**note: The featured image is not the official cover. I Googled some fantasy stuff and made it in like 5 minutes. Looks kinda cool, though. . .***
Hello there, everyone! It has come to my attention that I have, as of this year’s past six and a half months, written only FIVE articles to post on here. I do mean to write more, but a certain DEBUT NOVEL seems to be taking up all my time. (Like, seriously, all my time!) To not disappear completely, I’ll write something here and tell you how the whole editing process is going.
Editing! . . .yay . . .
Over the past couple weeks (or months…or years?), I have made massive headway on my revisions to the original text, which was written for National Novel Writing Month 2010. That’s right, I wrote 50,000 words in twenty-something days, which means that pretty much all the original text is unusable. What’s that quote? “Marry in haste, repent at leisure”? The writing equivalent would not doubt be “Write in haste, re-write the whole fucking thing at leisure”. In addition to writing a like Cheetah on catnip, I really had no idea what the in-world setting was. I was just flying by the seat of my pants. The world mostly wouldn’t be established until the second book which (which I wrote the next year),which meant that I had to go back and FIX everything. You’d never guess, but if you’re backstory changes, so does a lot of your current story. (Like, everything. . .)
As of two nights ago, I finished my first pass of the entire novel. Well, what I mean to say is that I reached the end of the original text. I still have to go back and add in some SEVEN new little scenes which are either new or are complete re-writes. But that shan’t take long. I’ve contractually obligated myself to have a final, printed, double-spaced, and bound copy of the draft by the end of this month. If I fail to do so, I owe my roommate twenty bucks. (8 bottles of Charles Shaw wine…) After that, it’ll be onto the second pass, where I’ll read the whole damn thing AGAIN, but this time off the printed page.
Hopefully with less edits.
After fixing the second pass, then it’s off to a couple pre-determined beta readers, which’ll be very exciting, for instead of just rambling about the book to friends, they’ll actually get to read it and see how it is. It’ll be good to finally have some objective eyes looking at it, too.
If there’s one thing I have learned about editing/revising a previous work, it’s that it’s an IMMENSE amount of work. Sometimes even more work than actually doing the initial writing itself. I feel like I went into this process with the domestic-care-metaphor assumptions of straightening up a room. Just a little messy. Straighten this up, straighten this out, right? Well, as I started cleaning, I soon realized I was gonna have to build a whole fucking addition to the house. And then I realized that my house wasn’t just a simple one, but three separate ones, and I need to plan and build bridges between them that were structurally sound and wouldn’t crumble under their own weight. The amount of work, to be completely honest, kind of blindsided me.
In order to help me with the crazy task of planning the set-ups, pay-offs, and callbacks of an estimated 180,000-word trilogy, I wrote a long, detailed summary of all three books. The super-summary itself turned out to be some 6,000 words. And that’s not including the some 70-year chronology I included, that detailed the backstory of the entire thing and all the characters since birth and. . .hey, what are you doing with that straight jacket?
J.R.R. Tolkien is known for saying that The Lord of Rings, the massive sequel to the shorter The Hobbit, “grew in the telling”. While I’ve always let my stories and music/all creative stuff take a somewhat organic route to forming (because I am a creative hippie), I had no idea that the novel I started writing for fun in November 2010 would EXPLODE to be a full-fledged trilogy with a long backstory. But the most interesting thing about that fact is that the story CAN’T be anything else. If it wanted to be a short, simple story, then it would be. The story’s really calling the shots here, I’m just writing it all down. I feel like the story itself knows what is best for it, and all I can do is obey its commands.
“Write a new introduction for the company’s arrival to Falkenbir, or else!”
This practice of obeying the creative work reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, this one from Rammstein’s lead guitarist Richard Kruspe. Here he’s talking about music, but I think it works for any type of creative work: “You are part of a machinery, and the music lets you know where it wants to go, which direction it wants to take. . .It is the case that when you have a song, it lets you know if the song should be stately, aggressive or rhythmic – whatever. It always tells you, and when you recognize that, when you are sensitized to this and recognize this, you can’t do anything wrong. We [Rammstein] got this wrong in the beginning. We thought we should try to press into a certain direction. You can’t do that. You can only follow.”
And follow, indeed! Even if it means re-routing your entire story and writing thousands of words of new material (which also means throwing away thousands of words of old material), you gotta listen to your story so it can be the best it can be. I probably should have been writing in “A Distant Horn” while writing this, but oh well, this was a nice, and most welcome, break.
Oh yeah, and the book is about a perilous quest to find a great warrior that can defeat a ancient, super-evil Lich. Didn’t think I had mentioned that yet.
Hey there, Linnalapset! Been a while since I have posted on here, but do not worry, Linnalapsi is not forgotten! Quite the contrary, actually, as work on the third album continues slowly as I focus on other projects. But this is no place to talk about those, and let’s not talking about the nine-,eight-,ten- (?)-track Linnalapsi III just album yet. It’s time to take a look back on “Menneisyyden Laulut” (second Linnalapsi album, to be referenced here as ‘ML’), which I released one year ago today.
It’s weird to think that it has been a year since I released ML, especially since it seem like it took a billion freakin’ years to come out. While the initial splash wasn’t as big as I anticipated (y’know, not getting me the top spot at Wacken and all…), I slowly began to see ML pop on random blogs and metal tracker websites from all over the world. For the first time ever, Linnalapsi was somewhere on the web where I didn’t personally put it, which is pretty damn cool (and nice for a change).
Some statistics. . .
If you know me personally, you’ll know that I am stats freak (just ask my friends about my custom-made Xbox FIFA stats that one summer…). Now and then throughout the last year, I was monitoring Linnalapsi’s “growth” throughout the web. While it didn’t grow into a massive tree or anything, here is what I found:
-In the year after the release of ML, Linnalapsi’s official website received a 280% increase in hits than the previous year, the most of which came from Germany. Besides the USA, Russia, Finland, and UK were the most frequent visitors. That’s pretty cool!
-Linnalapsi and ML have popped up on numerous metal bloggy things and forums from all over the world (even though they all say I’m from Finland, lol). According to my bandcamp site and just one other site that gives downloads numbers, ML has been downloaded 77 times. That averages out to someone downloading the album every five or so days. That’s not too hot, but remember, this is just the data from TWO of the sites. Odin only knows how many more times ML has been downloaded from all those other file-sharing sites!
-On Youtube, the ML videos have amassed a little under 2,000 views. That is nothing compared to other bands’ 9,000 or even big bands’ 40,000 (a month) views, but hey, I’ll take it.
Compared to the first album’s numbers, that is pretty impressive (there were months when this site got zero hits). With numbers like that, we can guess that about 1,000 new people learned about Linnalapsi last year. Hell, even if it’s 500 new people, that’s still 500 new people who didn’t know about you or your music a year ago. And as one of my friends said it, ‘Dude, someone is Estonia could have you on there iPod.” He was right.” SOMEONE IN ESTONIA *COULD* HAVE ME ON THEIR IPOD, and that’s a pretty encouraging thought.
Marching Ahead to Album III
Despite one nice, decent review and a couple other statements of “good work, dude”, ML was not received with much love by, well, anyone. That’s all right, though. I can see ML’s faults now: some of the song structures are repetitive, the drumwork (which I had no clue about) can be a bit boring, the synthy sounds are not desirable, and my growling (and just regular) vocals are no good. I might have known some of this before, but either wasn’t mature enough of a composer, or didn’t take Linnalapsi seriously enough to make it absolutely great. That’s all right, though, ML is the best album I could have made at that time, just as the first album, “Laulu Linnalapsien” was the best I could do at that time.
But now is now, and with each month, or riff, or song, you learn to get better at things. I feel like there is an immense quality gap between the first and second album, and I feel the same will happen again for album III. I always hear composers and musicians saying “our new album is going to be the best we’ve ever done”, and while I’ve never really believed it, I can now understand where it is coming from. Just as I was assuring you my second album would be better than the first, I can guarantee without a doubt in my mind that the upcoming Linnalapsi album will be the best one so far! Most of the songs’ demo-versions are done (or close to being done), and they’re CATCHY AS HELL. Whether it’s the evil poundings of a piano, the sinister plucking of a banjo, the roar of mischievous horns, an epic call for battle, or that tear-jerkin’ melancholic solo, Linnalapsi III will be sure to get the blood of any folk-metal fan riling. I guess what I am trying to say is that these new songs have gotten MY blood riling, and I’m excited to share them with all of you (y’know, in a billion years when they’re done).
Thanks for listening,
Oh, and if you haven’t downloaded ML yet, you can do so here!
Hello everyone, just checking in here with some news about my upcoming self-published debut novel, “A Distant Horn”. Don’t worry, I am still planning to release it on November 1st, although my progress with the editing is going a lot slower (repeat: A LOT SLOWER) than I earlier anticipated. That’s all right, though. I was pretty good in college about spending entire days in the library or the editing bay to meet fast-approaching deadlines. So far with this project, I haven’t had to do anything like that, but have been showing it a bit more attention lately (instead of giving it to those pesky music projects).
As of now, I am some 29,000 words into my first pass of the edit, which is pretty much half way. If I want to do ANOTHER PASS (which my perfectionist self DOES want to do, ugh), then I am 25 percent done with just doing passes before handing it off to my trusty editor friend, who’ll hopefully point out all the typos and none of the plot holes. 25 percent, yikes.
I bet you probably guessed this already, but let me tell you, editing a book is no easy task. Each of my James Bond Countdown articles averages around 2,500-3,000 words, despite my best efforts to cut them down (just love those movies, I guess). Those roughly take me half a day to edit, clean up, and come up with pictures. While I won’t have to find pictures for “A Distant Horn,” it’s around 57,000 words, which means it’s like TWENTY James Bond articles, which is a HUGE amount of work. For some reason I thought editing a book was going to be easy. Just fix a thing here, fix a sentence there. Oh, but wait, I forgot, I CHANGED THE ENTIRE BACKSTORY. Oops!
The work is fine in itself, but a lot of times when I have free time now, I want to do absolutely nothing at all. After your day job, you don’t really want to come home to that unfinished riff or that unedited chapter, that has been waiting there all day with an expectant look because you didn’t work on it YESTERDAY, either. Sometimes you just wanna cook your sweet potato and watch “Frasier” all night, you know what I’m saying? And despite my temporary disinterest in doing this work, I know that I HAVE TO if I want the end result to be as good as it can. It’s like being your own boss, but the only worker is you, and lazy, and doesn’t wanna do anything.
I’ll start editing after this episo. . .season, I swear.
So the clock is ticking for “A Distant Horn”. I have 175 days until my projected release of the book (thank goodness I didn’t make any more promises this year). Will I be able to make it? All I have to do is finish the first pass, do the second pass, draw up the map nicely, give it off to an editor, go over it again, make sure everything is perfect, then hand it off to my graphic designer friend, get a cover from the artist (is he still in the USA?), make the pdf, order a couple proofs to see if its good and then publish it. TOO EASY!
Thank goodness I at least have the first draft of the map, which I decided to draw up at work over the course of a couple days. Marion, the crazy, fantastic world in which “A Distant Horn” and it’s two sequels (DON’T EVEN WANNA THINK ABOUT THOSE ATM!) was finally being realized. It’ll have to be re-drawn on the computer, of course (hire someone to do that?), but I think it’s a pretty nice first draft. Check it out and stay tuned!
In Spain, Bond meets with some Swiss banker to retrieve some money for Sir Robert King, who was buying a report from an MI6 agent. The report was stolen and the agent killed, so Bond goes in asking questions. Before the banker can give details, he is sniped, causing much chaos in the room. Bond grabs the money, but learns nothing as to who killed the agent.
Bond returns to MI6 with the money and meets King, oil pipeline dude and old friend of M. Due to some chemical reaction caused between the chemicals on the money and King’s (secretly switched) lapel pin, the money fucking explodes. Bond is shot at by some lady on boat outside Q’s new boat out to chase her on the Thames. The boats finally reaches the Millennium Dome, where the suspect de-boats and jumps into a hot air balloon. Bond grabs the ropes and tries to convince her to come and talk. Her gun speaks instead, shooting some canister and the whole thing up. Bond falls down to the Dome and dislocates his shoulder.
Later, Bond attends the funeral and sees there Elektra King, Sir Robert’s only daughter. In the local MI6 base, Bond and Co. figure out that the money is linked to Renard, a terrorist who kidnapped Elektra long ago. Oh, and due to a bullet in his head, he can feel no pain. Thinking Elektra is the next target, M sends Bond to go protect her.
Bond arrives in Azerbaijan and after a “cold reception” from Elektra, they decide to go skiing and go check out the pipeline. It is here they are attacked by flying snowmobiles or whatever. After Bond thwarts them, he meets with Valentin Zukovsky (the same from Goldeneye) at his casino to get info about the attackers. Zukovsky tells Bond that Davidov, Elektra’s head of security, is secretly in league with Renard. Before they can get chatty, Elektra comes down to gamble. She’s not one for Bond’s overprotective style, and tells him “There’s no point in living if you can’t feel alive.” Elektra then promptly blows her dad’s $1,000,000 credit line with the casino.
Bond leaves Elektra and kills Davidov, then boarding a plane to a a nuclear physics place in Kazakhstan. Posing as a physicist, he meets Doctor Christmas Jones, a super sexay American physicist with an affinity for short shorts. Bond goes down in the silo to check shit out, and finds Renard and his cronies about to steal a bomb. Bond is taken aback when Renard says “there’s no point in living if you can’t feel alive”, but can’t do much question-asking, as Doctor Jones comes in and blows his cover. After gunshots and lots of steam, Renard gets off with the bomb.
Bond and Christmas escape by posing sexily
Bond accuses Elektra of being in league with Renard and she slaps him. He later shares his thoughts with M, giving her some bomb locator signal. Right then, the pipeline comes under attack from the stolen bomb. Bond goes along with Christmas to stop it. They realize the bomb has been tampered with and half the plutonium is missing. Bond decides to let the bomb explode and give Elektra the impression they are dead. Thinking Bond dead, Elektra reveals herself to be in league with Renard and that she killed her dad. She kidnaps M, but not before M slaps her.
Renard and Elektra visit M and says she’s gonna die and shit. M then realizes she has the locator card from Bond, but can’t activate it without wires and stuff. Bond comes to Zukovsky’s caviar place to ask him questions, but the interrogation is cut short by a helicopter weilding massive saw blades. After two destroyed helicopters and a destroyed car, Bond finally gets to ask Zukovsky what Elektra’s mysterious gamble was about. Bond suspects she wasn’t gambling at all, instead paying Zukovsky for something. Zukovsky reveals that Elektra was paying for the use of a submarine commanded by his nephew in Istanbul.
Bond, Christmas, and Zukovsky go to some Instanbul base and look at some maps. It is here they realize the reactor from the submarine and the plutonium can be used to make a nuclear bomb. If Istanbul were to disappear, all the oil peeps in the area would have to use the King pipeline. M finally reaches her clock, and connects the locator card. Turns out she’s on some island-tower in the middle of the bay. Bond and Christmas try and go save M, but they are once again kidnapped and brought to the same tower.
Christmas is sent to die on the sub, and Bond gets tortured by Elektra in some torture device to which he is handcuffed. Before he can be killed, Zukovsky arrives with guns blazing, killing traitorous henchman and baddie alike, eventually reaching Bond. Elektra shoots Zukovsky and he falls to the ground. Before he dies, though, he points his concealed-in-his-cane gun at Bond and shoots his handcuff open, freeing him. Zukovsky dies. Bond escapes then, runs up the tower, frees M from her little cell, and encounters Elektra at the top. He kills Elektra when she refuses to call off the submarine.
Bond confronts Elekta
Bond then jumps out the window to the sea (and submarine) below and finds a way inside. Bond finds Christmas and tracks down Renard just when he’s about ready to blow up the reactor. Upon news of Elektra’s death, Renard goes berserk and fights even harder, but not even captor-victim love can save him from a golden-rod-through-the-stomach death. Bond and Christmas escape the submarine, which mimi-explodes underwater, and are saved by some tourists on a boat.
M returns to MI6, where people are using the best technology to locate the MIA Bond. They find him by means of a heat signal, his body getting redder and redder. Under Bond, another set of legs wrap ’round him. M is surprised with her agent’s behavior, but no one else is. Inside the room, Bond and Christmas enjoy sex and bad puns.
Things I like:
While my complaints for The World Is Not Enough are numerous, I do still enjoy the film and several of its aspects. To be honest, I think the movie starts off a little boring, and don’t think it gets going until Elektra reveals herself to be a villain (when the movie’s plot kind of starts to make sense). Once it’s revealed Elektra and Renard want to blast the Bosphorous, the movie gets REALLY GOOD, and the climax is pretty damn thrilling. For this reason, I appreciate The World Is Not Enough most when I can watch it all the way through, for the last hour is the entree to the large, lame-ass appetizer. In snippets, not so good. All together, pretty good.
In addition to being a Bond fan, I am a fan of castles, and armour, and other medieval things, which makes MI6’s Scottish-castle base, to me, the fucking coolest MI6 base ever. Bond see-through glasses are pretty spiffy as well, and the Moneypenny flirt scene is classic.
Now, I’m going to disagree with most Bond fans and say that I don’t mind in the slightest that Denise Richards is a nuclear physicist. While her lines and delivery might make her seem like a stupid person, everyone seems to be opposed to the mere idea that such a fine-looking lady could be such a smart scientist. Which is absolutely crazy. Physicists Amy Mainzer, Sarah Kavassalis, and Lisa Randall are all 1) beautiful women and 2) smarter than either you or me will ever be. So what is the big deal with having a hot scientist? Is the problem that she’s a woman, or that she’ s Denise Richards? I’ll admit that her delivery of lines isn’t the best, but that doesn’t make her unbelievable as a brainy physicist.
Amy Mainzer, Sarah Kavassalis, and Lisa Randall. All would make great Bond girls.
And everyone seems to have a problem with her Tomb Raider-esque short shorts and tank top. While I probably wouldn’t wear such scant clothes when dealing with nuclear substances, who says a physicist can’t wear that? I don’t get it. Do the male Bond fans just have trouble accepting a hot woman is incredibly smart? This is probably a discussion for a wider venue, but I thought I’d bring this up because I seem to be the ONLY one who doesn’t mind her.
Oh, and I really love this shot, too. So great.
Renard smirks as Bond’s instant kill gets blocked. Excellent framing.
Things I didn’t like:
For as much as I like this movie, I sure have a lot of gripes about (as I do with everything).
It’s no surprise that if you space out during the expository scenes of Bond films (or any film), you’ll be completely lost. This happened to me a couple times when I was younger, and I wasn’t fully able to appreciate them until I became an adult and, y’know, developed an attention span. That being said, the plot of The World is Not Enough STILL confuses me. So, Robert King buys a report from an MI6 agent about some terrorists attacking his oil pipeline. The report was stolen from said MI6 agent who was then killed. Bond wants to know who killed the agent, so he goes to the Swiss Banker handling King’s money to ask who killed him (OK so far. . .). The banker is shot before he can deliver a name and Bond escapes with the money.
But why is the banker returning the money? Is it because the report was stolen? But in the scene with M, the report is there on her desk. So, how did they get the report? And if King did get it, then why would he need to be paid back? And how would the banker know who killed the agent anyway? And why would King have to buy the report at all if he was such good friends with M? I don’t get it.
So King goes to see his tampered-with money and blows up. After the death, Bond finds out about Elektra’s past captivity and learns her ransom was a hefty 5,000,000 U.S. dollars. Bond reads the financial statement from King’s money and notes that the pounds amount translates exactly to five million USD (It’s something like 3, 313, 313.13 pounds). Bond goes to M and tells him this is a sign from her past captor, but couldn’t the prices being the same be a coincidence? What was the price of the original report? Wouldn’t the MI6 agent have set the price? Wasn’t King buying it from him? And if it wasn’t, then why would Renard return money back that wasn’t the same price as the report? I don’t get it!
So as I understand it, Renard killed this MI6 agent and decided to give Robert King his money back. Then Elektra switched his lapel pin so that when he next saw the money, the money would explode, killing him and possibly M, who she hates for advising King on paying her ransom the last time she was kidnapped…
Wait, y’know what, there’s no point in trying to figure this shit out. The fact is that all this captivity/report/money backstory shit is just FAR TOO MUCH for a backstory. And looking at it from a logical point, why the fuck would Renard and Elektra go through so much damn trouble just to kill her father? Now, I know Bond villains often do things a bit elaborately, but this plan is so ridiculously complicated that it hinders itself. Why didn’t Elektra and Renard just kill her dad somewhere and blame it on an accident? That wouldn’t involve Bond or MI6 at all, which would keep eyes off them as they steal some plutonium and blow up Istanbul (which also would have been disguised as an accident). Accidental death and accidental city-blow-up leads to getting off scott free, so why would Renard and Elektra send a message right to MI6? Most of the time, when you’re trying to get away with something, you don’t BRING ATTENTION TO YOURSELF. Stupid idiots.
While this makes me want to bang my head against the wall, my biggest complaint doesn’t have to do with the plot at all, but rather this movie’s references to the new Millennium. I mean, I get it, it was 1999, and the year TWO THOUSAND was coming along, which meant we would enter into a new era of technology and knowledge (right?). In preparation, we stored gallons of water in our basements and saw fit to label products in futuristic packaging. “The Guinness Book of World Records” saw it’s “Millennium Edition” and was all shiny silver. The 16th Wrestlemania dropped its roman numeral schtick and went by the name “Wrestlemania 2000”. Pokemon: The Movie 2000 and Dracula 2000 were released. Everything had a fuckin’ 2000 or a Millennium attached to it.
This might have in fact just been the 2,000th Pokemon movie
With such hype for the Millennium, it’s a surprise this movie wasn’t called “James Bond 2000” or some shitty-ass Millennium title, like The 2000 Is Not Millennium. And thank goodness the plot didn’t deal with some sort of plot that had to do with New Year’s and all the world’s computers freaking out. But even though it doesn’t do any of this shit, it still reeks with the dated-ness of Millennium anticipation. Even the trailer for the movie said “As the countdown begins to the 21st century begins, it’s good to know you can always count on 007” (or something to that effect). Oh, and how could we forget John Cleese’s “Y2K” joke at the end of the film?
Additionally, the score is underscored by techno-y beats (futuristic music!), and while this was somewhat present in the previous film, Tomorrow Never Dies, it’s done as much as it is here (we wouldn’t get a shitty dance track for a Bond song until the next movie). I’m talking mostly about the opening boat chase, which features some tech-y beats behind the classic Bond brass. A boat chase which inevitably ends at the fucking Millennium Dome, some stupid ass shit they built in London to celebrate the new Millennium. In addition to the Millennium Dome and the more electronic sound, electronic music artist Goldie was ACTUALLY A HENCHMAN in the movie. And his name was Bullion because he has gold teeth. Like, seriously?
I don’t know why this bugs me so much, but it does. That’d be like if the newest Bond film featured Twitter references, dubstep and Skrillex as a henchman. Could you imagine that? And could image how lame that would be fourteen years later? Can you imagine how lame that would be NOW?
“Hello Mr. Bwaaawaawubbwubbwubb-ond”
All that aside, I already said before that I can buy Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist, but the it’s a wonder they named her Christmas Jones and not Christmas Saystheobviousallthetime. For example, when she and Bond try and diffuse a bomb, he says “Look at this, someone’s stripped the screw-heads,” to which she replies “Someone’s tampered with the bomb!” Uh…DUH. Such on-the-nose dialogue is given throughout. Like, yea, we got it, Christmas.
And why does Valentin Zukovsky look so fucking different? I didn’t even recognize him from Goldeneye. Fucking A.
Getting more catlike with each movie
The Song:
Finally, composer David Arnold is given the opportunity to compose the main track (after losing the race for Tomorrow Never Dies to Sheryl Crow’s song), and it’s fantastic. Shirley Manson’s voice is simply perfect for the haunting, underscored-evil lyrics written by Don Black. With the chorus of “The world is not enough, but it is such a perfect place to start. And if you’re strong enough, together we can take the world apart, my love,” the song is passively sinister, which is damn awesome. One of the my favorite Bond themes, actually.
Favorite Scene:
While The World Is Not Enough features some unique action scenes, the absolute best scene is the one featuring Q and his new protege (played perfectly by John Cleese), who Bond quips as being named “R”. Banter flies between all three of them, brimming with under-the-radar jokes and comedic subtext. In addition to great conversations, this is the first Q scene to mention Q’s retirement (Desmond Llewellyn was pretty old by this point), and shows Bond’s care for his long-time colleague. I always love the Bond-Q relationship and how, despite them always being annoyed with each other, they really seemed to care about each other. Desmond Llewellyn also makes a fitting exit to his character. Llywellyn’s last briefing as Q is an absolute perfect send-off.
Favorite Line:
While I should probably choose something deeper, my favorite line comes when Bond (posing as some Russian guy) meets Christmas Jones. She says “Doctor Jones. Christmas Jones, and tell me any jokes. I’ve heard them all,” to which Bond replies “I don’t know any doctor jokes.” Clever!
Extra Tidbit:
The film’s title is actually the English translation of the Bond family motto (first shown to us in the 1969 Bond flick On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) The original Latin is Orbis non-sufficit.
Hello, everyone! Casey from Fadenfreude here with some, yes, I can’t believe it, Fadenfreude news. Who would have thought my little industrial metal experiment from last year would turn into something that I, well, care about? And care about enough to give it news? Oh well, things happen, and I’m happy to welcome Fadenfreude as the next entity in my creative catalog (because I LOVE having a billion projects to work on. . .)
As you no doubt know, last month was February Album Writing Month (or FAWM for short), in which thousands of people around the world attempt to write 14 songs during the shortest month of the year. I completed this last year (resulting in the first Fadenfreude album, available for listening here!), and was intent on creating the second Fadenfreude album.
After full time job-ness, project schedulin’, a concert, feeling all around burnt-out, and on the last day severe technical problems, I only managed to write six songs. That’s 42.8%, which, in every education system in the world is a failing grade (except maybe the United States). I could have bumped up my song total to 7 had my computer randomly begun to have a problem with recording (I love cheap stuff so much!). All excuses aside, here are the six tracks which will appear on the next Fadenfreude album, to be released hopefully sometime later this year.
Some are completely done, while some need an extra bit of ornamentation that a couple additional tracks of strings or electronic whatnot could easily do. They’re all at varying degrees of volume, having not yet been through the meticulous polishing process (that comes later). All the lyrics are in German, but I’ll provide a little summary for each one, as well as a link to the full lyrics and English translations. So grab your headphones and turn it up!
1. Meister aller Herren (Master of all Misters)
A song about Mr. Feeny, the teacher and mentor character from the great ’90s show “Boy Meets World.” Explains how he strikes fear and is boring, but is also smart and intelligent. As the songs states, he’s “had many experiences and already found the answers for us.” Some men just want to see the world learn. Click here for a link for the full lyrics and translation.
2. Kostenlose Möbel (Free Furniture)
Chronicles the life of free furniture hunting and all its dangers. “Crooked nails, ripped cushions, doesn’t bug me at all!” Decorating on a budget can lead to, well, “eclectic” interior design principles, but as the song states, the bank account says “Nein!” when trying to buy nice things. Click here for a link for the full lyrics and translation.
3. Jeden Tag Los (Every Day Go)
My first real serious song, as in meaning the entire lyrics aren’t a joke. I usually don’t like songs about partying, or feeling good, like P!nk’s “Get the Party Started” or “Let’s get it stared” by The Black Eyed Peas. Like, we’re already partying, do we need to say, “yea, let’s party!!”? Despite my aversion to such titles, I wrote one (because the world doesn’t make sense). And what started as a party song turned into a metaphor for life and how we must “go, go, go! (los, los, los!)” every day because we won’t be here forever. Weird! Click here for a link for the full lyrics and translation.
4. Stuttgart
Another type of song that has always perplexed me is the song about a city. Like, how can you write a song about a city? Every week, FAWM would present its FAWMers with a challenge, one of which was to write a song about a city. I had no intention of doing this, since I have only really lived in towns (and didn’t want to write a song about L.A. . .), but eventually decided I should give my study-abroad-second-semester home a shout-out: Stuttgart. At the end, I say all the ‘burbs I frequented or my friends lived in. Mine, Vaihingen, is mentioned last. Click here for a link for the full lyrics and translation.
5. Verschränkte Melodien (Intertwined Melodies)
“Every person is a melody, that has specific properties. A tempo and instrument, the soul about the sheet music. And sometimes when people meet each other, no matter how they arrived there, the melodies mix together and they go together perfectly.” So begins the most serious song Fadenfreude (and just me in general) has ever tried. A melancholy song for those us whose melodies with others might have mixed, but not been happy songs. It is common for people to believe in a soul mate, some mystery person you’re destined to share a life of happiness and togetherness with. But what if we have sad soul mates, too, who we’re destined to have sad stories with? “At first, smiles, at the end, tears, because not every song is happy”. Click here for a link for the full lyrics and translation.
6. Plastik (Plastic)
A companion piece to the furniture-ode above, “Plastik” chronicles the life of the plastic-bottle Vodka drinker, who, despite wanting quality, doesn’t want to spend too much money (because they can’t). Click here for a link for the full lyrics and translation.
So that’s that. I have another song ready for recording, but am currently fixing my technical problems with recording (or trying to fix it and getting frustrated as hell). I’ll get back to that later for sure. Hope you enjoyed this little sample! I’ll get working on those other songs ASAP! Signing off for now.
Casey Poma 