Today and for the next few weeks we’ll be handing the reins over to poet-in-residence J.E. O’Leary, so he can tell the story of his band Trousers as he goes track-by-track through the band’s only release, 2004’s We Pitched a Hut and Called it Providence. Today: Track 9, “Life As a Movie II”

This song has a weird life, and almost never made it on to the album. I’m pretty sure we did this song towards the end of the day on the last day of our studio time. We had two other songs “The Breakup Song” and “The Outer Limits” and while mixing them, we had more or less agreed that the takes we had weren’t that great, at least they weren’t as good as the other songs we’d tracked. These two songs ended up on my first solo record a few years later, but it was a drag realizing the takes weren’t good enough, because they were really fun to play. The Outer Limits, especially, would have sounded pretty great on the album in my opinion.

We already had a little instrumental jam that we’d recorded and were planning on using to round out the album (more on that in two weeks) but we felt the album still needed another full length song to beef up the tracklist. So while the rest of the band went and got sandwiches, Josh set me up with a mic and an acoustic guitar and hit record, and we ended up with a pretty good version of a song that the band loved, but we’d never worked on.

I wasn’t too keen on putting a solo acoustic song on the album for a few reasons. For one, I didn’t really play guitar. I’d fucked around on the instrument for sure, but I didn’t even own one at this point. Also, as much as I was the primary songwriter of the band, I was extremely proud of the collaborative nature of the group, and didn’t want to highlight anything on the record that might take away from that. So it was optics to a point. I didn’t want people to think I insisted on including it. It wasn’t even my idea. I’m pretty sure Joey is the one who suggested it, and we only ended up doing it because we needed another song and didn’t have time to set up the whole band again to try another take of one of the two songs we’d decided weren’t working.

The song is actually the third version of the song that exists. The first version, “Life as a Movie” was from the first batch of songs I’d ever written. I recorded it in the basement of my apartment in Canarsie in 2002, when my girlfriend had just left me and I had a whole summer where I had nothing to do but write songs and smoke weed. I’d recently gotten a 4-track Tascam Portastudio, and spent most of the summer learning how to record songs. For Life as a Movie, I’d recorded a version with long instrumental verses which lead into the chorus, and wanted to do a spoken word part for the verses. I chose selections from a long, rambling piece I’d written in my journal about my feelings about my girlfriend leaving me. I would read from the journal, stop when the chorus started, then start reading again. The result was pure lo-fi magic.

But that chorus! Still to this day one of the best things I’ve ever written. This needed to be a song I could play live, but I figured there was no way I was going to be able to memorize all those words, and I wasn’t sure I wanted the song to be as long as it was anyway. So I reworked the poem into actual lyrics, sped up the tempo, and chopped the run time in half, and “Life as a Movie II” was born.

I wasn’t playing shows in those days, but every time I brought the bass out to a park or subway platform, people always loved this song. It was one of the ones I brought to the band, but we never really figured out an arrangement that worked. I would have loved to do a full band version with Becca on backing vocals. But we have to settle for the version that we got done. We never played this one live, but I might have a rehearsal space version of it somewhere.

The actual recording was done in one take, which shocked the hell out of me, because as I said I didn’t even own a guitar and probably hadn’t played one in weeks if not months. But the bottom four string are the same, so I just pretended like the top two strings didn’t exist and just tried to be real careful. My voice was working ok that day so we added some backing vocals which worked nicely. I insisted on leaving in the “All right, take one” part because I always loved the Violent Femmes song “American Music” which starts with Gordon Gano sheepishly saying “Can – Can I put in something like, ‘This is American Music, take one.'”

I guess this is technically a cover of “Life as a Movie 2” and not part three. Not sure what a Life as a Movie III would look like. Eighteen years and a million beers and cigarettes later, my voice is in a much lower register. Maybe a piano version in a different key? It’s been a long time since I’ve revisited this song, and I’m happy with it. It’s the kind of song that makes me wish I’d had more success as a songwriter, not for me, but I would have loved it if more people had heard this song. I think as an artist that’s all one can really hope for – that you write material you believe in. That is its own kind of success.

Today and for the next few weeks we’ll be handing the reins over to poet-in-residence J.E. O’Leary, so he can tell the story of his band Trousers as he goes track-by-track through the band’s only release, 2004’s We Pitched a Hut and Called it Providence. Today: Track 8, “Dinosaur”

Trousers was a pretty happy family for most of its existence. We got along great, were all committed, and mostly had fun. Things didn’t start to get bad until Spring 2004, when money was tight and personalities started to clash as people got restless; Joey talked a lot about leaving NYC; Becca was finishing school; George was super into his work. I was laser focused on music and the band, to a fault; it became my personality, and everything I felt was tied to how the band was doing. If we had a bad practice, I sulked all week. If Joey talked about wanting to move, I took it personally, imagined it as a slight. I didn’t realize this at the time, but that kind of behavior pushes people away, doesn’t bring them closer to you.

But in truth, the thought of wanting to leave or do something else was, to me, stupid. Towards the end of 2003, and into 2004, things were looking pretty good for the band. Our demo was good, and had gotten us booked at Sine and CBGB’s Gallery. We were writing really strong material, and were actually growing a following. Things weren’t happening fast but they were happening. There was no one point where it fell apart, maybe a series of bad practices solidified some people’s decisions. And of course, if people aren’t happy in their life, the band won’t change that, no matter how good it is. But I’d say that period of maybe October 03 – Feb 04 was the peak of the band. And that was when I wrote one of our best songs.

In December 2003, Becca, who was studying at Hunter, was going back to Oregon for Winter break with her friend Ange. Ange was our #1 fan and roadie. She was more or less the fifth Trouser. Joey was going back to Washington for the holidays. Maybe George too, back to California. Memory is fuzzy here. But basically the band was on hiatus for three weeks or so. This was fine – it was the holidays, not much would be happening live music wise. We would regroup and come back strong in spring, think about loft parties for spring, roof shows in the summer. I told the band I would hunker down for the month and write some new material. Becca had also started singing, so I said I would write a song for her to sing. She had only one request, that it be called Dinosaur. She and Ange were obsessed with Dinosaurs. They had Dinosaur t shirts, read those Dinosaur comics on the internet, even dressed up like Dinosaurs for Halloween (a picture of which ended up as the back cover for our album).

When I set to work, I tried to think of Lou Reed writing songs for Nico, or “I’m Sticking With You” for Mo. The song had to be really tender, but had to have a monster melody. I wrote it in the key of B, which was pretty high for me, but that was OK since I wouldn’t be singing it (my backgrounds are pretty weak on the record). The lyrics were written from the point of view of a younger woman in love with (or crushing on) an older man and each one had some reference to Dinosaurs. I remember George was particularly fond of the line “You’re so underground now aren’t you”.

When it came time to record it, we couldn’t quite get it right timing wise, so I had to sing the lyrics live while we were tracking. As a result you can hear me faintly in the background as Becca sings “keep me up” and “never miss a chance to dig you”. Becca’s vocal performance here is tremendous. Real vulnerability and emotion. And I always liked George’s snare work on the track. Joey’s guitar work is perfect as usual, real power on the power chords. I always loved the bass part at the end where I hit the chorus pedal. As a whole it’s great. I would have loved the chance to write a song for Becca to sing on every album.

The song’s Youtube video is also the recipient of probably the best internet comment I’ve ever had in relation to any of my work:

I mean, this is the kind of comment I dream about. Some rando from god knows where found our CD in a thrift store and loved it so much they searched it out on the internet. It really makes you think about what else is going on out there, what other people you may have inspired. It really speaks to the magic of art and of human connection. You don’t need to be the best, or the most ambitious, you just need to believe in yourself and put yourself out there. 95% of the rest of it is luck.