Sunshine of the Paradise Alley
Street song of Old New York w/ Humpy-Thumpy Waahh-Waahh Bass: Theres a street thats lined with gold and shines
Albums recorded in 2002-2003 on a cassette 4-track recorder
In 2002 & 2003 Dave made a bunch of albums recorded on a lo-fi cassette 4-track machine.
Story behind the song
January 2003, sitting on a beach in Florida and reading through the book Gangs of New York. I hadn't seen the movie yet (the movie is based "very loosly" on the book). There was a page that had lyrics to a traditional song that was sung in the early days of the City. Reading throught the lyrics, a melody line poped into my head, "hey this actually looks/sounds like it's a real song", I thought.
Two weeks later, the song is still in my head. Whenever that happens, I know that it's really worth recording the thing. So, on a sunday afternoon, back in snowy Connecticut, I recorded this song.
A bit of delay on the electric drums, I was in a melodic mood with the bass I guess, and hammered together the guitar & 2nd bass part pretty quickly. I remember taking a break to run to the Mall for something, I don't remember what for, then returning home and laying down the vocal tracks.
Everything came really easy when making this song, no laboring over this one at all. The only change I made in production was editing out an ending section where I tried to make it sound like the band got in a big argument and blah, blah, blah... The little skit at the end didn't really work too well, and the song didn't need to be overdone with something like that going on.
It's a catchy song (I guess), and a few people have told me they like it, so I'm happy with it. This is the first time I took some pre-written lyrics and wrote my own music to go over it - that's something I've gone on to do much more of in my music - but I think this song is the first official time that I did it, so along with being a decent song, it holds an important placemark in my own musical development.
