122922 Listened to Family's Music in a Doll's House. Loved it except for the singing. I find that folk-influenced warbling off-putting. Paul Rothschild told the Doors that if they wanted their music to not sound dated in future they should avoid gimmicks like wah-wah pedals. Singers should have received the same advice. I think British bands (mostly blues-influenced) were less inclined, hence the lasting presence of Kinks, Stones, Who, Zep, Fabbies, Stones etc. Love's Andmoreagain sung straight? Mmm hmm! More please! 122822 Randomly ransacked our discography for 4 hours. A personal favorite was a reggae version of White Girl. Had a good chat with Jerry about our process of developing drum tracks for my solo and GFS stuff. 122622 Sang some more takes for Gulch. 122522 I discovered the YouTube channel Yesterday's Papers about a week ago. One of my favorite features, besides the reading of vintage reviews of psychedelic singles from various British music publications from 1967-1968, is a kind of celebrity review bit from Melody Maker, called Blind Date, where a pop star of the day (Lennon, McCartney, Jagger, Zappa, Donovan, Hendrix - you get the picture) listens to singles from the British top 40 and comments on their quality and speculates how they might do in the charts. The reviews are actually very insightful and of course extremely entertaining. I've also discovered and purchased music from bands I either didn't know about or that warranted a deeper dive. Recommend. 122422 Got Gulch drum tracks from Jerry. Merry Christmas to me. 122222 Thank you KKFI for the Gardenaire play. Fit right in with Scott Hrabko & The Rabbits. 122122 Short, aimless holiday practice. Did work on sorting out live versions of Corky Finds Something and Who is This Plumber? 122022 Listened to Bobby Jameson's (Chris Lucey) Songs of Protest & Anti-Protest. Got some fun greatest hits collections: John Mayall The Bee Gees (early) Donovan The Small Faces Humble Pie The Hollies (early) Cream The Troggs Eric Burdon 121722 Listened to The Move's Shazam for the first time. Good stuff. Will buy more. Listened to Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and I absolutely don't get it. All of the vocal coloring he does is repetitious and off-putting. The whole thing feels like one long miserable song. I don't see this being one of those albums that I listen to 6 times and then a light comes on. There is no electricity. 121422 Practiced deep cuts. Corky Finds Something, White Girl, Gardenaire, The Wall and Rattle. Even took a half-hearted stab at Windy. 121312 Sent Pheromone Beanie to Patrick. 120722 The Dukes of Stratosphere stuff is the best of 1960s British psychedelic music despite being born in the 1980s. I think it's even the best of XTC. I was already aware of many of the influences of the Dukes but decided to tidy up my resume and listen to the Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow and Ogdens Nut Gone Flake by Small Faces. Lots of fun and loads of trip factor (Laid awake last night trying to think of how I could get a microphone to my piano to run through a wah-wah pedal.) but the thing that surprised me was hearing how this (or Small Faces in general) likely influenced the Sex Pistols. You can hear it in that vocal delivery on Lazy Sunday. BTW, I have a staunch policy on talky bits in songs. The King, The Doors and oddly the Stranglers are frequent violators. Ian Dury and Patti Smith get Get out of Jail Free cards. Kevin McDermott gets one for sweetly whispering "It's been a grand day." 120522 Listening to Love's Forever Changes. This one was compelling to me because mortals don't know who or what it is and the music elite rate it with a billion yellow stars. I've had three listens and am having a fourth today. The fourth listen is like required reading. I wouldn't feel dead inside if I never heard it again. I've been wrong about great music before so due diligence etc. Liking it more after listens 4 and 5. 120422 Listening to Trout Mask Replica. This speaks to me, brothers and sisters. Not the spoken word stuff, not the horn battles and not the singing - though there are always some fun lines on Beefheart records. It's those trademark grooves. It's the rhythm and not the blues. Like a fever brained Don Quixote in a suit of crows unsteady in a glass saddle on a powerful three-legged stallion dragging four empty Igloo brand coolers - red - down a gravel road. Like a wounded troll crashing blindly through the forest squashing chainsawing lumberjacks until it bleeds out at the foot of a mountain. I swoon every time. I think I came about him the best way - AFTER organically discovering a lot of the artists that he has influenced. Like gateway drugs. I bumbled upon him in the '80s when he was doing stuff from Doc at the Radar Station and I had already cut my teeth on The Residents/Snakefinger, Alternative TV, The Birthday Party etc. I don't think I would have been up for his stuff when it was being released during the Beatles heyday. Sent Patrick a mix of Pheromone Beanie to see how he felt about not using a full drum kit for the song. He and his team felt like the hand percussion could carry the tune. 120322 Ruzi-Q tracked bass and some harmonies for Pheromone Beanie. We also pulled up Turkey (something we started on a few years ago) for consideration. 113022 Boisterous rehearsal. 112822 Added sitar and more cymbals to Pheromone Beanie. 112722 More vocal and classical guitar takes for Pheromone Beanie. Added a ride cymba, snare druml and some back-of-the-guitar conga parts. Sent a copy to Chris Ruzich. By the way, I referred to him as Ruzi-Q in my correspondence. Obviously I was quite pleased. 112322 Listening to Hunky Dory made me want to write a song on the piano. Came up with a fistful of chord chanes yesterday and recorded them today with some guitar parts. Pheromone Beanie. 112122 Just back from a road trip. Took some albums that I either hadn't heard or required a deeper dive. Dug everything but the Peanut Butter Conspiracy. Hunky Dory made me want to write some songs on the piano. The Peanut Butter Conspiracy - It's Spreading Garden State - Soundtrack Duke Ellington - Money Jungle David Bowie - Hunky Dory Shakti - with John McLaughlin Steely Dan - Pretzel Logic Martin Sewell/Andy Partidge - The Greatest Living Englishman Recently purcased for the next trip: The Monkees - Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., Headquarters Incredible String Band - Changing Horses, Wee Tam and the Big Huge, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter Lindisfarne - Nicely Out of Tune, Fog on the Tyne Family - Music In A Dolls House Fembots - Mucho Cuidado, Calling Out, Small Town Murder Scene The Move - Shazam, Looking On Procol Harum - Best of Procol Harum Pink Floyd - Meddle, Delicate Sounds of Thunder Various Artists - Insane Times: 25 British Psychedelic Artyfacts Astral Weeks - Van Morrison Bee Gees - Best of the Bee Gees Traffic - Traffic, Mr. Fantasy Joy of a Toy - Kevin Ayers Love - Forever Changes, Da Capo Faces - A Nod is as Good as a Wink to a Blind Horse Small Faces - Ogdens Nut Gone Flake, 10 Hits Humble Pie - Best of Humble Pie Eric Burdon - Best of Eric Burdon Fleetwood Mac - Tusk Alvvays - Blue Rev Miles Davis - Bitches Brew The Shins - Oh, Inverted World The Hollies - The Hollies Greatest Hits Public Image Ltd. - Second Edition Wire - Chairs Missing Donovan - Donovan's Greatest Hits Pooh Sticks - Million Seller Captain Beefheart - Trout Mask Replica The Tom Tom Club - The Tom Tom Club Tres Hombres - ZZ Top Who's Next - The Who Hounds of Love - Kate Bush The Troggs - The Best of The Troggs John Mayall - Silver Tones: The Best of John Mayall & The Blues Breakers 111622 Tidied up Dingus and sent the session to Patrick. 2ND full band rehearsal. Added a few more songs from the discography. 111522 Talked to Patrick about making Dingus another collaboration and he agreed. Sang more vocal takes, Need to comp them, re-cut the bass, or at least provide an alternate take, and comp the piano parts. 111422 Beginning the process of re-working Dingus. Tried some less barky vocals. Used the old Boss GT-6 to add some swirly modulation and some heavy riffs. Tried some different drum beats. 110922 Back to building a live set. This process is difficult for me as I quickly forget chord changes without repetition and brother I tells ya we haven't run through these songs in over a year. I'll pick them all up again soon enough and then only forget them in a live setting. 110822 Evaluate 29 (Johnny Marie with Patrick Meagher) available for streaming. 110722 Got the first mix of Evaluate 29 back from Patrick. Decided to add a verse. 110622 Recorded the basic track for Shame. 110522 When we finished recording drums for everything we intended to record we dashed off recordings of a couple of under-rehearsed songs just to capture them - The Salt Trilogy and June. These are good candidates for the set list so that we can develop them further. Danny sent me June last night to start sorting out. Sent The Blue One to Chris Richards for trumpeting. 110422 Sent The Blue One to Jerry. Bought another Mel9 because I want one on my live board since I use it so much in our recordings but I don't want to lose the one on my home board because I use it so much in our recordings. 110322 Chris Ruzich popped over to record some bass for The Blue One. Off to Jerry tomorrow. 110222 Had a State of the Union meeting and determined that we would go back to recording at my space and use Danny's space for rehearsing for future performances. Ran through an hour's worth of JMLP stuff. 110122 Started on Dingus and ran out of gas just listening to it. May have to start fresh with it. I first introduced this song to Girl for Samson in September of 2004. We worked it up but never got a recording that we were happy with so it's one of THOSE songs. Not sure why I keep it on the table since I could churn out two new songs a month if pressed. 102722 Show Me Your New Contacts now available for streaming, downloading or just looking at. Sent Patrick the session for Evaluate 29 for a collaborative effort. Again, this was built from a snatch of Laundry Day. 102522 Got the first mix of Show Me Your New Contacts back from Patrick. Finally replaced the foam in my Sony MDR-V6 headphones. Current status update: MIXED Stinker Dolemite Failure to Rise Ring of Stars The Cats of Summer (solo) Show Me Your New Contacts (solo) Evaluate 29 (collaboration) Pheromone Beanie (solo) Oily Rainbows (solo) Rattle (solo) Sweet, Soft Gollum (solo) Bobby (solo) Kitchen Matches (solo) BEING MIXED Dingus (collaboration) No Limes Merry Blaze Gulch (solo) The Blue One (solo) Off with the Ropes (solo) PROCESSING Lethal Portions Laundry Day Its My Island - bass Lighthouse Eve (solo) - vocals, bass TO DO JMLP Who is this Plumber? Shut Up You Crazy Diamond Open Sack Adorable Deplorable Swimmer's Shoulders The Last Moth June Everybody Does It The Salty Way TO DO JM I Can Walk (solo) Irene Ironweed (solo) Expression Petals (solo) Every Night (solo) Cherry (solo) Let Her Run (solo) 101622 Got after Sweet, Soft Gollum first thing in the morning. Tried a few vocal takes not using my head voice exclusively. My 5 AM voice was not up to my sad code so will try again later in the day. Added a low harmony idea to the chorus of Evaluate 29. 101522 Guts are knotted from suddenly realizing I could have found a way to rhyme "feng shui" with "kung fu sway". I need to drink some 7Up. Auditioned a non-galloping bass part for Laundry Day from Laundry Dave. Feels better. 101322 Sent Chris Richards Off with the Ropes and Rattle for trumpeting consideration. Fiddled a bit with Evaluate 29. 101122 More IMI vocal takes. 101022 Sang more takes of It's My Island. Still tweaking some of the lines. 100722 Fooled around with some melody ideas for Evaluate 29. 100622 Saw Fanny play at the RecordBar last night. Their cover of The Beatles' Hey Bulldog is a joy. I thanked June for including it in their short set and she laughed and said, on the charming side of cockily, "You liked that one, eh?" Also met the lovely Chris Richards so Johnny Marie songs meet trumpet parts! Fleshed out Evaluate 29 a bit. There is a percussive bass part Dave does in Laundry Day that I knew would make a glorious loop. Grabbed a chunk of Jerry's drums and chickaboom! - a foundation for a song. 100522 Off to see Fanny play at the RecordBar. I had to come up with words and the rest of the melody for the chourus (just the chourus, mind you) for It's My Island and the weight of it was like needing to go to a hardware store to address a mysterious plumbing issue. Finally got it done and feel that it is good. 100422 Saw a screening of the Fanny documentary. Why didn't David Bowie give them some good songs if he loved them so goddamned much? That would have changed everything for them. 100322 I have a U-shaped pedal board setup that I've been dying to intergrate with the DAW but because it has nearly 30 pedals on it I can't get it into the small space I have to work with. Finally figured out a way around the space issue and now get a nice, noiseless signal in. Took some more stabs at It's My Island. Still working on the differences between how pedal settings sound with the studio monitors vs how they sound on a track. 100222 Tried re-cutting some of the guitar tracks in It's My Island with the Decimator and it seems to work a little better than your run-of-the-mill noise gate. 100122 Worked on It's My Island a bit. Bought a Decimator to help with the pickup noise. 093022 Took a few stabs at the intro for It's My Island with the Tele but with two computers near by it's entirely too noisy. Have to sort this out. 092922 Sent The Blue One to Chris Ruzich for bass and to Leon for pianio. Determined to finish Rattle today and send it to Patrick. And I did. 092822 Coming up with new things to write about is challenging. Some topics already covered: The delights of having sex in the afternoon Not liking Mondays Not being satisfied There are 8 days in 1 week Purple Rain Europe being free of radios and so on Recorded cowbell and tambourine for Lethal Portions. 092522 Made new reference mixes with fresh bass parts for Jerry to work with. 092422 The Cats of Summer is now available for consumption. Chris Ruzich popped over and recorded bass for SS Gollum, Off with the Ropes and Gulch. 092322 Got the first mix of The Cats of Summer back from Patrick. Juicy work as always. Still poking around the new stuff for places where I need better takes of things - especially vocally. 091722 Added tambourine and more vocal takes to Sweet, Soft Gollum. Danny got a Fender Rhodes from the beloved Dave Estes so I asked him to re-cut his EP parts on Rattle with it. Did I ever tell you the thing about Dave Estes being at a Porps show in the 1980s? 091622 Got piano parts from Leon for Gulch and Sweet, Soft Gollum. Didn't get Rattle touched up in time to get it to Patrick today so will work on it this weekend and send to him on Monday. 091522 First get-together last night in a couple of months. We listened to Laundry Day and Lethal Portions to see what else needed to happen to them before handing them off for mixing. Recorded some backing vocals for Laundry Day. I looked at the set list and it appears that we only have 7 more songs to finish once LD and LP are handed off: Everybody Does It Open Sack The Last Moth Who is this Plumber? Adorable Deplorable Shut Up You Crazy Diamond Swimmer's Shoulders 091422 I think I have Rattle beaten into submission. Will listen a few more days then submit to Patrick on Friday. 091022 Still cleaning up Rattle. Should have it ready to go next week. Allen Johnston on drums, Dave Swiercinsky on bass and Danny Button on keys. 090922 Sang more takes of Rattle. Listened to Laundry Day and Lethal Portions and made notes for our session on Wednesday. 090822 Of course someone posted a link to God Save the Queen today and it was a glorious listen. I could totally hear Thom Yorke singing this. 090722 Tried re-recording some of the guitars in Rattle and Off with the Ropes using different setups. 090622 Considering what to start on next. Listened to Rattle, The Blue One and It's My Island - all very neato. I Think Rattle is closest to being finished so will wrap that one up. Tidied up Rattle a bit and sung a few more takes. This will go on the solo album as will The Blue One. It's My Island features all of the Lonesome Petunias so it will go on the next JMLP album. 090522 Had another go at vocals and guitars for Off with the Ropes. 090322 Mac is now Off with the Ropes. Sent a copy to Mr. Music for bass consideration. 090222 Reggae ended up working nicely. Move the keyboard chords over to where the snare would be and come up with some pussmepullya washboard parts on the guitar. Any daylight inspiration is forced - based on history and experience. During the sleepless and soggy night the real stuff comes, and sadly I'm almost always awake and ready for it. Today Mac will transition form rock ballad to dance song to reggae. Reggae is actually a shorter hop from the source than disco. 090122 Mac is starting to annoy me. The groove is too much like Isn't it a Pity? Experimenting with how much I have to change to make it dancy. 083122 Should have Mac ready to give to Chris, Leon and Jerry this coming weekend. 082922 Ring of Stars now available on BandCamp. 082822 Sang more Laundry Day takes. Getting closer to lyrics for Mac. Added a bridge and a scratch melody for it. 082522 Resuming construction of Mac today for the solo collection. Added a bass and a percussion idea. Made up some dummy words that I kind of like. This one is going to fall qickly if I don't dick with it too much. 082422 Got the first revision of Ring of Stars back from Patrick. Gosh damned close! 082222 Fooled around with the percussive outro on Bobby and dig it. Sang some more takes of Sweet, Soft Gollum. I have to sing in a falsetto because of where the melody sits and I discovered that is sounds better coming from the chest/guts vs the neck and shoulders. Sent a mix to Jerry,. Need to tidy up Oily Rainbows and get it to Patrick. And I did. 082122 Imported Dave Storms' percussion bits into the outro of Bobby and added and subtracted sounds. Will either keep or build another song around it. 081922 Picking the next thing to start on. Listened to Cherry and Irene Ironweed but was moved by Sweet, Soft Gollum. 081822 Sent Jerry Gulch and Bobby. Imported Leon's piano parts for Bobby. Imported Jerry's drums for Oily Rainbows. This guy always hears what I'm hearing. 081722 Sorted out Gultch and sent a copy to Chris Ruzich for bass prep and to Leon for piano. Got piano parts from Leon for Kynd of in My Mynd - now Bobby. Received a pass of drums from Dave Storms to let me know where he was going with the song. Dave sent me a fresh bass track for Lethal Portions. Jerry Riccardi sent Oily Rainbows tracks so will get Gulch ready for him. 081622 Still struggling with a bridge for Gulch. There is a point sometimes when creating cheap pop songs that you have to decide that something isn't working and scrap it. It's difficult deciding to pound your shitty looking flower pot back into a lump of clay and start over after worrying over it for days and thinking that you saw glimpses of something good. This occurred to me immediately after I had already uploaded the previous paragraph. The value of aborting something you've spent time on is that now you understand what won't work for the song. That is helpful. Upon further reflection, once you determine that red isn't the right color you can improve your return to the drawing board by reflecting on WHY red doesn't work. After all that preaching I came up with a delightful bridge. 081422 Worked on bridge and lyrics for Gulch. Chris Ruzich recorded bass and vocals for Bobby. 081322 Got some sweet acoustic guitar parts from Bill Ryan, engineered by Dave Storms. 081222 Worked more on getting Gulch sorted out. Close on the arrangement. Came up with some temporary words to help with phrasing consistency. 081122 I think I can knock off Gulch this weekend. And I mean knock it lovingly, tenderly. Just need words and add a verse/chorus repeat. I have some great musicians putting fresh paint and curtains on Bobby. I could potentially get it to Patrick less than 3 weeks after making it up. 080922 Listened to a half dozen hastily recorded demos and found some good stuff. When Bobby is done I'll start on Irene Ironweed and Gulch if I can't get my wheels on the ground with I Can Walk. 080822 Sent Bobby (I'm already sick of this working title) off to Dave Storms for drums and Bill Ryan for whatever he feels like doing to it. 080722 Bobby was built on a 4 chord thing using really odd open chords. How do I justify calling them odd? When I add the fingering to chord ID sites they return "Why are you doing that?" I built a bunch of stuff on top of these mystery chords, muted them and then tried to add proper guitar chords on top. That was a bit of an exercise as the vocal melody required altering the chords as the song advanced. Part of the process when you're a gigilo. 080422 Got bass parts from Dave for Lethal Portions and Laundry Day. Sent Patrick Show Me Your New Contacts. 080322 Got drum tracks from Jerry for Show Me Your New Contacts and The Cats of Summer. The Cats of Summer now in Patrick's capable and loving hands. 080222 Came up with proper words for Bobby. 080122 Sent Leon Bobby for some sexy keyboards. 073122 Created Kynd of in My Mynd (now Bobby) rather than work on I Can Walk. 073022 Adding guitar and fresh vocals to Lethal Portions. Talking to some more drummers for my solo stuff and Girl for Samson. 072922 Still tidying up the arrangement for I Can Walk. 072822 More struggles with sliding meter markers but finally got a good scratch track for I Can Walk down. 072722 Spent more time trying to flesh out I Can Walk in Pro Tools. It bounces back and forth from 3/4 to 4/4 so getting the markers right is making me crazy. Got close so tomorrow I'll tweak it to make sure all of the intervals and rests are the right duration before laying down a proper scratch guitar. 072622 Wrote some words for the bridge of Show Me Your New Contacts and sang some takes. Tried a different vocal approach on Kitchen Matches. Got all of John's guitar parts mixed in and sent a copy to Chris Ruzich for direction. Talked to Patrick about doing a pre-mix of Kitchen Matches before giving it to Brad. He agreed and it is now in his hands. Getting close to artwork for Merry Blaze, Ring of Stars and No Limes. 072522 Cleaned up Merry Blaze and handed it off to Patrick. Failure to Rise is done. 072422 Sang more Merry Blaze takes. This one should go to Patrick tomorrow if I get the piano parts today. Imported John McConnell's guitar parts into Kitchen Matches. Bumbled upon an idea for the artwork for Failure to Rise. The old pile-the-junk- drawer-contents-on-the-table- and-start-removing-things- until-you-are-left-with-a-can- opener-and-a-bright-red- lighter technique. 072322 Tried doing the galloping rhythm on Laundry Day. Managed to squeeze off two takes before switching to a more straight-ahead approach. Sent mixes to Dave for some at-home tracking. Current status: MIXED Stinker Dolemite Failure to Rise Ring of Stars The Cats of Summer (solo) BEING MIXED Show Me Your New Contacts (solo) Rattle (solo) Oily Rainbows (solo) No Limes Merry Blaze Kitchen Matches (solo) PROCESSING Lethal Portions Laundry Day Gulch (solo) Bobby (solo) Sweet, Soft Gollum (solo) Off with the Ropes (solo) The Blue One (solo) Its My Island TO DO JMLP Who is this Plumber? Shut Up You Crazy Diamond Open Sack Adorable Deplorable Swimmer's Shoulders The Last Moth June Everybody Does It The Salty Way TO DO JM I Can Walk (solo) Irene Ironweed (solo) Expression Petals (solo) Every Night (solo) Cherry (solo) Let Her Run (solo) Dingus (solo) 072222 Ring of Stars tidied up and sent to Patrick. Replaced some of the Jazzmaster parts with a Tele. Got the first mix of Failure to Rise back. Mercy. 072122 Had to sort out a misaligned synth issue in SAURO! Got it lined up and uploaded. Prepped No Limes and sent it to Patrick. Hoping to send him Ring of Stars in the next few days. 072022 SAURO! now available for streaming and purchase on BandCamp. Recorded bass for Ring of Stars and bass and backing vocals for No Limes. 071922 Tried to re-cut the guitar melody for Laudry Day and failed. Got enough for Danny to have a reference. Note to Wednesdayself: No Limes is 140 BPM and Ring of Stars is 130.. 071822 Got SAURO! (formerly Stinker) back from Patrick. It is quite jaunty. Going to see if I can get No Limes close to ready to ship. Should just need bass after I add some more vocal takes. Did some work on the Kitchen Matches arrangement. 071622 Removed some of the splashes from Show Me Your New Contacts and sent to Jerry. 071522 Recorded guide vocals for Lethal Portions and Laundry Day. 071422 Added guitars and some vocals to Merry Blaze. Cut another ending for Ring of Stars with the Tele. 071322 Two Petunias with birthdays today. Sent John McConnell Kitchen Matches for some guitar ideas. Sang a scratch lead vocal for Merry Blaze so that we can work on it tonight. Added Nashville tuned acoustics and the guitar outro part to Ring of Stars. Have a jacked drum track that I need to sort out while waiting on Dave's bass part. Recorded bass, backing vocals and organ for Merry Blaze. Jerry indicated that he thought he could track drums for The Cats of Summer this weekend. 071222 Comped Danny's Ring of Stars guitar parts. Learned a hard lesson about dragging bits of an interleaved stereo track onto a mono track if there is another mono audio track below. The hard lesson is that Pro Tools will put one channel where you desire and the other on the tack below it - which in this case was a tom track. 071022 Sorted out the ROS vocals so they are less wincesome. Shannon tracked a few keyboard parts. I think I'm going to be getting some guitar parts from Daniel shortly which will put a fresh bass part between Patrick having the song and not having the song. 070922 Steve Robinson sent me a track from his new album and it was lovely. It was also deflating because he has a radio-ready voice and I'm right in the middle of trying to croak my way through a 7 minute dopus. I can only do what I can do. I can love and admire someone else's work. It doesn't have anything to do with my work unless it inspires me. 070822 Sang more takes of Ring of Stars. Working on lyrics for Kitchen Matches so that I can get this to Brad. Came up with 3 good bits for KM and one that's so goofy and alliterative that it's either a must-use or I should delete any reference to it and re-format my hard drive. Also added more guitars because guitars are good. As Danny Button says: "Let the guitars do the talking." 070722 Married the Ring of Stars live parts with the best of the demo parts. Need to sing a new lead vocal. I may have scored another drummer for the live project courtesy of Chris Ruzich. We'll see if the new guy truly appreciates what thankless means. Worked a bit on the arrangement for Kitchen Matches. Sang more lead vocal takes for Ring of Stars. 070622 Recorded backing vocals for Ring of Stars. 070522 Got vocal tracks from Jerry for Failure to Rise. Promptly prepped the session and sent it to Patrick. 070322 Stinker will be released as Sauro. It's just the right thing to do. 063022 Dolemite available on 7/1/22 062922 We had a few listens to Dolemite and then ran through the catalog for the rest of the evening: Sweet & Low, Capers Land Ho Beat Box Caveat Parasol Dingus, Who Is This Plumber?, Open Sack We Don't Do That Little Something On Ordinary Guy Swimmer's Shoulders Dolemite, Gardenaire Billy Corgan's Cadillac Seven Little Eyes. Next week we'll finish up Ring of Stars. Got the first mix of Dolemite back from P. He's so good. 062622 Andy Gill and Hugh Cornwell spoke to me as guitarists. Andy for his jagged attacks and Hugh for his flat delivery and lovely, jarring note choices. 062522 Shannon tracked some more vocals for Failure to Rise. 062422 Danny added some classical guitar takes to Failure to Rise. Jerry is going to do some of the ooos and ahhhs at home so that I can get this to Patrick by Tuesday. 062322 Added guitars and vocals to Failure to Rise. Came up with some more backing vocal bits so will try to coax Jerry and Shannon to replace some of my parts. I really dislike hearing a singer also doing all of the backing parts. Love Elvis but I never liked hearing him donig his own ooos and ahhhs. His voice is too distinct. Marvin Gaye and Paul McCartney can do that shit all they want. 062222 Band dinner at our one of our regular venues rerouted because of Health Department violations. Found an alternate source and then tracked drums, bass and backing vocals for Failure to Rise. Should give it to Patrick on Tuesday. 062122 Fooled around some more with the outro of Kitchen Matches and sent a copy to Chris. 062022 Oily Rainbows now in Jerry Riccardi's capable and flexible hands. Chris Ruzich recorded a couple of bass takes for Oily Rainbows. We also listened to Kitchen Matches and played through I Can Walk. Tried some Muffy guitar melodies during the Kitchen Matches outro. 061822 Sent Patrick Strinker. 39 active tracks and that includes two drum takes. Transposed the 5 instruments in the B section from my demo of Who's That Plumber? into our live session that is longer and at a different tempo. Added a mellotron vibraphone to Show Me Your New Contacts. 061522 Recorded bass and backing vocals for Merry Blaze. 061422 Finally sent Patrick Dolemite. 35 tracks. Will start prepping Stinker next. 061322 Fiddled with Kitchen Matches a bit. Need an instrumental or vocal melody for the C section. I need to finish I Can Walk so that the people around me are spared the endless searching through the chord sequences. 060822 Recorded drums for Everybody Does It. Now we move on to culling best takes of the songs and then overdubbing. Current recorded to partially recorded song list: Merry Blaze Stinker Dolemite Ring of Stars Who is this Plumber? Lethal Portions Laundry Day Shut Up You Crazy Diamond Open Sack Adorable Deplorable Its My Island Rattle Dingus No Limes Failure to Rise Swimmer's Shoulders The Last Moth June Everybody Does It 060522 Sent Show Me Your New Contacts to Leon for Keyboard Konsideration. 060422 Sent Jerry Show Me Your New Contacts and The Cats of Summer. Chris Ruzich tracked parts for The Cats of Summer, Show Me Your New Contacts and took a couple of swings at Oily Rainbows. 060322 Whacked the Show Me Your New Contacts section out of the I Can Walk monstrosity and now I have a 4 minute ditty Chris can bass up tomorrow. 060122 Took some earnest stabs at recording June. Next week we'll do Everbody Does It and then move on to step 2. 052522 I try, awkwardly and painfully try, to avoid the crowd, avoid trends, and yet there sits an Altoids case velcro'd to my pedalboard. A pedalboard purse. Scheduled Chris Ruzich for Oily and Cats. We recorded some takes of Failure to Rise. Had some issues so will rinse and repeat next week. 052322 I don't think that I've ever used the word "difficult" organically. 052222 Added a new section to I Can Walk since I'm having trouble with it. 052122 I can't work out all of the time changes in I Can Walk and now I wish I was a little bit dead. 051822 Recorded more live takes of Swimmer's Shoulders and The Last Moth. 051522 Sang some more takes for The Cats of Summer and roughed out another arrangement for I Can Walk. 051222 Recorded drums for Swimmer's Shoulders and worked out The Last Moth for next week. I think that will just leave Failure to Rise to do. 051022 Back from a visit with John McConnell. Had great fun dicking with his guitars and boards and several song bits were born. Immediately bought a Line 6 M5 and a TC Electronics Spark upon my return. 042722 Recorded drums for Adorable Deplorable. I was amazed to discover that we just have a 2-3 left before we can actually start tracking other instruments. 042422 I saw an ad on a music forum - a mother begging for a studio opportunity for her daughter. She ended the plea with "TIA." Type "Thanks in advance." you lazy leech. 042122 Recorded some more variations for I Can Walk. I want to finish sketching this one by early May. 042022 Got off a decent version of Open Sack. 420 Day was brutalized and left lifeless near the old quarry. Got piano tracks from Leon for The Cats of Summer. This is our first collaboration since Porps in the 1980s. 041622 Made myself clean up the 13 pedal board by properly routing all of the power cables underneath. Looks snazzy. My neighbors have a male and a female dog. The male dog isn't long for this world. In order to ease its suffering they have been giving it cannibas butter. This has dramatically improved its quality of life. I went outside this morning and the male was lying lifeless on the ground while the female was grinding her groin mercilessly on his head. It was very disturbing. I wasn't sure if it was a demonstration of mourning for his passing or a celebration dance. I struggled to think of what to tell the neighbors. "Your dog is dead and getting skull- fucked." I went inside and hugged all of my cats, lamenting the day I will be faced with their passing. I went back outside an hour later the dog was sitting happily on the deck. He hadn't died. He was just passed out from the edibles. 041522 Found a neat sound. I have a Mono Synth pedal that I've just never been able to justify the space on a board for. I put it back on and set the effect very low so that when I play chords it makes wonderful random glitchy noises. Replacing my Canyon delay with a Memory Man Deluxe. 041422 Must have a Mercury7 and a Rainbow Machine. Must. 041322 Recorded live versions of Shut Up You Stupid Diamond and Merry Blaze. Rehearsed Open Sack for next week. 041022 Added another long section to I Can Walk. 040722 Record the layout for I Can Walk because I need another unfinished 9 minute song on my to-do list. 040622 Got a couple of good live takes of Laundry Day. I think this means we have live drums with Jerry Riccardi for: Stinker Dolemite Ring of Stars Who is this Plumber? Lethal Portions Laundry Day Shut Up You Crazy Diamond Open Sack Adorable Deplorable ...and tracks from Allen for: Its My Island Rattle Dingus No Limes ...and that leaves: Failure to Rise Swimmer's Shoulders The Last Moth ...and still needs some work: The Salty Way Spain Everybody Does It ....still to be done. (updated 4/27/22) 040422 The Walrus Audio Slö is now my official over-used pedal. Big. Dark. Oily. 040322 Sent Chris Ruzich The Cats of Summer. For my records - songs for consideration for "solo" album thus far: Gulch Pox Oily Rainbows The Cats of Summer Stealing Books The Salty Way Kitchen Matches Chris and I worked on something last year that I can't find. Time to wring some value out of the journals. ...and the journals pay dividends. The song is Kitchen Matches. 040222 Finally getting my voice back, such as it is, after a severe month-long sinus infection. Tidied up Oily Rainbows and sent Leon a version of The Cats of Summer. 033022 Recorded a live version of Lethal Portion and got Laundry Day ready for next week. 032622 The Lord Dr. Fennel gave me lyrics for Cats of Summer, rendering Cats of Summer not suitable as a title. 032522 Recorded the guts of The Cats of Summer for the solo album. Talked to Leon Kopelivich about adding some piano to some of the songs. 032322 Finished recording the 2nd half of Who is this Plumber? Talked about starting on Lethal Portions next week. 031622 We had a go at recording Who is this Plumber? It's made up of 5 sections with varying tempos and time signatures so we decided to approach it one section at a time. Got mired in section 3. 031322 I've been struggling to find meaningful ways to employ my Syntax Error pedal. Found two neat spots in oilyrainbows. Before this I was using the DM12 as a MIDI controller for guide drums for one bit and as a synth for another. Discovered tapping out MIDI drum bits while the synth is recording on an audio track. Inspired a nice romp for an outro. 031222 Sent what I had so far for Oily Rainbows, now to be referred to as oilyrainbows, for drums and bass. Sauced up a riff section by using the Tele instead of the Jazzmaster. 031122 I love that thing where the lyric you heard is better than the lyric they used. I found one of these tidbits in Vietnamerica and will be employing it in the intro of Oily Rainbows. 031022 Week-long sore throat now in the lungs so the voice is Barry White through a fuzz pedal, Will catch up finishing up Oily Rainbows in about a week. 030822 Have Oily Rainbows arranged. Just need to tidy up the vocals before sending to Chris Ruzich and Jerry. Got a note from Danny indicating that he's got the live set up in our space now going directly to Pro Tools. We should really start churning out music now. 030222 We're inching towards a system for recording live. Had a go at Ring of Stars with my wobbly guide track. Everybody was a little cranky but a listen to the results afterwards was healing. I have loads of songs that need to be recorded so I'm going to start putting them out by myself while the Petunias get caught up with our to-do pile. 022622 Finished getting stuff out of our previous space. Sooooo many keyboard stands. 022322 Had a run at recording live bass, guitar and keyboards. 022222 Sent Danny some of the guitar parts for Ring of Stars to marry with Jerry's drum bits from last week. Going to try to record the remaining instruments live together. 021822 Same more takes for Ring of Stars. 021622 Recorded some live takes of Ring of Stars, mostly to harvest some lively drum tracks. 021122 Girl for Samson's Old into Young is now up on Bandcamp. Available everywhere else on Monday. My contributions for this album where originally intended for juiceboxberries. 020622 Danny and Dave made some progress on Danny's studio. Our first rehearsal with everybody using headphones. 020522 Finally came up with words for Ring of Stars. We've been performming that one for about 2 years with 6 mintues of gibberish. 012522 I want to use the word dynamite in the Dolemite lyrics. Perhaps "Dolemite, big disco dynamite". 012422 Bumped the Ring of Stars tempo up to 130. 012222 Set the Ring of Stars demo to Dave and Jerry for rhymic concerns. Of course it's agonizingly slow compared to the version we've been doing live. 011922 An away game as our current host is on holiday. 011222 The day the man who killed the ants came by. East-West Pipeline. 011122 Sent Danny the framework for the Salt trilogy. 110921 Sketched out The Salt Trilogy - three chunks of songs that we have been fooling with at rehearsals. Having fun tweaking a ZOOM G1 Four that I got for a hundred clams or dollars or whatever. 010622 Had a dream that I was chatting with Andy Partridge and just through saying things out loud to another human (in my head) I felt shame for not being more aggressive with getting these albums finished. I hearby resolve. 010122 Learning new songs at the same rate that we're forgetting old ones. Current rehearsal setlist: Everybody Does It It's An Open Sack Laundry Day Lethal Portions The Last Moth The Salt Trilogy Who Is This Plumber? Songs that we played live for the last 2 years and now have likely have forgotten, and still haven't recorded: Adorable Deplorable Dingus Dolemite Failure to Rise It's My Island Let Her Run Merry Blaze No Limes Rattle Ring of Stars Shut Up You Crazy Diamond Stinker Swimmer's Shoulders The Blue One