15. Nobody's Wife (You're The One)

It's scenes like this that force people like me to watch bad movies. While some people may go too far and say that there's something to like in everything, you do sometimes find an amazing moment in the middle of the most middling piece of mediocrity... like Elf with Will Ferrell (although, I must admit, after re-reading some of the quotes on imdb and thinking about the scene where Will Ferrell blindfolds Zooey Deschanel and makes her drink coffee, that I think the movie has a few decent chuckles).

After seeing this scene the first time, though, I was so taken by the genius songwriting of Frank Loesser (right) and the interplay between the male and female parts that I decided to write a song like that.

This was January '05, and after doing my first two CD-R albums, I was looking to do something new and interesting, so I thought about doing a duets album to be called Songs Sung With Other People. I started working on sketches for songs that I hoped my future song partners would help me fill out. However, the project never materialized and the song was set aside.

Months later, Preston (pictured left, with R. Stevie Moore) took me to a performance by Sammy Shuster at the Sidewalk Cafe, and I was immediately taken by her voice and her playing style. My self-serving little brain suddenly started whirring: "You must befriend this woman and see if she will sing on 'Nobody's Wife.'"

Long story short, she did sing on "Nobody's Wife" at a number of our live shows (including a performance that was recorded and included on No-No's (Leftovers and Live Songs)). Dan DiMauro, who I used to work with at Troma and who did the drawing and art direction on this CD and on The Very Best Of... So Far, was a very vocal proponent of the inclusion of "Nobody's Wife" on this album because of his assessment of its general awesomeness. I initially thought of including it as an unlisted track, since it didn't directly fit into the My 3 Addictions song cycle, but it became apparent that that was way too mid-90s of an idea to be feasible.

Preston wanted me to ditch the song because he felt like the album would be lopsided with too many songs about women who won't date me. He thought that if I liked it so much that maybe I should ditch the troubled "I'm in Lust" and replace it with this instead. My argument for keeping all of the tunes is that this song is not about women who won't date me. The male character is on a date. Therefore, the song acts like an epilogue or an appendix to the "proper" song cycle.

Also, I began to think about Phases and Stages, the Willie Nelson album that inspired the concept-y nature of this album (more on that at this link here). Phases and Stages ends with the song "Pick Up The Tempo," which sort of acts like an epilogue to that album. Willie has been through an album's worth of heartache -- a divorce from two points of view -- and now he uses the idea of playing music as a metaphor for his life and decides "the band" needs to "pick up the tempo."

Taking that into account, it seemed obvious that if I was really going to rip off Phases and Stages, I should rip it off entirely and include an epilogue song.

And, as Major Matt once said, "Yeah, just do it. Nobody cares."