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The Life of Leon |
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| All My Life | |||
| Music/Lyrics: L Leon Sands Constructed and sculpted percussion: L Leon Sands Vocals: L Leon Sands All instruments: L Leon Sands Time: 3:17 Lyrics |
Written at the Port Aransas beach house in the summer of 2001. Pammy suggested the subject matter. There's really no correlation to my real life in this song. It's about someone I may or may not know.
The recording was created using Acid Pro as an instrumental awaiting vocals. I finished it off recently with vocals using Apple Logic Pro through the MOTU 896HD on the G5. |
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| Norwegian Wood | |||
| Music/Lyrics: John Lennon and Paul McCartney Vocals: L Leon Sands All instruments: L Leon Sands Time: 2:27 Lyrics |
I've always thought this to be a true confession from Lennon about some hookup while on a Scandinavian tour. Here I interpret it with that sentiment--as if I had high hopes with a new friend, having the hopes dashed after the realization that there wasn't a mutual desire.
I've added sitars and adjusted volumes at a few points. This recording is done entirely in Apple Logic Pro. |
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| You've Got to Hide Your Love Away | |||
| Music/Lyrics: John Lennon and Paul McCartney Vocals: L Leon Sands All instruments: L Leon Sands Time: 2:18 Lyrics |
This is one of John's most brilliant vocal compositions. The honesty of his phrasing reveals a vulnerable side. It's attributes like these that have made Lennon's writing my favorite among the Beatles.
Recorded entirely in Logic Pro, I used my Epiphone Elitist Sheraton tuned down a whole note for the electric accompaniment on the chorus. That's my Les Paul Studio through the Roland VG-88 using a modified violin patch for the flute solo at the end. |
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| When I Was Younger | |||
| Music/Lyrics: L Leon Sands Vocals: L Leon Sands All instruments: L Leon Sands Time: 4:24 Lyrics |
I wrote this in the mid nineties. It's a play on the real events of my youth after being slipped drugs while on a high school spring break in 1977. The reference to my father's son is not about my dad. It's about the Jesus syndrome that often accompanies psychotic behavior.
This recording is done entirely with Logic Pro. The Roland VG-88 comes in very handy for emulating sitars and other strange instruments. I'm using my 5-string bass rather than a transposed guitar on the VG-88. |
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the A1A |
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| Ponte Vedra East | |||
| Music: L Leon Sands Constructed and sculpted percussion: L Leon Sands All instruments: L Leon Sands Time: 3:46 Instrumental |
During the year I lived on South Ponte Vedra Beach, I acquired the Roland VG-88 and began exploring the many guitar and instrument models it offered. Ponte Vedra East is a row of beach houses directly on the Atlantic Ocean accessible from only one rather treacherous two-lane highway--the A1A. It was very inspiring, in a tropical breezy way, and so I named the collection the A1A to recognize where I was at the time: Florida's Atlantic beach between Jacksonville Beach and St. Augustine, believe it or not.
As with all of the songs on the A1A, this is recorded in one take. This piece was totally improvised at the moment. |
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| What's This? | |||
| Music: L Leon Sands Constructed and sculpted percussion: L Leon Sands All instruments: L Leon Sands Time: 3:27 Instrumental |
Noodling along, I ended up constructing this piece. When I was finished, I had to ask myself, "what's this?" I found a great funky bass patch for this groove--kind of an auto wah synth bass. | ||
| Slow Night | |||
| Music: L Leon Sands Constructed and sculpted percussion: L Leon Sands All instruments: L Leon Sands Time: 8:16 (lengthy, yes, but if you like this sort . . .) Instrumental |
Mesmerized by the rhythm of the crashing waves, this piece went on for awhile with various peaks and valleys of energy and emotion. So many evenings on Ponte Vedra Beach were thankfully slow nights. | ||
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Plural Spaces |
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| A Slow Walk | |||
| Music: L Leon Sands Constructed and sculpted percussion: L Leon Sands All instruments: L Leon Sands Time: 2:02 Instrumental |
This piece was written as a part of a vision for a stage play portraying the life and specifically the suicide of Mark Rothko. The concept involves multiple stages with each stage in its own unique space. While conceiving this production, in conversation with a friend, I made the statement that the production will have "plural spaces" in the context of many different points in his life and moments in time.
Like many of my visions, this may never come to be. |
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| sHIFT | |||
| Music: L Leon Sands Constructed and sculpted percussion: L Leon Sands All instruments: L Leon Sands Time: 1:14 Lyrics |
An accident; this song literally fell together. While experimenting with loops and over-dubbing, I spilled a can of sound and this is what was left on the floor. Shift a bit to the left and everything changes. The lyrics are a cynical comment about the drama we can easily fall into during moments of self-pity.
Houston is a dismal concoction of chemicals and hydrocarbons and sub-life-forms who profit off the trust of people hoping for a piece of God Money to feed their insatiable Ego. Record multi-billion dollar profits earned by all major petrochemical refineries defeats government probes into price fixing. Better cancel the art car parades and save some money. - 2002 |
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| Suicide Theatre | |||
| Music: L Leon Sands Constructed and sculpted percussion: L Leon Sands All instruments: L Leon Sands Time: 2:45 Lyrics |
After finishing Mark Rothko: A Biography by James Breslin I was overcome with anger, sadness, ambivalence, and sense of betrayal by what Mark Rothko did on his final day. I was at the Port Aransas beach house in 2003 in the midst of writing and recording music for other projects when I finished the book and was so emotionally moved. I was overwhelmingly compelled to write these lyrics. The music came from a piece I had been working on which I discovered had a rhythm bed that was perfect for the energy of the lyrics. It was at this point I started to formulate the vision of a stage play laying out the pain of Mark's final years. This song represents the apex of the show, the ultimate climax. This is the moment of his decision to lay back and let his life drain away in a ceremonially theatrical act for an audience of no one.
The distorted vocals are a result of using the small Vox Pathfinder 15 as a preamp before running it into the recorder and increasing the Vox gain to saturate the signal. This technique was also used on sHIFT. |
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