The Song Of The Week for

February 9th, 2004 is:

Truth and Beauty of Human Existence (R. Cooper)

What's Going On Here?

We actually got the idea for this page after watching the "They Might Be Giants" documentary "Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns" (a great documentary BTW!). If you're a TMBG fan you know that they have had a "dial-a-song" service since the band was formed in the 1980s. Fans could dial in and hear new songs or portions of songs that TMBG were working on. Sometimes these were just a couple lines and a melody, sometimes they were complete songs. Some of the songs ended up on TMBG albums. TMBG Dial-A-Song is still in operation today on the same old answering machine and is almost impossible to get through to (I never have --Jim).

The thing that appealed to us about Dial-A-Song was that it forced TMBG to constantly be writing and exploring new ideas. Hence, Song A Week (SAW).

Here are our self-imposed guidelines:

• We will post at least one new idea here every Monday.
• Posts will only last one week and, unless they end up on someone's album (Mellotone or other band members' projects) they are gone (well, we'll archive them, but they won't be accessible to anyone but us!). The point is that you better get on the website and download the MP3 before the week is out or you're out of luck. If you missed something you really wanted maybe you can post a message in the Melloville forums and get someone to send it to you (we've created a SAW forum to go along with this).
• Anything qualifies for posting, whether it's a fully polished multitrack recording or one of us strumming an acoustic into a tape deck.
• There are no rules as to what we might explore. Don't be surprised to hear some really out there stuff in addition to traditional "Mellotone" sounding songs.

That's it! The overriding concept is to stimulate our creativity, so download this week's selection and let us know what you think in the forums!