"Dinosaurs" was written in February of 2022 as my first song for that year's FAWM (February Album Writing Month), an online songwriting challenge in which participants attempt to write 14 songs in 28 days. It's a love letter to the stretch of US Route One that runs through my home town of Saugus, Massachusetts. In decades past, this road was lined with several wonderfully kitschy pieces of commercial architecture: a restaurant shaped like a ship, another one modeled like a grandiose Chinese palace on a hill, a three-story replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, a 68-foot tall neon cactus outside of a steakhouse, and a miniature golf course guarded by an orange dinosaur visible from the highway. As time goes on, these landmarks are disappearing one by one. Today, few remain and some of those that do face an uncertain future. So I decided to write a song from the point of view of the orange dinosaur, who muses about both the past and the future, as he watches his fellow roadside attractions disappear one by one.
This song may not mean much to anyone who's not familiar with the places referenced in the lyrics, but it's become a big hit at the local open mics I do. It's the one song people specifically request, and these days most of the room is singing along with the chorus by the end with their arms up in a T. rex pose.
I'm still fiddling with the sequence, trying to finalize the 'studio' version. The link below is to an early demo version. It's missing some newer lyrics that I've added, but will give anyone who's interested an idea of what the song sounds like with vocals. I've added Strings to this sequence, but those are replaced in the recording with Epic Online Orchestra, which in my opinion just sounds better on this particular song.
Here's a demo version of "Dinosaurs" using this backing track, some added instrumentation from Epic Online Orchestra, and a scratch vocal track recorded with my phone: https://soundcloud.com/i_am_kiffa/dinosa...als-take-2
Kiffa
5/23/22 3:50
