Lyrics |
| Tell me when your glass is empty I’ve got more than I can drink I’ve got things I need to think about Nothing we can speak about Warn me when your glass is empty Show me when your candle’s burning I’ve been burned and careful too I’ve been frozen out by you before Left behind the door before Warn we when your candle’s burning Let me tell you this before the waiter comes
again All around us empty mirrors If I find the time to ask you |
Click here to hear the song: Restaurant
Notes by the Author:
This is another early-80s, college undergrad, experiment. Like "Growing Up" and "Mine the Museum," it’s not really about anything I’d ever been through at the time (although God knows I’ve been through this song a time or two since). I don’t play it that often, and it’s another song that I always knew needed more musical substance than my guitar could provide.
If there’s anything Jon specializes in, it’s musical substance. He quickly understood the need to fill this beast with plenty of effects. I’m not really convinced that we’ve recorded the definitive version of this song. That might need a philharmonic orchestra and Roger Daltrey on vocals.
When I say that I don’t play this song often, I mean to distinguish it from other songs I’ve written, like "Touch Me Softly," which I tend to play right away when someone asks me if I’ve written anything. But I did play it for a young woman once, at a band rehearsal at Chris Seaman’s house after I’d graduated from college. Chris and his friend Danny (a drummer) still lived near San Diego, and I went down to visit them one day. I knew this woman in the band from our college days, and after a very pleasant jam we were all lazily scattered around the house. She was looking through my notebook of songs, and focused on this one for reasons unclear to me, and asked me to play it. She really got into it, for reasons I didn’t understand then and never got a chance to ask her about.
To me, any work of art is most interesting when I know it has stimulated someone else. So whenever I play a song for someone and see him or her react strongly, I immediately want to hear it again so I can ponder what the effect was. But I never figured out what reached that pretty young woman in this song. Perhaps that’s for the best. But it sure made this song more interesting to me.
Notes by the Other Guy:
What I like most about this song is the haunting lyrics. I consider it the best of Bill's songs based on the "Women who won't go out with me" theme. I believe he has perfectly captured what it's like to be desperately hanging on to a relationship, and how horrid it feels to be relying on the context to provide the necessary resources for romantic interaction. When you want intimacy, you'll go to just about any lengths to make an evening special. When the energy is going more in one direction than another, it is one of the most awful moments in life. Come to think of it, this may just be my favorite of Bill's songs, although "Dark For Ages" may be our best recording.
This recording sounds gives the most produced-up feel of any song we have. There are 3 guitar parts, a base, and at least 2 very distinct keyboard parts. Plus backup vocals. The Juno-60 served well for the drifting keyboard noise in the verses and the slow, electric sliding sound in the chorus. I, of course, like the pounding electric guitar the best, but the techno-keyboard sound in the chorus goes very well with the guitar. At least I think so. Anyway, if you crossed the 1980's sounds of "Motley Crew" and "Flock of Seagulls" you'd get something very much like this song. That may be what Mary's Garage Band is all about.