The Hour Hand

This weeks song is “The Hour Hand” by my old band Roosevelt Roosevelt. I have mentioned my old band a few times so I decided to put up one of our songs. This song is off of our last album A Wish to be Blind. It was recorded at Inner Ear Studio and mastered by Chad Clark as Silver Sonya Studios.

The main reason that I chose this song is because I think it contains the best lyrics that I have written. We wrote this album in college, and I was in class that studied Nietzsche. At the time I was fascinated by his writings, and the Eternal Recurrence in particular. Briefly, the Eternal Recurrence is the idea that nothing ever changes and thus life is meaningless. I tried to use the image of a clock to express this, the hour hand returns to the same place every hour and nothing new ever happens. So yeah, we were that obnoxious. It is little wonder that we didn't have scores of groupies. I mean what are you gonna say, “Hey baby, want to come home with me and read The Gay Science?”

I also like this song because of the guitar solo. We originally recorded a different bridge/guitar solo. But after listening to it numerous times, which is what you do in a studio, we decided that it was too anthem rock. It evoked images of lighters in the air and me with my foot on the monitor, and we were already uncomfortable with Creed comparisons. So Aaron wrote the piano part that we recorded. This meant that I had to change my guitar solo. I decided to do a slide guitar thing, but unfortunately didn't have a slide so I used a beer bottle instead. The actual solo is fine, not my best. I just like that I used a beer bottle.

Some might point out that I have railed against drum solos, so it is slightly hypocritical to talk about my guitar solo. Well it is, but guitarist have their own issues to deal with also, particularly guitarist who don't sing, so back off. And no one likes drum solos.