songs about buildings and food

mr sandman

most weekday evenings my sophomore year were spent on a balcony at boardwalk with j.m.b. and s.k. watching the sun set and the rent-a-cop do laps in his golf cart, and then, sitting on the floor playing guitar.  i played rhythm guitar, hammering out this or that four chord sequence with cut-time and variations in dynamics and alternations between picking and strumming and so forth, all until my left hand felt like it was going to fall off.

nothing much came out of those sessions except a lot of smoke and this song.  one night i was playing C Am F G (my favorite chord progression and the basis of thousands of pop songs, including elvis’s “blue moon” which is where i learned it) and j.m.b. just started to pluck out this odd, syncopated melody on the electric guitar.  then he sang, in unison with the guitar line, “mr. sandman, sing your song for me” and that’s basically the whole song, right there.  out of all those hours and memories, this is what still exists.

this is a cover of that song recorded on a cheap 15 dollar computer mic before i got my recording gear.  note that this is very different from the original, which was way spacier and tranced, whereas this is in my alterna-soul whatsit style.  if the original was played on the moon, this version was recorded on a hill looking up at the moon.