Get in Line

An excerpt from a now deleted blog post from Juliana on her official site in 2009:

Once in a while I go and revisit some beloved music from the era of my childhood (1970’s) and I get re-obsessed. For a couple of weeks when I happened to be working on writing my “In Exile Deo” album it was ELO (Electric Light Orchestra, for those of you unfamiliar with the band). I was blissing out to their greatest hits CD and for a few days “Mr. Blue Sky” was really blowing wind so hard up my skirt. I had the song on repeat; I was on a “Mr. Blue Sky” binge. I loved the relentless downbeat groove and I wanted some for myself and “Get In Line” was what I came up with.

I still go crazy whenever I listen to this song (the ELO song, not my song). It makes me so happy. If I ever get married I want this song played at my wedding.

I love that the guitar solo comes in early – in the middle of the song. So cool. So refreshing. I love the strings’ perfect and uncheesy rock usage. I love the impeccable and uncanny arrangement and all of the sounds. I love the one-two-three-four slams on the…what is that, the bell of the ride cymbal? Or a gong?

On my song I tuned the main guitar to an open D chord: D A D F# A D. (I almost always play my solos in normal EADGBE tuning. This makes it hard to translate many of my recorded leads in a live setting. I dream of owning a double-necked guitar someday just so that I can play, in concert, the unconventionally-tuned songs’ rhythm parts on the bottom neck, but then also play their conventionally-tuned solo parts – by switching to the 2nd neck.) It’s fun to write in this open tuning sometimes. It frees me up when I’m at a loss for ideas in standard tuning. And I can make it sound Stonesy or pretty or sad or triumphant or lazy or any combination of all of the above. But I’m not sure “Get In Line” has any of these qualities. “Get In Line” is something else. It doesn’t sound like it is played in open tuning. And doesn’t sound like any other of my songs that are played in open D tuning – Because We Love You, On Your Mind, The Easy Way Out, The Prettiest Girl, etc.