I Believe
Life's Rich Pageant | 1986
Listen Original Listen Final Mix

These Words

Part of the fun of this project is getting to make new discoveries abnout these songs. Its why I wasn’t shy about choosing some from the post-Buck era that I’m not as familiar with. Especialy after Up. I almost forced a couple of “Around the Sun” picks since I know that would give me greater appreciation for that album.

For the past few days, I’ve been turning over the lyrics to this song over in my head. I love how they sound both confused and certain. There’s the simple conviction that change is the ultimate belief. But on the way there is a sort of self-evident thinking in the fourth and fifth verses.

The second verse begins with two simple and extreme versions of belief: “I believe in coyotes and time as an abstract”. One being an a=a identity proof and the other a belief in conceptual thinking. The first attempts at forming a philosophy.

By the fourth verse, the singer is streaching meanings to make connections. These match the meter of the verses as the last word of each line becomes a loose associative connection to the next line:

“Think of others, the others, think of you Silly rule, golden words make practice, practice makes perfect Perfect is a fault, and fault lines change”

This immediately follows the line about making sure your calling’s true. The singer inserts self doubt and has to make looser connections as the attempt to connect all concepts becomes more difficult.

This becomes fractured further in the fifth verse. Example is repeated but further apart. Which leads back to the key from the second verse:

“I believe in example, I believe my throat hurts Example is the checker to the key”

Breathing

…is difficult on this one. With a close listen, you can hear Michael overlaping the vocal takes to make this one work. There are some phrases that just go on and on here. I’ll be compositing this one together from multiple takes, though I’m forcing myslef to do a couple of full takes first.

Breath notations will be key here

Guitar

I ended up spending three day sputting together the guitar takes. Like the vocals, there are several overlapping parts. I have a high arpeggiation track, one to hit those low F hammer-ons, one for the chorus full chords, one for the background lead licks on the verses and one to strum clean chords on changes throughout.

Oh, and one fun little guy I call “Furious George”. Its the intense “surfer-guitar” sound Peter gets on the transtion from the first half to the second half of each verse.