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The New CD

Six Feet Under Demos and Drafts

by Steven Mon

The vast majority of the songs on the new CD were written as part of the 2001 Fifty Songs in Ninety Days! challenge (you can do a search on Yahoo Groups if you're curious). The idea, as the title states, is to write fifty songs in ninety days. I've read a lot of complaints that all this does is promote a lot of crap--but so what? The whole idea of trying to write so many songs in such a short time period is to force yourself to write and not get bogged down in worrying about every little detail--which can bring creativity to a grinding halt.

I never came close to fifty songs, but I did force myself into a fairly steady routine and generally produced a new song every two weeks. Over the course of ten months, I wrote twenty songs, twelve of which formed the bulk of the new CD (one song written a year earlier is included). The others were ideas that lost steam, or simply junk filler I knocked out if I felt like I was in a rut. Some were simply godawful. But the process was always the same--I'd come up with a chord progression and work up some melody and lyrics and quickly lay down some guitar parts and midi drums. Then the--er, rest of the guys would flesh it out with bass parts, guitar fills, and maybe some lyric changes. Some of the demos sound really different on the finished CD, and some sound pretty much the same (we even kept some of the solos used in the demos on some of the tracks).

Mind The Gap

As an example of how a song changes during the creative process, let's take a look at the Mind The Gap track. I came up with the idea for this song while I was vacationing in London riding the tube. I scribbled down some lyrics over there, and when I came home I played around with a melody. Originally it was titled Underground and was something totally different (260k mp3).

Please mind the gap said a voice in the air
I took one step and fell in a chair
as the train lurched from the station

We're going underground
it's still the best way to get around
even though sometimes it smells,
the Europeans don't like to wear deoderant

Now, at the same time, I took some other lyrics I had started scribbling over there in London, tentatively titled London Girl and set it to this melody (430k mp3).

Sharply dressed in her Armani suit
she emerges from the underground
and even though it's hot in the tube
it's still the best way to get around

She's meeting someone by Nancy's Steps,
they're gonna have a pint at the Thameside Inn,
*...undecipherable mumbling....*

For those who haven't heard the track, those lyrics became the song Mind The Gap, the melody was discarded, and London Girl became something totally different altogether. Here is the first real draft of Mind The Gap (765k mp3) (the riff is there, lyrics are slightly different).

The song went through even further revisions, but the core of the song was laid out at this point. So, now that you've read this page and can file it under "Who gives a crap about some nobody's creative process", please save up some money and buy our CD when it is released.