Central Incompetence Agency

It's hard to say if the song I finished last night is the twelfth or thirteenth completed song with the record because I'm not sure exactly how far along the songs are that Kelly is working on. I am especially open to others' opinion on this one for re-writes as I think there's something that could be added to make it really pop.

At any rate, it's about the CIA and the way they've handled, or mostly mis-handled, American foreign affairs for 70 years. When you put it next to three of the four twentieth century tracks ("Know It All" being the exception, and it's the only one I didn't have a real hand in writing), it really speaks of how the last century has been a violent affair and how deep paranoia strikes in our psyche when you think about it. The tone of the record turns a little darker on the twentieth century pieces, and this is the most paranoid. I don't think it will cripple the record or hurt the tone of it because it still is still pretty light, but it's there.

Musically, I sought to make something more exciting than the rest of what we've been working on lately without a big guitar solo. Instead, I decided to use riffs that will play sometimes together over the same chords but mostly with the whole band stopping and one guitar riff going with no accompaniment. It's been so long since I created the riffs that I'm not sure to the first time listener how much I preserved the feel of the spy songs I was using as influence. Daniel's lead ideas when we first played it together in April were to make the verses sound like a James Bond opening credits song. He can be in charge of that. The pre-chorus may have a little R.E.M. in it since that's what I've been listening to lately, but the crowning piece, the piece that requires this song to close the history record, is the outro, which I took a small cue from Abbey Road as to how to do, not by calling it "The End" or tacking on a 17-second ditty at the end, but something else more grand and under-stated that they did on that record and that I'm making more pronounced for ours. I hope the other guys like it--I'm intentionally not saying what it is because I want it to blow their minds when I play this one for them.

I hope to make a demo for this one, but I'll have to use a multi-track recorder to do it, and time and borrowing one are two complications on that one. I can't estimate the time it will take to this one until then, but I'm pretty sure it falls between three and four minutes.

Running time is a big factor for making this record, as we've discussed many times, and I'm starting to wish we had the time and resources to make a double album of history songs. I think we're already getting a little tired of refining ideas to write the songs, and we want to get it out while the project is still fresh. It would probably take much longer to double what we have, and I don't think the end result would be the effect we really want deep down.

Still, I'm glad that I had time to finish this one and to give it a chance to see the light of day since I liked the song since its inception. It will now have to pass the test with the other boys.