Maybe The Brakes Will Fail

05/09/2003 8:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Rob O'Connor

If I may impart to you the secret to life, it has to do with doing as little as possible. The graveyard is filled with poor souls who tried to do too much. Always find someone else to do the heavy lifting. Nowhere is this more true than in the world rock 'n' roll. Write a song that wraps up the history of civilization or reworks the oeuvre of Edgar Allen Poe for that matter and you've got a big dull mess on your hands. But write short tunes about broken hearts and your own kinda pathetic existence and everything falls into place effortlessly. Exquisite country weepers such as "Dreaming My Days Away" and "Codeine" don't try to be too cute or clever or add any stupid chord changes to their stock-western grooves and they're much better tunes because of it. World-famous writer Neal Weiss constructed these tunes and then split up the execution duties between himself, Grey de Lisle and a team of players who get the job done without any extra wanking. It seems so simple. Yet if it were, wouldn't more people do it this way? Sadly, the answer is no and this is why we as a species are eventually doomed. Good day.