Wanna See Your

This last song on the album is probably the most misunderstood of all. Yes, it is a relationship song, but it's not a breakup song like most people think.

This song was originally a track called "Rhythm" that was part of a much larger work I wrote to use in a multimedia presentation I did for a Humanities class back in 1988. My partner and I worked several weeks compiling photographs, editing hours of video footage, and putting it together with this instrumental suite I'd written. I performed the musical tracks live when we presented the project to the class. We got an "F" from two of the instructors and a "D" from the third. Thanks a lot, guys.

Greg had been in the class and had heard the suite basically from its inception. It was not long after I had done that project that Greg and Barbara asked me to choreograph some music to a modern dance routine they had put together for their modern dance class. Ah, but I digress.

Well after Greg had hooked up with Green Chili, I started thinking about reworking "Rhythm" into the play list. All I had, though, was an introduction and a chord progression that worked well for a chorus. Nothing else. So Greg and I beat our heads together on this for a few months, and I finally came up with something of an idea for a musical pattern for the verses. Greg agreed, and together we worked up the rest of the music for the song. Then we needed lyrics.

I honestly don't remember where I got the inspiration for the words. Mark Murray will continue to claim that it came from some deeply-rooted angst over a failed relationship, but he's wrong. I think. Take a look at a sample of the lyrics and decide for yourself:

"I don't wanna see your face glowing in the sun.
I don't wanna see your lips tell me I'm the one.
I don't wanna see your eyes looking into mine.
I don't wanna see your body looking mighty fine.
I've had it up to here now, darling. I just can't take any more.
I wanna see your ass walking out of my door."

See? It's really clear. Here you have a guy and a girl in a perfectly happy situation except for her pet donkey. The guy (the singer) is fed up with all the donkey's antics in the middle of the night, not to mention its lack of sanitary habits and the smell, and he's issued his ultimatum: nothing else happens until the donkey is gone. He doesn't want to break it off with the girl, he just wants to get his living quarters back to normal. I just don't understand how they get the idea that he's dumping her.

In the studio, Alan once again worked some guitar magic on this song. I'm particularly fond of the growling guitar sound he worked up for this track, and the solo work at the end adds a really nice touch. If I ever put together a video for this song, I'm going to try to build it around the tape we shot during the recoding sessions. Something about four guys sitting on a two-seater couch playing massive air guitar during the chorus of this song just amuses me.