SONG: “All Our Tomorrows” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: “DNA Retrieved from 1,000-Year-Old Vikings”, LiveScience.com, 28 May 2008, as used in the post Viking DNA .
ABSTRACT: Well, I kinda knew I’d go for the Viking story this month because it’s Vikings. I thought this might wind up as a shanty about raiding villages to sell fish, but that would probably be too dorky. So I wrote a song about cloning a Viking maiden to love and squeeze and marry and I will call her Brunhilde and we will be together forever….
When in doubt, I always seem to go creepy. I was really trying for sweet (honest!) and the bit where it goes from that low note on “base” up to the high in “tomorrows” was directly inspired by the vastly more talented vocals of Glen Hansard. Maybe I can clone him, too, and make him sing in my place.
If there’s any doubt about what all the letters at the end of the song are about, they’re the standard abbreviations for the four bases that make up DNA (thus the source of the name of the movie Gattaca). I spent a lot more time writing than recording on this, but did discover one thing I quite liked – I used Reaper’s MIDI stuff for the first time, along with a pretty great mellotron VST plug-in called Tapeworm from Tweakbench. Free to download and very easy to plug in and use even for a MIDI incompetent like me. And it sounds pretty much like a mellotron.
LYRICS:
Vs:
It was back in seventh grade
I saw your picture on the page
Of a hist’ry of the Vikings
Your golden hair was striking
I’d watch you after school
In diagrams of molecules
While studying mitosis
And planning for our closeness
Cloning you roses.CH:
Gee, I’d like to See you sharing A fresh cup of Tea with me,
We’ll base all our tomorrows on these endless combinations
Scratch your runes across my skin until your longboat sails again
We’ll stay up in the lab reciting sagas
VS:
I’ll lift you from your bed
Your sunken eyes still sleeping
So deep you’re barely breathing
But the memory remains
Like dust inside our veins
Like seeds beneath a glacier
As the melting waters rise
And unwind nucleotides
Even though the years divide us
With the cold North Star to guide us
From the telomeres inside us
Like a Valkyrie, she risesCH:
Scratch your runes inside my cells
Our chromosomes and wedding bells
I’ve brewed your favorite mead to toast our future.
Gee, I’d like to See you sharing A fresh cup of Tea with me,
We’ll base all our tomorrows on these…
OUTRO:
Gee (A-T-C) See (G-T-A) A (T-C-G) Tea (G-C-A)
Base all our tomorrows on these.
Gee (T-A-C) See (A-G-T) A (T-G-C) Tea (A-C-G)
Base all our tomorrows on these.
Gee (A-T-C) See (G-T-A) A (T-C-G) Tea (G-C-A)
Base all our tomorrows on these.
Gee. See. A. Tea.
Base.