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LFA Newest Release: Way Back

Or is it Mr. Peabody? I’m still not sure about that. But find it on our various music sites, especially Reverbnation.com.

Cartoon-inspired lyrics and dance-inducing percussion by Sir Pent. I composed the rhythm one afternoon on the acoustic guitar, thinking the song would be alternative-folk in character, but as soon as I played it on my telecaster it became a voyage into the realm of power pop. With Chopper Newt’s fantastic vocals, prominent bass lines, and remarkable backwards guitar solo in the coda, I can’t get enough of this song.

Edit: I forgot to mention earlier a little bit of trivia about this song. Mr. Peabody, of course, refers to the 50s and 60s cartoon character who appeared on the Rocky and Bullwinkle show, a genius dog who invented the WABAC (or “Wayback”) machine so he and his boy, Sherman, could travel back in time to fix historical problems. To simulate the feeling of going back in time to fix a history gone wrong, the coda to this song reverses the main chord progression, after the sound effect of the tape rewinding….

Somebody send it to Pete Townsend, the coiner of the term “power pop;” I think he’d love it!

This entry was posted on October 6, 2008 at 7:46 pm and is filed under General with tags , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

57 Responses to “LFA Newest Release: Way Back”

  1. Sir Pent Says:
    October 7, 2008 at 9:41 pm

    I don’t know if I’d say “cartoonish” lyrics. The cartoon reference is merely a metaphor which illustrates everyones feeling of powerlessness over mistakes of the past. I like to think it’s a powerful statement on the emotion regret as it manifests itself in modern society.

    Reply
  2. Sir Pent Says:
    October 7, 2008 at 10:00 pm

    Hey…I was nosing around the Reverbnation site and…it has blog functionality. Right now it’s set to “mirror” this blog…but can be set to use it’s own. I was going to mess around with it a little…just to see what it can do, but wanted to make sure to get permission first.
    1) If the blog functionality is any good, THAT would give us the “all in one” functionality we would prefer…and it’s already linked to myspace and facebook.
    2) We’d need to see if we could re-direct http://www.lizardsfromafar.com URL to point to that site instead of this site.

    So…do you guys mind if I mess?

    Reply
  3. Sir Pent Says:
    October 7, 2008 at 10:23 pm

    OK…maybe not. I tried checking it out and it just kept either locking up OR reverting back to this blog every time I tried to save.

    Never mind.

    Reply
  4. Sir Pent Says:
    October 8, 2008 at 6:36 am

    Yeah. Definitely not. I got it to start working…but it’s really clunky. I also don’t think anyone can anonymously post. (Not that they really are now…) You have to be logged into Reverbnation to post or reply anything.

    Anyway, I have it turned on if you want to check it out. What is your guys opinions?

    Reply
  5. Matt Says:
    October 8, 2008 at 7:04 am

    Always fucking around with things, aren’t you? I set RN to mirror this blog because we already had this blog and because their blog wasn’t that good. Do you want to abandon this one? Fine, but I say we need it. I would be happy to set up a “public” website and keep this blog for private band communications.

    I don’t really care if the RN site mirrors this blog, either, but it seemed better than using their blog tool, and it interconnected the sites.

    And fine, not cartoonish. Bad choice of words. I’ll change it. Your lyrics are in no way cartoonish.

    Reply
  6. Matt Says:
    October 8, 2008 at 7:14 am

    Also, you’ll notice I cleaned up the front page considerably, moving much of the text to other pages. But we can’t get rid of the navigational sidebar unless we build our own webpage and put it up on a server somewhere. When we’re famous we can hire people to do that for us…..

    Reply
  7. Sir Pent Says:
    October 8, 2008 at 8:47 am

    I did notice that you cleaned up the front page and that it does look much better.
    I was just trying to figure out a way to consolidate our web-presence for:
    > easier maintenance
    > better tracking of usage
    > single source for “fans”

    If the Reverbnation blog were better, I would say abandon this one…but I am not convinced. It’s definitely not AS GOOD as this blog, but the attractiveness of having a single source to me is pretty compelling.

    Reply
  8. Matt Says:
    October 8, 2008 at 8:58 am

    I always send people to RN first to hear the music, then they can find this blog, but I see your point. Even if we did abandon this blog, however, we’d have multiple sources, as all indie bands do these days: we have facebook, myjones, purevolume, myspace. It’s getting ridiculous. Too much to maintain.

    Reply
  9. Sir Pent Says:
    October 8, 2008 at 9:04 am

    Exactly. At the very least, I think we should consider dumping myjones & purevolume as the traffic on those sites is barely noticeable. There’s also the iLike site that Chopper set-up…I’m not sure how to measure traffic there since he doesn’t share the admin.

    This is obviously a change of heart from my initial stance where I advocated putting our music on as many sites as possible. I think a better tactic is the one we are on now which is: PODCASTS.
    If we can generate interest via different podcasts, we could also via the podcasts direct them all to http://www.lizardsfromafar.com …whatever site that ends up being. These people would be able to hear our music AND read all about us without having to go to another site.
    We’d also be able to measure traffic.

    I’m not saying I have a real solution yet…maybe a different blog that will allow us to embed the player. THEN the Reverbnation just becomes a “tool” for us to upload music?

    I don’t know. What does Chopsocky think?

    Reply
  10. Sir Pent Says:
    October 8, 2008 at 9:15 am

    What about something like this:
    http://bandzoogle.com

    I haven’t really checked it out OR decided it’s the best…but something like this. Now, it has a fee associated with it…but it’s less than $200/yr for the highest plan.

    Reply
  11. Matt Says:
    October 8, 2008 at 9:39 am

    It looks great, but I’d say we shouldn’t spend our own money until we make some…. so, never?

    I’m in favor of going to a blog that allows us to embed the RN player. I put in yet another request at WordPress.com to make RN a “favored partner,” but they never respond, the fools.

    Reply
  12. Matt Says:
    October 8, 2008 at 9:48 am

    I don’t mind spending YOUR money, however…. no, not really.

    I just listened to Way Back with my daughter here. I want a video of this song in which I’m dancing around playing a coffee mug with a spoon because that’s what I think of when I hear those little percussion tinkles.

    Reply
  13. Sir Pent Says:
    October 8, 2008 at 11:52 am

    I’m still not saying we DO the bandzoogle thing…I’m just saying we should think about something LIKE that.
    And for $150/yr I wouldn’t have a problem ponying up the cash for that, if that is indeed the road we feel will serve us best.

    Reply
  14. Sir Pent Says:
    October 8, 2008 at 12:30 pm

    I’m also a little insulted by bandzoogles marketing:

    It’s so easy even your drummer can do it.

    Reply
  15. Matt Says:
    October 8, 2008 at 2:29 pm

    Ha ha.

    I haven’t studied their site in detail, but don’t think the system we have is a major handicap. People can click around to the various sites quickly, and it costs us nothing but a little time to set up the sites.

    Looks like we’re getting some traffic as a result of the podcasts!

    Reply
  16. Sir Pent Says:
    October 8, 2008 at 3:22 pm

    Yeah, I’m kinda recanting the need to do the other site…but I still think a more “web like” design for the front page would be of benefit and shaking loose some of the sites that aren’t doing anything for us:
    purevolume
    myjones
    iLike

    myspace: I’d like to lose this thing too, but a good deal of traffic is passing through it daily and we frequently get bounces from there to here.

    If we could get a blog that could post our widget, I think we’d be set. The sad part there is…in searching around, lots of people tout wordpress as being pretty much the tip-top of free blogdom.
    Blogger – very rigid
    typepad – very little functionality
    livejournal – functionality??? (It DOES support the reverbnation widget)
    blogspot – very basic

    Reply
  21. Sir Pent Says:
    October 8, 2008 at 8:34 pm

    http://hypem.com/artist/from

    4H and Fourteen featured.

    http://hypem.com/nnaali
    nnaali linked as one of her favorite songs.

    Reply
  23. Sir Pent Says:
    October 8, 2008 at 8:38 pm

    http://twitter.com/FM102x

    Way Back featured as song of the day.

    Reply
  24. Matt Says:
    October 9, 2008 at 6:50 am

    Holy Cow! How did this happen?

    Reply
  25. Matt Says:
    October 9, 2008 at 6:57 am

    Oh, I see: mostly this is mirroring the insomniaradio.net Daily Dose. But that’s cool. I suddenly realized we may be on dozens of people’s iPods and mp3 players now.

    Reply
  26. Sir Pent Says:
    October 9, 2008 at 7:04 am

    Yeah…but it’s still pretty cool.
    Also, the one chick that put it into her “faves” category (or whatever it was) is pretty cool to me. Someone we have NO connection to picked our song as a fave.

    Reply
  27. Matt Says:
    October 9, 2008 at 7:15 am

    Everybody I play Four H and Way Back to loves them. They’re both very catchy songs.

    Reply
  28. Matt Says:
    October 9, 2008 at 7:24 am

    Regarding the other blogs or websites, I’d say myspace is a keeper. Many people use it and it gets lots of traffic. Actually, the new myspace music widget is quite good, even though we don’t use it. The other sites we have can just be left alone: don’t maintain them, but don’t erase them. Who knows, someone may stumble on them and get to here or RN.

    We can design a “real” but relatively simple webpage for the band containing basic information, pictures, music, etc., and then link to this blog for blogging. But, no big rush. We don’t have a place to host a webpage, for one thing.

    Reply
  29. Sir Pent Says:
    October 9, 2008 at 7:35 am

    The two flow into eachother very well, too. I have them arranged so it goes Way Back into 4H. The mesh is very pleasing.

    When I get a chance, I am going to play around with LiveJournal. It sounds very similar to this functionality BUT it is reverbnation compliant…so it might just be a matter of switching. (The one thing I don’t like thus far is that there is a constant LiveJournal banner/navigation bar at the very TOP of each page.)

    Reply
  30. Matt Says:
    October 9, 2008 at 8:08 am

    I don’t want to use livejournal, if only because of advertisements that we don’t have to put up with on wordpress. Don’t waste your time.

    I used to have macromedia fireworks which made it easy to design good graphical webpages, but anyway, lets just design a nice but simple front page for the band and eventually we’ll put it up as http://www.lizardsfromafar.com and we’ll link the blog and RN to it. I do have an old version of Photoshop that can slice and dice graphics. I’ll come up with something good. I have an idea….

    Damn, I’m sitting here twiddling my thumbs waiting for big ol tiff files to upload to the uploader. This article I’m publishing has pictures (first time I’ve done that) and now the guys are typesetting it and need the images in high resolution, but the images are too big to e-mail…. So, here I sit.

    Reply
  31. Sir Pent Says:
    October 9, 2008 at 8:59 am

    I’m still gonna look into it

    Reply
  32. Sir Pent Says:
    October 9, 2008 at 12:54 pm

    Mr. Peabody and Sherman (2009)
    Directed by: Rob Minkoff
    Rating: NR

    The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show time-travelers Mr. Peabody and his adopted human sidekick Sherman strike out on their own for a big-screen CGI adventure in this feature directed by Rob Minkoff (The Haunted Mansion). Minkoff teams with longtime producing partner Jason Clark and Andrew Kurtzman to pen the screenplay, with Bullwinkle Studios’ Tiffany Ward and Classic Media’s Eric Ellenbogen joining the project as co-executive producers.

    Title: Mr. Peabody and Sherman
    Status: Announced
    Country: United States
    Genre: Adaptation, Comedy, Family

    Reply
  33. choppernewt Says:
    October 9, 2008 at 3:01 pm

    Wow, this can’t miss. The guy from Haunted Mansion? They’d let him near another motion picture?

    Reply
  34. Sir Pent Says:
    October 9, 2008 at 4:30 pm

    I know the goal was to create the next “Pirates Of The Caribbean” type of movie. (ie, since 1 movie based off of a Disney ride was a hit, surely another would be.)
    Can I assume, never having seen it, that it was not a good movie? Box office figures would suggest that, but I can think of a lot of movies that I found to be enjoyable that did not meet box office expectations.

    The REAL point of this should be: HOW do WE get WAY BACK into the hands of Rob Minkoff?
    Chopper…you are the closest thing we have to a Hollywood connection.

    Reply
  35. choppernewt Says:
    October 9, 2008 at 5:52 pm

    You are very persuasive. I’m sure you could badger/humiliate/embarrass enough people to make it happen.

    Reply
  36. Matt Says:
    October 9, 2008 at 7:13 pm

    Just find out how to contact him and send him the mp3.

    Reply
  37. Sir Pent Says:
    October 9, 2008 at 9:08 pm

    Instead I tracked him down via his production company on LinkedIn and sent him an email with a link to the reverbnation website.
    I’ll let you know if he replies.
    I also sent it to his production company vice-president.
    I’ll let you know if he replies.

    Reply
  38. Sir Pent Says:
    October 9, 2008 at 9:10 pm

    I also found the address of his production company out in LA.
    If we don’t hear anything from the email, we could always burn a CD and send it to the address…but I’m sure it wouldn’t get to him directly.

    Reply
  39. choppernewt Says:
    October 9, 2008 at 10:31 pm

    Fact is, they’d likely never listen to it if for no other reason than if they did, it would open the door for a lawsuit down the road if they did anything remotely like what you’d sent them. They wouldn’t be able to prove that they hadn’t stolen the idea. Therefore, they avoid the problem by not accepting any unsolicited material.

    But in this case, I’m sure they’d make an exception.

    Reply
  40. Sir Pent Says:
    October 10, 2008 at 5:56 am

    Parade…meet Mr. Rain.

    Reply
  41. Matt Says:
    October 10, 2008 at 9:08 am

    Probably Chops is right. I also wonder if we need to register our songs with something like BMI or ASCAP to gain some legitimacy with this sort of thing. It would be a real kick to have our song playing during the closing credits.

    On a different subject, that cluster map widget on the front page is rather cool. Which one of you found that and installed it here? I see someone listened to us in London, and another in California.

    Reply
  42. Sir Pent Says:
    October 10, 2008 at 12:04 pm

    You guys are probably right…so I won’t post the cool news since it was such a poorly conceived plan…

    Reply
  43. Sir Pent Says:
    October 11, 2008 at 7:13 pm

    Here are the results of my poorly conceived plan:
    – I’ve been in direct email contact with the VP of a production company the Rob Minkoff works with. This is NOT the particular production company that is producing this particular movie. However, he said he really liked that song and thought it was really catchy. He said he had forwarded the link TO Minkoff and that he talks to him frequently.
    – I have all the contact information for Minkoff’s personal production company. All the information for Minkoff’s agency representation. All the information for Minkoff’s lawyer.

    Other than that, it’s been pretty fruitless so far…

    Oh yeah. Suck it.

    Reply
  44. Matt Says:
    October 11, 2008 at 8:21 pm

    Well, if effort counts, you’re a winner, dude.

    Reply
  45. choppernewt Says:
    October 11, 2008 at 9:19 pm

    You talked to a guy that talked to a Hollywood guy. That beats ass!

    Did I ever tell you about the time I talked to Danny Epstein on the phone?

    Awesome. We’re in like Flynn. Also, I predict a winning day at the track on Friday.

    Reply
  46. Sir Pent Says:
    October 11, 2008 at 10:15 pm

    I know it’s not as close to the guy making the Mr. Peabody movie as you got…but I was doing the best that I could with my poorly conceived plan.
    You’re probably right. I should just not even continue trying…

    I will suck it.

    Reply
  47. Matt Says:
    October 12, 2008 at 7:34 am

    As Homer Simpson once wisely said, “Trying is the first step toward failure.”

    I predict we will have Poster Child music by tomorrow night….

    Reply
  48. Sir Pent Says:
    October 12, 2008 at 8:51 am

    I was going to play this one differently and not mention the “next” song until Chopper did…so as not to annoy. (And also just to actually SEE how long it would take for HIM to ask.)

    Reply
  49. Matt Says:
    October 12, 2008 at 1:33 pm

    Tomorrow night might be overly optimistic, since I have other things to do, and I don’t quite have the song fully formed yet.

    Are you guys going to do anything with GFW?

    Reply
  50. Sir Pent Says:
    October 12, 2008 at 2:26 pm

    I’ve played around with a couple of drum ideas…but haven’t come up with a drum part yet. I would like for that one to be next because, as I have stated repeatedly, I really love the music on that thing. (Let us not forget about the genius lyrics, too.)

    Reply
  51. Matt Says:
    October 12, 2008 at 3:23 pm

    I listened to my demo again today after some time, and I like it. I’d like to see what can happen with it. So, I’ll not rush and let you guys play with it. As I said earlier, my only request is that the lyrical melody somehow mimic my guitar melody in the section right after the intro.

    Reply
  54. Sir Pent Says:
    October 15, 2008 at 5:17 am

    Some kind of re-direct page for WAY BACK (MR PEABODY) and the Radio Orphan Podcast and this blog:
    http://musicdra.com/?p=2693

    Reply
  55. Sir Pent Says:
    October 15, 2008 at 5:22 am

    WAY BACK (MR PEABODY)
    4H AND FOURTEEN featured:
    http://elbo.ws/artist/lizards-from-afar/

    Reply
  57. Sir Pent Says:
    October 17, 2008 at 7:15 pm

    Giant Robot featured on the bugcast:
    http://bugcast.thelovebug.org/feed.xml

    With horrible, horrible introduction by me…

    Reply

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