VB
© Williams and Johnson 2004

What’s that I smell on your breath?
VB
You’ve been down to the pub again with your brother
I still don’t believe you’ve got a brother
You used to only drink red wine
We used to stay in on Sundays
You used to read Virginia Woolf and drink red wine
And that’s VB

You say I’ve changed, but you’ve changed
Maybe it’s a phase we’re going through
You used to watch the football with me
It’s not like I love the Tigers more than you
I just need a room of my own, now
I just need a team of my own, now
I just need a life of my own, now
And anyway it’s Tooheys New

We haven’t held hands since last week
I wonder if you notice that?
I don’t mind if you go to every game
But you forgot to feed the cat
You were the one who wanted happy homes
You promised you wanted to settle down
You were the gold at the end of the rainbow
And where has the rainbow lead us now?

You haven’t said I love you for four days
And when I do you turn your back
There’s more to a thunderstorm than rainbows
I wonder if you notice that?
How about some time to think it over
I’ll go to my mum’s for a few days
You can have the cat for company
I wanted a dog anyway

You say I’ve changed, but you’ve changed
You used to only drink red wine
Maybe it’s a phase we’re going through
We used to stay in on Sundays
You used to watch the football with me
You used to read Virginia Woolf and drink red wine
It’s not like I love the Tigers more than you
I just need a room of my own, now
And that’s VB
I just need a team of my own, now
I know it’s VB
I just need a life of my own, now
Don’t deny it’s VB

Download: VB (mp3)

Background

Wing Commander Johnson and I have written a few genius songs and other things together in our time – she is a poet, novellist, cellist and cheesemonger, and I think all these things come across in her work. OK, maybe not so much with the cheese. I can’t for the life of me remember what inspired this masterpiece, but I think we were riffing off the fact that WGCDR Johnson had started drinking beer and I thought she was a traitor to the non-beer-drinking cause. If my memory serves me correctly, WGCDR Johnson and I wrote the first verse or so, then she went of home and we didn’t work on it for a week or so. I (quite naturally for me) got too impatient to wait, so I finished it off myself and recorded it to show WGCDR Johnson and get her feedback.

I’m a big fan of wordplay and in-jokes in songs, and also of specificity – I’d take a song about someone’s Great Aunt Fran (real or not) over a general musing about families any day of the week. Except Tuesdays. And possibly Saturdays. As I was saying, I like having references in there that are not necessarily essential for enjoyment of the song, but enhance it for the people who find them. To wit, a list of the references so that you all can feel extraordinarily clever:

VB = Victoria Bitter, the state beverage emblem of Victoria. I do love the ad campaign with lots of sweaty men:

You can get it ridin’, You can get it slidn’, You can feel it coming on about 4. A hard earned thirst needs a big cold beer, And the best cold beer is Vic, Vic Bitter. You can get it walkin’, You can get it talkin’, You can get it workin’ a plough. Matter of fact, I got it now. Victoria Bitter.

You can also get it takin’ a vow or feedin’ a cow. Matter of fact, you can see how that becomes an Australian dyke icon, can’t you?

Tooheys New = Clearly not as awesome as VB. Imposters. Anyway, I don’t even drink beer. I much prefer reading . . .

Virginia Woolf = Some writer played by Our Nic in The Hours. She wrote A Room of One’s Own.

The Tigers = Richmond Football Club. It’s proper footy. And I’ve just discovered they make fanvids. Of GARY ABLETT! (Pity he turned out to be such a creep, but these clips show that extraordinaty evolution of him from just another player to a cult figure, and also the evolution of the game from small ovals and dirty crowds to something of a spectacle). Oh, but Ablett played (mainly) for Geelong, not Richmond.

Recording

This is meant to be sung by two people, so when I recorded it I had to figure out a way to differentiate between the two ‘voices’. I ended up doing this by harmonising on almost all of the song, and using a harmony above the melody for the first voice and below the melody for the second. I think it works OK, but I’d love to hear it sung with two different voices! One of the impacts this doubling-up of vocal tracks has is making the a capella bit very big. Probably if I hadn’t had a million vocals I wouldn’t have been able to cut the instruments out from under that section. As it was it would have been too messy to keep it there.

At the time of writing and recording, we were also having a lot of fun in our band (The Northcote Military TATU of Death) playing kiddie instruments, toy instruments that we sourced from second hand and op-shops all over Melbourne. The horrid, horrid drone-y keyboard you hear on this track is one such instrument. It is so crappy that I had to pitch shift half of the notes in order to try to get it in tune, and it still wavers in and out of the right note! I LIKE IT! It’s so gross in places that I can’t help but have a perverse glee for it – I like it when music doesn’t take itself too seriously.

This was recorded on my old iMac using ProTools and the inbuilt mic, which has a pretty cruddy buzz on it. You can probably hear that I’ve been through fairly painstakingly and cut the buzz out from between the lines and words. Obsessive? Me?

What I Like

I like that while it starts out kind of being kind of sterotypically intellectual/bogan (with shades of butch/femme) it does work against that a little bit, too. It’s the football-lover who “wanted happy homes”, and they can still quote Virginia Woolf even as they drink beer, count how many days it’s been since person one said “I love you”, and like dogs more than cats.

What I Don’t Like as Much

It’s not so much something I dislike about the song, but the recording. It’s kind of scrappy, and a bit quiet. This has always been more of a draft than a final version for me – it’s waiting for some other vocalists to come along and sing it. Any takers?!

Conclusion

I really do enjoy this song, its specificity, its Australian-ness, its piss-taking (gently, gently). Clearly it’s a sign that the Wing Commander and I should get back into the business of writing together! I hope you enjoy it, and let me know what you think! (Note: there’s a long-ish fade-in at the start, so don’t turn your speakers up too high!)

Please feel free to share! But link to this entry rather than directly to the download. Thank you.