Crickets Chirping

Challenge accepted.

I thought the bass was too low, and Thom’s vocals were too high (pitch-wise, that is. Always with the falsetto, Thom is.) so I made adjustments accordingly. I also think drums always sound better when run through an amp simulator.

I put together an EP from the songs I have recorded over the last year or so. I call it Halfasstronaut. It’s not so much a work of art as it is a crayola drawing you might stick to your fridge with magnets from places we’ve visited together.

Here’s where the magic happened (sob, I’ll miss it):

You can download a .zip of the entire thing here: Halfasstronaut.zip, ~23MB

Or you can skim the tracks here, along with descriptions of the songs:

Adios, Mofos

This is the last song I recorded in the garage, and it’s probably the peppiest damn thing I’ve ever written.

Identity Crisis

I had an idea for a sitcom whose central gimmick was two identical twins who were separated at birth but then reunite later in life. The twist- they’re both blind, and so they don’t even know they’re twins. They move in together for convenience, since they both need roommates. The plot never puts the two in the same place at the same time (except for when they are both home) so people in the building think that there’s only one of them. Hilarity ensues. Instead of coming up with a script, I just wrote a theme song for it.

Lyrics:

Separated, at birth they were
Identical twins
Iodine was in short supply
So they both went blind

Mother, yeah she was a dirty one

No one in the building knows
that there’s two of them
Not even them
Yeah, you could say they’re whole again

Met each other on the subway
After they’d grown old
Neither was aware of the ironic
Coincidence

One needs a roommate
The other needs rent
No one in the building knows
That there’s two of them
Not even them
Yeah, you could say they’re whole again

Waltz of the Melancholy Vaudevillian

This is a re-recording of a song I did a long time ago, this time with drums. And gratuitous use of flange and reverb.

Our Onion

It’s so hard to be sincere these days. Rather than pour your heart out and risk sounding comically trite, it’s easier to parody true feelings and go for the sarcastic angle and make the comedy sound intentional.

These tiny things are precious to me
Easy to lose, and so hard to find
Digging through these dusty corners
I found the truth and I lost my mind
[see, my mind is tiny :)]

Just like you but not beautiful or true
A perfect match, strike me anywhere
Burning down this family tree
Hope is a curse afflicting the free

Someday I am bound to play
Sweet songs of sorrow till then
These tears ain’t falling
For you

Someday I am bound to play
Sweet songs of sorrow till then
Just keep on peeling
Our onion away

Talking in My Sleep

Can’t keep a secret
Talking in my sleep
I’m gonna tell it all
To the wall

Flower Vase

I bought some flowers in a vase for a friend who was in the hospital. On the drive over there I had to keep the vase in my lap to keep it from falling over, but water splashed out of it all over my crotch. Not wanting to walk around a public place with a soaked groin area (“No, really. It’s water!!!”) I called her boyfriend friend to come get the flowers and take them up to her room. When I went home I wrote this song.

Fron the Neck Down

This girl dumped me for a guy in a wheelchair several years ago. We’re friends now but at the time I didn’t take it very well. I wrote these awful lyrics and Brent shamed me into not actually recording them. It would have gone something like this:

I guess you needed
Someone to push around
But my feet touch the ground

So you dumped me
For a crippled asshole
I guess that’s just how you roll

Now you got yourself
The perfect parking spot
That must count for a lot

From the neck down, I’m alright
It don’t affect my appetite
From the neck down, I work alright

The implication being that perhaps from the neck up, I do not work alright and that’s why she opted for this differently abled fellow.

Don’t Mind Me, I’m Just Flying Debris

Brent played drums on this one, as you may have guessed since they’re nigh flawless (especially compared to my drumming skillz). The squeaking sounds at the beginning are two walkie talkies that I placed facing each other. This creates feedback, and you can control the pitch by how far apart you hold the walkie talkies. It’s sort of like an improvised invisible accordion. That squeals.

777 is a three part song in 7/4 time. It may have been better in concept than in execution, but I felt compelled to follow through after I told a couple of people “hey it would be funny to make a three part song in 7, on 07/07/07.”

I recorded this last night. No words, just guitar.

Here’s a song that Brian and I recorded this past weekend: Waook (2:44 mp3)

Bryan: Guitar, Vocals
Me: Bass, Guitar, Drums

And the lyrics (brace yourself):

Gertrude Stein
Lost her mind
Stoned off of weed

Leonard Nimoy
Lost his favorite toy
A 64 Atari

Waook
With me

Phineas Gauge
Went into a rage
He had something on his mind

George Takei
Likes other guys
Especially from behind

Waook
With me

Orville Wright
Lost his pipe
But still found ways to get high

William Shatner
Fucked an actor
Who wasn’t George Takei

Waook
With me

No, I won’t try to defend the gay jokes, star trek or marijuana references. Furthermore, I am neither able nor willing to explain the quantum physical implications of Leonard Nimoy playing Atari in 1964.

Yes, I realize that we are devolving into junior high mentalities at an ever increasing rate. I believe it’s a reaction to the discomfort of aging.

Valentine’s Day Song 2006 6.6MB MP3, 4:41.

Yeah I know the main guitar riff has been used a million times before. That’s intentional because that’s kinda how I feel about all Valentine’s day sentiments. The words are pretty simple. “Be my valentine” sung at the same time as the spelling of the word “V al en tine” If I knew any cheerleaders I would have had them do that part, but where the hell am I going to find cheerleaders at 11:45pm on a monday?

Don’t answer that.

The second part of the song just says, “take a number” (Number what, you ask? Number two of course. sure. You’re a real comedian for coming up with that.) It’s a reference to a sculpture that Edward made where one of those Take-a-Number dispensers is positioned between the legs of a female mannequin.

Anyways I played/sang everything as usual. Shit I gotta find more musicians. A friend of mine once listened to a song I was working on, then asked me if I played all the tracks. Me: “hell yeah I played all the tracks.” Him: “You’re really good at playing with yourself.” And he wasn’t trying to be funny when he said that. Man I gotta either get back into programming drum samples or find a drummer who doesn’t have a day job or a life what so ever. Brent?

I was going to call this song “I am an Orgy of One” and post it with a picture a camoflage heart with that written on it but I’m just not that motivated today.

Happy Half-Assed Valentines Day.

Here’s a song I made: Temporary Damage (1.5MB mp3, 1 minute)

No words. I just wanted to see what it would sound like if I ran a drum track through a vocoder, so I did that. Then I added bass (finally used that low B on my five string for something), guitar and some other stuff.

The drum track is actually two tracks. The first one gets yanked into the vocoder rather suddenly at the beginning and the other starts up shortly after that. They are both loops from a session I recorded several months ago. Sometimes I’ll sit down with a click track and record myself playing sloppy drums for 20 minutes and then go chop it up into pieces where I’m closest to being on beat. I’m steadily growing a library of self-recorded drum loops. It’s not quite the bag of tricks I’d like it to be, but it works in a pinch.

Here’s a song I wrote. It’s called All the Horrors of Nature. It’s got angler fish in it. You like angler fish, don’t you?

I played all the instruments (no drum loops this time either).

you can read
almost anything
if you stare at it long enough
the flowers in your brain
are spelling out my name
and how

follow me
my spelling bee
flap your little wings
and mocking birds will sing
songs from all our dreams
and how

honey drips
and the trip is never long enough
when our lips touch
the blinking of your eyes
kisses from butterflies
and how

[at which point I looked at the words in my notebook and realized that this was quite possibly the gayest thing I'd ever written. So I wrote a chorus to balance that while maintaining optimal cheese factor]

black widow
crawling in a shadow
a praying mantis’ fantasy come true
angler fish I’ll sink my teeth into you