‘Please Don’t Eat Me I Love You’
I don’t write too many “nice” songs. I don’t really see the point… if things are good, why waste time writing about ‘em when you could just be enjoying them?
But sometimes you just have to give props!
When your family’s not cutting it, friends get a free upgrade. I drew a shitty hand with the former but have been so lucky with the latter. Lisa Brennan alone is like an entire family in one beautiful little person. How did they fit all that awesome in there?!
After an early-aughts Collider show, a bunch of us ended up at the Moonstruck Diner on Second Avenue. I had some sort of mishap with my coffee and it spilled all over the saucer, making the bottom of my cup drippy. LB slipped a napkin between the cup and saucer when I wasn’t looking. Bryan Thomas saw her do it. He said: “Don’t let it go unnoticed.”
But it did. Mission accomplished, Lisa never said a word. I only found out about the makeshift doily years later. That’s the kind of person you want looking out for you.
“Please Don’t Eat Me I Love You” was an easy song to wanna write, but tough to actually pull off. Especially for someone who is not used to writing positive lyrics! I was still slaving over it the week of the session, and even now I can only hope I got it right. Many of the words come straight out of LB’s t-shirt collection, including the title/closing refrain and the Engrish slogan from the tee on the right.
Production-wise, you are hearing one unedited live take with surprisingly few instrumental overdubs. Drums, bass, guitar, piano and congas were all tracked at once, in one room – Studio Three at EastWest in Los Angeles. That is the space where the Beach Boys recorded Pet Sounds (hence the yellow-and-white-Cooper-Black-on-green single cover art… though it’s also a nod to the “Please Don’t Eat Me I Love You” t-shirt, on which the slogan is set in Cooper Black for both the original and pizza-parody versions).
There are still two songs left to mix from the LA session; you’ll hear one of them soon. The other we’re saving for Christmastime. Next week Sevendys reconvenes in Woodstock to record five more tunes. Which reminds me… I’m supposed to be making charts right now. See you back here on Tuesday the 7th for my June Single of the Month!
A truly fantastic song by a truly fantastic singer-songwriter-musician inspired by a truly fantastic person. I’m not very good at “nice,” either, but this truly inspires me, as it expresses a heart-felt, deep, “nice” emotion without ever resorting to cliche or short-hand or lazy imagery.
And there’s celeste and mellotron on it, too . . . Holy Cripes!
Having heard most of what you’ve released over the past however-many years, I really think this stands high among your greatest musical achievements, with big props due to Chuck and Avi and Sheridan and Jerry too for their parts.
Seriously fantastic. Seriously.