Takin' It Easy

"Takin' It Easy" (with an emphasis on the apostrophe replacing the "g") is a hard rock song written and sung by William Murderface and Toki Wartooth irrespective of their work with Dethklok. It is presented in the second season's episode "Dethrecord" and supposedly revolves around the benefits of remaining calm or, in other words, taking it easy.

While Murderface claims the writing mainly for himself, Toki is credited with all the engineering activities. Moreover, Murderface contemplates including the song in his side project Planet Piss; ruling out 'greedy' Toki at that.

The song does not appear on any show related album nor is a (full) version beside the excerpt featured in the episode available.

History
While their bandmates are affected by a writer's block and busy with the recordings for the upcoming album, Murderface and Toki are having a rather easy time, as they are hardly involved in the creative process. Murderface is not willing to simply put up with that, and thereupon approaches Toki, in front of which he laments about them both being excluded despite: "brimming with ideas." He then broaches their potential to save the band in the matter of writing music. The rhythm guitarist, however, does not show himself all too enthusiastic about the suggestion of starting a side project, evidently preferring some leisure to play with a portable console.

Nonetheless, an idea for a song emerges when they are discussing potential themes: taking it easy. For this purpose, persuaded Toki familiarizes himself with the recording equipment. He thereby rather sabotages Dethklok as he accidentally deletes essential guitar recordings which were priorly made by Skwisgaar in an elaborated and dangerous skydiving-experiment.

Later on, the Takin' it Easy-demo is going to be presented to the band. Shortly before, Offdensen asks Nathan, Pickles and Skwisgaar for politeness while criticizing; presumably to avoid further dispute in the important stage of album production they are already in.

At the beginning of the subsequent audition, Murderface and Toki, who are both unaware of Charles’s request, try to butter up their colleagues with coffee and hot towels. This needlessly delays the actual playing, and as several questions concerning title and recording come up, Murderface believes the momentum on the point of being destroyed. When the tape finally starts to play via cassette player, footage corresponding with the music is shown. However, it is unclear whether the video is intended to be produced by the show characters or mere visual accompaniment.

Once the track has finished, Nathan, Pickles and Skwisgaar abide by the agreement made with Offdensen and force themselves to utter some words of acknowledgement, despite being neither truly impressed nor interested in adding the track to the album. According to Skwisgaar, it does not fit the sound of Dethklok. At first, Murderface does not grasp the implied rejection and builds up false hopes about using Takin' it Easy as the album's opening song. After realizing that all of the three are passing on it, he reacts outraged and ponders making it a part of Planet Piss instead. That he (still) refuses to include Toki in this project causes anger in the co-producer. A conflict arises, but the future of the song eventually remains uncertain. (--> see "Dethrecord" for the exact circumstances)

Lyrics


* Now, what you all are doin' on a Saturday night,

I'd rather be sleepin' than gettin' in a fight,

You're rockin' to the north,

You're rockin' to the east,

You're rockin' 'round the world like a heavy metal beast

(You knows, you knows) You know you got to, you know you gonna,

(You knows you gots to take it) Yeah, you know you gonna,

Takin' it, takin' it easy, (x2)

* 1 Takin' it easy,

(Wowee - ) Takin' it ...

Editor's note:
 * In the DVD extras of season two, Murderface reveals that he forgot the actual lyrics of the first strophe after losing the napkin he had them written on. The lines are thus sung as scat and therefore just interpreted by the editor.


 * 1 is basically incoherent babbling (background scat) of Toki.

Music video
-

Trivia

 * Takin' it easy is the subject of discussion in a special feature of the second season's DVD release. The extra named Knubbler interviews Murderface and Toki about the song "Takin' It Easy" depicts a barely moving drawn image of a stereo being placed in front of a tree on grassland, supposedly playing the audio track of – as the title implies – Dick Knubbler interviewing Murderface and Toki regarding their collaborative debut. During its running time of approximately 14 minutes, it piles up quite a bit of trivia not included in the actual episode.
 * Toki indicates right in the beginning of the interview, that he did significantly more work than Murderface is willing to admit. Besides audio engineering, this includes coming up with the idea and writing the melody and guitar parts as well as the lyrics. Murderface plays this statement down by putting emphasis on him being in the leading position, setting the essential focus.
 * Apparently, Toki engineered the song using Avid "Pro Tools".
 * The initial song contained between six and eight bass lines by Murderface and lots of guitars by Toki. Many of the latter were cut out due to Murderface's disliking for guitar-heavy songs written in the vein of Skwisgaar. Toki has not agreed and still suggests putting them back in. He furthermore wishes for a guitar solo.
 * Murderface and Toki sang into the same microphone while recording, resulting in their vocals bleeding onto each other. When Knubbler calls them on this, Murderface mentions that he is not fond of microphones in general and Toki notes that Jagger and Richards made use of this method as well.
 * Both producers express that they are proud of their 'cunning' move to name the east instead of the more obvious south, after singing about the north (cf. line 3-4 in the lyrics above).
 * Murderface assumes that the song would have outdone the Dethklok tracks, if it had been added to their new record, whereas Knubbler suggest putting it on an album: "[...] with more music of its kind." The bassist then reflects how remarkable it would be, if the Takin' it easy-single was first of all published as part of a "classy" Greatest Hits-compilation, obviously misreading Knubbler's intentions.
 * Knubbler describes the song as a: "[...] superb demo," which delights Toki but insults Murderface, who thereupon swears at him and speculates that the producer even would have kicked Elvis out of his studio. This leads to Knubbler losing his countenance for a moment, remarking that Elvis at least showed up with some decent songs. He eventually offers guidance, though.
 * Since its running time of about one minute is barely sufficient to be considered a proper song, Murderface and Toki ponder to loop it a couple of times (instead of extending it by coming up with additional lines).
 * As later also mentioned in the bonus-interview, Toki and Murderface were mistaken about the fact that there would be no song about 'taking it easy'. Knubbler takes the song "Take It Easy" performed by the American rock band Eagles as an example when confronting them with their misconception. Seals and Crofts's album "Takin' It Easy" – featuring a song of the very same name as opening track – shares the theme even literally, inclusive of the apostrophe.