A rare and wicked skill to change the light or weather
no room was spared. No mood shown her mercy.
I was a tireless fool. I thought I could do better.
I left in flames, a paper shade hanging from a light.
And when it came to the wrecking ball
she swung effortlessly like it had no weight at all.
And when it came to her victories, the genus names
of all the flowers that were feeding off
her amazing glow.
I changed my master plan. I changed my friends and city.
I go to sleep, I still wake up screaming.
I dream so full and real, you'd think I would know better.
I try to stave off a new day from rising.
And when it came to the wrecking ball
she swung effortlessly like it had no weight at all.
And when it came to her victories, the genus names
of all the flowers that were feeding off
her amazing glow....
(Words & music by Joe Pernice, Bony Gap Music (BMI), admin. by BUG/BMG)I wrote Amazing Glow in early 2004 in the kitchen of our apartment in Park Slope. I was on a short break from touring our 2003 album Yours, Mine & Ours. 2003-2004 was the most touring I have ever done. I recall during that brief hiatus cracking open the case to my Gibson acoustic, and the air that wafted from it smelled like a rock club. Honestly, the blue fur that lines that case still stinks. Anyway, the melody, chord changes and most of the lyrics of the song came pretty quickly during that first sit-down, and I remember feeling good about it.
Back then I was an even worse sound engineer than I am now, but I decided a few months earlier that I should start making demos of songs. So I bought a BOSS BR864 16 bit recording unit from one of the enormo-dome music stores in Manhattan. I think it was around 350 bucks. The BR864 is a simple, plug and play unit. It has drum loops, guitar amp simulation and more effects than I have ever used. A perfect demo maker for a ham-fisted engineer.
So a day or so after writing the tune, I sat down and made an instrumental demo of the song. I played acoustic guitar and my black Fender Telecaster along to a crude, factory pre-set drum loop. At first I went a bit overboard with the delay effect on my Tele. I was shooting for the electric guitar vibe in Golden Brown by The Stranglers.
When my band recorded the song later that year for our album Discover A Lovelier You, we dropped my demo into Pro Tools and added drums, bass (which I’m pretty sure I played), vocals, etc. (During the coda, you can hear the aforementioned Telecaster drenched in delay.) In fact, most of the songs on Discover contain tracks I’d cooked up on my Boss. (As an aside, after the album came out, I got an email from a rep from Pro Tools. He liked the guitar sounds on the album and heard we’d tracked to Pro Tools, which is partially true. Had I been smart I would have shut up and let him offer me a bunch of free gear. Instead I wrote, “Thanks, but those guitar sounds you mention are a Tele direct into a BOSS 16 bit recorder.” He never wrote back.
I ended up giving that machine away to my kid’s after school playgroup teacher, and I upgraded to the slightly more slick BR900, which I still own. By my calculations the BR900 is precisely 36 better than the BR864.
I’d bet Amazing Glow is the song of mine heard by the most people because I performed a chunk of it in the Season Six finale of Gilmore Girls. (My song Clear Spot had previously appeared on a show soundtrack CD.) If you’ve heard me tell the following anecdote at a gig, forgive me. It’s the only one I have about the song. (Except for the time I was at James Walbourne’s parents’ house in Muswell Hill, and James and I almost lit the house on fire when we were messing with the song, and my cheap USA/UK power converter caused a piece of recording gear to literally explode.)
As chance would have it I’d been in Los Angeles recording when the kind Gilmore folks wanted me to appear on the show. Now, I won’t say that I’d been wearing the same clothes every day during the recording sessions, but I’d been wearing the same clothes every day during the recording sessions. Coincidentally, my character on the show was a street musician called the Bearded Troubadour. When I reported to the wardrobe department, the wardrobe person looked me up and down, thought on it for a few seconds and said, “You pretty much look the part already.” She might have given me a belt to keep my pants from sagging into code-violation territory. (In the end, I had a great time on the set. My good buddy and drummer extraordinaire Ric Menck came with me as my de facto handler. And I will always think fondly of Gilmore Girls and the generosity Amy Sherman-Palladino, Dan Palladino and Helen Pai.)
As for the recording you just heard, I tracked it live into my iPhone using a Shure MV88 microphone. I played my mahogany Martin acoustic guitar in standard tuning, key of C. The studio recording of the song is in the key of D. I dumped wav file into Logic, where I added a bit of EQ, compression and reverb. I converted the file to an mp3 as is required by substack.
As always, thanks for listening. Take care of yourselves and those you love.
And for those of you who desire even more of my music, there is currently a vinyl reissue campaign for my album Discover A Lovelier You running for a limited time at pernicebrothers.bandcamp.com/campaign/discover-a-lovelier-you
I’m genuinely shocked & humbled by the fact that we reached our campaign goal in a couple short hours. The thanks go to all of you who pledged to buy an album. —JP
"Amazing Glow"