The Process #4 — Plays Ball 4

Posted on Wednesday, January 4th, 2012 // 0 Responses.

Name: Plays Ball #4
Date Written: 10/5/10
Date Recorded: 10/7/11
Written for: Plays Ball

Remember how the booklet of the original Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution EP had a list of all of Tomas’s projects that would come out in the next few years? Remember how literally 10 years later, most of what he promised was either hugely delayed or never happened? Ten. Years.

Now that I’ve written a lot of my own music, I’m finally starting to understand (although not forgive) good ole’ Tommy. Every couple months I’ll write a couple of songs that don’t really fit with everything else going on and I decide to myself “oh, no big deal, I’ll just start another project and put out a full length when I get enough songs.” The difference is that I don’t announce them before I have something tangible.

Plays Ball is one of those things. I wrote a couple of songs in August/September 2010 as a reaction against the circumstances in my life, and the other songs I had been writing, which were seeming to get more and more complicated musically and lyrically. (Seriously? A reaction against yourself? ed., who is me).

I had just started working my first full time job and was trying to figure out just how music was going to fit into my future. I found a lot of comfort in the music that I listened to when I was a little younger, and decided I’d write an album that was basically a love/hate letter to punk music in the context of what my life was at that point. Good lord, stick with me.

I made it to 5 songs in a couple months and then got distracted by some other great idea. About a year after I wrote the initial set I gave them a facelift and wrote a couple more. It’s still definitely on the backburner, but every time I revisit it I’m surprised by how much I like the songs. None of them have names. This was the fourth one I wrote. The recording was done shortly after I rewrote parts of it in October of 2011.

Oh, before I go, quick note about the origin of the name Plays Ball. I had a conversation with Daniel a while ago, that probably stemmed from me not wanting to wear a suit to my cousin’s wedding or something stupid like that, where he explained to me that I would have to play ball if I wanted to get anywhere in life with anything. On the spot I decided I wanted to write an album of the catchiest, poppiest, verse-chorus-verse-chorus songs I could and call it Sister City Plays Ball. It would be the thing that made us huge, we’d hate it… it all fits in with the mythology. Obviously that didn’t happen, but the themes on this album you will hear maybe next year maybe never are about playing ball. Okay, bye.

Lyrics:

Alright alright I’m slowing down
But I won’t stop till my back bends a question
Am I too old to care?
Am I too young to be careful?
Am I too lost to be profound?
Am I too found to lose out now?

Alright alright I’m losing my mind
I know exactly how it ends
The same old new inventions
The same new old intentions

And I want to be buried in a roadside cemetery
I want to die in the headlines

What’s really new these days
Are the records I’ve been playing
It’s the same view out my window
Watching the college kids go
To the parties I don’t go to
Doing drugs that I still don’t do
And thanks to Max and Dr. Luke I’m

Lying awake another night
The bass beat rattling my spine

Up here in my ivory tower
I’ve got beautiful hardwood floors
And enough over-the-counter to last a couple headaches more
I get nauseous at the thought of my degree
And get neurotic on the weekly trip for groceries

So I wander through the aisles
Decide on cereal and ice cream
Like I’m holding out against
What well-adjusted people eat
I take the cashier’s smile
As an assault on my survival

Alright alright I’m losing my mind
Alright alright I’m losing my mind
Alright alright I’m losing my mind
Alright alright

And I want to be buried in a roadside cemetery
I want to die in the headlines
I’ve been living life like I’m the last Mohican alive
True to what I’ve done since I was young so I hold my tongue
When I explain there’s certain things I won’t be able to sustain
Both to myself and to the swell of every atom, every cell
And so I look out to the west, with its lonesome, crowded promises
And the sun sets