"Let's Stay"
August 11, 2010 at 4:23 pm
http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/4855284 click to play "Let's Stay"
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Earlier, when talking about "Fight for Me", I mentioned W. Anthony Vassel, our drummer, and I mentioned the solo in this song; well, here it is! Tony is given the extended jazzy intro and isn't it nice? Even nicer is how smoothly he segues into the song which is not so jazzy and you don't even notice it, do you? Wow, this is good! For a long time this was the song we did at the end of concerts right before "Nobody Else" and we sometimes used it to introduce the band, too. It was pretty rousing. I like the bluesy transition from major to minor and back the way Greg and Dave handle it. That is great 'slap bass' by Dave during the 'yea, yea' part. The 'punniness' of the word play should come as no surprise to those who know this lyricist at all.
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This version is a multi-track one from the "City of Joy" sessions but I believe it was done toward the end and around the same time as the live take "I Will Go", if I'm not mistaken. It has the feel of a live take because I think a lot of it was, or am I wrong? [Any of you LW types from that time remember at all?] It's a little uneven in spots. The voices didn't end together at the end and we didn't fix it in the mix. I used to really obsess about that kind of thing and let it bother me; now I'm as happy as I can be just to have this song. At any rate, it reminds me of how we did it live and it even begins to approach Tony's proverbial "Concert speed" like the "ramming speed" in Ben-Hur!!
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I believe the song was prompted in part by some books some of us were reading at the time about the danger the occult can present. In particular, there was one book called "The Beautiful Side of Evil" by Johanna Michaelsen. It was kind of scary, but the story goes that she got sucked into the whole world of "psychic healing", some of which is prestidigitation and magical illusion ("magical jive"), but also paranormal power. She discovered it wasn't what it seemed. At first, it seemed like it must be good, after all, people seemed to be getting healed and they even said the Our Father together. But the clues began to mount up that this was not only not good, but evil despite all the appearances at first. The spiritual enslavement, falsehood and destruction eventually opened her eyes that she had been fooled and she turned to the Lord to save her from that clinging mess.
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In the song, I tried to emphasize the fact that people shouldn't be warned about this kind of thing just as a scare tactic. The point is, why would you WANT to bother with any of that stuff when there's so much good stuff to know and live? I wanted to rejoice in the reason for avoiding it in the first place: staying spiritually ALIVE and vibrant and living life to the fullest! You can't do it if you're up to your eyes in THAT stuff, including using "spirit guides". In my experience there is no such thing as a "happy medium" – I've known some mediums (mediae??) and they just aren't happy.
�
Let's stay a-LIVE!
�
Mark Lajoie
�
Earlier, when talking about "Fight for Me", I mentioned W. Anthony Vassel, our drummer, and I mentioned the solo in this song; well, here it is! Tony is given the extended jazzy intro and isn't it nice? Even nicer is how smoothly he segues into the song which is not so jazzy and you don't even notice it, do you? Wow, this is good! For a long time this was the song we did at the end of concerts right before "Nobody Else" and we sometimes used it to introduce the band, too. It was pretty rousing. I like the bluesy transition from major to minor and back the way Greg and Dave handle it. That is great 'slap bass' by Dave during the 'yea, yea' part. The 'punniness' of the word play should come as no surprise to those who know this lyricist at all.
�
This version is a multi-track one from the "City of Joy" sessions but I believe it was done toward the end and around the same time as the live take "I Will Go", if I'm not mistaken. It has the feel of a live take because I think a lot of it was, or am I wrong? [Any of you LW types from that time remember at all?] It's a little uneven in spots. The voices didn't end together at the end and we didn't fix it in the mix. I used to really obsess about that kind of thing and let it bother me; now I'm as happy as I can be just to have this song. At any rate, it reminds me of how we did it live and it even begins to approach Tony's proverbial "Concert speed" like the "ramming speed" in Ben-Hur!!
�
I believe the song was prompted in part by some books some of us were reading at the time about the danger the occult can present. In particular, there was one book called "The Beautiful Side of Evil" by Johanna Michaelsen. It was kind of scary, but the story goes that she got sucked into the whole world of "psychic healing", some of which is prestidigitation and magical illusion ("magical jive"), but also paranormal power. She discovered it wasn't what it seemed. At first, it seemed like it must be good, after all, people seemed to be getting healed and they even said the Our Father together. But the clues began to mount up that this was not only not good, but evil despite all the appearances at first. The spiritual enslavement, falsehood and destruction eventually opened her eyes that she had been fooled and she turned to the Lord to save her from that clinging mess.
�
In the song, I tried to emphasize the fact that people shouldn't be warned about this kind of thing just as a scare tactic. The point is, why would you WANT to bother with any of that stuff when there's so much good stuff to know and live? I wanted to rejoice in the reason for avoiding it in the first place: staying spiritually ALIVE and vibrant and living life to the fullest! You can't do it if you're up to your eyes in THAT stuff, including using "spirit guides". In my experience there is no such thing as a "happy medium" – I've known some mediums (mediae??) and they just aren't happy.
�
Let's stay a-LIVE!
�
Mark Lajoie
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