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Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog: “Take a Hike”

November 11, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

Take a HikeListen to "Take a Hike" and "Goldfish" by Mark Lint and Stevie P.

After my college band The MayTricks broke up due to my leaving for grad school in Austin, I returned to Ann Arbor for several quick visits and recorded new material with my co-front-guy Steve Petrinko. Sometimes he would just record some drums for something I was working on, but more often we would write a song together and record it. In fall, 2002 we recorded a fun one called "Goldfish" that for me was another outburst at the job system, though the Spinal Tap-ish bridge about druids using fish as currency rather undermined any social criticism.

"Goldfish" came out of a drum and bass jam, that rather surprisingly became a real song when we overdubbed other instruments and wrote some words. During that same jam, we also did this fast, sloppy country-Western thing that was deemed probably not fit to be made into a song.

Nonetheless, the next time Steve and I got together (which I believe was summer 2003, but I'm not sure), we have didn't have a lot of time to sit down and write a new song, but decided to take a stab at writing lyrics to the country jam, so we passed a paper back and forth across the table while eating lunch and wrote this silly song "Take a Hike" about being your own person (Steve IS the kind of man who eats chorizo for breakfast.) We quickly put some other instruments over it, but I was never satisfied with the mixdown and never considered it complete. Last year or so I got Steve to FTP me all the tracks and finally sat down to mix them specially for this episode. While it doesn't exactly capture the spirit of Nietzsche's "gay science," some of the elements are there: recovery, individuality, a certain swagger, humor, "unleash my power!", unpredictability, and a smack of existentialism. "Such is the intransience of life!" "Yes!"

I'm hardly an expert at mixing drums, and in this case there were many drum tracks, all unlabeled, but I did my best to figure out what they were and ended up leaving out a couple that I couldn't identify (drummers use lots of mics!) and didn't seem to help things. Using the magic of digital editing, I fixed many of my bass rhythmic mistakes and replaced a few of the more horrible riffs, though the overall harmonic randomness was maintained. For both my rhythm and Steve's lead guitar, I used a software-based fake guitar amp to make the sounds tolerable. (Steve's was actually recorded with an acoustic but just didn't sound right, so now it's thick and fuzzy.) What the rationale behind Steve's keyboard solo at the end is, I don't know. I always liked the jaunty spirit of this tune and am glad to now have a version I can stand to listen to.

One more observation: "Take a Hike" is of course a euphemism for "fuck off!" But in doing my usual Google image search to find an image to start off this post, I find that that sense of the phrase has been completely drowned out by actual hiking organizations, nature parks, sporting goods stores, etc. using the phrase ironically, or rather literally, to refer to actually hiking. I consider this very weird.

-Mark Linsenmayer

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Filed Under: Nakedly Self-Examined Music

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  1. Partially Examined Life Ep. 84: Nietzsche's "Gay Science" | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    November 11, 2013 at 12:09 pm

    […] End song: “Take a Hike,” by Mark Lint and Stevie P. Read about it. […]

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