DJJD Volume 9

Created By:  Jonathan Dysart (DJJD)

Original Creation Year:  2005

Year of Re-master:  2010

Song Listing

Side A

1.    Look What You've Done:  Jet

2.    One Headlight:  The Wallflowers

3.    Are You Gonna Be My Girl?:  Jet

4.    Criminal:  Fiona Apple

Side B

5.    Blow Up the Outside World: Soundgarden

6.    Out of My Head:  Fastball

7.    Sex and Candy:  Marcy Playground

8.    Heart Shaped Box:  Nirvana

9.    Mama, I'm Coming Home:  Ozzy Osbourne

Side C

10. Ordinary World:  Duran Duran

11. Saltwater:  Julian Lennon

12. Chicago:  Graham Nash

13. Love is Alive: Gary Wright

14. More Than I Can Say: Leo Sayer

Side D

15. I Love This Bar:  Toby Keith

16. Take This Job and Shove It:  Johnny Paycheck
      "Office Space" Hip Hop version. Not on album

17. Bad Days (Aurally Excited Version):  The Flaming Lips

18. At My Most Beautiful:  R.E.M.

19. I'm Batman:  The Marble Tea

Origin of the Album

WORK SUCKS!!!!  AND I AM ABOUT TO EXPLODE!!!

That was my mindset upon the creation of this concept album.

          I just finished a two to three-month project on-site with a client up in Naperville.  I was working growling hours, at a minimum of 10 hours per day, and sometimes during the weekend.  My health was deteriorating.  The only meals I was eating were restaurants, particularly fast food.  I was not getting rest.  I started getting grey hair.  My waist was growing.

            I went to the local emergency hospital in Naperville, thinking that I had the mumps since that was hitting the client office a lot.  In the ER, it was diagnosed that I was suffering from exhaustion, and I needed to take a break.

            When I got back home, I was completely burned out.  My company was going through its turmoil.  Co-workers that I adored were leaving, and the future of the company was unsure.  Even though the job was a bright spot for my future, it was going south fast.  I was tired of it, just a daily grind just to go to the office.  I did not have a vacation for two to three years straight.  Home and family life was not graceful at the same time, having relationship problems and basically B.S. with some of them.  I could not get a break and get any peace whatsoever, not even at church.

            I was recently watching the relevant movie comedy Office Space, listening to the country song “Take This Job and Shove It” and the alternative song “Bad Days”, which was played on the movie “Batman Forever” when Edward Nygma (played by Jim Carrey) enters his domain.  The memorial Bad Days lyrics by The Flaming Lips are as follows:

            You’re sorta stuck where you are

            But in your dreams, you can buy expensive cars

            Or live on Mars and have it your way

            And you hate your boss at your job          

            Well in your dreams, you can blow his head off

            In your dreams show no mercy

            I decided to download those songs as the foundation for my new album.  I added “Mama, I’m Coming Home” by Ozzy Osborne, expressing my feelings coming home from Naperville.  I added two Jet songs, which I heard over the loudspeakers at Best Buy.  “Chicago” by Graham Nash was a jab at the city of where I was working from.  The Windy City that people glorify is basically a city of dung, in my opinion.  It was far beyond simply being a rival as an St. Louis Cardinal fan.  This city of Chicago and its mentality sucks big time.  "I Love This Bar" by Toby Keith came from a time when I was hitting the bars hard - Dark Rum and Coke was my drink of choice.  

With those initial tracks, I had more ideas and built the album around those song tracks.  

Concept and Theme of the Album

              As I was mentioning above, I was completely downtrodden and in angst with my life at that time.  My job was a complete pain.  I had no life.  I could not see any positive future at that time.  I needed a release using music as my tool and therapy. 

            DJJD Volume 9 could have been subtitled as the “Angst” album, similar that John Lennon’s solo album Plastic Ono Band – nicknamed “Primal Therapy”.  It does have a Beatlesque flavor to it:  Jet (who are heavily influenced by the Beatles) and Julian Lennon.  It has a combination of hard and soft rock, pop, and country music – similar that to the Beatles Revolver.  The theme of the album – the last one since DJJD Volume 3 - is more subjective, yet it has a taste of angst and rebellion.

Concept and the Album Cover

              Taking from the Beatles flavor of this album, I looked at the album cover Get Born by the band Jet.  The artwork looked so similar that to the Beatles Revolver, that I wanted to create an album cover that was similar to black and white themes. 

               I was going through the internet for some pictures, in particular, surreal art.  After a couple days of searching, I found this surreal picture – in black and white – where bunches of letters were formed to a surreal image of a portrait.  From my interpretation of the picture, it looked like a somber and sad man.  I found my picture.

            All I did was add the title in the middle left, using the same font as the letters of the picture.  I also added shading at the corners to add some more dimension.

            When working on the remaster of this album, I could not find that picture again.  Therefore, I tried and clean the picture up as best as possible, so I applied it to a white brick landscape using free internet tools.  But it represents the overall tone of the album - angst and bitterness.