Los Doggies

Vai’s melody is made of major thirds. It’s in the key of A above and makes an A Major seventh chord in passing. It first appeared in “Little Green Men” on Vai’s debut album. The melody is found at the very end.

Vai liked it so much he made a whole song out of it on Passion and Warfare. “Answers” is a toe-tapper that opens with a phantasmal beat. At around the 1:59 mark, Vai’s melody takes over and dominates the final minute of the song in various keys.

Steve Vai told a story in an interview. He played guitar for two days straight and fell asleep with his instrument. In his dreams, he continued to play guitar. The music he made was more beautiful than any of this world, but unfortunately, Steve Vai wasn’t able to remember it or it was impossible to play. Either way, he got Kubla Khan’d hard.

I would link to the article with the interview, but I’m not really interested in the internet anymore. I like imagination and boredom, faulty memories and synesthesia. Sitting around on the floor like Beethoven in a pile of orange peels. This is what we do.

When I bought Passion and Warfare from Sam Goody in the late ’90s, the cashier convinced me the album was satanic. He said nice-looking kids were the biggest satanists in terms of musical purchases. Anyway, it kind of scared me into not listening to the album for a while.

Now I’m not sure why all music needs to be satanic, but I guess Christian rock is kinda lame. “Devil’s got the best tunes,” as the preacher says.

Lost song from Tracy's Tiger by William Saroyan

A video posted by Los Doggies (@doggieslos) on Aug 2, 2016 at 9:00pm PDT

Here’s Thomas Tracy’s song from Tracy’s Tiger by William Saroyan, published in 1951. It’s a wide-interval diddy in C major so I thought it would sound nice on a glockenspiel.

Well, I like it. I want to make a pop song out of it with intervals sung wide. It’s got the major third lead-in like the bell song and the door bell, but it jumps an octave down to a low C. It would make an interesting vocal melody.

As a band of brothers, we’ve always loved popular telephone songs such as “867-5309/Jenny” by Tommy Tutone, and so we thought: Wouldn’t it be neat to sing the actual dial string from a landline phone, harmonies and all? Our new single, “Homebody” (hōm’bŭd’ē), features the band’s childhood phone number sung in this manner. The two tones of a DTMF phone signal make for some unusual chord progressions in the chorus, slowed-down and dancey, while the verses are upbeat and Beatlesesque, describing the dank basement which gave birth to the so-called “phoney songs of home.”

To stay thematically consistent, “Homebody” was recorded at our home studio in the mountain valley town of New Paltz, New York (featured in the song). While phone songs may be naturally catchy, the melody of “Homebody” is like sonar to our ears, reminding us of our lost suburban home on Long Island (also featured) with its quintessential American ’80s upbringing: Divorce, Cults, and Videogames.

Please enjoy “Homebody.”