BoyMeetsGirl Music: Journal

Hi Everybody,

The following was written for possible inclusion in a Billboard Hits of The Eighties book being compiled by Michael Smith, and we thought you all might be interested in reading it as well. Don't know too much more about the book release- when, where, if, and all that, but you can read it here now. Some of this info has been covered in previous journal entries, but there are a few extra bits and bobs for the fun of it...

OH GIRL:

Oh Girl was our first single from our very first album ever, so needless to say we were thrilled just to have a record deal and an album to show for it. We worked on the single with producer Tom Werman who had previously worked with rock groups such as Motley Crü, making music of quite a different style than ours, and one might imagine we had very little common musical ground. But as it turned out Tom helped us to shape a very punchy sound that enhanced our lighter melodic and harmonic structures. In addition, he is a funny, playful man and George and I had a great time in the studio with him. What I remember most about Oh Girl is that one night George and I were driving down La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles listening to KISS FM on the radio after hearing some live music at a club, and the DJ had just back-announced a song he had played. Then he said, [base "]and this next song is just plain good, a new release from a band called Boy Meets Girl[per thou]. We were so excited by the DJ[base ']s enthusiasm, and over the moon with joy to hear our song on the radio for the first time, that George pulled into the nearest gas station to use the payphone (the olden days before cell phones!), dialed the radio station and thanked the DJ in person for playing our song. The DJ was pleased and surprised to have George on the line, and all in all it was a magical moment that indelibly etched itself into our precious memories bank. You know, songwriters and singers dream of moments like this and when they actually come to pass it is nearly unbelievable, and oh so welcome!

WAITING FOR A STAR TO FALL:

Since George and I had written How Will I Know and I Wanna Dance With Somebody for Whitney Houston we naturally were in attendance at her Los Angeles concert (1986? 1987?) at the Greek Theater, a beautiful outdoor venue tucked against the Hollywood Hills. The night was clear, and just as Whitney was finishing singing How Will I Know, I happened to look up at the sky as a falling star arced across the open dome of the theater. A writer is never without something to scratch ideas on, so I whipped out my pen and pocket sized notebook to jot down the beginning lyric to what would become a hit for us from our Reel Life CD, the song Waiting For A Star To Fall. But first of course, we thought it was preordained (belief in magic is also a peccadillo of many songwriters!) that we send the song to Clive Davis to consider for the next Whitney CD. He passed, leading us to record the song for our own album. We did quite a lot of promotional touring in the States, Canada and Europe for this single, doing radio interviews and lip sync TV performances, all the rage at the time although who knows why, It was an exciting time for us seeing parts of the world from the backstage perspective, and wonderful to meet so many kind people through the overwhelming connection of music. We certainly all experience cynical phases in our lives, but looking back I appreciate more and more the abundance of common ground we share, and the love of musical expression in it[base ']s myriad forms is absolutely a constant presence in the human psyche.

BRING DOWN THE MOON:

It is easy in these days of the overhyping of perfection, to imagine you will find perfect love, or that you will be able to [OE]make[base '] love perfect through your own efforts; even the most robustly reasonable person wants that big sustained grand love to grace their lives, but at the end of the day perfection itself is an aim, not a destination. We are flawed and fallible through and through, which is what makes us each unique, questing, and magnificently human. So this is the background of thinking against which Bring Down The Moon was written. [base "]The mythic and mighty that fall when you lean[per thou] , and the idea of bringing down the moon, that ultimate symbol of romantic love, are expressions of the shattering of innocently cherished beliefs giving way to the working realities of love in every day life. It seemed natural to record it as a duet, presenting a musical dialogue between man and woman, supported by a beautifully haunting track. I especially like the rarely seen video for this song, a black and white dreamscape of disillusionment and introspection directed by Alex Proyas, who has gone on to direct The Crow and I Robot.

THE BUSINESS OF MUSIC THEN AND NOW

I guess what can be most assertively stated from our point of view is that one of the differences between the music business today and that of the eighties is that we are not really a part of it anymore!!! Haha! It has spat out most older musical entities, with a few notable exceptions who are still standing quite fine thank you (think U2, Sting, Peter Gabriel, Annie Lennox, etc.). The business has turned to increasingly younger, more formulaic acts to make a big splash and big money, in the pop arena at least. Rap music has dominated the charts for the last decade, in addition to influencing the soundscapes and rythmns of many other styles as well. In the eighties it was common for many groups to sign huge contracts, whereas it seems there are fewer mega money makers these days, many more names come and go quickly, changing with the day of the week. The returns in the business have made the overblown largesse of the eighties a thing of the past, although I have to say the musicians themselves take the cut in pay first, the CEO[base ']s last. The music business has not found a way so far to deal with file sharing, downloading and copying music, copyright infringements which affect singer/songwriters up and down the income scale, as well as record companies. Independent and unsigned musicians like us are creating websites on the internet in order to sell our music, and we are recording our music on digital home studio setups, bypassing the larger, more expensive studios for hire. So in many ways a certain portion of the music business is done from front to back independently, and with altered expectations, compared to the eighties when we depended on big budget record deals, recording studios, distribution and promotion, etc. Thus the domino effect has been felt widely in all the satellite businesses. I miss the large scale distribution, personally, but as Boy Meets Girl we are forging along the new pathways, committing ourselves to the creation of passionate music minus the big paycheck. It[base ']s a grassroots world, sobering, freeing, experimental, and perhaps a little nostalgic for some of what was lost. But I still feel the beat[sigma] www.boymeetsgirlmusic.com