Elaine

A song about change and childhood memories

words and music written by Ian Patrick Gentles

completed Wednesday, June 15th, 2016, 5:31 PM

song #422, 10th song of Set 23

About The Song

ITS INSPIRATION and MEANING

Elaine was one of the first friends I made when my family moved to the Villa Park section of Trenton, New Jersey. She and I lived on the same block and were in the same homeroom for the 4 years I attended St. Anthony's grammar school. However, I don't think we actually spent a tremendous amount of time hanging out and playing together outside of class. Girls tend to mature quicker than boys, and I'm guessing that by the ages of 11, she was probably moving closer to becoming a young adult while I was still very much into playing 'army' in the alleyways with guns I built out of Legos. But this song isn't necessarily about Elaine specifically. Instead, here, she represents an amalgam of memories I have from that part of my youth.

See, my parents moved a lot when I was a kid. Out of 11 different houses, the longest I ever lived anywhere before the age of 18 was 3 years and 9 months at a rented row-home in this neighborhood. I tend to think of my stay there as being like the month of March in reverse- where I went in like a lamb and out like a lion. In those four short years (which can seem like an eternity to a child), I became a classically-trained guitarist, learned how to ride a bike, lost my baby teeth and gained a second brother. While I can't say I came out of it like a lion, I was definitely a slightly older lamb when we left Villa Park. For a little boy growing up in the late 1970s/early 1980s, the place could be a little rough around the edges. I recall getting into plenty of fist fights, having my bike stolen and learning a new curse word every day. At the same time however, it was still one of the few working, middle class neighborhoods left in Trenton that was able to cling onto its relatively safe and close-knit identity while much of the rest of the city appeared to be crumbling around it. It was a place and time where we walked ourselves to school and then given free reign of the streets, parks and alleys after walking ourselves back home. Arguments were settled with fisticuffs, and a bully would almost always respect me for at least confronting him- after he'd kick my ass, of course. I remember mothers standing on their porches in the late afternoon while hollering their child's name to come home for dinner. Today these anecdotes seem like little more than the stuff that memes are made of. However, there's a much deeper story hidden in 'Elaine' that isn't blatantly addressed in the song's lyrics. And it's this…

I arrived in Villa Park at just the right time to witness the tail-end of what had existed all over the country for a long, LONG time before I was born: The literal mom and pop shops still owned and operated by descendants of the same moms and pops who inherited and ran those businesses for generations. Some of these were corner delis where the owners lived upstairs and would come down from their residence to greet their customers. (The kids would flock to these places after school to blow what should have been their lunch money on candy and gum.) There was the neighborhood department store we rode our bikes to when we needed school supplies. I remember the local garage my dad could drive to and then conveniently walk home from while the car was being repaired- and the neighborhood tailor that sold our school uniforms. There were dentists, doctors, drug stores, bakeries, music shops and restaurants- all within short walking distances from our front porches. Sadly though, almost all of these establishments would close forever over the course of my short, four-year tenure in Villa Park as convenience stores and shopping malls began to take root like invasive bamboo in the nearby suburbs. Of course, none of this was appreciated by me as a child at the time. It wasn't until years later when I developed a deep fascination with American cities that I realized what an impression that place made on me when the subjects of urban decay, collapsed industry, and white flight began to influence my music, artwork and writings. These are heavy topics with perspectives I may never have gained if I hadn't experienced the life and death of such a place like Villa Park at that specific time in history. My family’s stint there afforded me the ability to compare what living in a self-sustained and architecturally unique neighborhood can be as compared to one built around car-culture with its vinyl-clad homes, highway-accessed strip malls, fast food joints and chain stores.

So yes. On the surface, “Elaine” in many ways appears to be a song that compares the kids of years-gone-by to their current-day counterparts. It paints a picture of children growing up in a world that’s afraid to let them run loose, explore, make mistakes, and learn their own lessons. That world exists partly due to the exceptionally rare occurrence (for example) of a neighbor reporting a child’s parents to the authorities for letting the kid play unattended-to on their own front lawn. That alone sucks, but it’s the exploitative media coverage of that one-in-a-million case that has been enough to help influence otherwise rational-thinking people into becoming helicopter parents willing to live under the oppression of an overreaching nanny state. Yet in spite of the cranky undertones pinned by the lyrics, I hear “Elaine” more as a love-letter to a place and time that I was a very brief part of.

Our former house (2nd in from right) at 529 Emmett Ave. My mom would get angry at how filthy I got when friends and I would crawl into the coal chute area where you see the grated door beside the steps. Also, I’m glad to see the current residents proudly displaying the American flag.

the more things change, the more they stay the same

On a recent drive through the old ‘hood, I was almost able to see the ghost-like silhouettes and hear the playful screams of the local kids that once occupied those very spaces. “Almost”… That vision was frequently interrupted by the now-overgrown alleys, unattended-to yards, and occasional house in disrepair. But then again, it was probably always like that. We tend to remember things differently than what they actually were. To be fair, Villa Park as a community did not "die" with the loss of so many of its immediately-surrounding industries. Instead, it was my own idyllic, childhood vision of the neighborhood that was shattered upon revisiting it as an adult. In reality, many of the old friends and families I once knew stayed on for decades after I left while several of the 'moms and pops' converted to either dollar-outlets or quick-stop, grocery joints- albeit with bars on their windows. And even though the area feels quite different to me today, at least it doesn't seem to be suffering from the accelerated, high-crime rates and severe neglect that forced my father's family to leave the Trenton home he grew up in during the 1950s and ‘60s. So, no… it didn’t die. It simply changed. But then again, so have I. And I have no doubt that in another forty years, some old fogey will be looking back on this exact place as it is now with a sentimental perspective unique to themselves while waxing poetic about how things were just so much better back in their day while lamenting the current state of youth. I just hope I’ll be around to hear the song they write about it.

ORIGIN and DEVELOPMENT

Like so many of the song ideas waiting in the wings of my brain to be written, the melody for this one just popped into my head one day while hanging out in my studio/bedroom. I believe the original dummy lyrics for the bridge section went something like …”you called me, you called me yesterday”… which only served as a meaningless place-holder until I found a reason to turn it into a completed tune. Alas, that reason eventually came after taking a drive through the old neighborhood that Elaine and I once shared

Like a lot of my songs, there’s also a few odd-ball lines hidden here and there within the story. For example: where I sing …“we are bored and die from boredom”.., I was actually referring to a news story I heard about the coincidence of so many little girls being named “Katrina” in the New Orleans area. As it turned out, these kids were conceived out of boredom due to the power outage and lack of television resulting from the devastating, 2005 hurricane that the girls were named after. For some reason, that idea just seemed pertinent to this song. The line, …”children with powers limited to our will to escape”… I think is meant to evoke the notion that one’s individual sense of being/reality/surroundings is only limited to the expanses of their own imagination- an imagination that for me always seemed to be at odds with the un-inventive and suppressive nature of the education system.

complete and finalized lyrics

Above is the ‘Song Bud’ recording with its correlating sticky-note slip at left. For a more in-depth and detailed description of the song buds, please refer to the scrapbook page for my song, ‘DNA’.

Studio Track Sheet

These are my home-studio session notes. They serve the purpose of recalling certain electric guitar tones and drum sounds to maintain continuity across all segments of the song during the recording process. They can also be referenced later for dialing up any settings from previous recordings that I think might work in the current session.

About The Recording

PROCESS, TECHNIQUES, PRODUCTION, SOUNDS, MIXING and MUSICIANSHIP

There are two versions of ‘Elaine’ at the top of this page just below the video. The one on the right is my original, home-demo recording that I sang all of the vocals and played all of the instruments on. Several years after its completion, my wife/manger, Patti and I were looking to have a new version of the song re-recorded by an outside producer for the purpose of releasing it to college radio and internet-based stations such as Spotify and Pandora. After uploading the demo to a music job-posting site, we were contacted by LA-based drummer, Dan Konopka who plays in the band, OK Go. Dan has his own recording studio where he works as an engineer and producer on other artist’s projects. He loved “Elaine” and the several other songs we sent him to work on, and quickly recruited the help of a phenomenal guitarist named Gene Micofsky for the new sessions, while we monitored the progress from the east coast. Once the basic instrumental tracks were laid, Patti and I flew out to LA to sing all of the vocal parts. After several weeks of long-distance, back-and-forth tweaking made to the daily mixes, we were very satisfied with the final product. That newer version of Elaine can be heard on the top, left side audio player.

I love comparing these two different recordings. While Dan kept a lot of the musical cues and sensibilities that I had fleshed out in my original version, he definitely took it to the next level by running away with those ideas and it’s so interesting for me to hear somebody else’s take on the same song. One of the most notable differences is Gene’s straight-forward approach to the bass line as compared to my more rambling and bouncier playing style (which I was quite proud of from the original version). Gene also came up with so many new electric guitar parts and tones that really compliment the melody. The only instruments that were transported over into the new session from my original demo of Eliane was the synthesized strings and horn section. This was one of those, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” types of situations. There was no sense in re-recording them since they blended so beautifully with the new instrument arraignments. This was also made effortless by Dan’s perfect-tempo drum playing that allowed for seamless integration of those tracks into the new session.

One more thing that came about accidentally (but works perfectly here) is the soloed-out, background voices at the final, two choruses singing the lyrics “Elaine”, “was replaced”, “Elaine”, and “has decayed”. I was standing at the mixing board between vocal takes while the engineer was labeling and reorganizing some of the tracks. At one point he had unwittingly muted my lead vocals at that part of the song, leaving only the background voices audible. To me, it suddenly sounded like a chorus of children singing “Elaine” in a church choir. This was something I had never considered in the original version, but it worked in such a sweet, (yet eerie) way here. So of course, I insisted we keep it in the final mix- which we did. It was just one of those happy accidents that happens during the recording process. Musicians/producers/engineers need to be acutely in tune with recognizing that kind of magic when it happens in order to capture it- which I think we ultimately did with “Elaine”.

*Villa Park, June, 1978… Me playing my guitar for friends at my 8th birthday party. I guess this was probably my very first ever, house-concert performance.*
*(photo by Mom)*

a trip down memory avenue

One of the dozens of alleys in Villa Park that runs down the full-length center of each city block behind the houses. My friends and I would often lay claim to some obscure space around a garage or open lot in these areas as our hang-out before being chased away by the property owner.

One of my friends lived in this Burgundy house along the edge of the alley near the end of our block. It still has the exact same, tar-shingled facade with exterior paint-scheme and matching, metal fence that it had more than four decades ago.

These town-homes now stand on the site of an old floral shop that stood across the street from our house. The architect apparently couldn’t be bothered with trying to make them blend in (even just slightly) with their historic, century-old, brick and mortar surroundings.

There used to be a long row of old, family homes that stood on this site- one of which used to house a radio-controlled, race-car track in the yard that us kids would sometimes stand outside the fence and watch. It was all sacrificed long ago to make way for one of these very rare, big-box, drug stores. 😉

Perhaps the biggest influence on the direction my life would later take started at age 7 right here in what used to be the Liberty Music Center. It’s where I would spend the next decade taking guitar lessons from my teacher, Sally. I’m still friends with her to this day.

out of business

Liberty & Charlotte former corner deli.png

Liberty & Lyndale former gas station.png

Above are just a few of the buildings that used to house the neighborhood’s family-owned businesses.

At far-left was the corner deli where I’d go to see my ‘dealer’ during the time I struggled with a very serious, ice-cream sandwich addiction.
Just to the right of that: This building was actually just over the border of Villa Park, but it was a very cool corner deli with an old-fashioned butcher shop.
At center: This was a corner store several houses down from us at the end of our block. One of my friends lived in the other half of the building with his family.
2nd in from right: This was Zimmer’s grocery store and garage. Our house was one door in from the home at the left edge of the picture. While the shop-owner never had a problem with selling me the daily packs of cigarettes my dad would send me there to buy, I remember him refusing to sell me a 2 liter bottle of Coke one day. He thought I was too little and was afraid I’d drop it on my way back home just several feet away- true story. While the grocery store is long gone, the garage part still seems to be in operation- even if just for a private, car enthusiast.
At far right: Another former garage/gas station that once added to the neighborhood’s close-knit, ‘Mayberry-esque’ vibe and aesthetic.

mom & pop culture

The nostalgic notion of “the way things were” is always a personal point of view formed by an individual at some point in their lives- usually of when they were young. My perception of Villa Park was formed as I witnessed it through the lens of an innocent child. While there’s still lots of different businesses currently operating in the same buildings that once hosted my favorite haunts, for me they simply lack the same warm and inviting atmosphere that they once (appeared to have) possessed. However, just because the neighborhood no longer feels like the homey and vibrant place I remember from my youth, it doesn’t mean that it’s not all of those things for somebody else today.

Photo at upper left: Further west down my former street, a corner barber shop still thrives on Emmett Avenue. I love how these businesses simply exist and operate right there in the middle of the residential areas. Though modern zoning laws rarely allow for such integration, these vestiges of a by-gone era are exactly the sort of ‘quality-of-life’ sensibilities that city planners should consider reimplementing the next time they’re trying to navigate highways and byways full of traffic just to get a haircut.
Photo at upper right: This was Peitri’s Deli (I may have the spelling wrong, but it was pronounced “pee-trees”) and was located across the street form St. Anthony’s school. What I remember most about it is that they sold Smarties lollipops and SweeTarts by the fistful. Thanks to its location, it was a God-send for any dentist looking to make a killing in the children’s cavity-filling business.
Photo at center left: I don’t recall what this corner store was when I was a kid, but it seems to be doing well as another deli today. However, I do remember the business that was located in the white building with the red awning to the left of it. That was a costume shop that survived for decades up until recently. Of all the old, family-owned businesses in the neighborhood to be able to weather the changing economies and trends of the times, I wouldn’t have assumed that a store selling costumes would have been one of them. I guess that’s a sign of some very shrewd and savvy business people.
Photo at center right: This corner store is now a tattoo parlor. I can just see my 8-year-old self walking proudly out of the place after getting some ‘ink’… and then my dad dragging me back in there by my ears to have it removed.
Photo at lower left: I knew this place as Chung’s corner market. It had a few video game cabinets in the back that I dumped lots of quarters into. Therefor, it’s kind of fitting that it’s a computer and electronics store now.
Photo at lower right: Ahh… This was the grand daddy of them all. Long before the names Walmart and Target became synonymous with one-stop-shopping, there was Tracy’s 5 & 10 Cent Store (seen here from its former, back parking lot). I can’t tell you how many of those little erasers in the shapes of robots and dinosaurs I bought there as a kid. Today the place serves as a dollar store. While I was sad to see it go, I have to admit that the ‘five finger discount’ maneuver practiced by many of my little friends probably didn’t exactly help Tracy’s to stay afloat as it struggled more and more to compete with the troves of shopping malls that began popping up like weeds just beyond Trenton’s borders.

Hidden in plain sight here are many other remnants of the world I remember… Like the protruding, rusty iron beams still fastened to the facades that once supported those cool, old-fashioned store signs.., and the large, weathered advertisements now barely visible as they fade deeper into the pores of the brick walls they were hand-painted onto. All of it now coexists alongside cheap, vinyl awnings and LED lighting with heavy, security doors and barred windows which lend a hint to some of the more sinister ways the neighborhood has changed.