Thoughts, Raves & Outright Beatings

How would you feel about being on THIS particular playlist?

Somewhere, Zack de la Rocha is shitting bricks…

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As you two or three regulars may have noticed, I disappeared for a while.  I missed the Oscars (Yay Glen and Marketa!).  I missed the Obama/Clinton catfights.  All just to put together a CD of songs created using a couple of guitars and a handheld computer.

Yes, I’m done with it.  Made a few mistakes.  Inadvertently sent those mistakes to the RPM Challenge folks before realizing that I had to listen to it FIRST! Grrrrrrrrrrr!  Stayed up WAY too many nights on my way down to the wire, so as to do a “remaster” to reprovide to the RPM Challenge folks.  And now I’m feeling sick as a dog.

So, as you all can see, I’m too out of the loop to comment on anything really important.  All I can see is that McCain is looking to be like Bush II, with his apparent commitment to keeping troops in Iraq.  And Huckabee would usher in the the Republic of Gilead, should he be elected.  And Obama and Clinton…I don’t who would be worse.   Massive taxation, or a Bush II with a liberal face.  You all can decide who’s who.

It’s just like 2000.  The calculated risk involved in choosing what would appear the least of the evils.  Sigh…

I’m just so into this, let me tell you.

Anyway, I’ve set up an account on Discmakers to do an initial run of CDs.  It’s cheap and I can do the setup myself.  In the interim, I’ll be doing a psuedo-Radiohead and set up an oggcast previewing the CD come Sunday.    You can all post your fabulous (or snickering) reviews of my “masterpiece”.

As an experiment, I’m doing an all out distribution and promo of this CD.  CD Baby.  Itunes.  Ads on Myspace. The works.  Seriously, I want to see just how far I can take this project, because, despite it’s humble preparations (plus occasionally pitchy singing and embarrassing lyrical content), I’m quite proud of it.  I’ll also need to learn how to play these songs on my guitar.  YIKES!

Anyway, more news as it comes. 

Oh, and if anyone cares, I’ve unbanned Ryan Jerz from this blog. I can’t hold a grudge, and I’m sure he’ll be pleased as punch to get the news (BWAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA!!!).

I seriously wanted to go out this evening.  The snow is preventing me from doing so.

Instead…

I finished my last song this evening. It’s called “Ringed By Lovers”. As you will see, it needs a bit of tweaking done. But here’s an initial preview for your review, possible feedback, and even a chuckle or two.

Download

Lyrics

Given that I don’t have a lot of time left for the luxury of plotting extravagant arrangements, this song was assembled as a very basic, minimal, electroclash track. Again, I had these lyrics lying around, and, as I recall, I started writing while I was listening to Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song”. Since I can’t really get away with parroting Radiohead musically with just being backed up by my PDA, I decided to try marrying them to this music, and see how it worked. Hopefully I succeeded. Not sure I have.

Thoughts?

Oh, and if you have four wheel drive and can handle the drifts, EJ Maldonado is throwing a CD release party at Maytan’s Music Center this evening.

I’d go, but my little Hyndai (sp) is seriously skittish in the snow.  Seriously…

Stuff White People Like …seriously…

BTW, I don’t like Divorce, and I’m a bigger fan of Common than Mos Def.  But whatever…

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To be truthful, when I started participating in this year’s RPM Challenge, I was a little concerned about running out of material and ideas half way through the month.  After Sheila and Mayron, I was considering whether to hang it up or no.

Then Kosovo declared independence.  Yet another song idea!  This tune is a soul/trip hop kinda dealie (or an attempt at one), called “Taking Back Kosovo”

Lyrics

Download

Being that I’m ethnically half-Serbian, I was wondering if I should drown my sorrows in that flask of slivovitz a co-worker brought to me from her trip to Croatia, or nash my teeth at the world, once again, “siding” with the Albanians.

Nah…whatever…

I just have these memories of watching my mom, a normally docile person in her old age (God/dess rest her soul), squeeze the veins literally out of her neck at the sight of the Balkans conflicts of the early ’90’s, screaming about how noone ever says anything about the injustices the Croats and the Muslims inflicted, but somehow, everyone piles upon the Serbs whenever THEY do something wrong.

Mom, I love you, but…

1.  The Serbs started it.

2.  The Serbs kept…getting…caught.  Red handed.   Given the Serbian nature of being blatantly obvious of their occasional hatred for their fellow man, this should not surprise anyone.

Anyway, I was the Merchantile Mall McDonald’s the other day, and wondered what it would be like for an Albanian to have this conversation with my mom r.e. the current events.  The lyrics and the music came very quickly after that.  Hope you likes.

BTW, I threw every song I’ve put together for this challenge so far onto my Winamp.  The resulting playlist came to about 33 minutes and 14 seconds.  According to the RPM challenge rules, a completed album needs to be 35 minutes.  Or 10 songs  Or both.  At this point, I’m thinking I need to finish this project by the 22nd.  This should give about 3 days to resing parts, do a complete remix of at least half the songs on my PC, master them all, get some artwork together, burn a few professional quality copy of the CD, then send it off to to New Hampshire prior to the March 1 deadline.  I may need to do another song anyway, as the final mixes of my songs may shorten them a little bit.

So, I’ll meet my time goal, but I’ll only have 9 songs.  OTOH, maybe the world will be a better place because of it.  Who knows.  Also, after I finish this CD, I may do a little experiment with it.  Hang tight…

Your girl was quite busy running errands these days; oil, transmission, eye appointment, hair appointment (I spent 3 hours at the Ulta Salon in Spanish Springs this evening, getting a new do.  To say that I walked out of there looking 20 years younger would be an understatement).  That, and I found 5 hours total to put the following together.  It’s called “Sheila and Mayron”

Lyrics

Download

Once again, I had some spare lyrics laying around.  I finished them, polished them the best that I could, and set some music to them that I had been toying around with in my head for the past year or so.  

As with everything else in this competition, it’s gotten easier and easier to put things together the more often you do them.  So today, I was able to lay the guitar part down without so much of a hassle (I know it doesn’t sit well in the mix right now; blame the Zoom H4; I’ll have to remix on the PC).  But, out of all the songs I’ve done for this competition, this one was the hardest for me to sing - primarily, I think, because I wrote the thing in a key that’s a little high for me.   

Anyway, after several dozen punch-ins, and replacing vocal effects, I think I’ve got something that’s somewhat acceptable for public consumption.

Thoughts?

I took two days off from putting the CD together last week: Valentines’ Day and the day afterward, obviously.  On VDay, we went to Jack’s on 4th Street here in Reno, just to see if we could wing getting in without a reservation.  Wouldn’t you know it, the moment we stepped to the Maitre (sp) d’s desk, someone had called up to cancel theirs.  SWEET!  Place was noisy - hardly conducive to a romantic evening out - but it was fun anyway.  And the food, of course, marvelous.  Then Friday we went to a new Vietnamese restaurant in our hood called Saigon 88.  They served pho.  The Pho outfits have been opening up left and right here in Truckee Meadows, but this place was, hands down, the best.   Great atmosphere, great food.  Yum!

Got back into the swing of things Saturday morning.  I tried my hand at dance, this time.   I’ll admit that this track took only about 3 hours to put together.  It’s the sort of thing that pisses people off about techno.  But I promise, I put a lot of thought into it!

Anyway, here’s the track.  Hope ya likes:

Lyrics

Download

The song is about the former junkies I used to know back in San Francisco, during the late ’80’s and early ’90’s.  Vocally, I tried to convey the feelings of a strung out drug addict.  I’m afraid I might have come off sounding a little too happy (that, and my midrange has crept back into my singing again.  UGH!). 

Thoughts?