Track 6 – “You Telling Me To Calm Down Now?!?” (Verve Pipe cover)
“Blankets and Covers: Volume One” – Track 6 – “You Telling Me To Calm Down Now?!?” (Verve Pipe cover) (recorded November 10th 2010 at “Bayside” Keyport, NJ )
Track 6 isn’t really a “Verve Pipe” cover nor is it music. It is a drunken rant of an open micer throwing instruments around. Sometimes drunk people can say some pretty funny things and the “Verve Pipe” joke comes from something he says in his drunken rant to his bandmates. He says, “Relax? You guys ain’t rock, man. Do you guys want to do “Verve Pipe” or what? You guys are pussies, man.”
The inspiration for the title of the track comes from his quote, “Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?!? I’ve been beating the shit out of this since fuckin’, since fuckin’ 1987 man, telling me, you telling me to calm down now?!?”
My favorite tracks on this album are tracks 6, 7, 8 because they all occurred in real time one after the other starting with this track. My friend’s band “The Believers in Things” were on the list to play next after the guy who had the meltdown. The host was asking for them to come up, but the bass player was outside smoking a cigarette or something so I volunteered to come up and play in the mean time to get out of this awkward situation. You can hear me say, “Can I play something?” The open micer, he is actually a really nice guy, but was just having a rough night, responds, “You better man. You better man because they can’t handle me.”
“The Believers in Things” drummer Joe Walsh had his drums all set up to play so about a minute and fifteen seconds into the song on track 7, the Tom Waits song “Cold Cold Ground”, he joins in. At the end of the song I incorrectly say that the album it came from, “Frank’s Wild Years”, was released in 1988 when in fact it was released in 1987. It is a shame considering the rant included that great line about, “beating the shit out of these since fuckin’, since fuckin’ 1987 man”.
Immediately after on track 8 is “Dirty Old Town” in which I spread more misinformation. I said the song was by “The Pogues”, which is where I first heard it, when it is actually a song by Ewan MacColl which “The Pogues” covered. Joe Walsh stayed on drums for this, but also a harmonica player from the crowd came out of nowhere and played along. It is moments like these that make playing live and open mics special.
My hope for this project is for people to seek out the original versions of these songs if they do not know them and also to inspire people to seek out their local open mics if they are playing music privately and would like to play publicly. You generally get to play a minimum of three songs per night and listen to a bunch of people who love and are inspired by playing music. It’s a good time, drunken meltdowns and all.
Patience Belongings 
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