i’m not sure if it was too much Sin City or too much Tom Waits but the first idea i had for a song was messy, bloody and disgusting. suddenly the title popped up in my head: ‘A Bucket Full Of Meat’ which turned out to become the sixth song of the album. inspired by an episode of 2 Stupid Dogs and one of Coupling i now had a title. yay, a title! i was almost done!
but, as i mentioned, the approach was quite stupid. isn’t that cute? but it’s wrong! (small joke for the insiders, hehehe). Because i just did the usual. instead of just doing it, i started planning – again. don’t get me wrong, there came some cool ideas with the foolishly-trying-to-work-out-all-the-details-phase. one of them was quite tough to get rid off. it was about making a concept album about the butcher who kills people and sells their meat to the public (not really inventive, i know that). and there are actually 5 songs on the album that were related to that idea. first of all, ‘A Bucket Full Of Meat’ of course, then ‘Catching Up’ which is about the butcher on the hunt, killing a guy but missing his girlfriend which led to ‘The Chase’. She runs into a building, enter the song ‘In The Elevator’. But in the end he gets her as well – ‘Rest’. i still think this was a pretty cool idea, but i got caught up in way too many details about making up a decent storyline and appropriate music that i finally abandoned the idea.
so i started working on ‘A Bucket Full Of Meat’ and some of the other tunes on the side as idea-collectors. more than a week later i still hadn’t finished a single song! i was way too busy doing automations and correcting subtle details etc. to get something done. that’s when even i understood that this way i could never finish in time. in a moment like that, my usual thought would have been ‘so what, it’ll take a little longer then.’ case closed. but this time, and i owe the rpm-folks a huge thank you for that, there was no way of just not doing it. i had signed up for the challenge and i wrote about it in lots of emails, on this site here, in forums and on twitter. making this public simply was like shutting the door behind me, the only way out was to go through with it. and only seconds later i hated myself for doing so :-) but now it was done.
so i was in a really uncomfortable position – not only was i forced to create something, i was forced to do it fast and with flaws. UGH! it’s always the fight inside of oneself, right? looking back it was a very smart move to blackmail myself like that because it kind of broke a blockade. now i wasn’t only able to finish this, i also feel the strong urge to make another album, starting in march – as soon as i dealt with some website issues. but i say it again: i will start a new album in march and finish it in april.guaranteed! there! i did it again! ………………. DAMMIT !!!
now with no possible excuses for failing and with no more roadblocks ahead, i could finally get to work…
