Song information – Cygnus Wave

The Story of ‘Vieux Carre’

By Cygnus Wave August 27, 2012 May 3, 2021 Web Log

With Hurricane Isaac on a trajectory to New Orleans this week, we’d thought it was a good time to reflect on the story of the song “Vieux Carre” which was influenced by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The song was also influenced by a family vacation that we took to the Crescent City just months before that tragedy, and the extraordinary differences between good times and bad.

That November, 2004 trip was our first to New Orleans. We had a planned vacation to Orlando during Thanksgiving week but decided to start off in New Orleans so my son and I could catch our beloved Broncos who were playing the Saints that week. Naturally, one of the first attractions we wanted to see was the famous “French Quarter” and I remember driving down Interstate 10 and seeing an exit for “Vieux Carre”. My wife, who speaks and reads French pointed out that is where we wanted to go as Vieux Carre is the original French title of “old square” for the neighborhood. Well, anyway we enjoyed our trip, had lots of fun, and the Broncos handily defeated the Saints.

About nine months later Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and, like most people, I was horrified by the images of people trapped for days in the flooded city in the aftermath. One image in particular that chilled me to the bone was footage of refugees who had climbed onto the elevated interstate to get above the flood waters and were trapped in the sweltering heat under that same large green exit sign that read “Vieux Carre”. This, coupled with the horror stories of conditions inside the Superdome (a major evacuation center and the place where we saw the football game in 2004) moved me to write a song about the tragedy.

I originally wrote the song on piano in early 2006, while I was writing a lot of material for Imaginary Lines, but I never really intended to use the song for that project. Three years later, I introduced the song to my band Animal Society, and we worked out a new arrangement. It was recorded for our debut album in 2010, with the mix greatly inspired by the 1980s sound of the band Zebra, who ironically originated in New Orleans.

Listen to the Song:
[audio:AS/02-VieuxCarre.mp3]

Ric Albano

Tommy’s Got a Gun

By Cygnus Wave August 13, 2012 May 3, 2021 Web Log

On February 20, 2005, author Hunter S. Thompson killed himself at his home near Aspen, Colorado. That day also happened to be my son’s 14th birthday and he has become a big fan of Thompson’s work (as is evident in this 2010 piece that he wrote).

Anyway, I remember feeling disgusted when I heard the news because he did it while his sonm grandson, and daughter-in-law were in the house and while on the phone with his wife. Aside from my normal repulsion towards suicide, I also found the “grandiose” gesture was a lame attempt to replicate Ernest Hemingway and try to cement his legacy as a rebellious folk hero. I was moved to write some starter lyrics just days after the suicide;

The Hunter could not stand it no more
Couldn’t stand his Aspen slums
He pranced about like a dignitary
But his heart paled to that of a bum
It was so easy to travel the “Heming” way
He reached out with both arms and he embraced surrender
For he could see no solace in yet another cheap bender
No longer was it easy to face the setting sun…

I labeled the new poem “Tommy’s Got a Gun” but soon forgot about it. About four years later, I came across the lyrics and started developing music. Based on a simple, five note riff I worked out an arrangement with my band Animal Society and turned the lyrics into a proper song. To add the remaining necessary lyrics, I went directly to Thompson’s suicide suicide note and lifted some lines verbatim;

Football season is over now, there will be no more games
No more bombs, no more walking, no more fun…
You are getting greedy now, act your old age
17 more than we needed, 17 more than we wanted
Relax, this won’t hurt…

The song never quite worked out for Animal Society but was included on Imaginary Lines 33, with Erik Trabert providing the layered electric guitars and Rons Simasek on drums. Hunter S. Thompson received a full co-writing credit, one his last ever.

Listen to the Song:
[audio:Tommy’sGotAGun.mp3]

~
Ric Albano

The Yet-To-Be-Solved Riddle Song

By Cygnus Wave June 24, 2012 May 3, 2021 Web Log

The song was “She Said” (listen to it here) and each of the nine lines within the three verses begins with “She said…” or “She says…” with either direct or paraphrased quotes from established songs. The first line is;

She says I wonder if you’ll ever learn…”

This is a reference to an obcure song that I wrote about a decade earlier. But the rest of the lines refer to well-establish artists and well established song. A few hints on these songs – first, all these songs were released between 1966 and 1975 and next, the tense which preceeds the lines tells whether the original singer of these lines was alive or dead in 2006. Here are the eight lines in question;

She says ‘A movement is 6 stages while the 7th brings return’
She said ‘I know what it is like to be dead’

She says ‘Behind the beauty cracks appear’
She said ‘The future is uncertain and the end is always near’
She says ‘Keep them mower blades sharp’

She says ‘Think as it was and then again it will be’
She says ‘Go sing your heart out to the infinite sea’
She says ‘I may make you feel but I can’t make you think’…”

Six years after the song was written and nearly three after it was released internationally, noone has yet been able to tell me the origin of all eight of these quotes.

Listen to the Song:
[audio:SheSaid.mp3]

~
Ric Albano

Lorelei’s Crass and Sinister Style

By Cygnus Wave June 10, 2012 May 3, 2021 Web Log

The story of the origins of the song “Lorelei”

It was as strange and surreal a moment as it was wonderful. The moment that is now captured forever in the quarky little 7-second intro to the song “Lorelei”, started out as a simple enough task but soon escalated into a long and deep yet frustrating conversation.

The tune itself had been bouncing around the house for years with various lyrics and themes but by the summer of 2004 I was in the midst of a prolific writing period and decided to take this simple, jazzy melody of this tune and try to revamp it with a new theme. That theme soon arrived by my merely going to work everyday, with plenty of material coming as a result of one asinine remark after from some of my “enlightened” co-workers, especially in the political context of an election year. I would then go home at night and occasionally hear refreshing remarks from my 6-year-old son Jacob, who seemed amazingly just as interested in Campaign 2004, but yet seemed to make statements just as (if not more) profound then those “grown-ups” had made during the day. I had my new song!

I would simply take statements from both sources – the pathetic, boogey-man believing state worker and the intuitive, brilliant 6-year-old ver batim and juxtapose these statements in an entertaining (albeit cryptic) set of rhymes that would become the song “Lorelei” (check out the resultant lyrics here). I also decided to further pay tribute to my young source of inspiration by naming one of the many fictional characters in the song “Mr. Rooski”, the same nick-name that I’d been calling Jacob practically since birth. Then came the above mentioned moment, when I decided to test-drive this new tune on one it’s inspirations by performing it on the living room piano. Jacob was remarkably quiet and still throughout the 6 or 7 minute performance. Then when it was finished he stared back it me blankly for a little while, not letting on what (if anything) he thought about the song. Then, out of the blue, he launched his first remark:

“You didn’t win fair and square, you cheated!”

He was referring to a game of Madden football that we had played earlier in the day. At that point in time, he was just about as good as myself at video games (he’s much better than me now), so when we’d play he would either win and gloat or lose and blame me for somehow cheating to win. I calmly explained that this lyric was in no way about the Madden game and it’s original source actually came from other people that he didn’t even know. Further, I explained, the “Mr. Rooski” that is mentioned in the was in the song was not actually him but was instead was a fictional character, a gonzo temperament, an “abstract facsimile”. At first he seemed to accept this logic, but just as I was about to get up from the piano stool and continue on with this day he continued the argument with an amusing back-and-forth between myself and my 6-year-old son that lasted about a half hour. Everytime that I thought I got the point across that the song wasn’t actually referring to him, Jacob would continue the battle of wits by pointing out other lyrics that “proved” me wrong. After each subsequent argument and counter-argument and several ever-intesifying, open-handed piano bangs with the now-nearly shouted;

“It’s not Rooski! It’s an abstract facsimile of Rooski!”

I had an odd new beginning to this odd and entertaining song.

NOTE: This song’s most recent and final update included a revamping of the lyrics for the 2018 release of the Sinclair Soul album Nine Fine Lines.

Listen to the Song:

~
Ric Albano, 2005

Cygnus Wave Blog Archives 2012

By Cygnus Wave January 2, 2000 January 3, 2024 Informational, Web Log

November 11, 2012

Last year on Friday, November 11, 2011 we held a Wounded Warrior Benefit Concert at at Champion’s Sports Bar in Highspire, PA. Absolutely everyone involved was pleasant, upbeat, and helpful and the show could not have gone smoother. When my wife Karyn and I tallied up the all the donations including the door cover, raffle, cash contributions, CD sales by participating musicians, and business and online monetary donations we found that this single event had brought in $1,103. Well, we instantly shook the sofa to scrape up an additional eight bucks to bring that total to $1,111, which fits perfectly with the unique date of this event.

October 30, 2012

The Miami Dolphins defeated the New York Jets 30 to 9 on Sunday in the Jets home stadium. There was a lot of nervousness in the stadium because a hurricane was rapidly approaching. The Dolphins are used to being nervous about hurricanes approaching their own home stadium but the Jets are not.

September 9, 2012

Three years ago today, on 09/09/09, we released our biggest release with Imaginary Lines 33. This massive collection of 33-tracks running nearly 2 ½ hours of all original music was written and produced by Ric Albano. The songs are an eclectic mix of thoughtful and philosophical lyrics combined with sonically unique yet melodic music that, while experimental, remains accessible enough to draw in the passive listener. Then it gets better and better with each successive listen.

August 27, 2012

With another major hurricane headed for New Orleans, we’d like to reflect on the story of the song “Vieux Carre” by Animal Society, which was influenced by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The song was also influenced by a family vacation that we took to the Cresent City just months before that tragedy, and the extraordinary differences between good times and bad.

August 13, 2012

I remember feeling disgusted when I heard the news because he did it while his sonm grandson, and daughter-in-law were in the house and while on the phone with his wife. Aside from my normal repulsion towards suicide, I also found the “grandiose” gesture was a lame attempt to replicate Ernest Hemingway and try to cement his legacy as a rebellious folk hero. I was immediately moved to write some lyrics.

August 7, 2012

As we approach the third anniversary of our biggest release yet (Imaginary Liness 33 on 09/09/09), we will be exploring a song a day for the 33 days. This will commence with song #1 “Crimson, White, and Indigo” tomorrow and continue through “Long Way Home” on September 9^th, 2012.

The 33 song collection is a semi-compilation which contains all the material from the 2005 album Imaginary Lines I along with updated versions of songs released on Imaginary Lines II in 2007 plus 12 tracks previously unreleased. In total, the 2 disc album runs for nearly two and a half hours.

July 22, 2012

On September 25, 2007, my sister Diane had surgery that changed her life, The surgery to remove a tumor from her optic nerve went terribly wrong, Diane was left with severe brain damage to the left frontal lobe. For months, the doctores told us she wasn’t going to wake up and if she did, she would be in a vegetative state. No one could offer any hope for her future except to suggest that we prepare for the worst.

July 8, 2012

For nearly a decade and a half, Saturation Acres recording studio has been the most highly regarded and respected in Central Pennsylvania as hundreds of projects have been produced at Saturation Acres. These projects have crossed the musical spectrum from hard rock/heavy metal to country/Americana and just about everywhere between.

June 24, 2012

There are times when songwriting is just not so serious. One such example for me came in the late spring of 2006, when I sat down to write a song about summertime, but ended up writing a cool riddle which gypped lines from songs from eight of my favorite classic rock artists. The song was “She Said” and each of the nine lines within the three verses begins with “She said…” or “She says…” with either direct or paraphrased quotes from established songs.

June 10, 2012

May 27, 2012

Last Saturday Sound Off for Vets (a site sub-hosted on Cygnus Wave) throw their annual free benefit concert to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project and raised $900 for that great cause. Due to the donated efforts of many volunteers, local business sponsors, and performing musicians, the show was once again a success.

The event took place on City Island in Harrisburg, PA and the four hour show consisted of sets by Pennsylvania artists Chris Nelson, Rhyne McCormick, Michael Anthony Smith and the Dirty Thieving Gypsies, and Shift Seven. Nelson, the benefit’s organizer, claimed this to be the best show since Sound Off began in 2010;

These folks came out and played free of charge in order to help us get the word out about our wounded service men and women…”

The show was videotaped in its entirity and there are discussions about possible DVDs for sale to raise further funds for the cause. On this Memorial Day weekend, it is essential that we all remember and give appreciation to those who put it all on the line in defense of our country, our citizens, and our freedom.

Material Submission

If you are an artist and feel Cygnus Wave would be a good fit as a label, submit some demo material for review. Send an audio CD along with a one-sheet which includes the artist name, members and corresponding instrumentation, songwriting credits, important dates, a brief history of the artist(s), and future goals to:

Cygnus Wave Music
P.O. Box 126
Highspire, PA 17034

Or contact 33 Dimensions:

info@33Dimensions.com
(717) 829-4224

More Info on Cygnus Wave Releases

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