Download the song behind the pictures, “Pillow” by Isobel.
Lara Rossman on bass and vocals
Clay Jordan on keyboards
Howard Hudson on guitar
The Agent on trumpet
Big Gray on drums
All of ’em on handclaps and bottles and sticks
(with Jub Jub Wombat on hectares)
Recorded by Chris Bishop at Radium Recordings in the year 1999; written by Rossman, Hudson, Jordan, E. Jensen, L. Jensen.
I first heard this song on New Year’s Eve, 1999. Our pre-Catoptric group (we were MSU-MIA then) had gathered in the Smoky Mountains to weather any possible storm with bourbon for dinner and mimosas for breakfast. Wah had cooked up a great batch of IPA from Moon River and Jah had etched us all a personal pint class with “Y2Kegger” in it! It was wonderful.
Big Gray & the Agent blew into town ready for action, with a little cd-rom of this song. “It’s alright, nothing great,” BG demurred—as he does with everything.
After listening to it I called him a goddamn liar to his face and seized control of the cd player, jamming it on replay for a good half-hour until someone finally tackled me. I think it’s a great song. Bittersweetness is such a powerful emotion because it’s really two emotions—happiness and sadness. Two lovers who ardently miss each other, but never seem to connect—it’s a simple two-part song where the verses and chorus switch reference to accomodate the duality and separateness of the two lovers. It’s simple and it works.
I tried to use that circular logic of loss and longing in the strip and I was a little disappointed with the result—I tried to break it up more but this was the result. The central image is of course an homage to Don Hunstein’s iconic Nat-X, who is just a great model for these things. I realized when I was drawing it that I like girls who have tired eyes.
Enjoy the song.
Great work and cool song! Hey gorjus.. how bout e-mailing me sometime.. I lost your email..
damn nice work, gorj. ain’t nothin’ like an empty pillow.
God, that song…and the corresponding cartoon…takes me right back to a confusing, exciting, idyllic, but sorta lonely time for me in Athens. It was really fun to be in a band, but I didn’t really know anybody besides my coworkers, my sister, and my bandmates. I was still adjusting from Starkville. It’s hard to explain, but I can remember how that song smells…the smoke at The Bish’s studio and the hay outside of his house. Phew. Gettin’ nostalgic.
Oh, for the record: that song was written in, like, 30 minutes while I went to do something. I came back and everybody else had written the whole thing. I shouldn’t even give myself songwriting credit. I just added the Beach Boys drums to the flava. Isobel went on to become Pacific UV, Lara was kicked out (long story), Elise left, and me, well, that’s another long story. We never sounded like this song, before or after.
Ah, but those great fade-in “BA-BUM!” drums really make the song.
were you going for the hand holding/split screen from Indiscrete? you know, almost every time La Federala says your name when you come into a room for the first time, she’s imitating a line from that movie.
I got my album out to compare, btw. not too bad.