AUDIO

2006

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Junkie Stir
+ AFTER SPENDING 10 YEARS WRITING MAYBE THREE SONGS, IT WAS A LOT OF FUN... (MORE)

After spending 10 years writing maybe three songs, it was a lot of fun to write this one in 10 seconds. To call it a writing effort at all seems a bit of a misnomer. As it happened I was fiddling around with a software package called Project5* , trying to convince myself that it might be useful, and this wound up on my hard drive. (If I weren't such a propeller-head I could say "on tape", but it was not so...)

I never was particularly convinced by Project5, but surprisingly, I was convinced by this funky little guitar groove, played over a drum loop and steeped in delay. I grabbed a poem I'd written circa 1994, and literally read it into the mic. Then I plugged in a MIDI guitar and played the fake bass line, and bashed away at a keyboard (which I can not play, as it happens) to form the underlying Hammond part. Both of these were voiced by a soft-synth included with P5, called Dimension. (This one component is, in fact, pretty convincing.) First takes, no edits, all improvised. What could be easier? The effects-heavy mix is, of course, very, very forgiving...

I never expected any of this to stick, and obviously what's presented is a just a sketch, but when I went back to the initial recording I consistently found that I liked it. I sensed a "signature" that might become the sound of my next band, should that ever come to pass. As such, I take it to be the first song of the brand new Means.

black dog
junkie stir
rise by heat of day
shall we twist the vacant smiles
drag sharp stains across this face
tie knots round the naked throat knowing
rather than to swallow
pride not least
among our poisons
greet you feel you know your
affectations of indifference
i'll allow for your assumption
of my lapse in reason
you believe
this descent
to be a simple one
showering beside you and then
wearing steel and rubber
smear myself across these miles of tarmac
drop you home
expect that i'll miss you
but say
nothing
these are long dark days in mourning sun and
hot bright nights
shaken from sleep
if come back to you
will you ever have known
i'm gone

Quiver of Eros
+ NOODLE ALERT! OR, IF YOU PREFER: "1985 CALLED - IT WANTS ITS GUITAR PARTS BACK..." (MORE)

The cool thing about posting songs as MP3's to what basically amounts to a Blog is that I can use this as my own personal confessional. In other words I can beat you all to the punch. (One visitor recommended I not pre-judge my work, but I do reserve the right to judge after the fact.)

So, I don't think this piece has quite arrived at where it's going yet, but it's March 1st and high time I posted something new. Call it a brazen display of honesty. I am going to play my "these are only scratch tracks" card (I have a spare deck of them) for now. I'm still waiting on a real drum controller so for the time being you'll have to endure another round of my stock kick-hat-snare-hat treatment. (I did play the loop with my own fingers, I'll have you know.) As for that lead guitar business... forgive me, I took one pass just to see what would happen, clipped the really awful notes, and left it. In the end, I think the whole first half of the "song" is likely to disappear. The structure itself is questionable - I haven't found a hook or a chorus yet. There's just that intro and a bit of a bridge in the middle.

I've also broken some "rules" here by recording something that was more of a "production first, song second"; not to mention that I can't imagine how I'd perform it with a trio. (Not sure why that's become a personal objective of mine - maybe because herding 2 other musicians, and myself, has proved more than sufficiently challenging for me.)

At the beginning of the month (02/07) I set out to do this sort of art-speed-metal thing (obviously, this did not "take") based on a stream-of-consciousness poem I wrote ca. 1992. I struggled with the rewrite, trying to make it scan, until finally I was left with only three words that I actually cared about: "Quiver of eros." Essentially a pun with the added elegance of happening to make its own kind of sense... but these words held me for some reason. After carrying them around for a couple of days, "I draw a sharp breath" hit me, and then... nothing for a while.

One night I woke up abruptly with my head racing about the story of the man (help me out here) who shot the apple off of so-and-so's head... About acts of courage and trust and bonding... about apples and snakes and the Garden of Eden... about splitting the core... getting to the core... splitting the atom... atom and eve... an old half-song called Weave...

Boy, I slept like shit that night.

i draw a sharp
breath
from a quiver of eros
i'll let it fly this time
i get the drop on you

we aim to fear less
the snake that prepares us
to merely die in time
we split the core in two

come shed your false
flesh
the world that ensnares us
no matter what we find
i'd have a look at you

3 Rings

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Blossom
+ THIS SONG IS AS OLD AS DIRT... (MORE)

Cirque de la Lune
WORDS AND MUSIC BY DAVE DOYLE
+ AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT... (MORE)

Trace
+ THIS ONE CAME ON VERY QUICKLY... (MORE)