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Singled Out: The Ongoing Concept's Class of Twenty-Ten

08/20/2013
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Today The Ongoing Concept guitarist / vocalist Dawson Scholz tells us about the song "Class of Twenty-Ten" from their brand new album "Saloon," which is being released today (Aug 20th). Here is the story:

"Class of Twenty-Ten" was written nearly two years ago and is by far the oldest song on this album. As you can tell from the title and the song itself, it speaks very openly about the frustrations of losing touch with friends after graduating high school. Even though it's angry and in your face, I feel almost anyone can relate to this song one way or another. Out of all the songs on this album, this one portrays our live sound the best. It has this crazy, noisy element to it that really gives it a "live" sound. When we started recording, this was never intended. We were expecting something a little more polished. Once things started to come together though, lots of ideas began popping into our heads and we found ourselves reworking almost every aspect of the song. Guitars were the thing we changed most. I probably recorded guitars for that song 10 times before I found what I was looking for. We wanted it to be raw, and I started to realize that being raw is sometimes harder then being pristine and perfect.

Vocals on this song were tough. We probably worked on phrasing the longest. I feel phrasing is often more important than the lyrics themselves and what Kyle and I often do is push record and scream or sing a bunch of random stuff into the microphone until we get some sort of phrasing that sounds cool, then we add the lyrics later. This sometime works great, but for this song it was extremely difficult. I had so many lyrics for this song, it took a lot of revision to fit everything in and make it make sense.

At the end of this song it fades out into a bunch of feedback, then a very random and peculiar instrument comes in. We recorded drums at a studio in Canada and there was this extremely old reed organ there. We were just dying to put it somewhere in the album, and it seemed to fit the best at the end of this song, so we miked it up and had Kyle recorded it. It's so funny to listen to because you can hear the squeaking of the pedals as he had to pump them in order to make the organ work. It was a lot of fun.

To further the "live" sound we went for, we shot the music video in a friend's house. It was literally a one-room house with like 7-foot ceilings. We packed that place with people and went crazy. We put a huge hole in the wall, put a bunch of small holes in the ceiling and found out that the floor was close to collapsing after finding out there was a cellar underneath the house and that most of the wooden supports had come apart or broke over the years. It was a crazy day of filming, and a bit expensive after the repairs were factored in, but I feel it shows exactly what we are like live and what this song brings to the table.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the album right here!

Ongoing Concept CDs, DVDs and MP3s

Ongoing Concept T-shirts and Posters

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