I'm going to do something a little bit different for "lyrical Saturday" this week. I'm going to tell the story of the birth of a song, print the lyrics, and even include an MP3 of the song as well. This week's entry? "Whatsit?" by Great Awakening.

During the Great Awakening days, Mike Shaffer and I wrote 95% of the songs for our band. The typical arrangement was that I'd introduce a riff or chord progression, and sometimes even a theme or idea of what the song was about, and then Mike would come up with lyrics and an arrangement for the song. During the time that this song was written, our practice space was Jason Ward's (drummer) attic. Attic practice spaces suck, by the way, because it's a pain in the ass to lug your equipment up small stair cases. But I digress. One day at practice it was decided that we needed to write new material. I said I'd try to come up with some things when I could. Someone, I think it was Jason, said, "Why don't you come up with something right now?" To which I replied, "Well, I can't just pull something out of my ass, if I did it would probably sound something like this..." Then I pulled something out of my ass. I strung together what was literally a random string of chords with some bizarre rythm. Jason then said, "I like it." and Mike said, "Play it again." So I played it again. After a few minutes, I added a variation on the progression on alternate repititions, and came up with a chorus. Bam, a song. Pulled out of our ass. A pretty decent one, too. (Later on, Kelley and I had a similar situation that resulted in the 3-five-7 song, "October Kiss".) Later we added a genre switch at the end of the song where Jodie would take over lead vocals and we changed to clean guitars and altered the tempo. All in all, the song took on a strange etherial reggae feel with an indie rock ending. Give the MP3 a listen and see for yourself.

Whatsit?

How much is worth to you?

How much is it worth to you?

When all you’ve got is all I had in return.

All I’ve got is you.

How long do you think it took?

And how much is it worth to you?

When I lay my soul down on the floor,

And I offer it to you.

When it comes right down to the give and receive,

With your heart of stone and your mind like a sieve,

Well I’ve given all I got, I have no more,

So I throw myself upon the floor

In my private hell, my private hell,

I go there all the time.

In my private hell, my private hell,

I die to pass the time.

How much is it worth to you?

And just how much can you afford?

Have to have someone to count the change

And make a list of all the hearts and faces and gold and silver you hoard.

When it comes right down to the give and receive

With your heart of stone and your mind like a sieve,

Well I’ve given all I’ve got, I have no more

So I throw myself upon the floor.

In my private hell,

I go there all the time,

In my private hell,

I die to pass the time.

This performance of "Whatsit" is from the now defunct "Infinity" club that was once on Eugene street in downtown Greensboro. Most of Great Awakening's better live recordings are from there. This performance was circa 1993, I believe.