Story #3 "Land of Laughs" -- The Woolen Men

"When I was young I used to think that I could change the world
make it a better place for every boy and girl....it's a childish game."

The sheer wistfulness of this song by The Woolen Men is amazing.
This was my wake up song for about six months straight. I'm a sucker for songs that sound happy but the lyrics aren't necessarily happy. "Land of Laughs," fits that bill because it's a deceptively happy bit of nostalgia for youth and what was lost with adulthood. The lo-fi quality of the recording only heightens the charm. It's particularly fun to sing at the top of your lungs when you are driving, although I wish I had a lyric sheet as sometimes the quality is a shade too murky to make out.

I'm allergic to nostalgia. Perhaps it was my upbringing. We never pined for the past in my house. We tended to look ahead. Far from being scary, the future was something to anticipate.

The subject matter of "Land of Laughs," never lets the sentiment go sour. Again that's as much to do with the music as it is the chorus which is infectious. This song begs me to sing along every time I hear it.

I have some scraps of paper lying around with one liner ideas on them, little notes I jot down when I'm busy or distracted or inspired or half-inspired and then hope they'll grow later. One particular scrap said something like "A guy is watching TV at home and realized the closed-captioning doesn't match what he is watching." Out of that premise, the story "Land of Laughs," was born. It sounded like the name of the show to me, one with a host who showed cartoons. Uncle Bob (a reference to Guided By Voices front man Robert Pollard's nickname) was a composite of those kinds of campy cartoon shows with hosts. Except in this case Uncle Bob is leading the resistance against a nefarious Silicon Valley corporation.

It's in first person because I wanted to write in the voice of a college-aged stoner, but I didn't want to overdue it into stupidity. Besides, both the protagonist and his stoner friend stop smoking halfway through it, which required the tone to shift.

A-Sides and B-Sides is available on iBook as well as Amazon and also Kobo and Nook. You can preview a nice chunk of it, too. Hope you'll consider buying if you like what you see. Here's what the cover looks like.

Besides the chorus, the drums are amazing. It sounds like they're banging on garbage cans.