Groundscore: Upstairs
Groundscore is "sitting on the couch in your basement"...
The basement reference in this song is very literal. Conrad's basement was the home of Groundscore. It was our practice space. It was our hang out space. And it's where we recorded this song.
We regarded this song as our "single" -- if we ever had the chance to put one out, that is. We thought it was the most well-rounded and attractive song in our set. In retrospect, I'm not sure that it's any better or worse than our other tracks... just a bit more of the times (late 90s pop punk before the emo explosion).
This song is notable for being our one truly collaborative composition. Typically, we worked in a more individual fashion, bringing pre-written songs to the table and tweaking them for the band. Upstairs, however, was written collaboratively -- appropriately enough -- upstairs in Conrad's bedroom (our secondary hang out spot).
On this recording, Conrad plays drums, Zach plays guitar and sings the choruses, and I play bass and sing the verses and bridge.
Honestly, my vocals kinda suck on this. Zach should have sung the whole song. I'm not tone-deaf, but I have an extremely difficult time making my voice replicate the notes I hear. I spent a lot of my youth in musical theater and experienced all kinds of vocal training, and it's never made much of a difference!
As for the lyrics themselves, I'm still quite fond of them. I think they have a nice degree of ambiguity, along with enough recognizable phrasing to make them both familiar and strange at the same time, leaving lots of room for personal interpretation.
Next up is the final Groundscore recording, our most emotional outing... a track titled "Zach's New Song."
For some reason I forgot Nick sang in this one. I still feel the drums seem fast for everything else going on, but it did keep it up tempo.
I love the drums on this one!