A note from Luke: Blog #4 "Big Willie Style?"

I awoke this morning with the theme song to Men in Black stuck in my head. What an odd way to greet the new day. I haven't seen that movie in years and I'm pretty sure I haven't heard any Will Smith songs in ages either. I always liked Will Smith as an actor, although he has starred in some films that I felt weren't the best portrayals of my favorite books. I Robot and I am Legend to be specific. But I'm not a film critic so I wouldn't pay too much attention to this haha. I'm a pretty big fan of Isaac Asimov, who was the author of I Robot as well as Bicentennial Man and tons of other great books. Yes, I am a total dork for reading robot literature, but I would recommend you check him out.

I am Legend, written by Richard Matheson, was a brilliant book way ahead of its time. Most people don't realize that virtually every zombie film has been based on his writing. Matheson was the first author to pen the idea that being a vampire or zombie could be viral. Clearly you can see the impact he's had from Night of the Living Dead to Resident Evil and 28 Weeks/Months Later and the list goes on and on. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the film version of I am Legend. Unfortunately, I was a huge fan of the book first so I kind of had some pre-conceived notions of what I thought the movie should be.

Anyway, if you have our new album Over the Top or Under the Weather then you've heard the first track Sunrise. I never really considered it a song… it's more of an intro to the record. When I wrote the lyrics for that song it was shortly after I read I am Legend. The lyrics are based on that book. But I read that book and wrote those lyrics years ago… long before I ever got wind that they were making a major motion picture. So once the movie came out I couldn't very well tell people it was based on I am Legend. They would assume I was referring to the movie and I would therefore sound like a trendy loser haha.

Sunrise and Sunset were really last minute additions to the album. We hadn't actually discussed an intro and outro, it was just something I started experimenting with in the final stages of mixing the new album. Oddly enough, Sunrise ended up being one of our more popular songs online and our most downloaded song on iTunes… and it's only like a minute and twenty seconds long haha.

The book I am Legend also inspired the name of my side project, Saturday Evening Ghost. Some of you may be familiar with some of my SEG songs, but most of you probably aren't as I've pretty much neglected the project over the past few years. However, I am happy to announce that I have begun recording a SEG album and plan to have some of those songs up online soon! I don't know if I'll ever press any hard copies or not. It may just be a digital album or EP. I guess we'll just see where it goes. You can check out some of my older SEG songs right now at www.myspace.com/saturdayeveningghost

Thanks for reading my ramblings :)

-Luke