STORIES BEHIND THE MUSIC / THE CECIL HOTEL MISTERY / STEEMIT PROJECT

Hey everyone. This is my first entry for ''Stories behind the music'' project on Steemit I've decided to do in the next few months. Of course, I'll be posting regularly about all the other things I'm planning (or not planning) on doing as well as other music unrelated stuff. So, here's the first entry, a story about how we wrote the song ''The Cecil Hotel''. Enjoy!

The Cecil Hotel is located in Los Angeles and it's part of LA's metropolitan area. It was built in 1924. by hotelier William Banks Hanner, as a destination for business travelers and tourists. It offered a place to stay for a low budget and as it is located near the city's center, it soon became a popular destination for people with little money and nowhere to stay. However, the Cecil soon became known for being cursed as many people either died or went missing in the hotel under misterious circumstances.

The death reports started back in 1931. when a guest named W.K. Norton died in his room after taking poison capsules. The suicides and the misteries continued throughout the 1940's and 1950's and it didn't take long for the Cecil to become known as ''The Suicide''. In addition to suicides, the Cecil's history includes other kinds of violence and salacious happenings. It also became a notorious rendezvous spot for adulterous couples, drug activity and prostitution. In 2013. changed it's name into ''Stay on Main'' but the creepy violent activities continued. Amongst the most famous deaths from the Cecil Hotel is the death of Elisa Lam. The surveillance video shows Elisa behaving strange in the elevator only to be found days later in one of the rooftop water tanks after some of the guests were complaining that ''the water tasted funny and the pressure was low.'' Today, the Cecil is still open for businnes under the name ''Stay on Main'' and it's being visited by tourists around the world.

Last year, my band Moskau released a concept album ''Violence & Sorrow'' dealing with themes such as depression, anxiety, alchohol, violence, misoginy, religion, addiction etc. The album is divided into two sections (Sorrow with 7 and Violence with 6 songs) as it explores and depicts various ways in which people are coping (or not coping) with the notions of sorrow and violence. The album was nearly finished when Django learned about the Cecil. We were all constantly reading about all kinds of topics related to sorrow and violence so he eventually stumbled upon the Cecil Hotel mistery. We wanted to give the song a twist and present it as a fun place because you never know what to expect. So he went on Wikipedia and literally scrambled the sentences around to create lyrics for the song. Almost everything is used exactly how it is written online except for some changes made to achieve rhyming and to make the lyrics fit to the music. The song is sort of a ''violent-hip-hop-party'' track with Django reciting mistery after mistery about the Cecil. Everything fell into place nicely and the song was finished within a day. It's one of my favorite songs and surely a live in concert instant hit. Here are the links for both the studio and the live version: