---

This month's offering features "Grin & Bare It", an original classic/progressive rock band I was in from 1989-1992.

For many reasons, "Do Your Own Thing" has a special place in my heart. To my recollection, it represents the one time where the entire band came together and contributed to the writing of the music - it was pretty much written during rehearsals, with quite a bit of experimentation and interaction between all of us before we settled on the final arrangement.

For me, this song captured the "essence" of the band.

I remember Andy came in initially with the guitar riff and almost immediately, Mark began singing his own melody over the riff and writing lyrics to it. The lyrics Mark came up with summed up how we all felt about our gigs and the musical situation. We started jamming over it, each of us contributing our own riffs, over, under, and around the original guitar part and under Mark's melody. I remember playing with the chords/tonal structure a bit, helping organize the changes in the middle, and helping to steer it back to the 3rd verse. George, our sax player, decided to add a wind synthesizer to this one for his solo in the middle, initially as a joke, but we all took a shine to that and insisted he do it that way for the recording.

Once completed, this song was always included in the setlist and was a show-stopper during live gigs; we often ended the set with it. While we did play around with the middle section a little over the years (Mark's laugh was jettisoned at one point in favor of a band unison power-riff), we generally had a philosophy that all our solos be "written out" as note-for-note renderings, rather than improvisations, which means that what you're hearing in this recording is pretty much exactly the way you'd have heard it at a live gig, including every note of all the piano parts throughout, all the guitar solos/riffs, and all the drum parts. I listened to a few live recordings of it and I smiled at how tight it was.

Enjoy!

---