Very Important

Lyrics

Ladies and gentlemen.

I need you to stop what you’re doing right now and listen to what I have to say.

Because what I have to say is very important.

Very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very important.

Very, very.

Words really cannot express how very, very, very important the thing that I have to say is.

La la la.

La.

La la.

Ha.

Ah.

Oo.

(Ah, ow, ah, ow, ah, ow, ah, ow. Oo.)

Very, very, very, very, very, very, very… very… very, very, very, very, very… very, very, very, very, very… very… very, very, very.

(Ah, ow, ah, ow, ah, ow, ah, ow. Oo.)

Very, very, very, very, very, very, very… very… very, very, very, very, very… very, very, very, very, very, very, very.

(Ah, ow, ah, ow, ah, ow, ah, ow. Oo.)

Very, very, very, very, very, very, very… very… very, very, very, very, very… very, very, very, very, very… very… very, very, very.

(Ah, ow, ah, ow, ah, ow, ah, ow. Oo.)

Very, very, very, very, very, very, very… very… very, very, very, very, very… very, very, very, very, very, very, very.

(Ah, ow, ah, ow, ah, ow, ah, ow. Oo.)

Very, very, very, very, very, very, very… very… very, very, very, very, very… very, very, very, very, very… very… very, very, very.

(Ah, ow, ah, ow, ah, ow, ah, ow. Oo.)

Very, very, very, very, very, very, very… very… very, very, very, very, very… very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very.

Story

I wrote “Very Important” in about an hour and a half, after spending most of a sixteen-hour session on another song that I can barely remember. This one is still making me laugh twenty years later. I’d like to say I learned something from that immediately.

It was around 2005, in Oakland, at my first gathering of the Immersion Composition Society. ICS was a sort of mock secret society founded by Nicholas Dobson and Michael Mellender to get composers out of their own way. The version I encountered was simple: starting twenty-four hours before the meeting, write and record as much new music as possible. Stop when you have to leave the house. Bring the results. Listen to everyone else’s.

Naturally, I approached this exercise in overcoming creative paralysis by spending nearly the entire day trying to demonstrate what a sophisticated musician I was. miRthkon was still rehearsing for its first shows, and most of these people knew me as the guy who played in My Hero with Stikman. Apparently, I felt I had something to prove. With about ninety minutes left, I had one short piece and the uncomfortable suspicion that it wasn’t especially good. Time to make something else.

I grabbed an acoustic guitar, partly because it spared me the usual business of finding a guitar sound, and recorded a riff. Two more takes added improvised embellishments; I kept those and discarded the first. A MIDI bass line and a simple drum pattern supplied the rest. Then I sang one improvised vocal take, including the lyrics and the ridiculous melismatic excursion in the middle, knowing I was going to run it through an extreme Auto-Tune setting. The riff wasn’t really in a conventional key, so I’d set up a custom collection of pitches. I could provoke all sorts of peculiar artifacts with my voice and still have them land somewhere useful.

I started a second take to double the first, wandered into a harmony, and stopped. A better idea: listen to the processed take repeatedly, memorize its little glitches, then improvise a second lead around it. That combination of a fixed, very strange performance and a new response to it is most of what you’re hearing. I added the little piano/synthesizer figure at the end, displaced a couple of repetitions against the beat, mixed it, and left for the meeting.

The laboriously composed first piece received a polite response. This one got played twice. My friend Matt Lebofsky, who later played bass in miRthkon, would routinely turn up with practically an entire album of finished songs, playing everything himself. Two of his ICS pieces eventually made it onto Snack(s). We all hated him in the most affectionate possible way. I was pleased to have managed two songs.

Over the next few days I listened to this one enough times to memorize every absurd vocal artifact. I’d also recently bought a nice Sony DV camcorder, so I filmed myself lip-syncing both parts, including the glitches, as though those sounds were coming out of my mouth unaided. Hence the two talking heads and the faces I’m making. The editing is full of tricks I’d just learned in Final Cut, some of which I remain quite fond of.

The video became a hidden extra on miRthkon’s The Illusion of Joy EP. A CD player wouldn’t find it; a computer would mount a second volume labeled VERY IMPORTANT. I liked the implication that it might contain some urgent copyright notice. It also went onto YouTube, where the occasional person still turns up remembering it from years ago. An attempt to arrange it for the band, with the horns taking the vocal parts and Matt and me trying to sing the artifacts, didn’t survive more than a rehearsal or two.

For this version, I restored and upscaled the best surviving export, remastered the audio, and finally fixed a couple of things that had bothered me for years: slightly loose synchronization and a passage where the two voices were on the opposite sides from their respective heads. I’d tried to convince myself the latter was deliberately wacky. It wasn’t. It was wrong, and now it’s fixed.

Preparing this song for the archive took considerably longer than writing it. Apparently, some lessons need repeating.