No Subject

[Steve Luongo]

Day 9

This was a creative day.  We worked on lyrics and music.  John needed
to finish the lyrics for I Wouldn't Sleep With You and Endless
Vacation so he went his own way for the early part of the day.  He
disappeared into the lounge so we didn't see much of him until later.
In the mean time Alan went into the studio to begin work on another
piece of material that we had been outlining the night before.  It is
based on the Irish folk music that we saw on one of John's millions of
video tapes.

I joined Alan in the studio and added a part that I had had a dream
about last night.  I don't usually dream or at least I don't remember
them but we are all having vivid dreams here and the music from mine
was stuck in my head.  When I walked into the studio Alan was playing
his new parts and it was easy for me to sit with him and work it out.
I ran into the room shouting "I got it, I got it" and the next part of
the song was born.  Alan did a great job of making the 2 parts merge
and we were making some small changes to his parts when Godfrey came
in to add his guitar.  We knew we were onto to something when Bobby
started jigging through the room and whistling the tune we were
playing.  We promptly name it "Jig-on-the-Wold" (Dance on the Hill).
I burst in on John's lyric writing to declare that we had written a
great piece of music and he said "leave some room in it for me" which
we gladly did.  I guess I got his curiosity going because 5 minutes
later he peeked in the studio and listened to what we were doing.  We
received a smile of approval and we felt good about our latest
creation.

When we broke for dinner John was just finishing up the 2nd set of
lyrics.  We took a look and laughed at some of the clever lines he had
penned.  As always John has found a way to make the obvious
hysterical.  After our meal John and Bobby disappeared into the studio
to begin tracking the new vocals.  When I caught up with Alan and
Godfrey they were in the lounge watching Raging Bull.  I sat down and
the sound of hard Ds replacing Ts (dis, dat, dees, dems and doze) made
us all home sick for New York and some Italian food.  It also made
John "homesick for the English language."  The end of this film
prompted a search for another NY classic, Good Fellas but we had no
luck.  We asked John if he had it and he said no.  We were bummed out
and resorted to one of my personal favorites The Godfather pt 2.
 While we were watching the film Godfrey happened to mention that several
people in his neighborhood had car horns that play the Godfather theme.  You
might have guessed that Godfrey is from Queens.

We took a break to listen to the vocal tracks that Bobby and John had
laid down.  They were great and we were thrilled.  That's 2 down and
one to go.

We went back into the lounge and watch the rest of the film.  Godfrey
dubbed me Mr. Closed Caption because I was reciting the dialogue alone
with the characters in the film.  John asked " Have you seen this
before?"

Now it was time for the ritual dog walking and then off to bed to
dream of Johnny's Pizza in Mount Vernon or maybe Umberto's Clam House
on Mulberry St.  in Little Italy.  Either way maybe there's a song in
there somewhere.

2am