I want to write a bit about working titles.  All of my songs have working titles, because I have to name the directories on my computer *something* to keep them organized.  This is a list of the working titles for each of the songs I’ve selected for this album:

• brutal
• 32305
• brainscrape
• neater gunn
• take2
• concrete flea
• 0926-2
• reliable
• 1005
• tesselating
• victim

This list is subject to change.  Specifically, this list is subject to be increased.  So far, this process is going well, and I’m encouraged by that to add more songs.  Also, I’d like the total running time of the album to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 45 minutes, and with the tightening I’m doing with some of the song structures combined with a tendency to play these a little faster than the original demos, the songs are ending up shorter than I’d originally thought.  I am not upset by this.

Now, it may be clear that my naming convention is, well, nonexistent.  Some of the titles are pretty unimaginitive (“brutal” “take2”), some refer to the date they were written (“1005”, “0926-2” (I had two separate ideas that day), “032305”), but some are personal inside jokes that are apropos of nothing.

“Reliable” is so named because before it was a full blown song, the bass solo in the middle is something I’d always tend to default to when just playing around – it was my ‘old reliable’ lick I’d come back to when I couldn’t think of anything else to play.

“Concrete Flea” got named when I visited my parents during the time I was recording the demo.  Their dog had a special place he would lie outside by the sidewalk.  He got fleas, and the concrete was covered with them, and they got on me, and so that was on my mind.

“Victim” was named because I was prevented from recording that demo because someone kept calling me asking me to fix their computer, and ‘victim’ is how I felt.

Now that I think about it, maybe “inside joke” isn’t the right term, because none of those things are very funny.  “Inside boring story” is probably better.  The other songs are named for equally pointless and boring reasons.  The only reason I even mention all this is because people ask me a lot what the names mean.  My music is instrumental, so there aren’t any lyrics to explain anything, and the names are all mysterious.  Well, now you know – they don’t mean anything.

That said, when a song of mine gets lyrics (from an outside 3rd party – usually by my friend, James), it also gets a real name, like Pinocchio.  I guess that makes James the Blue Fairy, but I digress.  “Brutal” is now called “Release,” “brainscrape” is now called “Sunday Best,” and “neater gunn” is now called “Neatomatter.”  “0926-2” is now called “926” because due to an amazing coincidence, it’s also our work hours (nine to six), and he wrote about how much he doesn’t like working, a theme common in his lyrics.

When/if other songs get lyrics, their names will then be derived from those, and the working titles will be left behind like little appendixes – vestigial and useless.  That’s the main reason why I don’t spend a whole lot of time on working titles.