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.

Not As Politically Incorrect As It Appears On The Face Of Things

I dont talk to NDNs

I must provide a wee bit of explanation here so nobody thinks I'm a big, politically incorrect jerk. The guy in the song who sez, "I don't talk to Indians" is Native American, and he's sayin' it to be all ironic. He doesn't wanna talk to his brother cuz he's in a bad mood, and so he sez that.

This song is another one of those songs where dudes talking in Skins form the basis of the melody and all that. It was kinda nifty, and cool, too, that I stumbled upon a line of dialogue where the dude speakin' actually utters a tritone. Tritones are cool cuz they sound so weird.

The 2 dudes talkin'? Y'know? The 2 samples are taken from the same scene, but they're kinda unrelated (except they're talking in the same key). And the singing part, I dunno how related it is to what the 2 guys are sayin', neither.

See, yesterday, I took a nap and asked my unconscious mind to give me a dream about whatever song I was gonna write that day. The dream told me the lyrics of the first verse (yay). The dream also indicated that I should take dialogue from that particular scene. In a sense, then, all the stuff in this song is related, but the connections aren't apparent to the typical, average, common-garden-variety listener. The connections came from the unconscious, and those types of connections are always a bit weird and loose-seeming. Yesiree.

Technically speaking, although this song was derived from the same process as the ones on the album I'm working on, I know this song's gonna go on a different album.

Stupid Mister Yellow Lodge

All Our Birthdays Everyone

This is a song where one of the main characters (Mogie) feels all bad because he forgot his son's birthday, and he makes the observation: "Y'know, our dad forgot our birthdays, every one." This song is about how his dad (Mister Yellow Lodge) is not very nice. It's weird that it comes out that way - where I'm calling him "Mister," rather than "Sonny" (his first name), as if I'm singing from the point of view of a kid, cuz kids are more likely to call someone "Mister so and so" rather than their first name. It's like the song is from  the vantage point of someone who's the same age as Mogie back when his dad was forgetting all his birthdays.

It's weird because I think I may have completed the album I've been working on, but I'm still writing songs for it. I don't know if this'll be a bonus track or if there'll end up being a whole separate album or whatnot.

I'm a-plannin' on puttin' the whole album on this blog, all the songs in the proper order, and all that, but I gotta do a wee bit of re-mixing of some of the songs (or at least that's my excuse for not puttin' it out there right now, right fucking now).

If you're stumblin' across this part of the blog for the first time, see the earlier entries to see what I'm talking 'bout. Poopity poopy poopy ones.

Requiem for a Busted Windshield

Requiem 4 a busted windshie

A really cool person I know (his name is Kenny) happened to be outside when it was really windy. (Check out his blog: Kenny's Korner). Something odd and peculiar happened; the wind, as it was blowing around telephone poles and such, started making these sounds, as if there were human voices singing and flutes playing. Kenny happened to have his smart phone handy and recorded the wind sounds.

He very graciously sent me a couple of the wind recordings so I could play around with 'em and maybe make some music outta them.

Weirdly enough, this was the very same week that a big rock smacked into my windshield and did enuff damage that I had to get a new windshield. I felt really bad for the old one cuz it died, protecting me and my kitties, who were also inside the car. I was all sad and realized it would be nice to write a requiem song for my busted windshield.

My conscious mind is really slow on the uptake. I kept thinking, what does a busted WINDshield have to do with spirits, talking on the WIND? Duh. Wind, wind, wind, wind, wind.