Artichoke » Songs http://artichoketheband.com The official website of the Los Angeles-based band Artichoke Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:16:01 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 “Cat” and “Marie Curie” http://artichoketheband.com/2009/08/cat-and-marie-curie/ http://artichoketheband.com/2009/08/cat-and-marie-curie/#comments Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:21:26 +0000 artichoke http://artichoketheband.com/?p=225 Today, we present the letter C:

In the category of tragic scientist biographies, none is better known than the story of Marie and Pierre Curie. And their story is indeed tragic — young husband Pierre killed by a horse-drawn wagon as he stumbled, radiation-poisoned, across a busy street; Marie killed much later by the same invisible magic after a life of underfunded toil and hard-won success.

I wrote and recorded “Marie Curie” back when we were renting space in downtown LA. I was messing around with with an agonizingly slow 3/4 tempo and a very loud distorted guitar. Later when we played the song live, Steve brought a little glowing test tube theatricality to our stage show. An actual scientist in your band can be a handy thing.

“Cat” is a catchy little melody over a swing beat that I like to use because it’s easy to sing over. My 3-year-old niece Rosemary acted out the lyrics of this song the very first time I played it for her!
cat
I guess that’s it for C. I should also mention that Artichoke will be performing at the Eagle Rock Music Festival on October 3rd at 10:00. See ya next time for “Dog” and “Charles Darwin.”

Timothy
Artichoke

]]> http://artichoketheband.com/2009/08/cat-and-marie-curie/feed/ 0 “Mary Anning” and “Aardvark” http://artichoketheband.com/2009/07/mary-anning-and-aardvark/ http://artichoketheband.com/2009/07/mary-anning-and-aardvark/#comments Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:59:25 +0000 artichoke http://artichoketheband.com/?p=210 Howdy! This year, Artichoke completed two alphabets of music, one of scientists in two volumes, and one of animals for kids. So over the next few weeks, I’m going to post songs for each letter from both projects from A to Z on myspace. http://www.myspace.com/artichoketheband

“Mary Anning” and “Aardvark” kick things off. The song about Mary Anning is a fairly complete biography. She was a skilled artist with a keen eye for fossils. Mary Anning managed to overcome many prejudices of the time against her gender and social status in 19th century England.

I wrote this song back when we rented a rehearsal space down on 7th street in LA. I made it fairly catchy by dividing every 8 beats into 5 and 3 on the bass and drums. As an early lineup of Artichoke was breaking up, this was one of the first songs where I played everything: lead guitar, bass and such. I learned a lot. And when a new live Artichoke arose, the band really rocked this song!

“Aardvark” is the first song on the kids record. Apparently aardvarks are pretty tough animals, with thick ant-proof skin and some serious claws for digging. They are sort of living fossils, relatively unchanged genetically over the last many million years. This is a fun song to start the live kids show with.
aardvark
Well, that’s the letter “A.” See ya next time for “Beaver” and “Luther Burbank.”

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