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To sing the songs on Work In Progress was a leap into the unknown. For years we’d invented, built, and played our instruments, now at last we were recording words on top of them.
2009/10/18 – Dynasties Fall
2009/12/09 – I’m a Little Worried
2010/03/22 – Dark Clouds
2010/11/28 – Hand in Hand
It was intoxicating. Our music was peaking. We were recording magic sound unlike anything anyone had ever heard.
Finally life after India was taking shape. Hiking the high mountains gave us back our strength. Japanese to English commercial translation was paying the rent.
Still there were downs as well as ups. Most disturbingly we seemed to be on a different wavelength from the people we’d grown up with, from our old friends who had like us gone to good schools. The disconnect between their words and actions could no longer be ignored. How could we ever have respected them? Born to wealth they’d taken no risks, done nothing interesting. Big disappointed we started calling them “the birthies”.
They didn’t like us either. They were dumping us right and left, shunning us because we were broke. Unhappy in their expensive lives, they were spooked we could live elegantly on so little, spooked doing things differently was working for us. And once they could no longer see us as merely failed refugees, could no longer pity us, next best was to pretend we didn’t exist. They stopped answering our e-mails, didn’t return our calls…
Of course we were hurt and furious, so in our songs and blog posts we went where respectable reasonable people are not supposed to go.
And if our harsh words put some birthies off, that was fine with us, we’d already lost those guys anyway. More important we knew though iced with a layer of pain, our words spoke truth.
Which is why our songs and song posts still have relevance, why we’ve given them a place in this website, why we’ve gathered them together underneath this “Our Songs” menu tab.
There’s stuff in them we’d say differently now. The individuals who so disturbed us back then, these days seem worthy of pity. Our anger has become a bit dispassionate, more directed against the piss poor way us humans have set things up, than against the specific people who insulted us.
But we’re proud we had the balls to sing and write what we did the way we did, to get our insights down raw, fresh, and in your face.
At the foot of Taos mountain, nights brilliant with sharp stars, seeing who we were and who we were not.
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