A Note From The Author
At the end of 1995 I experienced a spiritual and creative revolution. It was a time of great imagination and inspiration. It was also during this time (a three month period spanning November of 1995 to January of 1996) that section one and two of this book were written, save a few poems that I had written a year or so before. Much of it was later turned into songs, which is why you see a repeating 4 line per stanza structure (verse chorus verse chorus). I wrote the words first before the music because I was still trying to become proficient at the guitar. Eventually I attempted to put these words to music and then record these songs on an old Radio Shack tape recorder. The result was poor and some of these songs have been lost. Fortunately, “Cupid I Need, Cupid I Dream“ was not lost, and I still have the first bad copy of this song.
Section three was a long process. I worked on the majority of it until 1997 on an old 386 40mhz computer that I had built out of spare parts. The computer floppy disk drive developed a problem and making copies soon became impossible. Because I kept most of my poems and songs on a computer hard disk instead of keeping a printed hard copy (stupid, stupid), when the computer became obsolete, so did my poetry and songs. It wasn’t until late 2000 that I attempted a rescue, which worked, and I ended up putting the entire hard disk onto a CD, which was then later shelved. Time passed and I forgot about the CD, as I had much newer work to attend to. This newer work I wrote in journals that I filled up each month. These would serve as my new hard copies. I did this until 2004 and have kept a filing cabinet for all of it.
Last year (2005) I began going through all of it again in preparation of this book. I tried to be careful so that section three would only contain material written before 1999 and after 1996. As I found out, almost all the work during this time period is a song and was recorded to various tape journals. This I will go into further detail about.
As the primary song writer in the three bands that I played in circa 1997 to 1999, I borrowed and incorporated the songs and words I had written into the band’s catalog, including a demo #2 containing the songs: “Plum”, “Glimmer Girl”, “Through These Glassy Eyes”, “Estranged Delusion”, “Shadow Dancer”, “Without”, “Belly of Pain”, “Blue Ballad”, “Tin Star”, “Silver Lining”, “Through The Eyes Of Innocence” and “If I Could”. We used a cheap plastic dynamic microphone plugged into a Sony stereo cassette recorder and played live straight through the song set. The result was fuzzy and the gain was low. I think I showed a handful of people the tape. Because recording professionally was expensive then and technology was scarce, we ended up doing more live shows than recordings.
In my second band we created a demo which we released only on cassette containing the songs: “Angels Speak”, “Porcelain Smile” and “Blush”. This was recorded in a community college studio on a Mackie board and ADAT machines. Not much was done with this EP and I still have a box of the tapes waiting around to get tossed out.
In my third band we created two demos. The first one, containing the songs: “I’m Not The One”, “Chase The Sun” and “Satin” (which was a song written by another band member), and the second demo containing the songs: “Desert Sky” (an early version not included here), “Dream Walking”, and “Overcast Days”, all ended up going no where and now sit on my dusty shelf uncompleted.
Success seemed short lived then, and with all the bands and all the musicians that I worked with, I always made sure to keep music journals. I figured that because I would not get a chance to record the songs completely, I should archive them to tape for later use. Also, it became almost impossible to remember all of the chord structures and melodies as the years went on. So I created quite the library of my own work. One of the songs which always sticks out in my mind is “The Flower Bed”. Nothing ever became of this song, but I have a tape lying around here somewhere of my brother and I playing the song over and over. Someday I will have to ask him if he still remembers the chords. Another example from my library is “Roseate” which I wrote for a girl I was dating at the time. Something about that melody has always stuck to me, and to this day I still play it on the guitar.
I know that this music might be lost to the past, but the words remain and are here as a collection of poetry and songs. I have done much better work but this was an old style of writing that I dabbled in to write music, and does not reflect my style of writing poetry now. I have since drawn a clear line between what I consider poetry and what I consider music lyrics. This book serves as a prime example of this.
Like with all things we, as humans, desire to improve upon our work until we feel that our work is finished. Sometimes we never get the feeling of satisfaction with our work. Because much of the songs here did not get finished musically, I still wonder about the possible improvement. Perhaps I will have to wait around until the next life or the next for it, or until that old muse comes around again.
Hopefully in your reading of this book you will enjoy the words as I have. God bless.
A J Lewis
February, 2006
