Adventure Thing #2.5 - "Obliterated" & The Future Imperfect (Cyborg Liberation Tracks) (Patreon)

Thank you for letting your voice be heart in last week's poll! We were actually totally surprised by some of the results - for instance, while we thought "Move" would likely do well, we were totally blown away at the popularity of "Circles". I had tossed it on there somewhat on a lark, but the people have spoken and we've now started working on a new studio recording.

To that end, as of today it looks like the Top 4 were:
Move (151 votes)
Circles (96 votes)
Chain Wallet Rock (83 votes)
Silver Bullet (74 votes)

That said, there is one other important consideration here, and that is that we need a track with a great opportunity for people to add their voices. So, while we would love to do new studio versions of all of these, we're actually. going to bump the 4th place "Silver Bullet" and do "The Taste For Glory" instead. While it may be a bit controversial and I realize it didn't get as many votes, it has some epic opportunities for an 'IFD Choir' of Patrons submitting their vocals. And now on to today's adventure things!

Unreleased Track - "Obliterated" Demo (Adam Schlesinger cowrite)

As you may already know, Fountains of Wayne is my favorite band, and Adam Schlesinger is one of my all-time favorite songwriters. It basically blew my mind to get to head to his studio in New York back in 2010 and write with him, not to mention grabbing lunch with James Iha and whoever else happened to be hanging out at the time. 

There is an interesting twist to this though: ultimately the demo that we came out with felt too "dance-y" to me, especially back in 2010 it just didn't jive with the band's sound. So I rewrote some pieces and the band did our own demo at Bill's home studio, which is the main one attached here (AtlanticDemo2). That said, I've also attached the original demo from Adam's studio (demo mix1) so you can compare and contrast, which can be fun to do.

The song didn't end up making it onto KABOOM!, but especially now that Adam passed away this year, it will remain one of my all-time honors to have gotten to write with him.

Semi-Released Tracks - "The Future Imperfect" (Cyborg Liberation Tracks)

Similar to DEMOlition, The Future Imperfect was a collection of tracks that didn't make it on to The Near Future. However, what you may not know is that several of these tracks are actually full studio recordings that we did back in 2012. We ended up getting a contract with Wizards of the Coast to write a song for them to put in the credits of the game Magic 2014: Duels of The Planeswalkers, and instead of just recording the song for the game ("Hero") - we decided to do a full batch of studio sessions to make an EP. 

That said, due to timing of getting off the label, we ended up not being able to release that EP (which we tentatively titled Cyborg Liberation), and it largely sat on the shelf. However, these tracks did all make it onto The Future Imperfect, and I think many of them will be leading candidates for Side Quest!

• "Hero" - the track that made it all happen! I have to admit, this track is probably one of my least favorite sonically. I like the song a lot, but we ended up doing the entire thing in one day, and we made some mixing choices that always ended up bugging me. Ah well.
• "Burnadette" - this was actually the track that I had wished Wizards chose for the game. The plot of the game centers around Chandra, a red pyromancer planeswalker, and I thought I was being super clever, but I think it might have been a bit too on-the-nose. Still love this song, and at one point it was going to be on The Near Future (it even has a callback in Jimmy and Sally that ended up standing alone as an orphaned bit), but it didn't end up making the cut.
• "Seek And Destroy" - there's a very fun origin story behind this song. It actually began with an instrumental track that Packy wrote and posted online, which he had called "Sneaker The Seeker Destroyer". I wrote a topline (melody and lyrics) over it and voila, it became this song! We actually did play this song live on a lot of the War of Cyborg Liberation tour in 2012
• "History Repeating" -  I did SO many different versions and arrangements of this song because I really wanted it to come together. I don't know if it ever did, but this is the closest we got. It's a pretty thinly veiled breakup song (in this case, primarily about the record label as we were in the midst of separating from them)
• "Shit's Gonna Be OK" - this is actually one of my favorite songs from this EP, and we've played it live on several occasions. I think the title makes it clear what it's about, but it's something I've come back to a lot over the years in darker moments, and as we were talking about this project Chad also said that it needed to be on Side Quest or else (he didn't specify the or else but I'd rather not find out so I think we'll keep it on the record)