The United Dictators Of Mars - SONG

Heavy Dreams

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Music: Mody, Words: Harris

Drifting across the wavy sands. In the twilight of the moment. Leaving all thoughts you have behind. Now falling ever deeper.

As sure as dark surrounds me, the light just fills my mind. Taking over my life functions, as I close my eyes are swollen shut. The cold lays at my feet. As I feel the wind pass through me, still my body lies. All alone I hear the souls in the distance screaming my name.

Down in the bottom of a pit. Lost inside the bedroom jungle. All time has lost it's meaning. Now you've become the trip.

I have no vivid recollection of writing this song or any of the 3 songs from 1994. It's crazy because as I've said, it's our best stuff. It was my first introduction to drop D tuning and it opened a whole new world of writing possibilities for me. I know I was at Jeff's house playing through my main riffs and he was editing me as usual. I think he had me add the extended music section after the first verse but really that's the foggiest best I can recall of any writing of this song. Jeff also took well to the drop D tuning and I think it shook him out of the Queensryche mode of singing and put him in a position the use the strongest assets of his voice which was his power. I was blown away at his vocal demos and how perfectly his melodies fit the song and his lyrics were dead on. During the time I wrote these I was doing so without a few valuable assetts. Both Billy and Todd were not in the time and I was without my drum machine. I always programmed some form of drums to my songs but now I was letting Brian work through them with me and he just went to town. I didn't think he could cram all that bass drum work in and still keep the groove but he did. His tom fills often started at odd places and his work in the slow break sections was outstanding. Young Bob Heath was our bas player at the time and though he was technically a better bassist than Billy, he had no experience adding his touch to an original and he basically just went along with the root of the song. In the break sections I gave him some stuff to work with as he followed the clean guitar part then did a 7ths harmons with the guitar which I don't think you hear too often, guitar and bass harmonizing. Todd eventually rejoined the band and I gave him the lead over the slow breaks in the middle and end of the song. I'd say 80% of what he came up with was brilliant. He usually never wrote his solos but he did format out most of these. It's the 20% that he rambles on a bit that didn't appeal to me but I think I was a bit too concerned about that kind of playing in the non lead era than his actual choices. Jeff worked to help get a dirtier guitar sound and though it's not the cleanest demo it does have an edge which sets it apart from it's 1993 counterpart.

I think Tom has forgotten but we wrote this together and I remember really enjoying this. I wanted to do something heavy yet with a groove. Something different than anything we'd ever done before. It was a turning point for us. The idea was to re-invent ourselves. It was fresh. It was perfect. I am hoping that this has triggered Tom's memory to this exciting time. The main riff was perfect. When guitarists hit it right on, it makes the job of a vocalist both easy as well as exciting. By now you are probably wondering, "what the hell is the song about?" This song is about dreaming and the journey from losing consciousness right on into the trip. That about sums it up. Tom had left his eight track recording device at my home and I had a lot of time on my hands in those days. I took my time in the writing and recording of vocals to refine. I prefer this approach. Being disciplined in writing and recording makes for a well produced finished product. By using a multi-track recording device and process gear, recording and playback helps in refining your works. I implore anyone with the capability to use this method in honing ones skills. If we had the gear to polish our recordings in that period, there is nothing they wouldn't stand up to. For some reason, I remember utilizing my Ensoniq ESQ-1 for writing of drum pieces during this period but can't remember for the life of me what exactly for. Perhaps Tom can refresh my memory. Anyhow, This is one of my all time favorites.

Tom's Rebuttle: I do remember working on this at your house but I have no recollection if I came in with the riffs or we made them up together. I also don't recall you stepping on my drum machine feet.

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