dressing to undress

in september of 1998, my grade ten english class was given an open-ended assignment that provided us with about a dozen different choices in how to approach it. one option was a song/poem/mock radio announcement about a crime, so i decided i’d exploit that and take the opportunity to write a song. the teacher didn’t seem to understand what i was after, though…while i was trying to explain to her that i would just bring in a keyboard or something and perform the song live for the class, she was saying, “i have a radio so you can play music and talk over it if you like.” i was ready to start pulling out clumps of my hair in frustration when suddenly a long-haired guy i didn’t know turned around and said, “hey man—i play guitar.” his name was gord thompson, and i had no idea what had just been set in motion.

we got together the next night after school, mostly just playing around and getting to know one another a bit. it was nice to have someone playing my shitty acoustic guitar who actually knew how to get some pleasant sounds out of it for a change. gord had an idea he’d been playing around with on guitar (it was in a minor key and kind of melancholic), and we quickly fashioned it into a finished-sounding song. all i had to do was write lyrics the next day at school, and we’d be set. i did, but i knew immediately that the words i had written weren’t going to work with the music we had cooked up. a few nights later we got together again, with gord’s girlfriend amanda sitting on the floor of my tiny music room in the basement, and the song was re-born as the more uptempo and intense ”pacing the cage”. it evolved over three takes and became gradually tougher-sounding until we arrived at the definitive version, with gord getting into it and letting out some spontaneous screams near the end, which inspired me to scream, which made amanda laugh—all of which was captured on tape. since gord wasn’t sure exactly where some of the musical transitions were supposed to occur, i turned my directions to him into an odd sort of scat-singing, chanting “middle eight” and “back to normal now” in between verses to steer him in the right direction. we also played pieces of a lot of classic rock songs and i improvised a silly song about jesus. it was a fun night. amanda told me i sounded like eddie vedder (also caught on tape), which i took as a compliment even though i don’t think i had heard a single pearl jam song at that point.

the students in our class seemed to like the song when we played it for them on tape the next day, and we got a mark of 19/20 (one mark was deducted because the teacher thought my lyrics weren’t “clear enough”, which always smelled like bullshit to me). gord and i became fast friends and started eating lunch together and getting together to jam some more outside of school. in march of 1999 i got a roland VS-880 mixer/digital workstation, which was my first time working with something that wasn’t a simple tape recorder. a whole new world of sonic possibilities opened up, and i toyed with the idea of making something of a twisted blues album with gord and i both playing guitar, though my skills on the instrument were still barely there. somehow when i played with him it seemed like i wasn’t such a terrible guitarist after all. we just connected. unfortunately, i found out too late that the cd burner i picked up wouldn’t work with this particular mixer, so the stuff i recorded with gord in march of ‘99 could only be preserved on tape. i dubbed the collection “suck on my arse” and it was arguably the first real papa ghostface album, though we didn’t have a band name yet and most of what we recorded was just fooling around in between stabs at john lennon’s “how do you sleep?” and the clash song “should i stay or should i go?” which we recorded for submission to the people who were putting on sort of a school talent show thing, calling itself the “air jam”. we didn’t make the cut (it’s kind of a long story), but we recorded some messed up things and had fun.

the two best songs on the tape are probably the first and last. “frog song” starts out as silly nonsense and then evolves into a little ditty about a boy who develops an odd symbiotic relationship with a frog he swallowed at the age of three, who only makes his life more complicated than it needs to be. the boy runs away and joins the circus, only to be followed by the frog, and a botched suicide attempt leads to a hallucinogenic journey of self-discovery that includes an encounter with tom waits. it all has a happy ending, though. “bandoni boodana”, on the other hand, is an epic ballad that begins as a story about a homeless guy, before spreading its wings and spinning a tale involving the muppets, bill clinton and barney the dinosaur. other highlights include “another dick in the hall”, which is a long, atmospheric instrumental, a piss-take of the barney & friends theme song “i love you” with a baby bop cameo, and another instrumental in the shape of the sort of jazzy “uncoiled”. in some places it’s clear that we haven’t quite mastered the art of improvising off of one another yet, but when we hit our stride some cool stuff falls out, like gord’s trippy guitar-playing and my keyboard madness on “another dick in the hall”.

in the summer i picked up a different mixer (a VS-880-EX) that was compatible with the existing cd recorder, and the real fun began. gord suggested sürdaster as a band name, which is latin for the process of becoming deaf, but i didn’t think our music was heavy enough to warrant such a name. i came up with papa ghostface and gord seemed to like it, so the name stuck, and our first cd was recorded over two nights in july, with the title taken from gord’s friend andrew whitelaw (it was something he had said about what it felt like when he had his nipples pierced). still pacing the cage pales in comparison to the original version (the one without the “still”), but the rest is a pretty good start.

by this time we had spent almost a year jamming off and on without the ability to record properly, so we had pretty much honed our improvisatory craft. i unleash a guitar solo halfway through the opening track (she’s my girl) that is painfully crude today, but felt like a huge rush of nastiness at the time. funny how things like time and skill will alter the way music sounds. snowflake learns about life and dark blue champagne shuffle are re-workings of “frog song” and “another dick in the hall” respectively, and they hand their templates’ testicles to them in a paper bag. snowflake is mostly a guy giving a final speech to his cat before the little critter leaves home to fend for himself out in the mean old world, alternately caustic and tender, and featuring another appearance from tom waits. both incarnations of the song are probably worth hearing, but this one is a lot more epic in scope and i do some pretty crazy singing where i can’t believe my head didn’t explode from spitting out so many words without taking a breath in between any of them. you can practically hear my face turning red from the exertion. dark blue champagne shuffle takes what was originally aimless jamming and transforms it into something a lot more interesting. back then i wasn’t afraid to play keyboard drums and fake bass at once while pretending they were a real rhythm section, and the result sounds like a lot more than just two guys messing around without any overdubs. in the middle of the song gord suddenly tunes his E string down into death metal territory (all the way down to A!), just for the hell of it, making for a cool sound. no apologies is the first of what would become a staple of future PG cds (and pretty much every other project i was ever involved in)—the spoken word piece. this one happens to be one of my less cryptic jabs at the ex-family (my mother, her second husband, his family and that whole happy bunch), with suitably happy-sounding music underpinning the touching narrative. there’s a great moment at the end that comes out of nowhere with gord and i each unleashing a speaker-destroying scream. mine is high and throaty, while gord’s is deep and guttural.

the title track, meanwhile, is a warped universe unto itself. it’s something of a love song that starts off with the lyrics, “there was laughter in the sky at night / i was sucking on her nipples”. i have a very vivid memory of leaning over to sing into the microphone gord was holding in between his legs (because i only had one mic stand at the time) a few times, to get some distortion on my voice, and looking at his ripped blue jeans while i shouted into the mic. he adds some nice distorted sounds throughout while i rifle through different synthesizer patches. i had to cut a few random pieces of the song out in order to get it to fit on the cd, but the whole thing is so messed up and fragmented, i don’t think i can even tell anymore where i made the cuts. falling apart at the seams could almost be a ballad, if not for my oddball delivery and the lyrics about testicles and oysters, and the voice i use to deliver the opening line of “i was hiding in the back of the street” has always been one of my favourite moments on the whole cd for some reason. at one point i try to get gord to play the chords for “bandoni boodana” just for fun, but it doesn’t quite work out. i wish my microphone had picked up the funny “oh-ooh” singing he was doing at the beginning of the song (which i tried to emulate myself before i started singing actual words), but it didn’t happen. true love in the springtime kind of sums up the adventures i would soon be having with the opposite sex and kills off aunt ronita for the last time (to read about her previous deaths, see SINGIN’ THE OESOPHAGUS TO SLEEP and DON’T TALK LIKE A BABY), while leaving room for a bridge section that features gord screaming into a kazoo and me grunting in harmony with myself.

this was all just a warm-up for the weirdness that lay ahead.

TRACKS:

she’s my girl
true love in the springtime
dark blue champagne shuffle
snowflake learns about life
falling apart at the seams
no apologies
still pacing the cage
screaming nipples

STUFF TO LISTEN TO:

True Love in the Springtime

LYRICS:

(all of the words were improvised while recording)

SHE’S MY GIRL

i knew a lady when i was three
she took her clothes off in front of me
i knew a lady when i was four
but she don’t come ’round here no more
i knew a lady
but she told me i wasn’t any good

i knew a lady when i was young
she used to tell me i had no tongue
i didn’t believe her
there was a lady i used to know
she used to tell me how her garden would grow
there was a lady who came around
she did the nasty throughout the town
oh yes she did
i knew a lady

i knew a lady
she called herself my friend
i knew a lady
but there was no sense in pretending
i couldn’t take it away
i tried to take it away
i couldn’t take it away
they tried to take it away
they tried to take her away from me
they tried to take her away
they tried to take her away…from me

no, they can’t take her away
’cause she’s my girl

TRUE LOVE IN THE SPRINGTIME

i used to walk down the street every afternoon
in search of a woman who would sit on my lap & say hello
but there weren’t any women that would come up to me
and then sit on my lap & say hello
i tried my darnest being a perfect gentleman
but all that stuff you hear is bullshit
it never works out
and i tried
i tried as hard as i could
to find the lady who would love me for the rest of my life
they say that she’s out there somewhere
waiting on that horse of hers
but where’s the horse?
and where are her purrs?
’cause she’s like a kitty cat in the middle of the spring
you can never tell her anything

but then, in the middle of the night
i saw a beautiful sign of hope
in front of me was my aunt…
ronita!
ronita!
she was dead!
so lovely

i wanted her to be dead
from the moment i first saw her
but there was nothing
nothing
nothing
i could do

and then, in the bedroom, i saw her—
the lady i had waited for all of my life
she took off her panties & said, “how are ya?”
i said, “i’m fine…please let go of that knife!”

SNOWFLAKE LEARNS ABOUT LIFE

i saw my cat on the porch of my house
the cat said to me, “where is the mouse?”
i said, what he hell are you talking about?
i haven’t seen a mouse since we’ve been in this drought
i don’t know what you say
no no no, don’t come back here
go away

the cat looked at me & he said, “reow. reow.”
i said, kitty, kitty, please live me alone
i’m trying to get it on with the lady next door
you see, when it’s late at night, she lets me peek inside her window
i like what i see, but she doesn’t show me skin
though i really want to see it
so please go away, kitty cat.
i want to get it on with the girl across the street
i want to kiss her from her head to her feet
yes i do
yes i do
yes i do

the cat was crying so softly at my door
he said, “please let me in, meow meow meow
meow meow meow meow
you haven’t given me water in two weeks
my hair is falling off, and i reek!
all my girlfriends say i reek”

and i said, kitty…this is what life’s like
you gotta roll with the punches
you gotta pack your own lunches
you gotta go with the flow
if you don’t like the juices i pack
well, that’s too bad
pack your own lunch

kitty kitty kitty kitty
listen to me please
i’m only looking out for you
you you you
sooner or later, you’ll realize
you’re not the only one
you’re not the only one who needs a little helping hand

i once had a frog when i t’was three
then i had to take a pee
i said, ribbit
ribbit, ribbit
but the frog ran away to the circus one day
there was a man who sounded like tom waits
whose voice came floating back into my head
he said:

“i’m here to show you what you’ve been missing
take that frog & rip off his motherfucking head
he has been misleading you
he had been mistreating you
run back home while you can!”

well, i shot him
and i ran home
and i was all alone
and i was waiting for my kitty
kitty, kitty, kitty
i was waiting for my kitty

i said, kitty, the best things in life are free
but the battle is never won
until you’re safe within the ground

KITTY!
listen to me listen to me listen to me listen to me…
i’m only looking out for you!
please listen to me!
i don’t mean you any harm!
listen to me listen to me listen to me

kitty!
you got to watch out
you got to watch out for yourself
’cause it’s a dirty world, like dirty underwear
and…the screaming nipples are out to get you
’cause they DON’T LIKE YOU!
they don’t like anybody but themselves
so you’ve got to watch out, watch out, watch out…
watch your back…

here—take my pillow
take my backpack
take my lunch
take this food
take this coffee
take this money
take this wallet
take this picture
take it with you
take this telephone
take this brochure
take these traveler’s cheques
you might need them where you’re going
take this paper airplane
it will remind you of the good times we had long ago

and take this—
it’s the frog i told you about
he’s still around, yes…
i know the scary man told me to get rid of him
but i couldn’t bring myself to do it

take care of yourself, kitty
now that you’re on your own
and remember…
you must be careful when you’re on your own
please don’t forget to call me on the telephone
please don’t you cry
i don’t like goodbyes
but i don’t know anybody who likes saying goodbye

please…i’ll miss you
don’t forget me
let me kiss you
come here, little kitty
come here
don’t forget to take care of your younger sister neddy
i know you want to…well…experiment with female cats & all that
but you can’t, because it’s not fair to her
you’d be sexist
and even though you’re making her purr
it doesn’t matter
she doesn’t like those sexual positions
no no no no

kitty…

please…i love you
kitty, please make me proud
find a well-paying job & raise a family
and have some children
and have sex with your wife every night
because it’s good to have a healthy sex life
and if you don’t get it out, you’ll be incredibly horny
and that’s no good
oh, kitty…

FALLING APART AT THE SEAMS

i was hiding in the back of the street
shoes…hey, they weren’t on my feet
my baby, she didn’t sing for me
all the oysters in the world
could not prepare me for this squirrel’s left testicle

ladies beware—i know you’re out there
i’m looking out for you

i sang a song about the loneliness of sparrows
she looked at me & said “some shooting me those arrows”
i couldn’t explain the feeling in my gut
it fell down around my ankles
and i told her, “don’t be that way with me
i know you understand the meaning of ’set me free’”
i didn’t know why she was always in a foul mood
when i was around her on my summer vacation

baby, why do you treat me like a horsey?
baby, why do i only have my two left feet?
i don’t understand the meaning of it all
i don’t understand why the leaves fall in the springtime
in the springtime

i smell you
in my hometown marching parade
in your mother’s dress she wore for you
she sewed it with her left shoe
she made that dress for you

i couldn’t understand
what was that in your hand?

her she comes walkin’ in that fine new dress
i said, here she comes walkin’
i don’t feel so depressed
she sweeps me off my feet & makes me feel alright
she sweeps me off my feet
i don’t have to be so uptight

i feel alright when she’s around
i feel alright when i put the crown upon her head

jesus waits for those who look on with eyes of shame
he sings songs of pity
but who is to blame?
hey girl, uh…
you never even told me your name

i’m falling apart at the seams
over her, it seems
i can’t hold myself together
i can’t even stand the weather
i can’t stand to be with her
i can’t make it without her
i can’t do anything
i can’t do anything…

NO APOLOGIES

there are certain people who come into our lives. some of us have had these people, at certain times in our lives. we didn’t necessarily ask for them, but they came. for example, your mother could divorce your original father, and then remarry, and, of course, your stepfather (unless he was very unfortunate) would have some family members. they’d become your so-called relatives, in addition to your other relatives. now, if your mother takes a liking to them, thenthey are treated as all your other relatives are; as if they are her siblings, and she had known them all her life.

at first, they may seem nice enough—treating you rather kindly; getting drinks for you; allowing you to sip at their alcohol while you are underage; getting you drunk from time to time, so they can laugh at you and their friends can laugh at you. this is all in good fun, of course…until they start joking. just a little swipe at you now and then. “it’s just a joke,” they say, and everyone laughs at it—including you, because you think it’s funny as well.

over time, these jokes grow more frequent; the intervals between them grow shorter. some of them hurt your feelings, but you laugh anyway because you think, “ah, these are my relatives. they can have a little fun.” they say some more things that hurt your feelings, and you think, “what can i do? everyone thinks it’s funny.” they say things that aren’t jokes to you anymore. you don’t laugh, but you can’t stand up for yourself, because everyone else is in on the so-called joke. whenever you do stand up for yourself, or say anything to this relative (or these relatives), everyone gets mad at you. “don’t talk back to your uncle charlie!” or, “your aunt ronita’s only joking.” what can you do when everyone’s against you?

in time, you move away and only see your relatives occasionally. sometimes they joke with you as they used to. sometimes they act awkward around you, as if they knew they had hurt your feelings. but never an apology. they’re only human, after all.

you get older. develop some psychological problems, such as intermitten explosive disorder. things like that. or, your memories of the past sometimes permeate your daily life, causing you to do things that, under any other circumstances, or if you would not have had these relatives, these things would not happen. some deep-seated emotional trauma causes you to have a negative attitude…beat yourself up over things. beat others up over the same things, causing you to have very few friends.

this is why family is a very private sanction, and should be held in very high regard.

after all, they’re only human. what would you do in their shoes? we’re all only human. we all hurt each other’s feelings from time to time. but we should just forget it, and try to move past the pain. forgive and forget. forgive and forget. everyone, let’s just forgive and forget!

perhaps you treat your chldren the same way when you have them. or perhaps you are intuitive enough to realze that that’s not the way to treat people, and so you learn from the mistakes of others. it can always go either way. but you always have an excuse, because we’re all human. and we all get together to have a nice barbecue, and talk about horses, and sex, and race cars, and if the tigers beat the bluejays this time…

SCREAMING NIPPLES

there was laughter in the sky at night
i was sucking on her nipples
there was laughter in the sky at night
i was sucking on her nipples

i was sucking on her nipples!

she said she loved me
i said, “you’re full of shit”
she said she loved me
i said, “you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about”

i told her i was gay
that meant we had no sex that night
we did not have sex
and she said, “i was prepared to give it to you!”
i said, “well, why didn’t you fucking tell me?
i would have taken it!”
she said, “you’re gay
you’re gay!”

i’m sorry about your nipples
i didn’t mean to touch your nipples

fuckin’ shit!
fuckin’ shit!
have i told you lately…?

have i told you lately that i’m horny?
have i told you how much i want you in the morning?

i grabbed her by the wrist
and she slit it
why did you slit your wrist?
i wasn’t expecting that
but i’ll make it up to you
if you let me
pet me like a doggy in the night

i waited for your call
until my hair turned purple
from the aftershave you bought

you want to go slightly closer…
i know we want to get closer to each other
like your sister & your brother

i felt you within my pants
sucking on my wristwatch
waiting for the moment which would never come

suck it, you piece of CHEVETTE!

the cops came down the street in twos and threes and fours and fives and sixes and sevens and eights and nines and tens and i was waiting there, watching for the curb…

roasting my behind on the dinner table
roasting my behind on the dinner table
i was waiting for you to roast it all away…

time to go, honey
get off of my lap
give me my pants
oh, thank you!