Ep. 9: Dominance & Control (2 of 3)
What are you willing to throw your life away on? With Andrew Reed and The Liberation. It's a serious question, one worth pondering. Am I living the life I want, an intelligent life, or something else? How can I have a better experience of life?
Speaker 1:These are some of the questions explored in this series of messages without the brag and the advertisement. Getting beyond even human institutions and society into the wilderness, nature, the reality of how life actually operates on this planet. These messages range from intimate recordings from the awakened forest to concerts, national conferences, and broadcasts on a wide array of philosophical topics.
Speaker 2:Okay. Welcome again to the second installment of Dominance and Control where we discuss the songs on this epic concept album. Of course, this is the second album of the trilogy since there's three albums in this demarcation, and then of course Dominance and Control, and then the final one, the White Album, will be The Sound of God. So World I Have Won, this is where rock star Caesar, our central figure, is really fighting more the battles and prevailing in all cases. Often he's merciless and crushes his opponents, and not just military opponents, but also his non military opponents such as the press and media.
Speaker 2:He wants great things written about him. He wants to be on every billboard and all this. And he's so devastatingly good at doing this that his opponents, you know, pray for divine help as a last resort because they don't have anything else really to turn to. And Caesar, in this case, he takes his defeated folks, and he enslaves many of these. And you think of Romans and like Ben Hur, and you think about the slaves in the galleys, and they're all rowing, you know, sweaty and all that.
Speaker 2:You hear in the song, We keep you alive to serve this ship. Row well and live. So you have this slave like element and it almost sounds industrial because here we kind of wanted to translate it to the modern age where you think of factories and people working behind computers and machines where people feel fundamentally sometimes like slaves and that they're working for the man or the machine being manipulated. And then it's like, what's it all about here? So there's almost this mechanical industrial aspect where you can hear the hammer coming down on the rail and you hear screams and whips.
Speaker 2:And then Alex came in the studio one morning and he had just went crazy adding some different voices, because we knew that, again, we're telling a story here, and so there's a lot of that. There's all these groans. I mean, just outrageous.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah. You know, it was a pretty eventful day in the studio. I I I came in. I felt inspired.
Speaker 3:It was it was the the mist in the air. I knew what we had to do, you know, in adding sound effects to this song. So Andrew stepped out and I was there by myself and I was trying out some of these voices, was trying out some of these parts and it just wasn't clicking. But I put on the headphones, I tuned out the world, and then I was there on the ship and I was cracking the whip. The whip?
Speaker 3:The hammers were falling. The hammers were falling. The smokestacks. That's right. And I would do an example for you right now, but you have to listen to the song to be able to truly enjoy it.
Speaker 3:And so I'm gonna leave it for there. No spoilers. And so, yeah, that was a lot of fun to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so World I Have Won. And this has really almost a Rush like vibe because there's lots of different musical movements and song changes in it. And actually some of the musicality in this song is some of my favorite, like especially when you get into kind of the solo section and stuff, it's really got this industrial feel and almost machine like guitar riffs, which are way cool. And then it goes into this like Thin Lizzy type riff where it's playing it straight, and then we have the wah harmonic guitar playing its part. And it's just really satisfying, I know, for me to listen to.
Speaker 2:And since Thin Lizzie is one of my favorite groups, I like Rush as well. But I'll just say this, when I write, it's not like I'm trying to think of really other artists or imitate, you know, what they're doing. I'm just writing from my own musicality. So with that said, here is World I Have Won. Triumph.
Speaker 2:Triumph is victory. And so when you go to Paris and maybe some other European cities and you see this great big square thing with kind of a round opening over roads that cars go through, that's called a triumph. And it's normally erected to commemorate a victory. In Roman days, you know, they are the rock stars. They are the symbols of power, and they are, again, lords of the world at that point, at least the world that was known at that time.
Speaker 2:So when they would have victories over their opponents, they would go to the holy city, you know, Rome, they would go down the streets in their golden chariots and waving at the crowds and all that, their best attire, you know, with all kinds of flower girls throwing petals everywhere, the crowds cheering you on. Again, almost like a rock star thing in the modern era. As they made their way towards usually the big temple where the emperor was, and then of course they'd march up the steps, crowds roaring all around, and they would bow down and of course receive normally a type of leafed crown or a baton of gold and what have you. And it would be a national day of celebration. So the triumph is an important thing.
Speaker 2:And of course in this case, rock star Caesar is being honored with his great victories here. And one cool aspect that I haven't really talked about is a lot of this album was actually written in high school. Yes, my first bands were all prog rock bands. There's a few reasons for this. First of all, obviously I liked that music.
Speaker 2:I found that I had this musicality. So this music was interesting to me. We didn't play covers. I have never been a cover guy. The incidental cover song that we do is just because we think we can do a good version of it and it's interesting to us.
Speaker 2:But it just didn't make sense for me to try to mimic or copy other people's songs just to be popular or whatever. I was into the art and I really haven't changed that much, much probably to the dismay of the different music insiders. But we would play these songs, and this song like Try It, people loved it. I mean, was a pure instrumental piece, and we learned how to move with our instruments, how to become really good entertainers. But I was always shocked at how we could have non vocal songs that people just stand up and just think we're crazily good.
Speaker 2:The other point about this song, when it goes towards the drum solo, it's almost this demonic thing that we used to play live, where I'm just like on the wall just playing crazy, awful notes, and Aaron's letting his fingers just rip with the fires of hell coming out of it. And it's just it's just a crazy introduction to what? A drum solo. Now how many drum solos do you hear at a modern concert? They are gone.
Speaker 2:But to me, a drum solo is part of rock and roll. And so, yes, we have this epic drum solo included in that. And again, I think it makes this album unique and why it's, in my opinion, just such a classic rock record. Now the part of the song that people love the most is Alex's organ part where it comes on and then he goes up the octave and it just sounds like Phantom of the Opera or the Ghost and Mr. Chicken, kind of creepy, like, Woah, this is epic!
Speaker 2:And I remember kind of saying, I kind of want it to go like this and went out and I came back like the next day and Alex had put it down perfectly. And I thought, Wow, that is cool. And I need to add this point is at the beginning of the song, of course, the triumph is happening, and so we have the crowds masked, you know, clamoring for their hero, and me and Alex just kinda lost our mind in the studio one day and it's like,
Speaker 4:Caesar, play us your music. Yeah. Play us your wonderful songs. We can't live without your music. We can't live without you.
Speaker 2:But that's kind of the thing that people they just go to hysteria about their their rock idols and gods and stuff. And so anyway, we had a good time doing that. So without further ado, here is Triumph. King of things and lord of more. At this point, excess and debauchery continue.
Speaker 2:Business transactions as the buying and selling become the sport of the day. So here we have rock star Caesar. The glory's losing its glimmer, you know, and it's fading away and it's just more and more the same, more buying and selling and all that, with diminishing satisfaction. And that is just so much about life. We think that if we strive and after the great victory, then we'll be happy.
Speaker 2:So a lot of people are actually postponing their happiness, you know? It's just like, you know, if you're learning to play an instrument like the guitar or whatever, practicing and sweating it out, of course. But if all your satisfaction is going to come from the concert you're going to play or that public appearance, you're kind of missing out on life. And my advice would be enjoy practicing. Just enjoy playing the instrument and the whole process of life rather than setting aside for some future date.
Speaker 2:Rock star Caesar, again, works hard, gets all the victories, everything he thinks he wants, but it becomes more and more and more just not content with life. And you think about modern society, you think about advertising, and more and more and more is the cry because their whole job is to make you feel inadequate, to get you to buy something to complete yourself, to give you some satisfaction. And then you mail off, you get the thing, you go on the internet it comes, and then it's like, Okay, like what's next? And then you're buying the next thing that you think is going to satisfy you. So the cycle is just inside of life.
Speaker 2:And I think it actually has to go down to the survival instinct that more and more and more that, Hey, you know, the food's abundant right now. This thing called winter and fall are coming. Might not be as much, better hold back. But having more is just better. And then of course as we evolve our consciousness, we start to get up in the higher planes, especially above 500, and we realize that we don't need that much.
Speaker 2:That life can be very satisfying, you know, with things you love and the necessities of life, and you're tasting your food, and so it's not always about quantity and the continual striving for more to fill the void or lack. So with that said, here's King of Things, Lord of More.
Speaker 1:If you need anything further, just go to MBI.life.