He lives in my basement (My Favorite Monster prefight)

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Lunkhead
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He lives in my basement (My Favorite Monster prefight)

Post by Lunkhead »

My Favorite Monster
Due: Monday, 02/04/19 9:59am PST
yourbandname_mfm.mp3 sent to fightmaster@songfight.org
Subject: My Favorite Monster
Body: (your band name)

He's green and furry.
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Re: He lives in my basement (My Favorite Monster prefight)

Post by ujnhunter »

Today is my favorite monster's 4th birthday. I am trying to get a song in for him... we shall see.
-Ujn Hunter
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Re: He lives in my basement (My Favorite Monster prefight)

Post by lichenthroat »

The lyrics are great, owl! I'm really looking forward to hearing this one. The mixture of classical and contemporary imagery is very effective, even just in text.
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Re: He lives in my basement (My Favorite Monster prefight)

Post by Heine »

I'm in! Just submitted. - A bit sloppy - but timing ain't no friend of mine...

It's a song within a song. The frame part has a guitar riff that's so simple - I guess I must have stolen it from somewhere. But I don't where! It was quite fun recording some vocals that could be way from Transylvania or something. The dream part is a bit more tasteful (and sounds more like me). As not being a native speaker I hope the lyrics aren't too bad this time.
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Re: He lives in my basement (My Favorite Monster prefight)

Post by owl »

thanks lichenthroat! I'm in for this one, as you already noticed. First song of FAWM too! Hope you enjoy it when you get a chance to hear it.

The intro was originally the chorus and the chorus was originally a bridge, but I decided I liked it better this way.

FAR too much detail about the lyrics below:
---
  • The main reference to know about here is Rainer Maria Rilke's poem that inspired this, "Archaic Torso of Apollo," which is about a spiritual experience upon seeing a broken, headless statue of Apollo, but I made it about porn:

    Archaic Torso of Apollo
    Rainer Maria Rilke, 1875 - 1926
    Translated by Stephen Mitchell


    We cannot know his legendary head
    with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
    is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
    like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

    gleams in all its power. Otherwise
    the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
    a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
    to that dark center where procreation flared.

    Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
    beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
    and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

    would not, from all the borders of itself,
    burst like a star: for here there is no place
    that does not see you. You must change your life.
    --
  • A bit of context about the background of the poem itself, from this interview with Mark Doty:
    "Rilke felt that his own earlier poems were airy, disembodied. He got himself a job working for the sculptor Rodin, whose very fleshy, highly physicalized forms were enormously attractive to him. He wanted to write poems with the same kind of muscularity and physical presence as Rodin’s sculptures.

    Rodin gave him all these assignments. Go to the zoo and look, go to the Louvre, choose something, and talk about it. Although, in this poem, it feels like Rilke has not chosen his subject, he has been chosen for his encounter with this headless object that seems to see him with such rigor and force, despite the fact that its eyes are not there. It has a gaze without a head."

    I have been really thinking about this Rilke poem a lot recently for some reason, and this wonderful translation in particular, so I felt like I wanted to write something inspired by it. The mental juxtaposition of naked men's bodies in pornography (the profane) with the naked torso of the classical statue (the sacred and artistic) was striking to me, especially bound together with that thread of physicality that Rilke was striving for. And I wanted to carry through the idea of the presumed gaze of judgment from the invisible face attached to the torso, that makes the narrator feel seen, and feel that they must change.
  • All of the poem's imagery of the body bursting with brilliance--lamplight, flares, an exploding star--brought to mind the glow of computer screens, and also Rene Magritte's painting "The Pleasure Principle," with a man whose head is an orb of light. (There's a Gary Numan synthpop album by the same name, which is fitting for the style of the section.)
    Image
    Image
  • There's no overt lyrical nod to Ryan Creamer in this song, but he inspired the chorus and the exploration of this idea of longing, or what people might be looking for above and beyond the pleasure principle--what the transcendence the narrator is reaching for in 1908 might be in a porn video in 2019. He's a guy who's gone viral recently for creating his own Pornhub channel and only posting ultra-wholesome videos like "I, Your Step Brother, Decline Your Advances but Am Flattered Nonetheless," "I Ride in a Taxi and Don't Have Sex With the Driver," "POV FOREHEAD KISS COMPILATION," and "I Hug You and Say I Had a Really Good Time Tonight."
  • The lines at the end of the 3rd verse are from "Why Can't I Touch It" by the Buzzcocks. I could have sworn I read an article recently after Pete Shelley's death where they explicitly said that the song was actually about God and spirituality when everyone else thought it was about sex, but I've been hunting for that article for the last 15 minutes and the closest I could find was this quote from the Chicago Reader, so maybe I imagined it:
    "No track summed up this dichotomy between the carnal and the metaphysical better than "Why Can't I Touch It?," a Buzzcocks B side from 1979. Its mischievous title suggests the complaint of a horny teen, but atop its loping bass riff and crisp rhythm guitars, Shelley longs for transcendence."
  • Last but not least, if you aren't up on your ancient Greek mythology, Zeus impregnated Danaë, the mother of Perseus, by taking the form of a golden shower (!) that dripped in through the roof of her chambers, which is incredibly weird in a Terminator 2 kind of way now that I think about it, and also went to Leda in the form of a swan and Europa in the form of a bull.
  • Jacobellis v. Ohio is the Supreme Court legal ruling about obscenity where the judge wrote (on the topic of porn vs. art) "I know it when I see it"
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Re: He lives in my basement (My Favorite Monster prefight)

Post by Pigfarmer Jr »

I love the art submitted by Jerkatorium and Lichenthroat.

And that's a lot of information, Owl. But it's cool to get a peek into the creative process of your song.
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Re: He lives in my basement (My Favorite Monster prefight)

Post by vowlvom »

Haha I like the Coverbot's attempt, it's endearingly misjudged.

I'm sending something in shortly.
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Re: He lives in my basement (My Favorite Monster prefight)

Post by Paco Del Stinko »

This monster has submitted.
Bringin' the stink since 2006.
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Pigfarmer Jr
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Re: He lives in my basement (My Favorite Monster prefight)

Post by Pigfarmer Jr »

vowlvom wrote:
Sun Feb 03, 2019 6:29 am
Haha I like the Coverbot's attempt, it's endearingly misjudged.
I think the 'antidote' is in the picture as opposed to the 'monster' being there. But I could be just reading a bit into it.

Also, I've submitted a song just a few short moments ago.
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Re: He lives in my basement (My Favorite Monster prefight)

Post by lichenthroat »

I'm in, with what may be the Lichen Throatiest song yet recorded.
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Re: He lives in my basement (My Favorite Monster prefight)

Post by lichenthroat »

I appreciate the lyrics explanation, owl! You've packed even more in there than I had thought! It makes me happy that I am not alone in sometimes trying to stuff lyrics full of seemingly unrelated combinations of allusions. I like your lyrics even more now.

The Danae part was what really grabbed my attention and caused me to comment initially. Interestingly--and surprisingly relevant to your song--a few years ago, my wife gave me a Gustav Klimt wall calendar that included the painting "Danae" (linked below). I had the calendar in my office but ended up not displaying it that month because one of my coworkers had suggested that it might be inappropriate for the workplace (i.e., pornographic).

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1445107# ... mt_010.jpg
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ujnhunter
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Re: He lives in my basement (My Favorite Monster prefight)

Post by ujnhunter »

In. In. Yes.
-Ujn Hunter
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Re: He lives in my basement (My Favorite Monster prefight)

Post by thirdcat »

got it in just under the deadline again!
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Re: He lives in my basement (My Favorite Monster prefight)

Post by Cybronica »

In with a minute to spare, bass line recorded the 10 minutes before then... No truth this week, so it's a Cybronia solo single. This was a fun one to try out some new techniques with. The bridge especially was fun to create.
“It's like opera for toddlers or something.” -furrypedro
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Re: He lives in my basement (My Favorite Monster prefight)

Post by Cybronica »

Sometimes these song challenges feel a bit like scattergories, where you have to come up with a good response, but also make it something that no one else thought of. Paco, after reading the lyrics, it seems like now the group must devolve into arguing over whether our premises cancel each other's out. ;)
“It's like opera for toddlers or something.” -furrypedro
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Re: He lives in my basement (My Favorite Monster prefight)

Post by reve »

I'd like to thank Ujn for helping me relive my teenage infatuation with Screeching Weasel.

I'd also like to thank Owl for letting me know that Pete Shelley died... but... only sort of. Homosapien is one of my all-time favorite records. Everyone should go listen to it.
-- reve mosquito.
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