Here we departed completely from trying to perform the songs live. INDICES is a studio record. Guest singers, weird instruments, overdubs galore. This record was a return to our roots after years of scholarship. Songs from the brain, for the brain.

DRUNK TUMMLER

Drunk Tummler started from two Rob riffs, which comprise the verse/chorus and bridge. Schuyler wrote the conclusion in a cab in Morocco.

A tummler is the guy at a Vaudeville show who seats you; prepares you to have a good time. The title has nothing to do with the book the boys are reading in the video. What a mystery, huh?

VIRGO INTACTO

This is a Schuyler special. Like 10 guitar parts and then he invited his friend Sam to sing with him. It took 7 years but he finally got a girl to duet with.

Schuyler had never heard a King Crimson song (other than 21st Century Schizoid Man) before recording this, but you can hear similarities to KC due to us using the same time signatures and rather obvious accent choices.

Schuyler had hoped the extensive polyrhythms in the song would prevent comparisons to other more popular progressive music but Schuyler was fucking wrong. In fact, the 2nd guitar part was somewhat improvised in studio for precisely this reason; ie., to leave things to chance rather than risk aping a song embedded in his subconscious.

LET THE HOOKER GO

The skeleton of this came mostly from Schuyler again. You can usually tell a mostly Schuyler song because it has one rhythm repeated ad infinitum and then some sweet elements. Mostly Rob songs are angular and impressive. Mostly Jeff songs are cool and interesting. Of course this song became so large and bonkers that none of us can really be credited with having written it alone.

The rather unfortunate title comes from the movie True Lies. Schuyler absolutely destroyed the underside of a garbage can recording this. His brother Scott sings on it as well.

Kylecam™ video coming soon. Kyle’s songwriting contributions are getting summarily overlooked throughout these reminiscences because his instrument is percussive rather than melodic and he can’t generate ideas as a result, but he was a songwriter, particularly here. He also recorded his part in 1.5 takes which was astonishing.

RECOGNIZE AND PASS

So this is a lot of Schuyler stuff. The entirety of what you see in the video was written on an acoustic guitar in DADGBE, so his pinky could articulate a bit of melody above the TONIC-DOMINANT pairs. 

Rob wisely declined Schuyler’s request for him to tap his part, resulting in a rich, full low end. And you can see in the video we’re sort of writing the song in the studio, instructing Kyle to extend a portion he’s recording. Jeff’s work is understated and tasteful.

The video is just the first 3rd of the song. The full version has a long bridge part with a baby crying on a bus between Rabat and Essaouira. And the end has a 4-part violin section Schuyler recorded in his bedroom with his brother.

AND FINALLY, A DREAM

This is some Rob stuff and a bunch of sculpting. It’s a pretty good song. Only this and Drunk Tummler could be performed live, though we did play the first 3rd of Recognize and Pass at our last show.

The footage for the video was actually shot for another song, but it worked better for this one. Schuyler shot it on Super 8 with help from his brother, his baby cousin, and some friends of the band.

IN CONCLUSION

greedyfeedr was a project Schuyler created and which eventually began exploring a musical vernacular he wasn’t versed in. As such, there were growing pains. The scholarship we underwent during the first phases (ie., the first 2 records) should have been done in private. INDICES is the product of a lot of learning and experimenting and would look good as a first record.

Unfortunately, for any creative endeavour, you have to wade through ignorance/immaturity and see your initial bad ideas to fruition in order to learn from them. If you’re a writer you simply ball those ideas up and leave them in the wastebin. But with some other disciplines, music included, you fail in full view of the audience you’re trying to impress.

Anyway, all that is to say INDICES is a pretty good record. It’s not perfect, but its errors are palatable, unlike the preceding records. It might be the only real greedyfeedr record. If we’d spent our teenage years refining our relationship with the vernacular, experimenting and making demos privately, then released INDICES as our debut, we might have been a pretty good band.

Instead we were just 4 nice guys from Brantford.