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Time for an update on my music projects for 2009.

First, please find the track called Blammo. It's a mid-tempo indie rocker. I like the way the drums came out.

Next, I present the unfinished concept album called Tom Dashing that I attempted to do for the RPM Challenge. Only one track is complete. The others are in progress, but I doubt I'll finish them.

Peter Cummings and I had a brief musical relationship in the early nineties in which mad sounds were made and recorded. Pete died in 2004, but his friend, David Longey, put together an excellent online resource where you can listen to listen to pretty much everything Mr. Cummings did.

Pete dripped with talent. When you get a minute, do drop by that site for a treat.

Last weekend, I dropped in on the Maker Revolution in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA. Readers of magazine Make will know that there is an emerging culture of creative people how are not satisfied with mere software robots but desire physical ones as well. This exhibition/conference had a mechanical bottle/wind organ and the dude is is Orgy of Music, who grafts transducers onto items like tennis rackets and then plays them like a guitar. It's a sort of atonal jam band thing. He pushes the signals through various effects processors and amplifiers to achieve a loud effect.

The main talk I saw was from Bre, who leads a community of CAD-enabled hackers with access to various automated fabrication tools. He was promulgating the idea of a an on-demand society in which everyone could create the items they need (like glasses or cultery) as they needed them.

This techno-political idea struck me as a sort of mutation of the Web 1.0 matra "zero warehousing." It also struck me as fundamentally unworkable. The whole point of capitalism is that you can use money to get things so you don't have to make all the stuff you require. While capitalism has its quirks, it still the best system anyone has come up to distribute human labor and wealth.

Anyway, I enjoyed the show. I wish I were more crafty.

This year, I will attempt the RPM Challenge. I will deliver 35 minutes of new material to RPM HQ by March 1 (which is a Sunday).

I have been batting a few ideas around lately and would like to explore composition from a different angle this time around.

Wish me luck.

UPDATE: Feb. 14. Due to illness, I don't think I'm going to be able to finish 35 minutes of music this month/year. Bummer.

Pink Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright has died of cancer. I am a big fan of Pink Floyd and Wright's moody and atmospheric keyboard work on Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and Animals helped make those albums classics.

Thanks for all music, Mr. Wright.

I'm considering licenses all of the music content on this site through creative commons. It's already free to download and I've never refused anyone the right to reuse any of the material.

Anyone have any thoughts about this? Any hidden downsides to this kind of licensing?

Update: I've updated the licensing on the music page. I've also updated the ID3 info on each file so that there's some link back to this site. I'm the cutting edge of 1999!

From Urbaniak's liveJournal.

More early Pete Gabriel madness. Also a plus for those who think samplers are too complicated these days.

From Pete Gabriel's 1978 solo tour. So much energy...

Click To Play

Hey kids! There's a new Gameshelf out (ep. 6) about economic games. The ones reviewed are Acquire and M.U.L.E.

In other gameshelf news, I recently reworked the gameshelf theme as bumper music. It's sort of a cross between Enya and Christmas music -- not too interruptive.

The rumors are true: Spinal Tap is playing at Live Earth. I have seen SP play and it's worth the price of admission.

Jason McIntosh has decided to go with one of the theme songs I wrote for The Gameshelf. This theme is featured in the promo above.

My conquest of all media has been outsourced!

On the eve of my thirty-fifth birthday, I recorded this song, seasick. I wanted to get a more live feeling to the recording, so it's not entirely in time with the click. I like the way the guitars came out and I think the vocal performance is more interesting than not.

The "ship creaking" noises came from the wooden floors of my apartment. I simply slowed down the samples and lowered their pitch.

A remix of an old track Without You is now available for mass consumption. Remixed with better audio equipment, new synth patches and a new organ track, I hope this track will be received with all the attention it so richly deserves.

Wouldn't it be cool to make your own synthesizer in Perl? With a little rudimentary physics and a CPAN module, you can produce the monophonic opus of your dreams without leaving the protective womb of your favorite editor.

Experienced readers of this journal will note that I am interested in music. Not only do I listen to quite a bit of it, but I've been playing, composing and recording music at the hobbist level (read: wanker level) for over ten years now. While you can limp along as an audio engineer without understanding the dynamics of audio waves, this knowledge can save quite a bit of time during tracking and mixing. Knowing which band of frequencies best accentuates those instruments in your mix can help you fill out your sound while reducing unintentional mush ("mush" is a technical term).

Listeners of my recent music will notice a lot of MIDI sequencing. From drums to bass to keyboards, it seems I've discovered the little Gary Neumann inside of me. I use Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 for sequencing the MIDI patches that my SoundBlast Live card has (with additional SoundFonts I bought from a third party). Pro Audio allows me to blend MIDI sequences with "live" audio tracks (vocals, guitars and other assorted noises captured by microphones). These audio tracks can be recorded with Pro Audio or WAV files can be imported into the current project. This is how I work with samples from various movies or CDs. My TV, VCR and CD player are components of my PC (even if they weren't, I have an external Mackie mixer which routes various sound sources through one set of speakers and to my PC, producing the same result for this purpose). I sample by playing back the orginal source while recording the audio signal with Cakewalk. As a WAV file, it is then easy to edit and modify that sample to taste.

Music is fun (but not always profitable) when its experimental. Just as I've recorded spatulas and toolboxes as percussion elements in the past, I found that my experiments with IBM's ViaVoice speech synthesis software to have pleasant musical applications (at least, pleasant by my reckoning). Since Perl is a big part of my life, I have wanted to incorporate some our favorite scripting into my music. When I found the Audio::WAV module on CPAN, I seized upon the opportunity to learn more about WAV files and audio dynamics.

I'll skip the high school physics introduction to sound and waves, since most of the readers here probably remember more of that stuff than I do. However, the important thing to remember is that sound moves in waves. The canonical example of a sound wave is one that takes the form of a sine wave. That is, a wave that smoothly oscillates from peak to valley (there are many other possible wave forms, true sine waves rarely occur naturally). The frequency at which that sine wave propagates is called fundamental or, in musical terms, the tonic note. While very important, sound that only consists of the fundamental frequency can fatigue the ear quickly. Additional frequencies that are even multiples of the fundamental make the final tone more complex and interesting. These additional frequencies are called harmonics and they interfere with the fundamental to produce a more complex wave form.

With this small bit of phyics and the Audio::WAV module, you can produce wave files of any tone you want. By extending the code shown here, your scripts can write out entire songs in glorius 16-bit, 44100hz WAV files. The key is to understand how to use Audio::WAV to write out audio information.

Because this is such a new module (it's only up to 0.2), the documentation is a little underpowered. However the core of what you need is there. The Audio::WAV class has two child classes it uses to read and write WAV files (called Audio::WAV::Read and Audio::WAV::Write respectively). Instead of directly instantiating an Audio::WAV::Write object, Audio::WAV has a write() method that returns a new Audio::WAV::Write object. For instance:

my $wav = Audio::Wav->new;
my $write = $wav->write($outfile, 
			{ 
			 bits_sample => $bits_sample,
			 sample_rate => $sample_rate,
			 channels    => 1,
			}
		       );

Audio::WAV::Write also has a write() method, but it expects to be passed at least one point of wave data to write out to the appropriate file.

  $write->write( sin($pi * $time) * $max_no );

(note: the documentation claims that write() can take an array of samples, but that only produced empty 46 byte WAV files for me.)

Although it seems simple enough to feed write() random numbers, the trick is in understanding how to generate meaning data (isn't that always the way). This discussion is limited to talking about sine waves since that does not exceed my mathematical acumen.

Like the graph of a sine wave made by an eighth-grader, the WAV file consists of points that represent the wave's amplitude at a given point in time (it's a bit more complicated than that, but the Audio::WAV module lets me work at this level). Successive calls to write() place a new point on this imaginary graph at the next available time slot (see below for an explaination of how time is subdivided along this "X-axis" of time). Once the maximum and minimum values for wave's amplitude are know, it's a very simple math problem to determine the appropriate "y value."

y = sin(PI * x) # if you have an X value, find Y

In this case, the X value is going to be a slice of time which is determined by both the frequency of the fundamental and the sampling rate of the WAV file. The higher the sampling rate, the more X values are produced. But, how many time slices (that is divisions of the X-axis) are needed? This is a function of how many seconds you want the sound to last times the sampling rate. number of X-axis divisions = seconds * sample rate The value of each X-axis point is: X-axis value = (X-axis offset/sample rate) * hertz

Now we're getting somewhere! You can approximate PI with (22/7) and now you know your X-axis values. You only need to know the range of allowable amplitudes for this wave file to determine valid Y-values. Recall that sound wave amplitude is perceived as loudness by human ears. It turns out that the amplitude is governed by the bit resolution of the WAV file. max_amplitude = (2 ** bit resolution) / 2

Why are we raising 2 by the power of the bit resolution? For the same reason that you set your video card to the highest video resolution. The more bits, the more graduation. I assume that WAV files allocate the number of bits designated by the bit resolution for each sample of sound to represent the amplitude of the wave file at that time. The result is divided by two because the wave has positive and negative peaks. In effect, it's like the number is signed (in fact, it may be in the WAV file).

Putting this mess together, the amplitude of the wave at a given sample is found like this: current amplitude = sin(PI * x-axis value) * max amplitude

Because sin() produces a number between 1 and -1, the amplitude will either be at the maximum amplitude or smaller. By added a scalar to the maximum amplitude, you can control the volume of the samples too. In Perl code, producing each point on the sine wave is done like this:

for my $pos (0..$len) {
  my $time = ($pos/$sample_rate) * $hertz;
  $write->write( sin($pi * $time) * $max_no );
}

This code produces a sine wave with only the fundamental frequency. If you wanted to add the second harmonic to this wave, simply double the hertz value every other iteration.

for my $pos (0..$len) {
  my $hz = $hertz;

  if ($pos % 2 == 1) {
    $hz *= 2;
  }

  my $time = ($pos/$sample_rate) * $hz;
  $write->write( sin($pi * $time) * $max_no );
}

It's easy enough to generalize this code to support any harmonic. I thought it would be fun to add an arbitrary number of harmonics to the fundamental.

my $next = 0;
for my $pos (0..$len) {
  my $hz = $hertz;

  # throw in some harmonics, but keep the tonic dominate
  if ($pos % 2 == 1) {
    $hz *= $harmonics->[$next++];
  }
  $next = 0 if $next >= @{$harmonics};

  my $time = ($pos/$sample_rate) * $hz;

  $write->write( sin($pi * $time) * $max_no );
}

Notice that the fundamental is represented at least as often as any additional harmonic. The more harmonics are added, the more the fundamental dominates. This may not be entirely what you want, but at least you now have some place to start tinkering.

Wouldn't it be great if someone wrapped this into an easy to use perl script? You bet it would be!

#!/usr/bin/perl
# Create sine wave WAV files
# Based on code found in Audio::WAV::Write POD
# jjohn 12/2002

use strict;
use Audio::Wav;
use Getopt::Std;

my %opts;
getopts('?hb:f:H:s:t:V:z:', \%opts);

if ($opts{h} || $opts{'?'}) {
  print usage();
  exit;
}

my $outfile     = $opts{f} || 'out.wav';
my $hertz       = $opts{z} || 440;
my $seconds     = $opts{t} || 2;
my $harmonics   = $opts{H} || 1;
my $sample_rate = $opts{s} || 44100; # CD quality;
my $bits_sample = $opts{b} || 16;    # 4,8,16 are all good choices
my $volume_scalar = 1;

if ($opts{V} < 1 && $opts{V} > 0) {
  $volume_scalar = $opts{V};
}

my $wav = Audio::Wav->new;
my $write = $wav->write($outfile, 
			{ 
			 bits_sample => $bits_sample,
			 sample_rate => $sample_rate,
			 channels    => 1,
			}
		       );

my $pi     = (22/7); # close enough;
my $len    = $seconds * $sample_rate;
my $max_no = (2 ** $bits_sample) / 2 * $volume_scalar;

# split Harmonics value into an array
$harmonics = [ split /\s*,\s*/, $harmonics ];

my $next = 0;
for my $pos (0..$len) {
  my $hz = $hertz;

  # throw in some harmonics, but keep the tonic dominate
  if ($pos % 2 == 1) {
    $hz *= $harmonics->[$next++];
  }
  $next = 0 if $next >= @{$harmonics};

  my $time = ($pos/$sample_rate) * $hz;

  $write->write( sin($pi * $time) * $max_no );
}

$write->finish;

sub usage {
  return <<EOT;
$0 - Create fancy sine wave WAV files

 USAGE:
  # a 3 second 440hz WAV called 'outfile.wav'
  $0 -f 'outfile.wav' -z 440 -t 3 

 OPTIONS:
  ?       Print this screen
  h       Print this screen
  b <num> bit resolution (defaults to 16-bit)
  f <str> name of the outfile (defaults to 'out.wav') 
  H <num> Add this harmonic to the base tone. Can be a comma-separated list.
  s <num> sample rate (defaults to 44100 (CD quality))
  t <num> number of seconds to make the file (default is 2)
  V <num> Volume multiplier (decimal values cut the default MAX volume) 
  z <num> Frequency in hertz of the WAV file (default is 440) 

EOT
}

Next time, I'll look at managing the wave forms better to produced rudimentary FM synthesis. Together with Perl's ability to read MIDI files, you can turn existing MIDI files into "fully realized" WAV files without using a sound card!

Zen thought for the day: If a WAV file is produced on a machine without a sound card, is there any way to tell if the program worked correctly?

[Original use.perl.org post and comments.]

I spent this glorious summer day remaking an old song that I love called Round the Bend. This version captures the bouncy feeling better than the hasty demo I made years ago. This version is electrified for your protection with my telecaster.

UPDATE: I remastered a few older tracks, which you might find interesting. I swapped out some old, clunky synth patches for new, clunky synth patches.

• Strings
• Coming Down (much improved)
• Germs
• Spooky

Last night, Sally and I saw Elvis Costello with Allen Toussaint at the Bank of America Pavilion (which was once called Haborlights). On this tour supporting his River in Reverse album, Elvis reworked many of his classics with a smoking New Orlean's horn section. The 2 1/2 hour show (no opening act and two encores) opened with a thundering version of "What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding." Elvis played several of his standards throughout the evening, including "Chelsea," "Watching the Detectives," "Pump it up," "Poison Rose," "Clubland," and "Alison" -- which was particularly noteworth as it was arranged for horns. However, the real fun was had when Toussaint played his classic bluesy rock.

Really, this was one of the better shows I've seen. Almost no pretention and nearly all performance. The light show was minimal and there were no stage theatrics. Elvis did take a few (well deserved) swipes at President Dubya, but that was OK with most of the crowd.

You can read the Boston Globe's review or listen to a brief interview with Elvis. I definitely need to pick up his new album.

One member of the crowd who nearly stole the spotlight from the main stage was a bald gentleman in a white T-shirt that bore lettering colored like the American Flag. He was very highly animated at the start of the show, intensely thrusting his fingers in a peace sign at the stage in a "throwing the goat" sort of way. Most of the time, these gestures were entirely inappropriate for the mellow songs of the evening and people around us began to openly mock this attendee by thrusting peace symbols in unison.

Boston: a town of mockery and hate.

Infamous founder of and guitarist for Pink Floyd, Roger "Syd" Barrett has died at the age of 60. Many will no doubt be surprised to learn he lived this long. I'm a fan of Floyd's early work with Syd, but I never followed his solo career, which was a bit too nutty even for me.

Many will have heard about Syd's penchant for psychedelic drugs, much of which fueled his music and stage shows. One report had him mixing in hallucinogenics with his hair gel so that as the stuff melted on stage, Syd would get all tripped out.

Sadly, the potent combination of success, drugs and youth proved ruinous in Barretts's case. After being removed from Floyd, Syd lived the rest of his days under supervision and reclusion.

Many rockers since than have aped much of Barretts insane style of fashion. His tempestous hair and dark, haunted eyes are a mainstay of brooding rock to this day.

So long, Syd. Thanks for music.

"Weird Al" Yankovic is the most misunderstood music critic in America. I think it's the "weird" in his name that throws people off. Maybe his addiction polka. Maybe it's the crinkle-curl hair. Whatever the cause, it's a shame because Al's Angry White Boy Polka succinctly details exactly what's ineffably awful about Nu-Metal.

As a genre, Nu-Metal was born in the dying embers of both Grunge rock and "Big Hair" rock (clearly a May-December relationship if there ever was one). A good Nu-Metal band is Helmet (although I'm not a fan, I can tell those guys can rock). The rot set in when Nu-Metal became a corporate commodity and stupid white boys thought that they could rap over wailing distorted guitars. I'm not sure that's how Affirmative Action is supposed to work.

From the mid-nineties on, the Suck knob on Nu-Metal continued to get cranked higher and higher until, well, even Weird Al noticed. In 2004's Poodle Hat, Yankovic went back to his roots with "Angry White Boy Polka." Unlike the polka tune on his first album which seemed to celebrate "classic rock," I get the feeling Al is making a point of showing off the cyclopean banality of the lyrics that populate the most commercially successful examples of Nu-Metal. "Preachy" doesn't really seem to cover for these whiny punks, but judge for yourself. After listening to a few of these tunes, I get the feeling that covering Pat Benatar's "Love is a Battlefield" in this style would be a mega-hit.

I have created a table that lists the source material used in Weird Al's parody. Old folks like me will certainly have avoided most of these excremental twits, but now, no matter your age, you can confidently say, "Staind? Those Nu-Metal guys suck!"

Nu-Metal: a musical STD of nineties.

Band		Song		Album		Sample
PAPA ROACH		Last Resort		INFESTED		Sample
SYSTEM OF A DOWN		Chop Suey		TOXICITY		Sample
THE VINES		Get Free		HIGHLY EVOLVED		Sample
THE HIVES		Hate to say I told you so		VENI VIDI VICIOUS		Sample
WHITE STRIPES		Fell in Love with A Girl		WHITE BLOOD CELLS		Sample
THE STROKES		Last Night		IS THIS IT?		Sample
DISTURBED		Down with the sickness		THE SICKNESS		Sample
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE		Renegades of Funk		RENEGADES		Sample
LIMP BIZKIT		My Way		CHOCOLATE STARFISH AND THE HOT DOG FLAVORED WATER		Sample
STAIND		Outside		BREAK THE CYCLE		Sample
KID ROCK		Bawitdaba		DEVIL WITHOUT A CAUSE		Sample
P.O.D		Youth of the Nation		SATELLITE		Sample
EMINEM		The Real Slim Shady		THE MARSHALL MATHERS LP		Sample

I covered another Erik Carter song, this one called Except me. This is one of my favorites from Erik's band Mumble and Peg.

This arrangement features me on piano, which was cleaned up only in a few spots. The mix was enhanced with Sonic Maximizer, which does help (surprisingly). It's a slow song, but definitely not easy listening. Enjoy.

Can I get an Amen? (local mirror [34MB]) is a short film mediation on the history of perhaps the most important drum sample ever and the implications of assigning, protecting and enforcing the copyright of that sample. Best of all, the essay was recorded to an acetate album, which is played back as the film's narrative.

The Amen beat will be instantly familiar when you hear it. I connect this beat most strongly with the Powerpuff Girls theme and Bowie's Earthling album. Since the sample has been used since the late eighties, you'll have your own ideas about it.

For the record, I think that it's high time to use modern, living drummers to create samples for new music. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being inspired by old recordings and even pinching a bar or three from them. I'm all for recontextualization of audio samples, but I think this 6 seconds of drumming has had its fifteen minutes of fame.

Certainly, this film essay is appropriate as "smash-ups" like Q-Unit and the Kleptones are really blurring the lines of copyright.

My adolescence was in the 1980s. Those that tell me the 80s were cool clearly did not live through them. As evidence of the brutal psychological torment inflicted on me and others of my generation, I submit this shocking archive footage. Music, in the wrong hands on the wrong drugs, can become a weapon of mass destruction (and suckitude).

At least Stevie Wonder never saw the disaster that unfolded around him.

Check out the new album, called Lurid, in taskboy's music section. It took over three years from the start of tracking the opening title Rusted Gunnels to get to the final mix. Whew! Special thanks to Nate Patwardhan for lending me all of his formidable music talent and use of his home studio. Also, Ira Schwartz, who drums on "Rusted Gunnels," has become my personnal percussion savior.

I think there's a little something for every one on this collection.

It's true what they say: art is never finished, only abandoned.

Dear Bill,

Your recent musical outing with Ben Folds, entitled Has Been, is a positive delight. I say this without irony. Honest prose mixed with phat beats propelled hip hop to dizzying heights in the 80's and 90's, so it should surprise no one that this old magic worked again. I can't listen to Common People without thinking of my personal whipping boy, Paris Hilton. The genuine horror expressed in What have you done is moving and unnerving. Who knew you could do gospel?

This is a the kind of music I wish I could make. It's part crank, part neutrotic. Can it be that you've only begun to reach the height of your career?

Keep on rockin'.

Your pal, Joe

A while ago, I was asked to write a theme song for a cable access TV show. Although none of my submissions were selected, I enjoy these little works. I hope you do too.

I also reworked the music page a bit to show what songs are new or updated.

Former New York City mayor Ed Koch became famous for asking the man on the street "how am I doing?". Taking a page from his playbook, I've implemented a crude voting system on the music page which allows you to give me feedback on my work (almost) anonymously.

To prevent multiple voting, I accept only one vote per IP address. Don't let that scare you too much, though. I'm pretty lazy and it would take more work to find out who trashed my music than I would want to expend.

Over time, I hope this system helps me figure out what I've done that's interesting to other people.

Continue rawkin'

UPDATE: I'm thinking about implementing rating for my blogs too. I think this is a good anonymous and simple feedback mechanism.

Death metal. Always maligned, oft-overlooked and rarely appreciated, this genre of music finds its finest voice in the soulfully articulately melodies of Impaled Northern Moonforest. Eschewing the familiar territory of industrial-grade distorted electric guitars for the more sensitive medium of acoustic steel string, these masters of metal, these bards of the barbarous thrill the listener with dynamic tales of grotesqueries, mutilations and other things I couldn't quite make out.

Perhaps this fan-contributed flash video distills the essence of their wonderfulness into a jagged little pill (with an easy-swallow coating).

How long before the serpent of L.A. corrupts this young, fresh talent is anyone's guess.

The BBC reports:

«Sony BMG is facing three lawsuits over its controversial anti-piracy software.

Revealed in late October by Windows expert Mark Russinovich, the software copy protection system hides using virus-like techniques.»

This is great news for consumers. Sony, who adopted a secret zero-copyright infringment policy, created music CDs that "defended" themselves from being copied. This defense was to install a root kit on the offending machine. A root kit is a suite of programs to allow unauthorized users remote access to your machine.

While I appreciate, but don't share, Sony's concern with piracy, this anti-theft measure is so blantantly anti-consumer that the media giant's unspoken contempt for its customers is jaw-dropping.

Theft of all kinds is a part of doing business. In the case of CD copying, Sony hasn't lost a thing. The original CD that Sony paid to produce was paid for by the consumer. Copies are made at the consumers expense.

What about the artist? I have found that consumers will support those artists whom they like. The legion of over-marketed hacks can burn for all I care.

There is one case in which I side with Sony on this. There are those "pirates" that make copies to sell. This slimy practice should be rooted out with the full force of law. Measures to stop that kind of wholesale theft shouldn't affect the small guy.

Shame on you, Sony.

I spent Halloween weekend recording tracks for the Anabolics at Nate's house. Nate and I were engineering these sessions, not playing. We started tracking on Thursday and finished three songs by Sunday. There's still a considerable amount of post production to do, including selecting MIDI patches and adding some final MIDI touches, but the band laid down solid performances for their material -- material that's so catchy, WHO will be looking into them soon.

Those unfamiliar with the process of recording should note that it is a most un-rock'n'roll-like activity. There is an incredible amount of down time for each musician while each part is tracked. There are few bands that can be recorded together live in the studio. Rather, a scratch track must first be record that will guide the performances of the rest of members. It's much like building a house starting with the concrete foundation. If you mess up the foundation, the rest of the house will jeapordized.

On Sunday, we did some rough mixes for the band to listen to on their very long trip back to NYC (from New Hampshire). The mixes were never meant to be definitive, and there are several things that I've already heard that need to be changed. Viva le Rock!

Thanks to Nate and the Anabolics for a delightful weekend. I'm throwing the goat as hard as I can. I hope you can see that.

Cobbled together from various earlier efforts, but collected together for the first time, the songs that compose Nukular Potatoe are some of my more recent work. Too much rock? I think not.

Fun for all ages (if that age is between 13 and 19).

I've posted a couple of remixes and rethought some of the collections a bit. The playlist of Cheap Sneakers has been been shortened to four of the best songs. "Fall Down" and "Plug Nickle" have been remixed and substantially enhanced with retracting. The work in progress, Encode has it's playlist in the preferred order and a more complete version of the song "Not Amused," which I feel still needs work. However, this version is closer to my vision than the demo.

With autumn and winter approaching, I hope to get more studio time in with Nate. There's a great version power trio version of "Rusted Gunnels" that I need to finish mixing that will entertain, I'm sure.

Carry on, my wayward sons.

Memepool has an entry about rap stars covering the lilywhite lilith himself, Phil Colins. One can understand the occasional cover of "In the Air Tonight," but "Sussudio"? The mind reels. But wait, there's more: Urban Renewal. It's a whole album of Collins covers by "urban and hip-hop stars".

Good gravy, someone even covered "Against All Odds." shudder

I need to up my dosage of anti-nostalgia pills.

I added about 6 more tracks to the Mother Bodfish album. Because, this music is for the people.

The paleolithic* rockers, the Rolling Stones played at my neighbor's place last night and, for old, old men, they seemed to put on a spirited show of crappy tunes. Having never liked the Stones to begin with, I was free from the forebarence that nostalgia sometimes produces in listening to bands from one's youth. Several times last week, the night was interrupted by Stones practicing at Fenway Park. Please believe me when I say that they sucked hard during rehersals. And they were playing their standards. I guess thirty years isn't enough time to explore the nuances of Jumping Jack Flash (n.b. it's a gas, gas, gas). However, with the addition of pyrotechnics, a warm-up act of the Black Eyed Peas and beer, the geriatric group managed to put on a coherent and lively show. However, there was little life or meaning in this band's readings of their own songs. You could have just as easily replaced the band with a bombbox. One standout number was a cover of the Ray Charles "The Right Time," complete with a horn section. Even that, I fear, was still a bit watered down. The evening ended with a five song encore that included the perfected Jumpin' Jack Flash and, again, more fireworks.

I'd like to point out the vast number of limos, stretched sedans and elongated SUVs that graced the streets of my neighborhood last night. It's not just the band that's aged, but their fans. Fatted on years of yuppy life, reaping the glory of wise 401K investiments, these sated empty nesters rolled in the park, tarted up like French whores, to get a faint whiff from that distant land of their youth that will only get progressively further away from them. On the upside, they were less troublesome than the average baseball crowd, so that had that going for them.

In short, the Stones appeal has always eluded me. Certainly, there is no siren in their song, so I suppose their draw must of the personality of Mr. Jagger. Still, I do have to credit the energy that these ancients emitted last night. That's no mean feat.

Note: "Paleolithic" means "old stone," which you have to admit is applicable here.

I've reorganized the music section so that the songs are grouped into "albums." I've added around a half dozen Mother Bodfish tracks and will add more over time. Even after almost fifteen years, those little bits of madness make me laugh out loud.

Also, it is my desire to produce at least one CD of my music. In the near future, I'd like to setup some kind of pay site for those who want to support my efforts directly. I've had a few thoughts on this. One model is to offer $25/year subscriptions that allow users access to a restricted directory with exclusive content. Another model is to offer all my songs for free, but put up a donation button. Juliana Hatfield experimented with this model, but stopped. She said that the program worked well, yet she's also not doing it anymore. The last model is like iTunes, in which you pay $1 for each full song.

If you're interested in supporting my musical activities, which model would you recommend? Please email me.

Update: I decided to accept donations for now. It's easy to set up and doesn't precude a premium content site later.

Some would site the following device as an example of overengineering. It converts vinyl LP records into mp3s via an iPod.

However, those critics would be entirely wrong. Many of my generation only vaguely remember that electronic devices such as TVs and stereos used to be sold in very large and heavy wood furniture frames. They were meant to reflect affluence as much as fulfill their primary objective. I'm not one that pines for the old days of vinyl (I think digital music is just fine), but I'm tickled by the elabrate fussiness that transformed the relatively disposable iPod back into an old-school furniture-appliance.

Despite my glee at this hack, my aging back does approve of the comparitive weightlessness of today's devices. In the old days, you tended to plan your interior design around the TV and stereo because you sure as shootin' weren't moving them.

To the makers of this fanciful iPod mod: I salute you!

Update: For reasons unknown, my ruby iMac that I found in the trash is booting again! Happy days! Who said that ignoring a problem won't make it go away? He or she (or maybe even it) was wrong!

This week I learned of the death of two people influential to my life, though each in different ways. The first was illustrator David Sutherland III, whose work for TSR's Dungeons & Dragons series fueled my early dreamlife. Reading between the lines, it seems that Mr. Sutherland, 56, was hitting the sauce pretty hard. He had many disappoints in life, it seems. He was rumored to be bitter about his divorce.

The other passing of importance to me is that of Peter Cummings (link goes to his former Holiday Clocks bandmate, Gideon Freudmann). Peter and I met on Cape Cod in a desultory period in both our lives in the early 1990s. Peter was turning thirty and I, 20. Through a mutual love of music and dadaism (or perhaps whimsy is a better word), we began to record music together on his four track cassette recorder.

What Peter never knew was that I was after his fetching girlfriend, whom I had met working for a fast food place and wanted to get to know in a Biblic sense. However, that pursuit turned out to be a non-starter (sadly). The collabrative relationship with Peter, in contrast, went swimmingly.

The style of composing was simply to allow one person to lay down a track. Then the other person would lay down a possibly complementary track separately. Often, the other person wouldn't be in the room (or even the house) when the new track was recorded. The idea was to get music that wasn't polished or, frankly, composed. Peter and I were, in a muddled-headed way, protesting the polished excrement peddled to the masses on top-40 radio stations every day. While our complaint wasn't particularly innovative or original, it was what motivated us.

We'd scream, use toys, loop 1/4" tape "samples", bang on pots and pans, scream some more, sing through the cheesy "William Shatner" mic, play Peter's psychadelic telecaster with rust-caked strings, play Peter's stout 1940's New York archtop, record "spoken word" on a dictaphone and generally have quite a rolicking time. While walking through a graveyard, we noticed a tombstone inscribed with the words "Mother Bodfish" and that become the working title of our project. We had talked about releasing our work on some crazy label. The cover would feature a strong, suffragette in sepia tones braving looking into East. On the back would be the hovel that Pete lived in with both of us passed out in the squalor. Alas, we were both a bit too unorganized to take our project beyond the cottage.

When I have more time, I'll digitize Mother Bodfish, but until then, here's a great track of Pete's called Silver Hat, which he recorded on the "Throne of Wax" album. It's dubbed from a cassette, so don't expect too much fidelity. Here's quite an autobiographical one called Any Given Day, 1995, from his last album "Cartoons."

Peter passed away after Christmas 2004 from complications caused by scleroderma at the age of 42. Peter was a gentle soul, but he had a self-destructive side that was painful to witness. Pete and I spoke in 2003, I think. I blew him off, not wanting to get sucked back into the Bad Crazy of my twenties. Part me wishes I'd seen him, but part of me didn't want to deal with his oncoming fatality. I don't do death well.

Peter should be remember for his substantial talent, both musically and as a writer, and for his skewed perspective on life. Oh, and he was a (crazy) chick magnet.

Not a wholy bad life after all, Mr. Cummings. A tad too short, perhaps.