High View To Low on Bandcamp

Lonesome Yodel, Busker's Holiday, Middle of May, Breathe And Sway, 10AM and many more tunes are out on Bandcamp.

Tray card with handy track listing:

Zsa Zsa's Bra on Bandcamp

D00d . . . Zsa Zsa's Bra . . . On Bandcamp . . .

ye olde J-card

It Shouldn't Be This Way

In a pink caddy of Mary Kay's
Dame Fortune drove by to say
EconoLodge
is Love's cheapest refuge

Running out all you could say
"the Garden State's no place to stray"
How could such pretty lips
spill so much refuse

from "It Shouldn't Be This Way"
©1985 Kevin R. Seward

Somewhere between wanting to be Bryan Ferry and wanting to be Elvis Costello, with some carry over from the works of Carl Jung and the Cavalier poets, I had a lyricless noisy thing I'd recorded with a very loosely tuned guitar.

Lyrics just sort of came along as I was walking in a barnyard of long ago. Then more lyrics came and finally way too many.

But for better or worse, the now more conventional music fashioned from the flubbery guitar thing could hold them all.

So below, the early demo or whatever version. Then a later demo or whatever version.

It Shouldn't Be This Way


It Shouldn't Be This Way (1990 recording)

Wheel's Reinvention, My Sweet Plaything, Fried Chicken Blues

Wheel's Reinvention



My Sweet Plaything



More spookiness of the unreliable narrator variety.


Fried Chicken Blues



Another scary tune . . one that pushes some of the already dark lyrical impulses of the Blues clear 'round the bend.

Comfort Waltz, Winter Palace, Hear Me Call

Comfort Waltz



Winter Palace


Hear Me Call

All three songs were written in the mid 1980s. All bear some grandiose notions-- the latter two wanting to be something like Fairport Convention circa "Tale In Hard Time" with a touch of Mission of Burma, Hüsker Dü, et al.

(Yeah, go ahead, laugh . . .)

Whatever they are or aren't in terms of concept or execution, they are some of my faves.

Gratuitous geek note: Hear Me Call might be one of the first things I recorded with anything sequenced besides a drum machine. Indeed, I used the band's Roland TR-505 drum machine as a rudimentary sort of MIDI sequencer to drive my bandmate Dale's Korg Poly-800. Still doing the passing between two cassette decks trick, I could record the drums, a very basic synth bass and whatever live stuff in one pass.

The versions of the others were recorded later on with, at the very least, the best MIDI gear a Caldor or a Lechmere could offer.

T-Improv, Smashed In Doors

T-Improv



Smashed In Doors

Instrumental for Plug, Endlessly

Instrumental for Plug



Endlessly

10 AM, Furthest Star, Blue Light

10 AM



Furthest Star



Blue Light

Harp Sketch, New Rub

Harp Sketch


New Rub



These are two tracks from Twilight Extended (click here to view ancient website on Internet Archive), a New Age meditation/relaxation music tape I released under yet another pseudonym, Bernard Waschman.


It's interesting that this music was created in much the same way as 12-Bit Jimson--using a sampler and recording to cassette. For the mixdown, I borrowed an Ursa Major reverb from my friend Steev. From that it was mastered by the good folks at W Bla Bla Bla.

The photo I took late one cold winter's day at my folks'.

Happy Halloween

Here are a few holiday appropriate entries . . .

I am responsible for me: 12 Bit Jimson's spooky machine

Zsa-Zsa's Bra by any other name . . .

Encounters With Insects, Hey Little Darlin'

long beginning: wayohh

Wayohh is not spooky per se, but might go that way in a haunted house.

And tonight only, 7-10 PM Eastern time, Thick Wisps broadcast a live Halloween show.

Middle of May, Not The Place, Still We Love

Middle of May



Not The Place



Still We Love

Another Good Morning, Busker's Holiday, Rubber Band Z-Box Blues

Another Good Morning


Busker's Holiday


Rubber Band Z-Box Blues

Breathe and Sway, Dream Song, Spiritus Monday

Breathe and Sway



Dream Song (Open So High)


Spiritus Monday

Zsa-Zsa's Bra by any other name . . .

Aside from the aforementioned Bengal Burlap, I have assumed many personae to suit my musical purposes.

Here's a couple of tunes done under the guise of Zsa-Zsa's Bra:

Creepy Death Dude


Just Bones


As you may expect, ZZB are just some super sweet biker dude sociopaths whose motto is "Live Free or Kill". Misunderstood by most, they just want a little space of their own in which to live and drive around. "The whole world . . .!"

It was near Halloween I think and I had entirely too much time to think at a mailroom temp job. And thus the notion of ZZB was born.

In my typical untimely fashion, I also, um, had ZZB cover Jessi Colter's "I'm Not Lisa". Then someone pointed out that Killdozer had covered that song. But you know, I saw Killdozer. And fine gents tho' they be, they're no Zsa-Zsa's Bra. So maybe I'll post that cover someday.

Anyway, when I played the ZZB for some old friends down Virginia way, they didn't believe it was me singing. Heh.

Wanting to go out on top, ZZB disbanded so I could go on to develop some additional multiple personalities. But I hear tell that late on a Saturday night you can hear their tunes cranking out of white van riding through Laconia.

my wife's favorites: Cascade, Lonesone Yodel

These are two of my wife's favorite songs from what I've done.

Cascade is from around the same time as Francis Bacon. (Also on Box.)


Lonesome Yodel is from a few years before that.

She likes plenty of other stuff, including Bengal Burlap (more of that later).