Operation 365... Blog 299

Operation 365 - Jefferson Jay - Archives - 305 Justin Mills "Pick Me Up" 12-11-08
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOm6z65osYM


So I finished with my Don Truesdail clips yesterday. Where does one go after that. Well, back to 2008, naturally. Back to Justin Mills. Justin Mills is alive and well, but he doesn't play music in public anymore, so if you want to enjoy his awesome songwriting, for now, here is the one-stop place to do so. Continuing, with the ideal of public service, I am going to put more than a half-hearted effort, three-quarters hearted maybe, in to sharing at least one version of every awesome Justin Mills song I have, just so the material is out there.

Here is Justin's song, obscure even by his standards,, "Pick Me Up." I always liked this one, kind of like the rest of them. Here Justin is joined by Wes Davis on percussion. Great times. 2008. What an awesome time.

Operation 365 - Jefferson Jay - Covers - 305 "Down The Corner" by John Fogerty
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=537_KWPT99k


John Fogerty's tunes, there's just something likable about 'em. He is like Tom Petty in that way. It was fun to play "Down The Corner." When I was first figuring out guitar, that little riff in this tune, was one of the catchy things I liked to play over and over. I was reading that thre was a whole concept around this "Willy and The Poorboys" line he talks about in the song. I guess Credence Clearwater Revival pretended to be another band called Willie and The Poorboys. I guess they even played on Ed Sullivan like that. I like fun stuff like that. Yeah, Team Creative.

Operation 365 - Jefferson Jay - Originals - 305 "Dance, Trans"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Uo4iILX2D4


This one was fun. I named this "Dance, Trans" 'cause those are the first two words I say. I had been playing these chords for a bout a week now, since a busted them out when I was jamming with my neighbor Rafi. It was a fun jam. Then, I made up a second part in the last couple days. I wanted to stick some words to it, but I also wanted to play them separately so I could focus on each part completely as I played it. Thanks to the program Screenflow, I could make this so.

I played the guitar part on iMovie, my program of choice, because it's easy, with energetic contributions form my dog Angel, my pal Josh, and a couple planes. Then I knew I needed lyrics so I decided I'd walk over to my giant wall of words, (first time I've ever called it that) and picked out the first thing I could reach when I walked over. It was even sticking out. That made it easy. I opened up a spiral notebook form probably 1996 or 97. In those days I was taking a poetry class from a guy named Jim Dodge at Humboldt State University. He had some pretty rigid ideas on what good writing was. I disagreed with them in theory although I appreciated what he was saying.

Dodge believed if the reader could understand the thoughts of the writer exactly as the author intended, that it was poor writing. I felt this left no room for interpretation and for people to apply things to their own lives in their own way. Why expect any two people to think the same thing ever was how I saw it. We are all different. So I expressed my feelings on this matter in a thing I wrote called "Babylon and Poetry." It wound up becoming a pretty cool, funky song in my acoustic band, Elin Tea. Well, I found some words I was writing right before I wrote what we would call "Poetry," for short and these were some of the ideas I had leading up to that synthesis of the whole thought train.

I have books and books full of this sort of stuff, Thoughts. feeling, opinions, ideas, beliefs, life lessons, lyrics... all that. This was the first time I gave it a go. I hope you like my song "Dance, Trans."

I just decided I am going to type all these lyrics out for your enrichment and/or enjoyment. I got one or two wrong, so here they are right.

Dance, trans, kick him in the pants
Believing in the freedom of the rhythm and his rants
Time, crime, it's true it's by design
The leader and the legions, they have yet to be aligned

The pace of the chase, it is slow but it is going
The chance we all decree, it's instrumental that we're knowing
Who, true, is the villain of this view
The dark and evil spirit softly driving me and you

Tax, fax, take your money and relax
The apparition's mission is to lull you with his axe
Sedate, inebriate will bring our government to glory
While we're drowning in oppression as our children hear the story

The bloody lovers bathe ove wine
The cold and dawning cave rears a spine
Injection and subjection to the vein
The self-defeating apathy disdain
Attack me if you can with your arcane
word games