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.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Running Scared, Mary Magazine, Justine
Running Scared
(UPDATE: This song & the ones below now out on Six Songs In July.)
In the late spring, early summer of 1984 I was malingering in a house some friends Jenny and Jim were subletting on Baker Street in Charlottesville. Yeah, watching cable (my first extended exposure to MTV), washing dishes at an Indian restaurant (until I was fired), eating lentils (and little else).
And recording songs on an 8-track reel-to-reel that Brian Daley was nice enough to let me use. Indeed it was Brian's generous offer, with no prompting from me. Downtime when he and his band mates from Rude Buddha weren't recording in the basement, I could thread a scratch reel of tape and record a song of my own.
In spite of my lack of experience with serious recording equipment, I recorded four songs. Running Scared was one of those.
Mary Magazine
While Running Scared had already been written weeks before, I believe Mary Magazine had just been written.
I only recall that in the months previous, when I'd lived above a pipe shop that mostly sold sweatshirts, my neighbor Sean was constantly playing Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom. I loved that record, every damn song on it, and could not get sick of hearing it. So you can blame Sean and Elvis for the above.
Justine
Here and in the other songs above there's the beat of a Synsonics drum machine. It was a fun gizmo and I'd used it for a while by this point. An early rack delay of Brian's gave the guitar its gallop. I think there's a keyboard part in there somewhere played on a tiny Casio my friend Jim had.
It's Time, the fourth song, is good in some ways and embarrassing in others. I'll sneak it on when no one's looking.
Aside from Rude Buddha, I recall Baby Opaque playing at Baker Street. The guitarist Todd was an actual (i.e. non-malingering) housemate. The drummer Michael was one of the first person in my undoubtedly sheltered life to mention Weekly World News.
After several weeks in this house of music, it was time to malinger someplace else. My friend Bob and I flew standby on People Express to England and wended our way to Paris . . .
(UPDATE: This song & the ones below now out on Six Songs In July.)
In the late spring, early summer of 1984 I was malingering in a house some friends Jenny and Jim were subletting on Baker Street in Charlottesville. Yeah, watching cable (my first extended exposure to MTV), washing dishes at an Indian restaurant (until I was fired), eating lentils (and little else).
And recording songs on an 8-track reel-to-reel that Brian Daley was nice enough to let me use. Indeed it was Brian's generous offer, with no prompting from me. Downtime when he and his band mates from Rude Buddha weren't recording in the basement, I could thread a scratch reel of tape and record a song of my own.
In spite of my lack of experience with serious recording equipment, I recorded four songs. Running Scared was one of those.
Mary Magazine
While Running Scared had already been written weeks before, I believe Mary Magazine had just been written.
I only recall that in the months previous, when I'd lived above a pipe shop that mostly sold sweatshirts, my neighbor Sean was constantly playing Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom. I loved that record, every damn song on it, and could not get sick of hearing it. So you can blame Sean and Elvis for the above.
Justine
Here and in the other songs above there's the beat of a Synsonics drum machine. It was a fun gizmo and I'd used it for a while by this point. An early rack delay of Brian's gave the guitar its gallop. I think there's a keyboard part in there somewhere played on a tiny Casio my friend Jim had.
It's Time, the fourth song, is good in some ways and embarrassing in others. I'll sneak it on when no one's looking.
Aside from Rude Buddha, I recall Baby Opaque playing at Baker Street. The guitarist Todd was an actual (i.e. non-malingering) housemate. The drummer Michael was one of the first person in my undoubtedly sheltered life to mention Weekly World News.
After several weeks in this house of music, it was time to malinger someplace else. My friend Bob and I flew standby on People Express to England and wended our way to Paris . . .
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Veteran's Day, Listen, Music and Candlelight
Veteran's Day
Here's another fave of mine, another bigger and better than me surprise.
Being just enough of a geek to connect my old two tapedeck recording setup to a mixing board (my bandmate Dale's ARP gizmo), I could do almost decent recording of songs. Something of a old habit that was now half-justified (& half-obviated) by playing in a band. I could record demos . . .
Being more of a control addict than a team player, I'd get all fancy with the production and effects galore. And thanks to Dale, there was a Roland drum machine to do my rhythmic bidding.
Listen
This is another demo recording.
There's also a studio version that Dale, band mates Dan and Dan and I recorded as Nobody Home. By that time, the song had been kicking around a while, but I still liked it. I still thought of it as a pleasant surprise.
Music and Candlelight
Years before this recording, my friend Bob and I were loitering in our friend Pete's apartment. It was in Paris, someplace I'd never been and would likely never go again. Montmartre was close by and we could see Sacre-Coeur Cathedral through the window. Strumming along on Pete's classical, this song kinda just fell out of thin air.
In like fashion, this recording came along. Thrown in there was the sound of my brother Alex's verdigris'd saxophone (same one used on Grunt Grunt Pig). Not really planned, not really perfect, it was yet another surprise.
Here's another fave of mine, another bigger and better than me surprise.
Being just enough of a geek to connect my old two tapedeck recording setup to a mixing board (my bandmate Dale's ARP gizmo), I could do almost decent recording of songs. Something of a old habit that was now half-justified (& half-obviated) by playing in a band. I could record demos . . .
Being more of a control addict than a team player, I'd get all fancy with the production and effects galore. And thanks to Dale, there was a Roland drum machine to do my rhythmic bidding.
Listen
This is another demo recording.
There's also a studio version that Dale, band mates Dan and Dan and I recorded as Nobody Home. By that time, the song had been kicking around a while, but I still liked it. I still thought of it as a pleasant surprise.
Music and Candlelight
Years before this recording, my friend Bob and I were loitering in our friend Pete's apartment. It was in Paris, someplace I'd never been and would likely never go again. Montmartre was close by and we could see Sacre-Coeur Cathedral through the window. Strumming along on Pete's classical, this song kinda just fell out of thin air.
In like fashion, this recording came along. Thrown in there was the sound of my brother Alex's verdigris'd saxophone (same one used on Grunt Grunt Pig). Not really planned, not really perfect, it was yet another surprise.
I am responsible for me: 12 Bit Jimson's spooky machine
Some years after the goofy (if gallows) humor of Zsa-Zsa's Bra, I went all Sybil again and sprouted another musical persona: 12 Bit Jimson.
Glen/Harry Glen/Harry was the flagship tune. The most nutty and least problematic of the Jimson armada.
Listening to sensationalist talk radio while processing expense reports for some engineer's business trip to Malaysia, I had my boombox taping (yep, that same boombox . . . pictured here). After hours, I sampled the better parts of what was passing for public discourse, sampled my own absurd two cents worth and there you go.
Wick (Not Exist)
I bothered to send reel tapes of Glen/Harry to a few local college radio stations. But something like Wick, dependent on audio clips taken from a few movies (mostly The Loved One), seemed to be an invitation to litigation. Even in those early, innocent days of sampling everything in earshot.
While it seems the height of hypocrisy that visual artist can freely collage items and appropriate and aural artists can't, such is the way of things.
And though these are my works to which I claim authorship & copyright, I post them here as fun things I did without commercial intent. Add to that my lack of deep pockets and I think we can move on to other controversy . . .
Just so you're warned:
Our next tune plays postmodern havoc with a widely practiced and revered prayer. It also plays havoc with advertising promises, talk radio advice and the male voice of authority. It plays havoc, period.
If that's not your sort of thing, don't go listening to this next tune.
Blesséd (Grace)
Blesséd is a bit like Glen/Harry. Both have exponents of old and new, faith & reason. More important is how in both there's a balance of trust a listener has in one voice or another, perhaps agreeing with words spoken by one but preferring the tone of the other.
I didn't even know the prayer I had sampled was Hail Mary. I wasn't raised a Catholic and I'm not one now. But the tone of the priest in terms of pure sound (low, resonant) and emotion (calm, abiding) is a ground for the whole piece. And yet the sense of the words is held in suspension, floating with the more overwrought, overplayed tone and rhetoric of the other voices. Held in the same skeptical regard.
My personal views aside, I think a more powerful bias of mine is sound over sense, musicality over meaning, context over content.
So the person I should have the most common cause with in Glen/Harry, the man who insists "I am responsible . . .": I really can't trust the guy. He tries too hard, strives too much to be reasonable. In my sonic drama (where this man is only a character, not his full-blooded self), you can hear he's doomed to break from the strain.
There's more to say down the line, about life in the wake of Massive Resistance or some such. Later, maybe.
Glen/Harry Glen/Harry was the flagship tune. The most nutty and least problematic of the Jimson armada.
Listening to sensationalist talk radio while processing expense reports for some engineer's business trip to Malaysia, I had my boombox taping (yep, that same boombox . . . pictured here). After hours, I sampled the better parts of what was passing for public discourse, sampled my own absurd two cents worth and there you go.
Wick (Not Exist)
I bothered to send reel tapes of Glen/Harry to a few local college radio stations. But something like Wick, dependent on audio clips taken from a few movies (mostly The Loved One), seemed to be an invitation to litigation. Even in those early, innocent days of sampling everything in earshot.
While it seems the height of hypocrisy that visual artist can freely collage items and appropriate and aural artists can't, such is the way of things.
And though these are my works to which I claim authorship & copyright, I post them here as fun things I did without commercial intent. Add to that my lack of deep pockets and I think we can move on to other controversy . . .
Just so you're warned:
Our next tune plays postmodern havoc with a widely practiced and revered prayer. It also plays havoc with advertising promises, talk radio advice and the male voice of authority. It plays havoc, period.
If that's not your sort of thing, don't go listening to this next tune.
Blesséd (Grace)
Blesséd is a bit like Glen/Harry. Both have exponents of old and new, faith & reason. More important is how in both there's a balance of trust a listener has in one voice or another, perhaps agreeing with words spoken by one but preferring the tone of the other.
I didn't even know the prayer I had sampled was Hail Mary. I wasn't raised a Catholic and I'm not one now. But the tone of the priest in terms of pure sound (low, resonant) and emotion (calm, abiding) is a ground for the whole piece. And yet the sense of the words is held in suspension, floating with the more overwrought, overplayed tone and rhetoric of the other voices. Held in the same skeptical regard.
My personal views aside, I think a more powerful bias of mine is sound over sense, musicality over meaning, context over content.
So the person I should have the most common cause with in Glen/Harry, the man who insists "I am responsible . . .": I really can't trust the guy. He tries too hard, strives too much to be reasonable. In my sonic drama (where this man is only a character, not his full-blooded self), you can hear he's doomed to break from the strain.
There's more to say down the line, about life in the wake of Massive Resistance or some such. Later, maybe.
Friday, October 26, 2007
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