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D.N.S. <Knock-Yourself-Out>

"I Don't Even Have An Opinion..."

	The Stories Behind The Music Of DNS	842 jours il y a
	The idea for this blog was utterly and totally ripped off from a blog posted not so long ago by another Tralee band by the name of Stupid Betty. I thought it was a great idea and decided it would be fun to do the same thing for songs by DNS. So here it is, the stories behind the songs and the names of the songs, in chronological order, no doubt. Thanks to Ivan, Mark, Colin and Tony for not filing lawsuit. Tough Love It was the summer of 2006 and 4 young sons were occupying their time by playing loud music in a spare house somewhere in the vicinity of Oakpark, Tralee. After half learning a classic Led Zeppelin tune, the lads felt it was high-time they self penned a song to show the world (the KDYS side of it) that they were much more than a bad cover band. We had already been jamming like mad, not really intending to keep any ideas for actual songs, when Ken suggested that we do a sort of guitar/drum duel riff thing, which transpired to be the intro to Tough Love, so in reality it was the drummer who instigated the writing of this song. The first song. Ever. After we looped the opening bars a couple of times, the band burst in to an out-and-out jamfest for no shorter than 20 minutes, each member putting equal amounts of sweat into this funky facade of thick-skinned riffery. At the end of this initial play, we had all the intro parts and the 2 first verse parts down. Then we went to the shop for, among other things, Fruit Pastilles and Ice-Burgers. When we returned we recorded the next jam onto our ghetto tape player to see what it sounded like to outside ears. Being, inexperienced in the art of songwriting, we thought this was the coolest stuff ever written. Well, I did anyway. The next day we played together, as far as I can remember, we literally 'balled in' the outro section, which we conjured from nowhere. It was going swimmingly. At home later that week, I (that is, Neil) was messing about with simple powerchords and came up with the cheesy chorus, but it went perfectly with the rest of the song, and so, it stuck. We had the bones of our first original!! 'Oooooh, this is so much fun' we said. I'm not sure if that happened or not, anyway, it seemed all that was left was lyrics and a solo, and heaven knows how much I would suck at both of those, but I was nominated to do the former out of necessity, so I stepped up to the plate. I based the lyrics on my very little knowledge of the alien race sometimes referred to as females. This gets cheesier every second. So I sat in my room, humming the verse music in my head, and basically free-wrote the lot. I was actually quite proud of it at the time, I especially liked the way that it didn't rhyme. Not so typical for a first song, might I add. The title is pretty self explanatory; The chorus refers to the fact that love, or what you might think is love at the time, is a pain in the ass, and will come back to haunt you once it dies. The solo was also written in the weeks following the initial writing, but I don't want to dwell on that to much. Nobody wants to know where I ripped the licks from, do they?? So that's it, the story of a song, start to finish. After 8 In the last few days before Dara Ken and Neil were shipped off back west for 3 weeks to speak Irish to an insufferable mid-wife, the main/verse riff was penned in the early afternoon in the brothers' bedroom. I had just being toying with it really, not expecting to have it used for anything in particular. When we arrived at the Gaeltacht, we were pleased/surprised to notice that the room we had been assigned to also contained the 2 next-most metalheads on the course. It was strange that only 3 people in the whole place had long hair, and all of them were in the same room. Naturally, we befriended these new boys in ways which are too graphic to mention, and it wasn't long before we discovered that Adam Govan, the dirty goth freak from Dublin, had brought his acoustic guitar down with him, so I (who had his electric tucked underarm) had a jamming buddy for the next 21 days. One evening when we were wasting time, I showed Adam the main part to this not-yet song, and we both started gluing bits here and there, and eventually we had a full tune. I asked Adam to write lyrics, just to see how he went about it, and upon being requested a topic, Ken said "Just write it about being fucked off your head, Y'know like, I'm sure you've done your fair share...", so that was that. There is a really early cut of the song with Adam on vocals, which we ghetto-taped, floating around somewhere in the practice house. After the Gaeltacht ended, the 3 DNS lads returned to Tralee for more practice in 'The Other House'. We decided to show it to Chris and he said that he liked it; "I like it" he said. So it was pretty much implied that this would be the next song to be completed. Although there was much ground already covered, there was far to go to turn this acoustic affair into the physc-rock trip we were aiming for. I spent a few hours at home looking at the lyrics, understanding them and changing parts that I either didn't get or like. The end result is rather different than the original tape, wether it is better or not, no one will ever know... Dara had bust out this bass solo that went perfectly with the rather strange middle section, and Ken had the drums down after a couple of run-throughs. Chris put his own spin on the vocal melody, and after about a week the only thing left was a title. The first title we made up, and was still being used up until after out first gig, was 'Mean John', which really had no relevance to the subject of the song, other than the fact that Mean John refers to certain pavee, and that pavee's drink and do drugs etc. We liked the title none the less, as it sparked a humorous fire which can be traced back to Ewan Lynch's gross misunderstanding of the phrase 'Peter, I mean John', who is foxy behemoth of a traveller, who's nose has been broken more times than he's had a solid meal, and who's intimidating stature has struck fear into the heart of many a Tralee youth. I'm trailing a little off the mark here, but I feel it is my duty to warn ye, ye rapscallions ye. At this stage we were back to school a few months, settling into TY (except for Dara, the 5th year mogasaurous rex) and the idle conversation in class often leaned towards band business. In art one day (it's shocking how vivid this is in my memory), we were discussing what the next songs we should write should be about, and Ken, as creative as ever, suggested one about getting plastered every weekend, a hobby quite familiar to all of us at this stage. I said that we already had one that was kinda about that, and then he said he meant something about like knocking yourself out. We all thought that was a really cool idea, and then Ken said something about how usually after around 8 O' Clock every Friday or Saturday, there would always be at least one of us in a state of need, ie. Mouldy. Considering the fact that we thought the 'Mean John' title wasn't working aswell as we had intended, it was mutually agreed that we should amend it to (following a bout of deep discussion) 'After 8'. Other meanings that can be drawn from this include 'The state of us after 8 pints', 'The state of us after 8 joints' and, of course, 'Yum yum I love After Eights, the mint centre inside all that rich chocolate...Heaven! You now know the story of our second song, and for those of you who are going 'OMGZ DNESSS DuNt rIght thEyZZZ oWn mUsAkZZZ!!!!1111, it was merely the product of a friendship in a time of boredom. It's not like we ever tried to hide it either. So there you go, song uimhir a dó, sin é!!! We Urgently Need Clothing After a full summers worth of practicing almost everyday, mostly just messing around and trying new riffs with random things, we had stockpiled a huge amount of half-songs, melodies and parts. Some of these were just dumb, such as the one where we had a bongo groove under a Thin Lizzy-style riff, or the 5/4 slap bass/drum crazy thing that never got farther than a couple of bars without getting ridiculously bad. The point I am trying to get across here is that we had alot of things that could have been the basis for our next song. Thank god we chose the simple one, an Arctic Monkeys-type powerchord riff which was passably OK for a new tune. Although we didn't play this song live until November 8th 2006, we had been working on in in some way or another since the middle of the summer. The main part came about through idle jamming and originally had the snare drum copying the guitar rhythm, with the bass doing the same thing as it does to this day, but it felt empty without the pounding drum pattern you hear now, so that is what we went for. We thought it sounded fairly good, even if it was a bit indie-schmindy for my liking. As clueless as ever about the lyrical direction for the song, I asked Chris to give the whole writing thing a shot, and he said that he start anyway, and not to mind the results. I informed him that I'd write lyrics aswell, and maybe we could mash them together in some way to make a kind of super-lyric that would blow minds and hearts wide open. Or not. One thing we had do get started before the commencing of lyrics-writing (at least for my part) was verse and chorus music, so we donned our thinking caps once more. There was a follow-on section that could be used as a verse already floating around after the summer, but it was very gappy and didn't really take the song anywhere in particular. But it gave a clue as to what was to come next. We also had the stoppy part after the second verse 100% done since the summer. I suggested that we should have a verse where it goes like one line of singing then a guitar melody thing to break up the monotony of the whole thing, and it would be different to the other two songs we had done already. The guys thought that'd be a good idea and we went to work on the thing, using the C powerchord as the singing part, and putting an upper-register descending chord pattern in after. Sorry to get all technical on all ye non-music guys, but this is all important. I think. So I went home with the knowledge of how many words could fit in every line and so went about finding said words. The resulting lyrics sheet was quite possibly the worst I have ever produced. The way it was written was so cheesy you wouldn't believe it, and all the lines were as predictable as Christmas. I went along to practice and showed it to the boyos, and they quite naturally were very reluctant to say yes to it, so I immediately started thinking of another angle of attack. By the way, and I suppose this should have been mentioned this before, the subject for this song was something along the lines of how very drunk we were getting most nights of the summer, and how this made it the best summer ever. At this stage, it was well after the summer, and we were working on the deadline of debuting this tune at the CBS The Green gig in November, so there was no time spared in working on it. In the next few days, it was decided that the lyrics should specifically focus on the few nights of The Rose of Tralee festival, and how all the town was just gathered in a square, dancing, watching bands and drinking themselves silly all in the name of Ray Darcy. Not exactly, I suppose, but anyway, I went about it, while Chris worked his magic on his own set of words. Since he wasn't around during the festival, he had his own Ballyhuige-based ramblings. We showed up with our finished lyrics on the same practice day, a Saturday no doubt. Showdown. Again, not exactly. Chris tried his own work first with the music we had so far, and we all had our part to say about it, and then the same as done with the other lyrics. Then a very strange thing happened. It was a Saturday evening, so we all said we'd go to mass. Upon returning, all of us thinking about the lyrics situation, Ken was warming up his little handsies since it had been rather chilly outside and, in the process, dropped one of his sticks mid-fill, resulting in a unique-sounding kind of drum pattern. I told him to do it again, and he said that he couldn't remember what it sounded like. I hummed it out for him and he started looping this crazy beat, and I joined in on guitar, and the rest of this story will be finished in the 'Knock Yourself Out' chapter, as that it what resulted from this jam so fine. It had so been decided by a higher power which lyrics were chosen for this current song, and it seemed to be working perfectly. We used the intro riff as the chorus, with different drums, obviously. Dara was the creative force behind the next part, the chromatic stomp, as I like to call it, as of right now. I didn't like it at the start, and I protested against it's use. Alas, it grew on me within 5 or so minutes, and then the elder brother made up a bassline that can only be described as 'Fucking Cool'. I put a funky-staccato 2 chord riff over it and Ken knocked out the beat which held the thing down in legend fashion. The rest of the thing wrote itself, and again we came to the naming process. There is a picture on the DNS bebo of one of the toms on the crappy kit with a big yellow sticker on it that says 'We Urgently Need Clothing'. It is an advert for one of those charities whereby you donate old clothes. Ken had the idea that this catchy phrase could be applied to the fact that we always got in some way naked while drinking during the festival. So it stuck. End of story. Very long story. More coming soon, stay tuned. P.S. comments would be greatly appreciated. P.P.S. Shane Young is trying to blackball us, don't listen to him. -DNS Crew. More coming soon, stay tuned.
	posté par D.N.S.

6 commentaires:

	ShaneChromeo. a dit...	Il y a 842 jours
	Comment Yeah, that was fun to read. You only put the i can't do either thing cause you want people to tell you how class you are. And i will. Your Class, solos savage and the lyrics are unreal. Go On Neil!
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	George 'Doe a dit...	Il y a 842 jours
	Class. Keep em comin
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	George 'Doe a dit...	Il y a 841 jours
	Wooo After 8 story. Makes me wanna start a rock band. Next wan please
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	Ivan O'Connor a dit...	Il y a 840 jours
	cool blog, and dont worry, the lawsuits on the way
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	Stef. . a dit...	Il y a 839 jours
	Okay dat was cul! . .Nw i no evrytin bout da songs. .&& hw ye were alwas drunk && got naked. .Okay den!
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	Tom Creedon a dit...	Il y a 805 jours
	That was a delighful use of half an hour, which totally distracted me from the detioriorating sistuation in Waterford and complete collapse of every friendship I have spent the past year attempting to build. Yours sincerely, The talentless metal head from the Gealtacht.
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