economics - the nightwalker
It was ten years ago that I started recording music. This track is one of the first songs I wrote and recorded, from a tiny bedroom in my parents’ house at the time. The drums and some of the keys were probably added about a year later when I was able to purchase a drum kit and figure out how to record it.
If you turn up the volume at the start of the track, you can hear a pipe organ. I used to just hold the microphone up the the TV and record as I flipped through channels or watched baseball games. I’m actually pretty sure that organ was from a 9/11 memorial service a few weeks after the attack. That was rather pretentious of me - but I was a mere 20 years old.
The piano is an old out-of-tune relic of my mother’s. I didn’t know how to play the piano, but I knew if I played around on the black keys, I couldn’t hit a wrong note.
I still like this track after all of these years, although listening to some of these early recordings makes me think that my skills as a songwriter haven’t improved at all. I listen to it though, and I see this innocent version of my self - full of hopes and dreams, and lacking the cynical edge and the often crippling self-consciousness that currently weighs on my shoulders. I was strictly recording for myself, then later sharing the songs with my friends. I had no regard for an audience, no fear of criticism. I wish I could feel that way again - even just for a little while.
I’ll be posting more of these in the coming weeks.
