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MP3 Benjamin Plum - Butterfingers
1 MP3 Songs in this album (4:11) !
Related styles: Jazz: Swing/Big Band, Jazz: Piano Jazz, Type: Instrumental
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Details:
I was sitting at a piano which was once located in the Kirkhof Student Center building of Grand Valley State University in Allendale, MI, angering a bunch of students who were trying to study when this song just sort of happened upon itself. It was an odd place for a baby grand piano, being right in the middle of an obvious studying area. It was this infamous piano, in this not-so-infamous building, where I cut my teeth in public piano playing performance (whew, that’s some serious alliteration). I’d been a musician for a long time, and had performed publicly a number of times, but playing the piano in front of people was something I was relatively new at. I would later find many students would come study in this room with the intention of listening to other students play the piano – it was public domain, anyone who wanted could come sit down and play it – so long as you played peacefully and quietly. Many of my songs were, in fact, peaceful and quiet, but peaceful and quiet only makes up for so much of the repertoire of a passionate musician, and that is what I was. Or am. So, occasionally, more passionate songs sometimes moved my fingers a little faster and a little harder over the keys. This made for more than one uncomfortable situation, where students would approach me and ask me to play more quietly – they were trying to study. Most of the time I obliged them and either left or resolved to play softer. This one time, however, a group of students were simply not content to share the room with me, despite my efforts to appease them. After probably the third time of them asking me to “keep it down”, I finally let loose “Butterfingers”, in its first, and entirely raw, version. Since then it’s been lengthened, and, perhaps to an extent, tamed. I think recording it took a lot away from that original smash-mouth, in-your-face, I’m-gonna-play-as-loud-as-I-want attitude that originally drove the song, but playing it live certainly brings back many of those emotions. The title is a euphemism and a reference to a very inappropriate story an old friend once shared with me, but that’s a story for another time.
That piano isn’t there anymore in the Kirkhof building. According to a student at the Help Desk, it was moved because a new prayer room had moved in on the floor above, and the noise from the piano had simply become too much. This song is an ode to that old piano, the quizzes and exams students did poorly on because of their lack of concentration on study materials while I was playing, the people sleeping on couches I woke up, and even the occasional passer-by who thought, “what on Earth is that awful racket coming from inside that lounge area?” My hope is that listening to this song will stir some of those emotions somewhere inside you, and you can appreciate it for what it is: something of a musical middle-finger, but in the most tasteful of ways.
- B
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