Blabbing away since 2012

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Boy + Girl

Update: A few people have told me the embedded video isn't working. Click here to see the video on YouTube. :)

Five years ago, Josh became my first ever roommate in China. Soon after he and I began writing songs, playing in tiny cafes and even finished a rickety, poor-sound-quality full length album. Since then, Josh married the girl he was then dating (Ayumi), started a bigger band with my other two roommates, Levi, Bren and myself (Stegosaurus) and continues to live in the 长宁 district.

Josh is left handed (using a left-handed guitar) and I'm right handed (I used my broken-necked steel string and a standard nylon string guitar I found in a garbage heap in Shanghai), so whenever we played songs together sitting side by side, it looked like I was the mirror image of him...sort of.

Our duo's name was 'Mirror Mirror.'



It's now been five years since we recorded that album. There are parts in it where you can hear ambulance sirens, birds chirping in the background (during the song "Banana Fish"), washing machine alarms going off (during album version of the duet "I Am A Robot") and other sounds that are the result of recording an entire album without a studio--and instead with a Logitech Skype Microphone on a problematic Hewlett Packard laptop.

I recently talked to Josh about making a second album. I'm not sure whether or not it will be possible, but for now we have one new song. It definitely feels like a song that would have fit in perfectly on the first album.

Ayumi was very reluctant to sing at first. It's not easy to sing for others and especially when English isn't your first language, so I really appreciate her finally recording this song with Josh!

Hope you all enjoy the song. :)



'Stegosaurus made a few hits and rocked things hard,
But they were just the pulse, and we the beating heart.
Banana Fish is still the song they ask me to play
We didn't make a big splash, but we made a few waves.
Now the world is changed. Obama said 'Change'
Different world now, my life's rearranged.
We were kids with an HP and a notepad,
Now we're old men keepin' up with the iFads.'

- Lyrics From an Unfinished Song Meant for the Mirror Mirror Album Sequel