[Continued from previous blog]

I am not a professional musician. I write songs for fun. I record them to see if I can get them to a palatable place. Palatable for whom, you might ask? Palatable for me, I would respond. Yes, it’s mainly an exercise in self-indulgence and self-gratification. Well, that’s not entirely true. My wife enjoys my songs—some of them are even on her iPod. A few other musician friends have the songs too. Someday I might make a proper CD or post the tunes on MySpace or some such thing.

As mentioned in yesterday’s midday report, I was just about to start recording a tune called “Remember the War to End All Wars.” Well, I must have played that fricking song about 25 times, but it still didn’t get to that palatable place. By nightfall, I had moved away from the war song and tried a couple of other numbers. I quickly laid down the rhythm guitar for a simple tune called “In Chinatown.” Then I set out to record “Desert Star.”

This song, like “Remember the War …,” is challenging for me, and I can’t say I’m entirely thrilled with yesterday’s version. “Desert Star” is about a guy whose car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. It's a tale about a man walking the fine line between giving up and carrying on, a man trying to remain hopeful in a hopeless situation. I wrote “Desert Star” while on vacation in Joshua Tree. We rented a beautiful house on the edge of the national park. It was the perfect vacation getaway except for one thing—desert mice! And they came out every night. But that’s the subject of another song.