Adventure Thing #2.9 - "Semper Fi" & DEMOlition Part 2 (Patreon)

A very happy holiday season all! I hope wherever you are that you are able to get some rest & relaxation and get some sort of respite from this most insane of years we've had. But the Adventure must continue!

Unreleased Track - "Semper Fi" 

This was one of the early demos in the marathon writing sessions for KABOOM!  I actually wrote it for a friend of mine who was going through a very rough breakup at the time, and then worked up this demo at Bill's place. That said, as time went on this song ended up getting put by the wayside in favor of others, and it didn't end up making the album or even DEMOlition. 

Months later, Bill and I also took another stab at a very different vibe for the demo, trying to see if a new angle on the song would be helpful, although in the end it didn't seem to change a whole lot. That said, it was a fun exercise so I'm including that extra demo here as well. 

Semi-Released Tracks - DEMOlition Part 2

Keeping with the theme of "Songs That Didn't Make KABOOM!", it's time for part 2 of DEMOlition! Here's the stories behind another tranche of songs that came out of that crazy time:

• "Once Upon A Time" - I still remember writing and demoing this song from our tour bus while we were out on the Too Fast For Love tour in 2010. It's a song about dealing with a lot of my youthful illusions about love, and embracing a more mature viewpoint on the whole matter. Also it's a point of pride as a philosophy major that I use the phrase "begs the question" in this lyric in the technically correct way. (NERD ALERT)
• "Save Me From The Dance Floor" - This was another one I wrote and demoed from the road on Too Fast For Love, and honestly I will admit that the demo quality on both this one and "Once Upon A Time" aren't super high - I was recording by singing into my laptop in my bunk and mixing on bad headphones after all. At the time I thought I was taking a stand against dance music, although with a decade of hindsight I'm kind of annoyed by the tone I took, and the hook is SUPER repetitive. Ah well, that's why it didn't make the album!
• "Angels or Demons" - This song comes from a slightly later period in December 2010. At that time I remember being pretty burnt out on social media flame wars. I've always been a bit oversensitive to social media and a pretty reluctant adopter, partially because I know I'm not good at handling its ups and downs. I tend to hold views of reality a bit lightly, as changing the angle you view the world can make all the difference. Also originally it had a parenthetical subtitle, so it was "Angels or Demons (Apocalypse Wow!)" (yeesh)
• "Anthem" - Man, I think I saved all the preachy songs for this post. This one's from mid-2010, essentially I had started to chafe at all of what I saw as the "manufactured" music in the industry around me and so I got up on a high horse and wrote this song about how there were probably a lot of other people out there like me who didn't like the crap they heard on the radio. Again, with a decade of hindsight I cringe a bit at the self-righteous tone, but musically I do still enjoy this one.