Second Version of the Hill Song

Forwardsbackwardshillsong

Hill song

Take a look at the blog entry below (from 4/29) for the full description of how I derived this song (if you haven't seen it already). (Then come back to this one (if you want).)

The song in this entry is basically a cover of the original song from 4/29 (but I included the original recording below it, for reference).

In news about the hill across the street from me...I think it was a few days ago that the soul of the hill finally left. I can tell...the soul of the hill just ain't there anymore. It no longer looks anything much-at-all like the picture below. I'm not gonna post what it looks like now, because that might be too traumatic to the average viewer. It sucks to live here and see the destruction happen on a daily basis. In any event, the picture above is my most recent flier that I'm posting on telephone poles and such to rebel against the assholes that are ripping out all the trees and ripping the hillside apart. It refers to the fact that I used to hear coyotes at night on that hill on a weekly basis. Not anymore. I don't know why rich developers have to destroy everything and us average citizens have nothing we can do about it.

In any event, I recorded a second version of the song. It's probably not hard to figure out how I made the vocals and guitars sound all weird.

It's odd, because in one sense, this new recording sounds a little bit more like how the song sounded when the hill originally sung it to me than the original recording...and in some senses, it sounds a little less like how it sounded when the hill originally sung it to me.

I feel sad that the hill's spirit has gone away. But I hope the spirit of the hill and all the trees are having a good time in Heaven.

The Song of the Hill

Hill song

[Brief synopsis: I did not write this song. The hill across the street from me did.]

There is this hill across the street from where I live; it's covered with all these beautiful trees, and birds go there and sing, and sometimes I hear coyotes at night.

Or at least that's how it used to be. Then these assholes came and started ripping out all the trees. I'm sure they're gonna put an ugly building there. It's ripping my heart out. It's tearing me apart to see this devastation. It's tearing me apart to see an ecosystem totally destroyed in front of my eyes.

I shoulda known it was coming. A few months ago, I dreamed of a hill with trees on it, and all the trees got ripped out of the ground. I never made the connection between that and the hill that I live across from. And then it happened. Shit, man.

Well, anyway, I feel so stupid and helpless. I feel all impotent. I can't do anything about it. I can't do anything to stop this atrocity. All I could think to do was make fliers with the Lorax on them speaking on behalf of the trees and put 'em up on phone poles and such. It's odd; I feel really good about that act of protest, even though it's not gonna do any good.

But last weekend, when I finally came to terms with the awfulness of what was happening, I kept on asking the spirit world what the fuck I should do about it. The answer I got was to listen for the Song of the Hill.

See, okay, that needs a bit of unpacking.

One belief I have is that every being has a song.

Okay, I think I need to do even more unpacking.

I think that hill has a spirit. A few nights ago, I got the message that the spirit of a hill isn't just the dirt. It isn't just the geological formation. That spirit also is of the trees and little plants and all that is growing on that hill. Now that this awful construction is happening, that spirit is going away. When it's reduced to just a mound of dirt, that is when I will know that hill's spirit has gone to Heaven.

So, the message I got was to listen for the song of the spirit of the hill. See, I believe every being has a song that's their very own song. It's sort of like a calling card for the spirit world to be able to recognize you. You sing your song, and the spirit world'll know who you are. The Objibwe people (and probably others) talk about people as having death songs. Those're songs you sing when you're about to die and enter the spirit world. That way the spirit world knows you're coming.

So, anyway, last weekend, I got the message that I should listen for - and then sing - the hill's song. I should listen for the hill's song and sing it.

So, I told the hill, "I'm listening for your song; you don't have to feel pressured to sing it to me, though. Only do so if you think it's a good idea."

For about a week, I was getting some snatches of music here and there and thought, okay, this might be something.

And then last night, oh dear lord!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm sitting there in bed, drifting off to sleep when this song comes  to me and hits me like a ton of bricks! Holy crap! Good thing I had enough frontal lobe functioning at that point to get my keyboard and figure out all the notes and chords and write it down.

So, that's what this song is.

I wish I could say that this is purely song of the hill, but I must admit that there's one part that's sort of my own mantra, but the rest of it belongs to the hill. I kinda think of the my-mantra-ish part as bein' sorta a connecty bit between one part of the song and another part of the song. And it goes well with the rest of it. (One hint - it's the part that's in English).

Now, I can't say with 100% certainty that this is the Song of the Hill. It could be a song that was downloaded from another source. But I think there's a very good chance this could be the Hill's song. And if that's the case, I hope I did right by you, Hill. I hope I did a good job of recording your song, because I know it is very sacred.

I'll miss you much, when your spirit finally goes away all-the-way. I'll miss you, and I appreciate you, and I apologize on behalf of my short-sighted, unwise species.

Not Here When I'm King

NOTKING1

There is a new project I'm working on that I'm not telling anybody about. I'll most likely tell people about it at some point, but I'm not a-telling people about it yet cuz I wanna keep it to myself for a while. So instead of telling people or not telling people, I'm just gonna hide this fucking thing in plain sight. I dunno if people'll listen to this song that's part of the project and know what it's about or not. But it is altogether possible for people to be able to tell what this is. As I said, it's hiding in plain sight. All that.

See, it's sort of like a murder mystery, where all the clues are there, and you just gotta put 'em together right. All the clues are here for a person to be able to tell what this project is about, but I dunno how easy it would be.

Years Ago

YRSAGO02

Okay, well, I mean, the picture really has nothing to do with the song. It's just that I thought of a particular cat-Bernie meme but was too shy to post it on Facebook. I was also too shy to post this song on it, too. But I'll put it on here and people might stumble upon it.

Anyway, this song is probly one of my more abstract ones, y'know. I found that as I was trying to come up with lyrics, they were just coming out...dumb. But then I realized, wait, why'm I adhering to Western logic? Maybe time CAN be a meal!!!!

I dunno, man. Okay, here's the weird thing. I finished that one album a while back, but I'm still repeating the main theme of that there album. I'm not saying that I'm continuing to write that album, cuz I feel that piece of work is complete the way it is. No, it's more like that theme, that main theme...it keeps on wanting me to write it. It keeps on coming to me and say, "write me." It floats on the wind and lands inside my brain and sez, I belong here, in this here song.

I think I'm bein' a minimalist, in a sense, in the truest sense of the word, cuz this theme keeps on emerging and wanting to have variations of it written. How many variations can you write when the theme of it comes from Heaven? Probably quite a lot, in a case like that. Yup, you can probably come up with lots of variations when it's a Heaven-based theme.

Bernie's The Only One

This is the MP3 version - it should work on iPads, iPhones, and other portable electronic devices.

BERNIE!!

M4a version (doesn't work on iPods or iPhones, but is of a higher quality).

Download BERNIE!!

I don't usually do political songs because I suck at writing songs about concrete stuff. My songs work better, in general, when they're more abstract.

But then I got real upset about the results of last Tuesday's primaries. Fuckity fuckity fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. I really want Bernie to win. So I wrote a song cuz I was real upset, and I felt dumb, and I wanted to do something about this sucky situation.

I really do believe America is a sinking ship. I don't think Hillary's gonna do anything to change that, since she is so heavily sponsored by the Corporate Money Powers that want to keep things the way they are. Things're getting worse and worse, and Bernie's the only person (in my opinion) running for president who gives a damn about wanting to fix things.

I do fear that the life of this country is going to be pretty short. I don't think we have much longer before this empire collapses. And Bernie's the only one who seems to care about that. Fuckity fuck.

So I wrote this song, cuz even if it doesn't change anything, I might as well give it a try. I mean, try to change things.

Letsee here. Some notes. Dude, I have the COLD FROM HELL!!!! As such, my vocals REALLY SUCK. I make no bones about that. My vocals really, really suck on this recording. But, given all the primaries coming up this coming week, I figured this situation was too time-sensitive for me to wait any longer to record the damn thing.

Another note: the part about Jesus. I think in a rock-genre, usually when people talk about Jesus, they're bein' all sarcastic and whatnot. Lemme say for the record, I'm not bein' sarcastic when I say Bernie reminds me of Jesus. He really does. So, there.

Ugh, politics. Weird that I'm singing about them. I don't usually sing about them. Maybe next week, I'll go back to singing about...um, I'm not sure what I usually sing about. But I'll go back to that, whatever it is.

It Is Not Our Secret/Cosmetic Empty Side

Oh, my. I took an old recording of one of my favorite songs and made it backwards just for kicks. See, I was reading this book about owls and UFOs (The Messengers: Owls, Synchronicity and the UFO Abductee, by Mike Clelland), and there was a part where the author was talking about how sometimes you can play a person's speech backwards, and you'll hear actual sentences and stuff. I guess some people think that's a way of deciphering messages that come from the unconscious through speech.

In any event, I thought I'd try it with this particular song - making it backwards, I mean. I wanted to to use this one because when I had the dream I got it from, I felt like I was channeling sort of. I felt like I was channeling this song from the dudes in the dream that were singing it. I figured, shit, dude. If there's any song that might have a hidden message, it would be this one. Let's see what those singing-dudes had to say. (Backwards).

Here's the backwards one, followed by the regular song:

Backwards cosm

Cosmeticemptyside2

The backwards one is actually from a different recording than the frontwards one. The one that I made backwards was a little too repetitive when I initially did it, so I re-recorded the song the next day. For whatever reason, I felt inclined to make the original (and not the final) recording backwards.

Well, anyway, it's interesting because the backwards version sounds like I'm singing "It is not our secret," over and over. The song starts out: "I know a secret. It is not our secret. It is not our secret. It is not secret..." 

There's lots of nonsense in there, too.

But, in any event, the backwards version surprisingly came out really pretty-sounding (well, in my view), so that I thought I'd post it here. It's funny to think that, if indeed, I was channeling some spirits' messages when I got this song, that part of their message was: "it's not our secret." Weird, dude. (The original entry this song is in is from October, 2012, if you want to know more of the back story).

Sea Shanty

Download MILLI0N1

Download SEACHANT

Um, okay, the drag-and-drop-a-picture feature leaves something to be desired. I'm not sure how I ended up with multiple copies of the same picture.

In any event, I was too lazy to add illustrations for these songs cuz I'm too bummed out these days to summon the mental energy to add illustrations to things.

The Million song is the last song of the album I've been working on. When I sent the album to a couple friends, I was a bit premature, cuz I wrote the Million song the week after I sent it. Whoops.

The song after it is a sea shanty, as the title suggests. I was highly resistant to recording it because I don't usually do sea-shanty-ish songs. It and the Million song both came to me in dreams, and it's odd that they're both sorta traditional sounding. Not my usual style in either case.

The thing about the sea shanty song is, while I was resistant to recording it, the damn thing got stuck in my head, and I thought that's a good sign. So I recorded it. It came from a dream where I died in a plane crash with some other people and an evil kid played banjo at our memorial service. The song is the song the kid played.

Oh yeah, I forgot . The Million song is in a previous post (the one before this one) but I accidentally put in the copy of it that takes up a lot of disk space, so it takes forever to play. So I made a fewer-megabyte version and put it in this post, so it doesn't take forever to play.

A Million Years

Download MILLI0N1

The melody for this song came in a dream. It's all Celtic sounding! It's kind of sad. It's in continuing with the same old theme I've been working with for a while.

I stole the drums from Linkin Park.

And the dude talking is Eric Schweig.

Jesus, Mogie; Head-On With A Rock (8 Centuries Long); Not Here, Sir

This is the blog entry where I put in 3 songs all in a row. That's because I got all procrastinatey about putting songs on here. It's more songs that're based on samples of people talkin' in the movie, Skins.

Jesus, Mogie! (She Had A Banjo)

Download JESUM0G1

This is a song about Jesus being all worried about a girl, who has a banjo.

Head-On With A Rock (8 Centuries Long)

Download HEADON01

This is a song about getting hit on the head with a rock, and there being something about 800 years.

Not Here, Sir

Download NOTHERE1

 This is a song about a dude who's announcing that another dude died, but in military-style.

Sorry Herbie/That Was Rather Stupid of Me

This is a song about a man who drops a cake.

Download SORRYHRB

Wake Me Up in the Middle of the Road

GRASR00TSPeople

There's a lot more to this song than, um, would make for a short, pithy description. It's one o' those songs, where I thought it was about one thing, but it has layers upon layers of meaning that my unconscious cooked up, unbeknownst to the rest of me, when I was writing this song.

It's about bein' a blade of grass growing through a crack in the road.

It's about how people sometimes cruise for disaster and then don't even realize it until the disaster is well-under-way.

It's about the dude sayin' "yeah us grassroots people" in the movie.

And there're more layers to it, too, but as I said, it wouldn't be pithy enuff if I tried to describe 'em.

All of the Teenagers

All Of The Teenagers

This song is a part of that weird, ongoing project I've been working on, where I take samples of dudes talking and make them into songs. This is a song about this horrible little house where teenagers go and hang out and do drugs and stuff.

It's weird, cuz I keep thinking, "oh, this song has a good hook." Then I keep remembering that I didn't make it up, cuz it's the dude talking (The dude saying: "All of the teenagers around here use that place as a hangout") who made up the melody. I was just copying it when I sang the chorus hook-y thing. Oh well. I guess I don't care all that much cuz it's fun to make up stuff by copying other stuff cuz you can be lazy and not have to think of new stuff.

Also, this is the second recording with my new little recording device thingy. Little Larry's zip drive finally died, so I had to get a new machine. His name is Timmy.