 

“With Johnny Cashpoint, he and I had agreed to switch songs, so we gave each other rough cuts. I did mine on solo acoustic - I think I only used three strings, come to think of it - and took too long, but Johnny came through. I just treated it like my own song, pretty much. I saw a lot of friends who were going through the same thing, and some writers' instinct inspired me to write from a female point of view, and I think it worked.”- Jon Eric

8. “Firebomb” by Jute Gyte

“'Firebomb' was a pretty good title and I wanted to make a song for it, but I was tired of doing metal at the time and didn't want to do another 'detuned acoustic + tuneless caterwauling' song. So in an atttempt to do something new and interesting, I decided to concentrate on my only real vocal strength (screaming), but do an entirely different genre, which ended up being pseudo-chiptune.”- Jute Gyte

7. “Hero Points” by Abominominous

“Just a semi-cryptic take on the human condition, and more specifically, the american condition. This was the first time i just used a basic loop for my drum part.”- Abom

 

6. “I Want to Get Better” by Nineteen Foot Cactus Kills Gunslinger

 

5. “Promise is a Promise” by Pompeii

 

4. “Save a Pony from the Glue Factory” by Spy vs. Pie

“Sally Struthers and Hasbro join forces.... or was it Kenner? This one was pretty easy to write. Me & Brian came up with the idea together, and I looked on the net for a list of My Little Pony Names. The lyrics pretty much wrote themselves. I wanted the second "so and so dies" section to be almost unbearably long, and I suppose I could have wedged 8 or so more names in there. The cascades of harmonies and accordian is all Brian Fukushima, the best friend an internet ever had.”- Phil Redmon

3. “Zombie Son” by The Frontalittle Squad

 

2. “Frannie” by Sonofsupercar

 

1. “Crinkle Binkle” by Frankie Big Face

“At the time I was writing "Crinkle Binkle," I had just met me wife-to-be and we were in that initial period of "discovery," where we were telling each other about the things we liked or thought were interesting. Very quickly, I found out that she enjoyed hearts of palm (which I didn't even know existed), tubular bells and Guam. So, I decided to weave these seemingly disparate elements into a song. Once I had the first verse written, the rhyme scheme was set and I pretty much took it from there. I don't know exactly when I decided to make it an old-timey shuffle, but it seemed appropriate and led me to some other lyric choices ("antique wind-up edison," for instance). When it was time to make the recording, I called JB over to my house with his snare drum and we banged it out in a couple of hours. I'm really proud of the song. I especially like the time signature changes and the lyrics, which I think are maybe my best ever.”- Frankie Big Face