{"id":717,"date":"2014-08-22T08:23:20","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T12:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chameleonred.com\/blog\/?p=717"},"modified":"2014-08-22T08:23:20","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T12:23:20","slug":"stories-behind-the-songs-paragon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chameleonred.com\/blog\/?p=717","title":{"rendered":"Stories Behind the Songs: “Paragon”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sorry for the long interval since the last blog entry–it’s been a trying month<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Paragon<\/a>John:<\/strong> The fact that Brian’s help turned “Revolving Door” from a cool chord progression into an actual song inspired me to try again with the Michael McDonald \u2013 style stuff. The chords in the verse, as in Revolving Door, just fell out of my brain into my fingers one day while sitting at my Yamaha C35***. After finishing it, I imagined it as interstitial music on NPR (i.e. the 20 second snippets they play between features on All Things Considered<\/em>). I had sent it to the band as an MP3, and, one day Brian emailed me one day to say that he’d come up with lyrics and a melody, along with a chorus.<\/p>\n

Brian: <\/strong>In August 2011, John sent me a demo containing the chords and a simple bass\/drum accompaniment for what became the verse of \u201cParagon\u201d. I liked what I heard, but wasn\u2019t sure what to do it with it. Months later, in May 2012, I listened to it again and decided it was a verse in need of a chorus. I was taking a guitar chords course at the time, and wrote chords and a melody for the chorus, throwing in chords I had just learned. I alternated between keyboard and guitar when writing the chords. Soon after, I decided that there needed to be a different chord progression for a guitar solo; I based the progression on the chorus, using some chord substitutions to arrive at a descending progression. Finally, with some difficulty (due to the strange chord sequence), I arrived at a melody for the verse.<\/p>\n

Sometime during the writing of the chorus, I came up with the title \u201cParagon\u201d. I actually wrote a couple of descriptive paragraphs, trying to solidify the vision of what sort of paragon I wanted to write about. After a few days of effort, I arrived at the storyline of the high-society woman dating a waiter.<\/p>\n

John is known for coming up with some funny mondegreens (misheard lyrics), and I couldn\u2019t resist throwing a couple into the lyrics. One was \u201cAwesome Zudokhan Love\u201d, which was how he heard Def Leppard\u2019s \u201cPour Some Sugar on Me\u201d. The other was \u201cdunder cheese\u201d, which is how he heard \u201cdone dirt cheap\u201d in AC\/DC\u2019s \u201cDirty Deeds\u201d. I changed this to \u201cthunder cheese\u201d after I Googled dunder cheese, though. I sent a demo of the added parts and vocals back to John at the end of May. He suggested a few changes to the chords in the chorus, and then the song was complete.<\/p>\n

We ended up recording two versions of the song; the first was at the original tempo and syncopated. John was dissatisfied with that version, so we recorded a new version at a faster tempo and with a simplified bass, drums, and rhythm guitar. I didn\u2019t really like that version as well as the first, so we let it lie for a while before ultimately deciding to go with the first version.<\/p>\n

The initial idea for the video originated with John; we sat around alternately brainstorming and horse-laughing until we had most of the details sketched out. Sadly\u2014er, fortunately, the video came out almost exactly as we had envisioned, mostly thanks to our star actor and some fortuitous props. I threw in another Franjione mondegreen for good measure: \u201cBingo Jed and Lionel\u201d = \u201cBig ol\u2019 jet airliner\u201d.<\/p>\n