someone cares

Someone Cares - original from about 1978 or so
Someone Cares (Remake) - 2013 remake

This was the very first song I recorded on my TEAC 3340 4 track tape recorder. I had to get a loan to buy this fabulously expensive $1000 4 track recorder. I didn't really realize that the recording was only a small part of it and that you need to have mics and effects and preferably at least one more machine to mix onto. But gotta start somewhere.

I had a singer named Dody Cosmedy sing this. She was the singer in my first post-college rock band "Headline" (yeah, cute name).

I was listening to a lot of Todd Rundgren at the time and you can hear that in this tune. I wonder what I'd think of the remake if I'd heard it back then? I'd probably think it was pretty pablum because this song was supposed to be Art Rock. ☺

On the original, I played all the instruments and it was recorded in mono. I slathered a bunch of SONAR reverb onto the vocals when I pulled this back from tape recently. I apparently wanted to get every chord change I'd ever thunk up into this song, not to mention all possible time signatures. If I'm remembering right I didn't even want to bother lugging the kick drum or toms from Tom Green's next door, so it's just hi hat, snare, and crash, all played very poorly by me I might add.

The 2013 version was done over the Internet with me just sending a rough mix of basic tracks to Dody, she loaded them up in her recording software, worked on 'em, and sent me back vocals. I have to admit it's a bit weird recording that way. All instruments are me, you can hear me singing on the choruses, and the rest of the vocals are Dody.

It's definitely the same tune although the arrangement was tightened up for 2013, guitar solo added, odd times removed, and the lyrics (below) are now a mix of the original rather maudlin 20 year old guy desperately trying to sound deep and something a bit more cynical informed by an additional 35 years on the planet.

It was tons of fun and more than a little bit nostalgic to revisit this. Enjoy.

lyrics

many times my life seems so empty
those i call my friends seem so unfriendly
the search for love seems never ending
still i keep pushing and trying
laughing and crying

i sleep i wake i give i take
i try to learn from my mistakes
i know that i that i am just a guy
who questions things and
wonders why

people all around i know their names
call themselves my friends, they're all the same
empty minds and mindless games
still i keep pushing and trying
laughing and crying

we make our play we run away
we live to fight another day
ignore the fact the deck is stacked
so innocently and
then we act like

the space that we keep between us
don't look, don't talk, please don't touch
the love that you need so bad
can be had

i was just a kid, self interested
but i still regret the things i did
and in the end with you my friend
you know that we must
all pretend that

we twist we turn, we still get burned
we're running out of lessons learned
eventually we all will see
the reality that's
nothing's free and

radio interview

Dody appeared on WKIO 107.9 on April 30th 2023. Here's the audio.