Rebecca Pittenger's Podcast of Weird Songs

Here's the next song in the Fucked Up Relationship Album, Part 3. Yup, yes, yessiree, more boyfriend-controllingness, as mister controlling butthole man continues to persist in isolating his girlfriend from her friend. 

This is another one of those songs about existence and the unfathomability of it. It's probably a next door neighbor to Half Blind and Out of Balance, although it's not all funny cuz it don't have poop and stuff in it. Oh yeah, the picture, while not directly related to the song, has the line, "I avoid the void" in it.

I think I'm zero-ing in on what I think I want this song to sound like. Yeah, okay, yeah. This ain't the final version, though cuz I have a sore throat today and my voice sounds like crap. And this is a crappy mix,. And I'm gonna get some feedback and stuff from people and see what they think might work and not work. Poopity poop. But I'm zero-ing in on something that might be, to my ears, good. There's a chance it might not be good to anybody else's ears, though.

This is the next song in the Fucked Up Relationship, Part 3. The crappy boyfriend tells the girl she has to give up all her friends. Cuz  they smoke weed. Or cannabis, as he calls it. If you know anything about abusive relationships, you probably know that isolating one's partner from their friends (and family) is an abusive-boyfriend strategy. Poopity poop.

This is the next song in the Fucked Up Relationship Album, Part 3. The mean boyfriend gives the girlfriend an ultimatum: If she smokes cannabis, he'll break up with her.

Okay, yeah. So, I'm losin' hope for the oak trees, the over 3K oak trees that are going to die in an egregious slaughter because of a horrible, massive, greed-driven housing development. Those trees are in the town where I grew up, Nipomo. It is a centuries old oak forest. The evil San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission voted to approve it this week. There was just one dissenting member, who stood up for the trees and the people of Nipomo (who will be breathing in air poisoned with particulate matter way above acceptable levels - many of whom will die of respiratory illnesses). 

Yes, it's very clear to me now that 4 out of 5 planning commissioners are as unethical as fuck; they don't mind dumping this massive development on a town that doesn't have the infrastructure to support it because Nipomo is ALWAYS getting screwed by this idiotic, unethical planning commission. FUCK THEM!!! Except for the one who dissented. She rocks. Well, the only thing that cheers me up about the whole thing is that those 4 commissioners who voted in support of this thing will go to Hell when they die.

In any event, I'm promising those trees that, when they die, I'll sing a song to let the Spirit World know they are coming. I'm hoping that'll at least ease their journey into the afterlife. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that what they're doing is illegal because they are violating several ordinances, including one aimed at deterring the clearcutting of oaks. But, I guess it's okay to break the law if you're a politician. I guess so. 

This is the next song in the Fucked Up Relationship Album, Part 3. It's the usual piggy-backing on the previous song type of song. The gal is certain that the relationship, now rebooted, is going to go great. But there's always that teeny tiny dime sized nugget of a shadow of a doubt. 

This is maybe, possibly, the first song in the Fucked Up Relationship Album, Part 3. I don't mind the other version of the relationship reboot song I wrote, but I realized, after the fact, that part of it sounds kind of like another song. I'm not gonna say which song it was, but it's like, "doh!" Anyway, another idea of how it could sound came to me, and here's what came out of that.

Hi everyone! Here's my next demo of this song. I may end up with a thousand demos before I'm done with all of this and stuff. I was just experimenting around with moving it up to the key of D because in the key of C, it went too low for my vocal range. The final version won't have strummy guitars in it; the arrangement'll be closer to the version I did week-before-last. Just playin' around. I wanted to try changing up the song structure just a tiny bit and tweaking the raps a little bit. There's still a little additional tweaking I need to do to the raps, before I go for it and do the polished version. And I may end up with 10 polished versions cuz I wanna make sure my vocals don't suck, and they tend to suck a lot when I try to do the definitive version of a song. The alien cats in the picture go with this song, yes, indeed.

I think I recorded the first version of this song 2 weeks ago. My memory fails me these days. In any event, I kept on thinking, "I like this song and all, but something is missing from the lyrics." Like, I kept singing about bein' smart in the other place and dumb in this place. I kinda felt like I could make my lyrics deeper and, how do I say it? Less specific or something? Like, make it more open ended and introducing the possibility that I might be an alien, but stating it just as a possibility and not as a known fact. So I did a sadder version, lyrics-wise, but the tempo makes it more peppy and upbeat. 

The peppy, upbeat nature of the tempo and the presence of banjo and cats counter-balances the depresso-nature of the lyrics, and makes for a song that might be good to listen to when one is depressed. The tempo might be cheering-up-worthy, but the lyrics make it not-a-bubblegum-song, cuz bubblegum-songs are obnoxious when you're depressed.

Note, I did this picture for one of the earlier versions of this song, and as you can tell, in the intervening time, between when I initially drew it and now, I wrote a bunch of rap lyrics for another song to the side of the picture. Poopity poop.