Tuesday Tunes

I was really angry as a kid. I lacked the capacity to tolerate why others didn’t understand me, despite the fact what I was trying to say and what I was actually saying were different. It was frustrating, stressful, and all around a bad experience. I eventually found two things that really helped me slow down and express my thoughts properly. The first was medicinal: I was prescribed Ritalin for my ADHD. The second was songwriting (though I started on poems and music separately). But, this was mid-teenage years by the time I was involved in both things. Until then, my childhood was full of …

The Song(s)
Song: Stress
Artist: Jim’s Big Ego
Album: Noplace Like Nowhere - 2000 - Self (under Bigego.com)
Method of discovery: Searching similar artists

Research: Jim’s Big Ego was formed, inevitably, around it’s namesake: Jim Infantino. Hailing from Boston, Massachusetts, the band formed in the mid 1990’s and has (at time of writing) released nine records, of which two-thirds are on Spotify. The next most popular song of Jim’s is about Barry Allen, better known as the Flash from DC Comics. Jim’s Big ego has leaned into, well, the big ego part. Their website touts the band as…

“the Greatest Band in the History of Recorded Music”

… and I could only find anecdotal evidence to back that up (evidence provided by myself). The other members of the ego include Jesse Flack, Josh Kantor, and Dan Cantor. Another Jim, Jim Sterling, used this song for the intro song to his series ‘The Jimquisition’ for about 30 episodes in 2017, but soon put it at the end of the videos instead.

Personal thoughts: Interlude: I can’t help but feel the main riff of the song, and the variations thereof, help to punctuate the lyrics of the song.

Theory: A gradual increase in volume is called a crescendo. But the term crescendo can be something that builds in intensity, like the action scene in a film when one character gets a gun, or loses a gun, or a gun goes off. It gets more tense. In a way, the Bass uses the same technique of building on itself, and escalating what has come before by playing an escalating series of notes. The main riff plays around the root notes of I-bIII-IV(-V), hitting the bracketed chord at the end of the phrase “everybody’s thinking about me”. But during the verses there is a rise and fall through I-bII-II-V, then I-II-bIII-IV, and finally I-bIII-IV. The chords get progressively higher, more quickly each time round.

Personal Thoughts: Revisited: Kind of like how stress, when unchecked, can build up and explode. People talk about spiraling into depression, well I think it’s appropriate that you can crescendo into stress. It’s the combination of the stone in your shoe, the person in front of you that doesn’t hold the door, the work that seems to multiply instead of divide evenly.

It’s the little things that get you when you weren’t paying attention.

Over the last week or two I’ve been joining some colleagues in workplace meditation, just for fifteen minutes a day. I do think it’s made an improvement in my stress levels. The other thing that helps release my stress, oddly, is listening to this song. These are the ways I avoid a stress crescendo.

Give it a go: If you’ve ever experienced a stress crescendo

Give it a miss: If your mind is always calm like an Ocean

[links]
Spotify: Tuesday Tunes, Stress by Jim’s Big Ego
Jim’s Big Ego: Website, Wikipedia
Other: Jim Infantino on Wikipedia, Jimquisition