ned
Written by Ron Moses
Guitar, bass, conga, keyboards, and programming by Ron Moses
Guitar by Steve Hart
Keyboards by PJ Muller and Brian Brodeur
Saxophone by James Moore
Recorded for Vulva (unreleased), produced by Scott Lurowist and Ron Moses
Okay, this is more like it! Fun times! More musicians than you can shake a finger at! No shitty vocal take! Let's fucking GO!
This composition came into being when I hit record on my sequencer and improvised a pattern of non-specific keyboard notes, focusing only on rhythm and relative movement in pitch, and not caring what actual notes I hit. I cleaned that up a bit, added some arrangement and some more composed bits, and there was “Ned.” No, I don’t remember why I called it that.
This session ranged from delightful to frustrating to arduous. Doing all the programming was fun (by that I mean drums, some keyboard parts, anything sequenced). I knew what I wanted my performed parts to be, so I laid those down in one sloppy take and moved on. I’d never even seen a conga before we recorded that. It worked out fine, see? Who needs more takes?
Steve and Brian did. They’d driven up together to have a fun weekend in the studio, figuring rather than prepare or even read the music I’d sent them weeks in advance, they’d wing it when they got there. I mean, Ron wrote it, how hard could it be? If you have listened to this track, maybe you’ll notice it’s not the kind of song you wing when you get there. We had to lay down Brian’s keyboard part literally a chord at a time. Steve’s guitar part was much simpler but I seem to recall he got super-focused on it, maybe out of guilt at having taken my composition for granted. Still, it was nice to have both of those guys on board, and everything worked out great in the end.
I never met saxophonist James Moore. Still haven’t, to this day. He was an Internet acquisition. We sent him the completed track along with some sheet music, and said go for it. And he did. But due to some misunderstanding, possibly on my part regarding the range of a saxophone, the main melodies could not be used. That actually worked out, because his part works better as a feature during the in-between moments. And of course, during what I call the “Mary Tyler Moore” section. If you know, you know. Lewis Saul described Ned as, “Abundant Chromatic Shifting with Mary Tyler Moore on Saxophone...[see Ron, someone reads your liner notes!]” so I guess he knew. We did mix James's melody into the final reprise, and if you tune in you can hear the few notes that don't make sense.
And then there’s that outro! Why, you may ask, does it go on so darn long? Do you really want to know? Yes, Ron, we really do want to know why it goes on for so very long. Well I’ll tell you why it goes on so long. Because fuck you, that’s why.
No, seriously, that’s actually why.
(instrumental)