Sunday, January 12, 2014

January in the Late 90s


Buzzed And Confused (solo acoustic)
Puerto Peñasco


I like marking anniversaries here, apparently. I have a big ol' list of every song I can remember, from goofy immature stuff I wrote as a 13 year old in 1983 to the goofy immature stuff I'm still writing today (hmm).  Today I'm posting a couple of songs I wrote in Januaries past.

The first is "Buzzed and Confused", written 15 years ago this week.  The title was inspired by an off-handed comment by a friend of mine, which quickly made its way into this song.  I always liked this one a lot, and was particularly pleased with the In-Jokes With Myself  version (In-Jokes having its own 11th anniversary this week as well), thinking it good enough to lead off the album. For whatever reason Science Diet never played it, and I may have more or less been alone in my admiration for the song.  The In-Jokes version had bonus Led Zep musical references, which would have been actual samples if I'd been savvy enough to figure out how to do it in that old software. This version is just me and my guitar, recorded with Audacity.

The second song is a bit older in multiple ways. "Puerto Peñasco" began as the riff, which I happened upon in 1991 during the summer I was in Japan. At the time the best use I had for it was a screed about a college dormmate who was particularly loathsome.  I was eventually able to repurpose it as a song about the nearest beach town to Tucson, Puerto Peñasco. The song is pretty slight, and it's not like I would have been in particular need of warm weather in Tucson, but it's pretty good-natured and since it's coming up on its 17th birthday in a week or two I figured I'd give it its first-ever recording. :)  For this one I used Garageband, recording it to three tracks (voice, rhythm guitar, and the riff) and adding just a bit of echo. Not sure if I'll ever try to record a "real" version, though there is potentially a spot on the potentially upcoming Unselected EP (since I'm not terribly happy with a couple of the recordings)...