Look, how is life?
Cut the representative smile; I mean it: How are you?
What drives you? Do you work to support your life, do you get paid enough to, or do you even have a life outside of what you do? This world spins slow enough for us not to notice how fast it really spins. Yet, what’s your hurry? Why do you, in your life, take others along with you to drop them off who-knows-where? What’s your point? Let’s get existential. If there’s wrong then there’s also right. (And that’s what I want to talk about.)
Recording
In a vocal + guitar (1 track) recording session dated Feb 2nd 2011 (following my 21st birthday-And no, I don’t drink), Taxi Driver was recorded after Observe‘s Track #7: In Your Eyes and before #8: What’s My Role, and #10 bonus russian Цой cover of Стань Птицей .
Revisted 2016: I added cymbals to accompany the newly added reverb effects projecting that lounge/bar/shop/music-corner imagery, and mixed some recordings of a live drinks venue and street ambience. This is definitely a headphones song. You can hear cars, kids, adults,… life.
Song Writing
As a lot of my writing, I wanted to challenge people to a life of more. People don’t normally ask real questions, people don’t normally think so deeply.. People don’t normally think about why they go go. So here I went to present.. “Why do you drive?”… The song wrote itself. Altho the lyrics have always been taxi driver, I had the song named Cab Driver (and still do in my text files) – until my sister kept asking about this song making it onto the Observe album. I guess it only makes sense to call it as it’s sung and will be remembered.. I’m not sure why ever cab.. Anyway, the song originally was practiced faster and louder, maybe slightly Bob Dylan-ish. And I was never happy with that – it didn’t sound good, it sounded too much like just a repetitive song. I wanted to speak to the ears, not the speakers. This version won by a mile, I even cut a breakdown and chorus repeat from it just to keep it to the point and not to a jam. Back to the lyrics, the end verse of wife and kids was a late addition to the song writing, actually a freestyle part that just came out during the previous session. At first, there was also no “when I could never go so far” – I had recorded an early version of the song and emailed it to my sister, who was my only music recordings listener at the time. One day I asked her for feedback, she said she liked it but that it was missing that last line.. “it needs a line.. something like… When I could never go so far, or something“… I guess now it’s a co-written song.
Enjoy the tune, until next Wednesday! Track #6: I See A Vision! 🙂