PropertyOfZack

PropertyOfZack Track-By-Track : : Dave Melillo (Part III)

November 25, 2011 ⋅ 7 notes ⋅ Comments

PropertyOfZack has teamed up with Dave Melillo to do a special kind of Track-By-Track for each of the songs off of his new mixtape, Thinking Of You. In the third edition of the feature, Dave goes deeply behind the music of “Know It All” to discuss the track and his thoughts surrounding it. Dave provided a picture of the production sheet for the track as well.

The following phrases are labeled under B for bullshit:
“true beauty is on the inside”
“everything happens for a reason”
“money can’t buy me love”
“if you dream it you can do it”

However, I have found one common phrase that I can rely on:
“you don’t know what you got until it’s gone”

I met the girl of my dreams when I was 19 years old. Unfortunately, I was in a moderately successful, touring band at the time, which means I had my head so far up my own ass that I could head-butt my colon. As a young man, surrounded by plenty of stimulus, I found it hard to decide exactly what I should do with the feelings I had for this girl. I hesitated giving my complete self to this person because I didn’t understand what I had, and I did not have the vision to see past the hedonistic life I was living at that time.

Let’s get something straight. I didn’t cheat on homegirl. That’s not my style. But there are worse things you can do than cheat on a girl, which include:

- making them feel like they have to compete with other women
- physical being absent from them for long periods of time
- mentally being absent from them for long periods of time
- treating your relationship as a competition rather than a partnership
- making her deal with your own insecurities, doubts and emotional bullshit

Yours truly was guilty of the aforementioned and a little bit more. But at the time I didn’t sweat it cause surely I would meet someone else who captivated my attention equally, if not more than my last love.

PropertyOfZack Track-By-Track : : Dave Melillo (Part II)

November 21, 2011 ⋅ 17 notes ⋅ Comments

PropertyOfZack has teamed up with Dave Melillo to do a special kind of Track-By-Track for each of the songs off of his new mixtape, Thinking Of You. In the second edition of the feature, Dave goes deeply behind the music of “Cut Me Loose” to discuss the track and his thoughts surrounding it. Dave provided a picture of the lyric and production sheet for the track as well.

Let’s start at January 2011:

My life in Florida, that I had just started living after being on the road for 6 years, was destroyed in about 17 days.
No big deal right?
Right.
Let’s add an untimely breakup on New Year’s Eve.
Bummer. But I can handle that surely?
Sure.

Add 14 gin and tonics, 3 sleepless nights and a near death experience and you have the 4th track off the mixtape … Cut Me Loose.

I have been a terrible person at times in my life. In January, every terrible thing that I ever did came back to kick me in the face like an imaginary friend named Tyler Durden. I ended January strung out, fucked up, obliterated, decimated, emaciated, complicated, subjugated and most importantly, instigated. True; I was black and blue, but I peered up at the bully of life with my broken nose and asked: Why?

After asking that question for weeks and months I received an answer from a close friend that no one wants to hear: ”Its you dude” …

Most of the time someone will lie to you, and tell you that the reason that you’re alone or unlucky is because of some external force that you have absolutely no control over. They’ll make excuses for you so you can go about living your life happily in the dregs, resigned to the fact that there is nothing you can do to get yourself out. I’m lucky enough to have really awesome friends who tell me when I suck, and pretty soon I realized that I needed to make some changes.

PropertyOfZack Track-By-Track : : Dave Melillo (Part I)

November 18, 2011 ⋅ 9 notes ⋅ Comments

PropertyOfZack has teamed up with Dave Melillo to do a special kind of Track-By-Track for each of the songs off of his new mixtape, Thinking Of You. Dave is kicking off the feature with “Role Player” and goes deeply behind the music to discuss the track and his thoughts surrounding it and has even provided a picture of the notebook he used to write the song in as well as the tracking sheet for the actual mixtape. Check it out below and come back each day for more!

Most people make a really big deal out of their astrological sign. I am no exception.
I’m a gemini.
I like long walks on the beach.
And a bold merlot …

But really … I have, at the very least, a dualistic personality. Maybe its the fact that I’ve been an entertainer since I was a little kid. I started off acting around the age of 6 and transitioned to music at about 12 years old. In both of those roles the only consistent aspect of my life was inconsistency. I was awarded for playing different characters and relating to people through various different perspectives. Once I found out that I could make advances in my life by using those skills, they started to become something I used on a daily basis. And then something really terrible happened … I stopped being able to control who I switched to and when I made the switch. If I stayed in one identity for too long I started to get bored, or feel anxious. Introduce some substance abuse and alcohol into the mix, and the results became even more random and, at moments, hostile.

I felt for a long time like I lost the real me somewhere among the characters I created to entertain and impress people. And then something really awesome happened … I realized that this vacillation was the cornerstone of my personality. Sure it’s unstable, immature and quasi-hazardous, but a tiger can’t really fuck with his stripes. I’ve learned to embrace the fact that I need to create different identities to deal with my life, and I try to use it to my benefit instead of hating on myself and searching for a consistent personality.