And Now For Some Lyrics . . .

In this section of the Surf Whammys website, you will find the lyrics for each of the songs on the new album!

Click on the song title in the left column to read the lyrics for a song.

[Hint: You can also click on the link at the bottom of this section on each page to jump to the lyrics for the next song in the sequence of the songs on the album.]

The lyrics page for each song begins with an overview which focuses on various aspects of the song, instruments, voices, recording and mixing techniques, history, or something that provides insights into the development and production of the songs. As noted throughout the overviews, the songs on the album were composed, performed, and recorded in the most spontaneous way possible, with very little advance preparation other than devoting a bit of attention to composing the rhythm guitar chords.

With very rare exceptions, all the instruments and voices were composed, performed, and recorded on the fly, usually on the first take, but occasionally on a second or third take--noting that even when the final take was the second or third, nevertheless, it was the first complete take, since there were a few times when the basis for an instrumental or vocal part was not immediately obvious on the first take, something which typically became apparent toward the end of the first verse, at which point everything would stop and a new take would begin.

Similarly, the basic draft of the lyrics for a song was done while listening to the first few tracks of instruments in playback, with the final lyrics being adjusted to match what the singer actually decided to sing when doing the vocal performances. This might appear to be a bit strange (and it probably is a bit strange), but this is the way it was done by design toward the goal of making the album as spontaneously new as possible.

Although each instrumental and vocal part was recorded separately, which was the only way it could be done, virtually everything was based on the general strategy that nobody in the band had any advance ideas about the songs and, in fact, had never heard any of the songs previously, since the songs did not exist until the band composed and played them spontaneously in real-time. This is perhaps all the more surreal when one considers the fact that the band itself is an illusion which exists only in the strange universe of the sight and sound of imagination.

The songs on "She Likes To Play" (The Surf Whammys) are mixed and mastered especially for listening through ear buds on an Apple® iPod®. There is a sonic landscape for each song, and the various instruments and voices are arranged spatially to create particular moods, some of which include elaborate auditory illusions and motions. Headphones also work nicely, as does the audiophile sound system of a car (when it is carefully balanced with respect to left and right center, as well as front and back center).

Listening to the album through external loudspeakers in a room is very different from listening to the album through ear buds, headphones, or inside a car with an audiophile sound system, since most external loudspeaker systems are not so carefully tuned to room acoustics (whereas, in contrast, audiophile sound systems in cars are very carefully tuned to the interior acoustics of the car). Stated another way, when you listen to the album through ear buds and headphones, and to a somewhat lesser degree inside a car, the perceived room is between your ears, which maps to the room that you perceive being as close as possible to the digitally imagined sonic landscape in which the album was performed and recorded, because it all is a grand illusion, no matter how or where you listen to it.