Music Union : Live Your Music

Dave Ellis — Drama Per Orgasm [self-published, 2009]

By Young Jin Choi

“I’ll throw in high notes sometimes /Any word’s fine as long as it rhymes[.] / I’m catchy, I’m edgy, I own this mic / Now here’s the chorus and I think you’ll like it.”

Sings the sardonic Dave Ellis on “Songwriter,” the first song of his debut CD, Drama Per Orgasm. One of the reasons why David’s lyrics appeal to me so much is that it entails that unspeakable, but undeniable, universal truth. And in this case, Ellis himself is no exception from the pure comedic caricature of the singer-songwriter that he portrays in the song: in many of his songs, as soon as the song picks up, he seems to lose himself in flitting moments of vainglory — throwing in high notes somewhere, throwing in some rhymed words somewhere, throwing in some trite themes somewhere.

Perhaps the most evident example of this is the undeniable similarity between the 5th track of the LP, Came Around (feat. Carrie Turner), and the 14th and last track, All the Words You Say. As soon as the last track starts – assuming that you have been listening to this CD continuously without skipping tracks, instead of shuffling the tracks or starting from the last track and playing backwards, like some fucked up psychedelic Satanists would do– you realize that these two songs feature the exact same solo acoustic guitar set up, and even down to the minute details such as the tempo and the arpeggio pattern, are almost identical. By the time you get to the chorus, you realize that even the repeating vocal melody now sounds identical to track 5 that you listened to earlier.

I guess if this were a rap cd — maybe Ellis should have followed his own advice as found in the song Songwriter: “I kick it to the bridge and maybe should I rap[,]/ I’m always ready to be tested like domestic beer on tap/ My poetry flows like a jello shot/ I throw in a clever stop[,]/ I’m too hot,”— they would have probably called it a remix. At least I consider this an honest approach, and it is also a largely accepted cultural norm that does not draw much public criticism currently, if any at all. So I do not have anything against that practice at all. On the other hand, trying to pass one song as two different songs under two different titles, albeit with different lyrics –even when ignoring the fact that these songs also happen to be in the same CD and share the identical instrumental arrangement,– is an act that us critics often like to refer to as an act of “self-plagiarism,” or perhaps even more commonly, just plain “lazy.” The difference here mainly lies in the view that artists must be honest to its listeners in revealing the relevant contents of the goods that they purchase, especially in this digital age of $0.69/track on itunes, perhaps ironically marking an atavistic return to the early gramophone age of the 10-inch a and b sides.

However, we also cannot deny the existences of certain legitimate artistic directions under which the value of repetition and refrain is valued and dominantly featured, the adeptness in the use of which specifically and independently demarcating the permeable membrane that separates the bad art from the good art. But Ellis’s case here is special: what make his music a truly unique and valuable piece of artwork lie not in the facts of his musical and lyrical virtuosity, but rather in those little and ubiquitous musical blips and lyrical slips found in his work. Beneath his “I like to get drunk/ and I like to fuck” macho bravado lurks a brutally honest portrait of a sensitive, dainty, and vulnerable young man as an artist, a daring and perhaps precisely accurate psychological tableau of the internal conflict between the self, the non-self, and the unconscious.

The first song of the CD, “Songwriter,” an easy-listening pop-rock standard that easily epitomizes his ironic, self-effacing, self-proclaimed “comedic sex rock” style. A supposedly sarcastic jab at the caricatural, self-obsessed and high-nosed singer-songwriter figure – for the record, I never said John Mayer,– but the song’s true appeal comes, as mentioned earlier, from the fact that its boomerang assail eventually strikes back to knock down its possessor and originator; it’s like me making fun of all the critics out there for their snobbism and hubris, concerned more with apocryphal word plays rather than actually trying to communicate and persuade of the idea behind it to the reader, that is, if there is any at all.

One of the most interesting moments of Ellis’s “Freudian slips” occurs in the second track of the CD, “The Best Part of My Day Is You”: “I go to the store and I buy a little supper there/ but not too much, cause I don’t have any Tupperware,” sings Ellis in the song, and he starts cracking up at the “Tupperware” part. For some reason, Ellis decided not to overdub or rerecord that part, most likely because of the limited budget and studio time that ail all indie musicians around the world, but this is definitely one of those honest parapraxian moments that makes this record so adorable. It is easy to dismiss this particular instance as a flitting moment of unprofessional handling of an unexpected musical mistake by an inexperienced recording-musician, but upon further inspection, a richly layered psychological context reveals itself to us. Ellis might have been embarrassed by the fact that these lyrics are actually downright fault, that in fact he does own enough Tupperware to store away two-weeks of dinners’ worth of Chinese take-out in his closet-full of Tupperware collections. But in “throw[ing] in high notes sometimes, [for] any word’s fine as long as it rhymes,” Ellis may have realized that his Tupperware reference, though it rhymes well enough, may go against his perceived and intended sarcastic, pseudo-macho comic persona. It is a thin line that Ellis is treading on here: even though he continually and incessantly strives to break outside of the self-imposed boundary that often besets those stereotypical, overtly and overly thespian singer-song writers through the means of self-effacing gibes, at a same time he cringes and cowers at the slightest hint of a lyrical gesture that may suggest at his own sexual uncertainty. The pre-perceived conception of the distinct social hemispheres occupied by the two distinct genders may serve as the yardstick for Ellis’s own judgment of what is appropriate to say and what is not, but more often than not Ellis himself is conflicted and torn between these two paradoxical standards of iconoclasm and “dramaturgical performance,” to borrow Erving Goffman’s overused term.

Perhaps the most dramatic manifestation of such internal conflict appears in the verses of the sixth track of the CD, “Not A Mystery”:

I like to get drunk and I like to fuck
I like to take stupid chances and I like to push my luck
I like to do all the things my mother told me not to do…

I don’t like to fight even when I win
I don’t like to be the cause of all the trouble I’m in
I want to kick off my shoes and go run in the rain
Forget for a while what it’s like to complain…

The sheer dichotomy of perspectives presented here between these two stanzas, seemingly contradicting each other – I’m pretty sure that there isn’t a single mother in this world who tells his son to go pick up some random bar fights whenever he gets a chance, even though that is precisely what Ellis says he doesn’t like to do, despite the fact that he “like[s] to do all the things [his] mother told [him] not to do,” – gives us yet another interesting glimpse at the ongoing internal turmoil that is taking place in his delicate psyche. But as Ellis tells us, it is “not a mystery” that such self-contradictions exist at all. It is exactly who he is, the vulnerable, young inhabitant of a mega-metropolis trying to carve himself a trophy of success in his chosen career-path, burdened by the fear of anonymity and nonacceptance even while being perpetually surrounded by the bustling and hustling noises of the city crowd. We can know and feel that, and even empathize with him, precisely because deep down, that is also exactly who we are.

The 13th and penultimate track of the CD, fittingly titled “Just Turned 13,” is a gut-busting satirization of the stereotypical image of a 13 year old American boy. I could go all psychoanalytic again at this point on the contextual significance of the song in relation to the psyche of the author – like how the contemptuous, almost vicious treat of the 13 year old boy in the song tells us of Ellis’s own dissatisfaction with his own experience as a 13 year old boy with rebuffed desires; and also of the formation of reasonless, subliminal hate of the anonymous, amorphous mass of the 13 year old boy in general as a defense mechanism against threat of the repressed desire annihilating the reality-sustaining self-image; and perhaps more instinctively, of his natural aggression against potential competitors and obstructers in the successful preservation and propagation of his gene pools, — but I would rather stop right here and recommend you to actually take a listen at this hilarious and brilliant song, which appears to possess all the potentials of becoming an instant Youtube hit among all “over 13” high-schoolers around the nation.

Oh, by the way, “Ellis has also raised thousands of dollars for charities by co-organizing and playing fundraiser concerts. Beneficiaries include the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and Susan G Komen for the Cure,” according to his website (www.daveellismusic.com). Really, what a kind and magnanimous lad — assuming that he is telling us the truth!

Michele Vreeland –- Never Not Myself EP [Girl Spill Records, 2009]


If Michele Vreeland sounds like your everyday Los Angeles girl, it is probably because she really is; but if Vreeland also does not sound like your everyday Los Angeles girl at all, it is probably because she really is not. Vreeland’s latest 7-track long EP, Never Not Myself (2009), is a hidden gem that offers us a heart-warming admixture of young Angelena sensibility and ear-catching songwriting. Remaining true to the spirit of indie, the EP was entirely self-written, self-produced and self-published by Vreeland. I mean, how many everyday L.A. girls you know have that under their belt?

Vreeland sings about the kind of things which every young woman in the world perhaps knows and thinks about every moment: love, loss, insecurity, hope, and pretty much everything else about “me,” around “me,” of “me,” with no clear direct object. A possible exception to this rule of generalization is the sixth track of the EP, “Nico,” in which she takes a thinly veiled disguise of a Beverly Hills party girl named Nico. However, it soon becomes rather obvious to the listener that she is really taking this opportunity to sing about, again, “me”: “Nico doesn’t care what anyone else say about her… What’s wrong with this world when no one cares about a girl? What’s wrong with the girl who doesn’t care about the world?” Indeed, “never not myself.”

Such strategy may appear childish at times, but when met with her constant, brutal honesty, it actually kind of works, because it is that much more realistic. The heavily-reverbing synthesized bass drum and strings of the third track of the EP, “L.A. Dreams,” sits extremely well with Vreeland’s uncannily catchy melody and candid voice, making it one of the standout tracks of the EP. Other standout tracks include “Wanted to say” and “Nico,” and there are no fillers in this little jewel.