The new stuff is getting closer and closer to being ready to release. While any actual release is still probably a few months away, Ryan and I were taking stock of things last weekend, and we have 12 tracks that are finished or well on their way to being finished, plus a bunch of stuff that could theoretically go on an accompanying "remixes and bonus material" disc, like Pet Shop Boys did with Fundamental/Fundamentalism, and Very/Relentless.
So 12 new tracks, plus bonus stuff. It's going to be fun when we finally get to release all of it and you can hear it!
Of the tracks that are still being worked on, the one I'm finishing some music tracks on while riding the bus here is called The King is Dead. It's something a little different that Caffeine Sunday tracks in the past - it's a bit of a political statement. Well, maybe not a political statement in the conventional sense, but a commentary nonetheless. I wrote the initial demo of the song a few years ago, when two American pilots dropped a bomb in Afghanistan and killed four Canadian soldiers. "Friendly fire", it's called. Anyway, one of the four casualties was Marc Leger, who was nicknamed King Marco when he was stationed in Bosnia and became the unofficial mayor of a village that was in tatters following the war there. He became a hero to those villagers by scraping together anything he could to help rebuild their community and their lives. But that suddenly didn't matter anymore, because an American dropped a 500-pound laser-guided bomb on his head. No more hero.
Anyway, I had a mix of emotions stewing inside me. Sadness, anger and frustration, for sure, but cynicism and helplessness too. I could see a time when there would be investigations into what happened, resulting in nothing changed. I also saw a time when the average Canadian on the street wouldn't remember the names of the four fallen (although I didn't predict at that time it would be, in part, because of all the other soldiers who would also die in Afghanistan - 71 and counting). Given that life would move on, the men would be more or less forgotten, and nothing would be done to prevent a similar incident from happening again (see: U.S. kills Brits in Iraq event just a year later...), was Marc Leger's death, and the deaths of the other three (Ainsworth Dyer, Richard Green and Nathan Smith) going to be in vain? The automatic response is "No, they will always be remembered and they did not die in vain", but I wasn't sure that was going to be the truth.
So years later, when most of those predictions have come true, I'm wrapping up my song about Leger. I didn't want it to be corny or sappy, and I didn't want it to be some sort of over-the-top angry Neil Young Impeach the President thing, I just wanted it to be my reaction to it all. Set to a stomping BT-style beat, of course!
And on that note, I'm closing this up to go dice up some samples before I get to work...
cn
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