eights collide

What’s all this about a second solo project? I must be mad with power, like that Bill Callahan guy.

So the first amj “single”, Eights Collide, has a much different feel from anything I made with any of my previous bands mainly in that the country life of central Vermont pervades much of it. I believe that this song had been inspired by a traversing across the street from our house during a warm spell where some of the snow from the winter was still around but it had mostly melted away, creating these vernal pools at the bottom of the hill. I’m learning to walk around without shoes. It’s a wonderful feeling to walk through the mud.

ampersand

I apologize for the lateness of this entry, especially since there is no song really to accompany it, but internets in NoMo is still really shady, so I’m typing all of this from work. If you can’t wait to listen to the last BC+ track that I have yet to put on the main page, then you can click here and download the track directly.

So Ampersand completes the final track on (expectations). This one is one of the first songs that I wrote that I still enjoy playing, although not much like the version on this album. It started out in the set list for my band Phosphates, but was never “professionally” recorded like some of the other songs we played, so I decided to translate it on a BC+ record. It’s pretty nuts on here, I’ll admit, and I do like it better when I play it on guitar. I may put up another version of it in the near future…

So on Saturday (internets permitting), I should have the first amj track up and running, and as soon as possible, the rest of the (expectations) page. Latah!!!!

fifteen months

Sorry that Fifteen Months was quite late to be posted today, but the internets in my apartment haven’t been very cooperative, so I’m actually in Montpelier using Rhapsody’s free wi-fi and eating some of their foods. There was a guy who looked like a young John Cale wearing sunglasses, but the guy who rang me up said that the shades reminded him of Lou Reed. I just pulled out Transformer the other day and now I want to find some more of his records, but I hear that his catalog is kind of spotty. I already have the one that he collaborated with John Cale in the 90’s on cassette. I need to pull it out again now that the tape player in my car is broken. For my next yet-to-be-heard Lou Reed album, should I try Berlin, Coney Island Baby or The Blue Mask? Those seem to be my top three, besides Metal Machine Music that I’d like to listen to once in my life before I go deaf. I mean, Lester Bangs swore by it. How bad could it be?

Ah, that reminds me that my friend Melody has the copy of one of his collections that I lent to her now ex-boyfriend a long while ago. I hope you’re reading it, ‘Ody, cause it’s a heck of a book. And as a tribute to the style of his writing, may I say that if you (the general “you”, not the singular “you” that may suggest that I’m addressing ‘Ody and not everyone else) don’t like The Velvet Underground, then you don’t REALLY like rock music. Period. Oh oh oh, and back to the singular Melody “you”: Amy pointed out that I’m currently wearing your horse shirt, and the guy who thought that the other guy looked like Lou Reed thinks it’s pretty rad too. OH MAN I’M SO BRILLIANT TO BRING THIS ENTRY FULL CIRCLE EVEN THOUGH I HAVEN’T TALKED A BIT ABOUT THE BC+ TRACK BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

further

Further came to fruition first after a failed take of Farther that I tapped over shortly afterwards. However, the first take was so much longer that the last bits of it still lingered, so I just kept it there mainly because I was lazy. I also tried to do some track bouncing (where you rerecord a bunch of different tracks onto a single track in order to free up the other tracks for additional layering) which would have been wonderful to extend my four-track so that I could put as many instruments as I wanted onto a song, but the wiring got mixed up somehow and I ended up with this high-pitched squeal that you can hear at the end of the song. So instead of deeming it a throw-away failure, I put it smack-dab in the middle of the album. Go me.

Ooh, have you seen the newly revamped archive page? I separated the albums so that they have their own page, which now that You Do What You Can is now completely online as of today, you can see and listen to the whole album pretty much as it was meant to be listened to. I shall do a little dance, then make a little love afterwards, and finally I’ll get down. TONIGHT.

bop

Bop came to me as a guitar part when I was but a wee freshman in college. I’m not quite sure why it’s stuck around for so long, but dagnabbit I had some tape to fill for the recording session and decided to put it on there. Two off-the-cuff vocals and a leg slap later, I had myself yet another track for (expectations). Hey, that’s how I dooze it, homes.

idols ate our babies

Someone once referred to Idols Ate Our Babies as the comedic song off of “You Do What You Can”, but other than the odd title, I don’t think that there’s much humor in it, except maybe the speak-sing voice in the background. Another song about city life, this time it’s about the attempt to find great success in a crazy urban setting where perhaps many people aren’t prepared to live their lives this way. Of course, it’s different for many people, but I knew even then that I couldn’t live there forever. If I wanted a family, for instance, I’d never put them in a city like that for more than a few days at most. There was something highly unnatural about seeing young kids brought up in the city, something that was much more forgivable with adults who chose to stay there. Not that I was a hick by any means, but I liked exploring the woods in my back yard with my friends and riding my bike to the lake during the summer. Playing in fallen leaves and snow. Sigh, perhaps I’m idealizing a past that never quite was what my memories paint them to be, but I’m glad that I lived in the city when I did and not any time earlier in my life.

what do i do?

What Do I Do? has changed meaning for me so much since I first wrote it a year and a half ago. I used to abhor love songs to the point where I would tell people that I’d only write a love song if it avoided the words “I” “love” and “you” in any way. I didn’t think that most songwriters said anything revealing or interesting in love songs anymore and I wanted to avoid their ranks, especially if love songs were something I was, as an artist, “supposed” to write. So I wrote about anxiety instead. I had plenty of that in my life, so why not write about what you know?

Then I started timidly to leave my shell. However, being so isolated from strangers for so long, I had a hard time meeting new people and I was so nervous about what I was getting myself into when I found myself engaged in the occasional social setting that all I could think about was what I was doing right and wrong instead of just enjoying the moment. This song was written in that frame of anxiety.

But why did I choose to blatantly use the word “love” in this song? Perhaps I began to understand what love really was, rather than what I was told that love was supposed to be. Perhaps I was getting sick of limiting my vocabulary and wanted to explore new lexicons in my lyrics. Perhaps it was a symbol of my newfound self-confidence, and surely someone who was so sure of himself could use any damn word he pleases, no matter what others may think of him.

Now I look upon this song from the point of view of an outsider. What was once a personal account of a person questioning what he should do with a person’s graces, I now wonder if this is something that most people do. Are some people ashamed of love to the point where we’re genuinely scared that there could be someone out there who looks after people’s well-being for no particular reason other than compassion? Do some people try to make excuses to stay in relative misery when happiness is but an embrace away? Or do some people believe in an ideal to the point where they become disillusioned when it fails to happen to them the way they expected it to happen?

thirteen

Thirteen was supposed to be…I dunno. I remember getting very excited at how it sounded in my head, and I really liked the lyrics at the time. But now it sounds a bit too sappy and juvenile, I suppose. Maybe if I put a little more care into how I recorded this one, or if I had a band to record this with…but then again, if it doesn’t sound right stripped down like this, then how can covering it up with layers of sound make it better?

Sorry Thirteen, I don’t mean to harsh on you. You’re a good song. Awwwww.

leave it on the island

I suppose that Leave It On The Island has remained one of the more accessible pieces of recording I’ve done to date, although I must admit that it’s perhaps that very reason that I’ve been so timid about listening to this one. It presents me at one of my most exposed, that I chose not to let drum machines, synthesizers, or even microphone distortion from hiding the voice within the music, and it’s been uncomfortable to hear me like this.

At least with most of the other Black Candy Plus tracks they sound dissonant for a few reasons, the shame of my underdeveloped voice being one of them. But at the same time, I’m glad that I did this. I’m also surprised that I did this on a record that I’ve shared with a wide group of people, for better or for worse. And it turns out that they tend to enjoy this one more than the pseudo-punk-experimental-electronic tracks. Who knew?

Since then, I’ve tried to make it more of a priority to embrace that side of my songwriting, because in the end, the genesis of many of my songs sound much like “Leave It On The Island”, and to record them otherwise takes away the innocence and magic of the original. Hopefully, the experimentation adds something positive in that void (which for the most part I think I accomplish, more or less), but if I can develop both sides for long enough, maybe something really amazing can come from it.

So with that in mind, I’ve made a couple records, which will slowly find their way on the Democore website in the next couple of months or so, with that intimate sound in mind. Once I have all of the Black Candy Plus stuff online and running, I think I’ll be aiming for a 14 June debut for a 12 song LP and a 14 song LP. The songs are ready, just need to work on the artwork…

set

For Set I used a Fisher-Price Pull-A-Tune xylophone (a misnomer, as by definition xylophones have wooden keys, but perhaps Fisher-Price didn’t think that kids could spell “glockenspiel”, I don’t know) circa 1978 for this one. I totally remember the one I had growing up in Plymouth, but this is not the same one, as far as I know. If it is, though, I wish I could ask it what kind of adventures it had…

Me: Hey Mr. Xylophone! You are so awesome!
Xylophone: Yeah, like twenty years ago…
Me: Whatchu been up to, homes?
Xylophone: You put me in storage for over a freaking decade, then sold me at a tag sale for a dollar! Not cool.
Me: Dude, I couldn’t play you forever, you know. The clarinet has like a million more notes, and you could blast that noise for sure.
Xylophone: What? Screw the clarinet!
Clarinet: Yo, that’s whack, dog. I didn’t do nothin’ to nobody.

Nah, this couldn’t have been my Pull-A-Tune. Mine would have killed me in my sleep by now. This one is totally loved.