LIVE VIDEO BY MATT VEND AND THE TENDER TEN:
This song is only 4 chords with no chorus to speak of, it’s
extremely simple, and the lyrical approach is what makes the song unique. As it
really is nothing more than a paragraph I wrote while riding on the sky train
through Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand. A diary entry, a random captured
moment, weaved into a poem for the sake of a song.
Looking back on the writing process, now in quiet
reflection. In a subconscious way, I was inspired by The Jam’s classic 1980
hit, “That’s Entertainment” where songwriter Paul Weller absorbs whatever
subject matter he can see in his peripheral and merely puts pen to paper. The
result is quite magical and “That’s Entertainment” in my opinion is up there
with any great pop song released in the ’80s.
Even though my arrangement and playing style is completely
removed from The Jam’s classic minimal poetic homage to dreary Thatcher-era
London. I feel in some strange way I was channeling the stream of consciousness
nature of this timeless track.
I was consumed by work while staying in Bangkok and never
found much time to play guitar. Yet in the long hours in between class waiting
to teach at an extremely daunting public school, I found time to write and I
wrote whenever I could. Since returning to South Africa, during one of the most
turbulent times in modern history, I suddenly found myself with numerous other
commitments, yet within these perimeters I also found my guitar lying among a
pile of clothes.
I picked it up and strummed away while looking through some
of the poems and paragraphs I had been scribing into a notebook on my recent
sojourn abroad. I slowly started to make sense of the images and reflective
feelings I had put onto paper.
I have often been an artist who has neglected the marketing
side of making art and when I completed this track in a studio format, I felt I
wanted to do something more with it than just put it up on Soundcloud as a
single for it to eventually be considered for a future album. Just to be lost
in an endless sea of Spotify playlists and Bandcamp amnesty days.
So on a lonely Sunday morning in Durban, I decided to do
nothing more than plug one condenser mic into my recording desk just to record
a dry take of guitar and vocals live while I recorded video using my webcam on
my laptop, so I could later splice the audio with the video and release it as
an accompaniment to promote my new song. I noticed the additional recording
from the video recording sounded thin and the condenser mic recording sounded
equally as thin and didn’t add much, the experiment had failed.
However, I did do something right in the performance aspect
and it was perfectly in time to the video so the audio linked up with minimal
effort. I looked down at my mixing desk and noticed 5 other channels, so I just
went for it and started picking up whatever I could find, the washboard met my
hands first and I sang backups as I played the aluminum cleaning utensil with
a screwdriver.
I wanted to capture as much of a live feeling as possible,
so I purposely worked quickly turning the monitors around as if to mimic a live
show, purposefully using bleed from the speakers and the natural room sound.
Finally, I added some overdub harmonicas, organ, and more guitar and the result
was quite distinctive. As mentioned I have limited editing software for video
on my laptop, so a friend of mine with video editing knowledge put the audio
and video together and did the final editing, post-production, and added the
lyrics. I think the result is pretty original and I hope to do more of these
bedroom videos soon.
Hope you enjoy watching it.
Love
Matt
Credits:
Artist: Matt Vend
and the Tender Ten
Song: The 27th of
May (sky train ramble)
All music and lyrics by Matt Vend, guitar and vocals
performed live, with overdubs by Matt which include vocals, harmonica,
washboard, and organ.
Filmed by Matt using his laptop web camera,
Post-production and video editing by Alexandre Marrier
DUnienville
Download and stream
the studio version here:
https://soundcloud.com/mattvend/the-26th-of-may-sky-train-ramble
Lyrics:
This city sprawls,
And makes other places,
I have been to,
Seem like:
Dusty villages, backwater towns, and lonely outposts in the
desert.
Monstrous buildings,
Shimmer from aluminum windows,
Fake gold furnishings,
Grotesque, beautiful.
A shining example,
Of capitalism, juxtaposed
With grimy street fighting.
Opulence and survival,
Attractive women,
And lonely, longing, drooling men
Searching for companionship,
Or
Searching for a paycheck…
All my old haunts have shut down.
Now they just haunt my sub-consciousness.
Feeding my retinas,
With Déjà vu and nostalgia.
Street art, street life, jungle.
The Wats and vacant lots.
Dilapidated shacks,
Rack and ruin,
Perfectly in tune with the chaos.
Everything here has a life of its own
Everything here, oh everything here,
Everything here has a life of its own.
https://soundcloud.com/mattvend/the-26th-of-may-sky-train-ramble
ReplyDeleteThe poem paragraph works well to create a visceral experience teeming with life and unrelenting energy
ReplyDelete