Rubber and Glue
BTW if you have iTunes or Spotify or other conventional music sites, the title of this track will appear as Rubber and Glue (Live). That’s because I mis-typed when entering it for distribution, or the auto-fill happened too fast, I think, but something on the web page got funky and I tried to go back and change it but the interface wouldn’t let me and then the browser quit and so on and so on. Anyway, The Virtualistics version of Rubber and Glue is not a (Live) version. It’s pretty close to the single released in February of 2021, but Jon has gone in and tweaked the levels to better match the other songs on the LP. Singles are like that. You just throw them out like baseball cards and then everyone forgets them. During the pandemic I made everything into a single. What else was there to do? Scroll to track 3:
This fun song has been around for a few years in my world and it has that nice worn leather kind of feel. It's motown, you’ve been here before, it’s light, puffy, and cute. How far along do we have to go before I can make you start singing the lyrics with me? It’s December 2020 and I am trying to be carefree.
Rubber and Glue is my heritage. We were kids in the late 1960s, playing baseball on Toledo’s tough streets at the height of Motown’s pull, and songs like Rubber and Glue were everywhere on the radio – take a known expression and make it into a song. From I Heard It On the Grapewine to Cloud Nine, I played my best baseball to those endless R&B songs on a transistor radio tuned to CKLW (Detroit).
For the current Rubber and Glue, I direct mic'd to the studio amp and then laid over vocals in a low register I can only sing at eight in the morning. For some reason it got a little swampy, as in river blues, which Jon Ireson, our producer, bassist, and acoustic guitarist, managed to save and amp up. The swampyness saves the song from getting too pop-ish, dare I say more Muscle Shoals. Chana and Mikaela recorded separate sessions in January, as I watched on Zoom with comments and direction. Chana has the high spots on this one with her Yeah, Yeah voice. It’s an instant classic. She just threw it out while recording a track and I stopped and made her do it again for me, several times in a row and then we dropped it in. I think Chana makes this song. Yeah Yeah!
Producer, Jon Ireson, amazingly fixed all the "artifacts" in my studio recodings as well as the vocalists’ home made set up, put it all together, played bass and guitars. Artifacts can be squeaky floorboards in the studio, the movement of your weight on a chair, the hum of some electric device you forget was on — or the cat, who often shook his collar bell as he sat in as my only groupie. Jon then gave it that simple Motown beat and rhythm contrasted by the clever, catchy pick-up lines indicating romantic attachment. It’s a simple story of a couple who are opposites but in love. Each verse has a different rhyming pattern until the last verse when there’s no rhyme at all, but by now you don’t hear it… it’s all “stuck on you”.
Jon Ireson, Producer says: “A wonderfully simple, catchy tune. It makes you think of the days when all you needed was a little ditty about your true love and a melody that you could hum for days. The song has that laid back feel of a CCR track to me so I added some call and response guitar lines with that John Fogerty spirit in mind. The girls add the sugar to the recipe. Some syrupy sweet backups.”
Rubber & Glue, by Patrick Ames. © 2014 All Rights Reserved.
I like to move around /But lately I have found
You got the kind of face / makes me stay in one place
I'm rubber, you're glue / And I'm stuck on you
I drift around and I sing / You sit down to chat
I'm busy until I fall asleep / maybe you can help me with that
I'm rubber, you're glue / And I'm stuck on you
It's funny how things attract / Like magnets do when they smack
We're kinda different you know / But we still kiss toe to toe
I'm rubber, you're glue / And I'm stuck on you
I'm stuck on you / We're rubber and glue
Like a fly caught on flypaper / Life begs sooner than later
There's not a whole lot to do / But hang out in your dressing room
I'm rubber, you're glue / And I'm stuck on you
I'm stuck on you
We're rubber and glue.