“Can you show me, the things you see, ‘cause I don’t understand you”
Hollywood’s Elegantly Wasted are just back from Europe, where they’ve been promoting their new CD, “Desolation Row.” Track 1, “Sickhead,” taps into the CD’s informal theme of being on a mental skid row by trying to figure out what drives a particularly self-centered guy.
“Despise me please, ‘cause I don’t wanna have to look at you / Turn away, ‘cause I don’t wanna be drawn to a fool”
Lead vocalist and guitarist Lenny J., who co-wrote the song with guitarist Queen D., explains, “It’s based on a real experience – most of our songs are. This person has no regard for others’ feelings or thoughts, no regard for anyone else.” Queen D., he says, “originally wrote the lyrics for another song, which just didn’t happen. The chorus/melody line with harmonized guitars and vocals came along and fit the words for the chorus, and sparked the whole song. A song writes itself; it puts itself together once it’s ready. If you force a song to be written you often just get filler-type material.”
“You think you’ve won, before we even started the game / Step aside, I’ve got no room for a man with no shame”
“He plays a game,” Lenny continues, “to see how far he can push people for his own gain, like a little kid.” The pre-chorus kicks in with a litany of frustrated shouts:
“You’re sick, you freak, you fiend, your words turn to spit, in my face / Twisted, perverted mind, don’t come too close, invade my space”
Lenny says, “The spit is a metaphor: The words are as bad as spitting, but spit would be better because you could wipe it off. Words hurt more than physical pain.” And the way it sounds like the phrases are being traded off between two people? “On the record it’s all me, a cool effect we got with overlaying vocals in the studio. Live, we use backup vocals instead. It’s more interesting to the fans, too. We try to mix it up so it’s cool both when you see us live or hear the record.”
The harmonized and catchy chorus takes a step away from the narrator’s anger and tries to make some sense of the egotistical person.
“Can you show me, the things you see, ‘cause I don’t understand you / Can you tell me, the things you feel, so I can understand you”
“The guy is making the speaker feel down and out, exhausted – on Desolation Row – and the speaker is trying to get out of those feelings, to figure this guy out. The lyrics are sort of dark but have something positive. We want our lyrics to mean something, so with our songs we try to strike a balance between good lyrics, good music, and a good vibe.”
Musically, the song draws listeners in right away with a short intro to a cool, hooky guitar riff over well-crafted rhythm guitar, John “Yeti’s” heavy bass line, and Pauly’s carefully placed drumbeats. “It’s a backbeat rhythm, like a disco beat but not a disco song. We’ve been opening our shows with this song because that backbeat hooks everyone, and it goes into that groove right away.”
Everything slows down for the bridge:
“I…can never see inside your soul / And I…will never follow when you lose control”
With 3-part harmony when “I” is sung, the bridge is powerful and distinct. “The meaning is like the chorus’s,” Lenny explains. “The speaker wants to understand, but can’t read his thoughts, and will never be like him. The music for the bridge is actually the same as the intro, but the extra vocals push it into it’s own: You listen to the lyrics instead. We like to throw a curveball into our arrangements, keep them powerful but not overly complicated, because we want our songs to be understood by anybody.”
Midway through the song, between short guitar solos, the band shouts out “Sick…head.” At the end, after a heavy halftime version of the pre-chorus, the title is repeated: “Sickhead…. Sick, head, sick” until all the instruments halt and the song ends on a single spoken word: “head.”
“Well…,” Lenny admits, “it was kind of a mistake. We went back and forth about it and then decided to keep it. It caps the song off in an unusual way.”
“Desolation Row” is currently released on the band’s own indie label, but they’re planning to shop it this fall. They have songs on an English compilation this month and a German compilation this fall. Lenny also says, “We did a video for ‘Better Off Dead,’ off the first CD, and are working on doing another one for a single from this CD.”
Elegantly Wasted will be one of the featured bands at the fifth annual All Access Magazine.com Music Awards at the Knitting Factory this November. Check out the MP3 for “Sickhead” and find out more about the band at www.elegantlywasted.net and www.myspace.com/elegantlywasted.
