Apparently I get a lot of mileage out of commuting. Yes, that’s a terrible pun and I’m just not sorry.

With about two hours in the car every day I’ve got plenty of time to listen to all kinds of music. Songs we’re working on, new music from artists I’ve been turned on to by friends (Cage the Elephant is a new favorite), classical music (more on that in a different blog entry). Sometimes I don’t listen to anything at all except the wheels on the road – when traffic is moving.

It being rush hours and all, there are plenty of jackass drivers that keep things interesting with their various clever driving maneuvers. As one of these overly excitable folks veered into the space in front of me after passing a long line of stopped vehicles, I muttered to myself, “There’s always somebody else in line, pal.”

That reminded me of something, and it took much of the drive thinking about it before I remembered. It was a line from an old Tubes song called “Gonna Get It Next Time”. I remembered the song because I loved the movie “Modern Problems” as a kid, and that was the song during the opening credits (I think). I thought it might be a cool DD69 cover.

I thought about it all day, and by the time I got home I had a rough idea of what I wanted to do. I threw down a quick demo, and when Mike and K-Billy showed up for studio night I told them about the idea. Neither one of them remembered the original version of the song, so I played them just a little bit to give them an overall idea of it. I wanted to get a new spin on it, though, so I didn’t play the Tubes version again after that. The guys seemed somewhat interested, and I was pretty insistent, so we decided to play around with it a bit.

I had the basic rhythm track – a loop, a keyboard bass, electric guitar and guide vocal. The next step was to run through it and see what the guys could come up with…

(To be continued)