Misfits and Slow Learners Track 3: Critics by Cub Lea as Hot Spot Last updated 12/04

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Download 32kbps 44.1kHz full-length (3:36) mp3 (mono) 844kb
(Full-fidelity versions at 128kbps and VBR-HQ bitrates are available on "the CD")
Download sketch track, 32kbps 44.1kHz full-length (2:50) mp3 (mono) 665kb
(Sketch track is inferior quality audio, arguably a superior performance, with different lyrics.)

	Credits:	Words, music, arrangement & production by Cub Lea, 11/87
	Players:	Cub Lea (all instruments)
	Synth:	Yamaha FB-01 (tone module version of the DX-21/DX-100)
	Notes:	Recorded and mixed on a Tascam PortaStudio 0.5 4-track cassette recorder 12/87 in a Toronto, Canada rooming house

See also: The Poet

Concept

This is a chimera of a song that was essentially written, produced and arranged the first time I sketched it out, and that never seems to have quite the right lyric. It's actually one of the oldest songs I have, and came to me almost as effortlessly as a song that appears in a dream while I was living in a rather unpleasant rooming house situation and bouncing from job to job as a telephone salesperson in Toronto in 1985. The original lyric had been kicking around since about 1981, when I was doing spot fill-in duty as a community reporter in Prince Edward Island and spending my evenings in a sweatbox rooming house, writing on a 50-year-old typewriter with a blue ribbon on - you guessed it - pink 8x11" paper.

The version released on the "demo album" is ostensibly a psychological self-mutilation, voicing my own worst suspicions about my motives and real abilities as a "rock critic", my first actual career in entertainment.

I redid this on a 16-track a year later as The Poet, tried to rework it even later for the Winter Heat project, and have never failed to rewrite the lyric every time right up until recording the vocal.

The musical inspiration for this song came from Andy Curran, bassist for Coney Hatch, and author of some of the most memorable hard rock I've ever heard, and certainly the most memorable of the "Bony Snatch" tracks (Monkey Bars, Shake the Stick, Stand Up, etc.). I adore plodding, slow metal anthems like this (e.g. Deep Purple's Child in Time and Sail Away, Joe Walsh's Rocky Mountain Way, Blue Öyster Cult's E.T.I.) and I love this track...or at least the clean, perfectly-performed version that I hear in my head.

The lyrical inspiration, in case it isn't obvious from the sketch version, came from my own self-loathing as I wrote a self-syndicated newspaper column on rock music and not-so-secretly dreamed of being a minor rockstar myself, my not-so-trivial lack of musical ability notwithstanding. I actually exaggerated my own arrogance here, trying to express what I felt was the more extreme covert self-loathing I so often picked up from the ever-present slime layer of rock writers who slag recording artists that they believe they could outperform if given the chance...and who almost never fail to disappoint once that opportunity arrives.

Execution

The sketch version was recorded under far less than ideal conditions in January of 1985. At that time I still had little more to work with than a decent bass, a cheap guitar, a pair of portable tape recorders and a Casiotone for a beat box and synthesizer. The leap in performance quality from this version to the four-track demo shows just how far I came with relatively little real effort in just a couple of years, years in which I was publishing some 100,000-150,000 words a month as a self-published author in addition to dabbling in music.

The four-track version is not too bad at all - I'd had more time to mull it over in my mind than any track on this album other than Watchin' TV, so I knew exactly how I wanted it to sound - but then there's not a lot to screw up on this track.

The intro. swoosh was executed using a Yamaha FB-01 tone module, a horrible piece of gear for pro recording that I could make do backflips once I learned its intricacies, and while it works here, I was never able to replicate it or even come up with a suitable alternative when recording it on better gear.

The swoosh was only the most audible part of the synth track. Buried in the mix, the sweep continues throughout the track as an ambient component, inspired in part by REM's use of a "ghost" organ track on an album of theirs which came out a few months earlier.

The bass tone used a nice (for its time) chorus effect which wasn't widely available for bass guitars; it chorused the upper frequencies while leaving the lower registers untouched to retain the integrity of the fundamental. The bass was, I believe, a Tokai Talbo.

Oh yes, I almost forgot...the original title of this track was Pink Paper ("for Purple Prose"), and this is probably the best vocal execution of any track on the album, and today it's probably my favorite of all the tracks from these sessions. I never executed it quite as well again.

Pink Paper

I feel like such a poet
The world has seldom seen
My novelty won't wear off
I'm permanently green
I've got an office full of foxes
And I follow what the rock says

I wonder...is black on white
Like night on day or dark on light
I wonder

Is Dylan such an asshole
Or am I just a clown
It seems like such a hassle
Getting into what's going down

My t-shirt doesn't say it
My stereo won't play it
My typewriter needs pink paper to create

I wonder...is blue on pink
Sig-nif-i-cant ink
I wonder.

I feel like such a phony
Ripping off the great artistes
And if the critics listen
Will they let me rest in peace?

My first record didn't make it
Yes, the people wouldn't take it
And they'll catch you if you fake it
They're too strong

Pink paper
Is black on white
Like night on day
Is what I say the truth?

Copyright ©1982 Bunction Music

Critics

They say I'm such a poet
Ah the world has seldom seen
My novelty is perfect
My vision is supreme
Got an office loaded with foxes
And I follow what the cashbox says

Is Dylan really an asshole
Or am I just a clown?
It seems like such a hassle
Getting into what's going down
My t-shirt doesn't say it
And my stereo won't play it
My typewriter needs pink paper to create

I'm not just any phony
No I only steal the best
The critics will not listen
I can't let my defense rest
My first novel didn't make it
'Cause the critics couldn't take it
And I just can't seem to shake it
They're so wrong

Hey, dig this:
Is black on white like night on day or dark on light?
I wonder...
(How profound)

They say I'm such an artist
That the world has seldom seen
My novelty will never ever fade away
My vision is supreme
(Watch me save the world!)

Pink paper...
Is black on white like night on day or dark on light?
I wonder...

Bap ba-dum dum...
Bada-dada-dada-dum dum...

Copyright ©1988 Living Skill Music