Saturday, September 29, 2007

Rest Stop

From Awkward Middle Phase: Seth Timbs' Home Demos, Volume One

A song about an epiphany. The end of a movie told in a song, with its own soundtrack included.

A man wakes up, at a rest stop in Carolina, after the worst day of his so far (which reminds me of the joke in The Simpsons Movie, though the song was written much earlier, in which “so far” is used to imply that things could easily get much worse for the person). He hasn’t hit bottom in his life because of “drugs or addiction, or anything promiscuous,” he’s just down on his luck, a situation that most people with middle-class values have trouble accepting.

And in some moment of clarity, the man drives away into the sunrise, remarkably discarding all of the problems behind him to start his life over again. You’ve only met him for two minutes or so, but you can’t help but wish him the best as the music swells. You can almost see the end credits roll as the car drives off into the horizon.

2 comments:

Jakob Dorof said...

another can't-believe-it's-a-bside track. much is made of seth timbs' prolific output, but five albums (and one official b-sides volume) in over a decade i'm sure only scratches the surface of it. it's nice that the entire fl. oz. discog is available on their myspace now, but how about the option to purchase yet more castaways? i wanna hear it all.

Juan Horsetown said...

I honestly don't think there are as many b-sides and unreleased songs as you think. I think with Fl Oz on its way out, it's doubtful we'll see the demos' volume 2. My hope would be that at least some of them could be released for download through this blog.

As the liner notes to AMP state, a lot of these songs never saw a release simply because of when they were written. It was hard to think about studio time when they were fighting for the release of FL, which took a very long time to complete. This particular track was probably written in L.A., and when Seth put together another line-up, they were focused on TWS songs and then on the newest batch of Fluid Ounces songs.

Purchase Fluid Ounces mp3s Directly from the Band!