A Lost Original and Should've-been-lost Cover

Songs:
Bisbee Blue (demo)
Your Love (cover)

How about another song or two?  That's rhetorical: you don't have any real choice in the matter, though neither are you required to download or listen. But, of course, you know that already.

I just did a little bit of recording to pick up my mood a bit. The first song is an original called Bisbee Blue. I'm not quite sure when I wrote it, other than "mid-90s". The song is named for the town of Bisbee, once one of the largest cities in Arizona but most recently something of a tourist/artist/old-timey attraction. Bisbee blue is a...you know, I'm not sure what it is.  A color, of course, but I'm not sure if it was in local pottery or jewelry or what.   It's the local turquoise.  It's also the name of a song by Tucson band Calexico, though my song was written first. I'd forgotten about it for ages, and only rediscovered it a year or so ago. I may rerecord it for real for the next EP, but I figured I'd bang it out now and post it.

And since heaven forfend I just post one song, I added a goofy cover of Your Love by the Outfield. Their version is better, of course, but they had the advantage of knowing what they were doing. Even though I either botched the ending or didn't botch it because you can't botch what you don't know, I thought I'd post it, too. 

Both songs are just me and my guitar. For Bisbee Blue I recorded them on separate tracks in serial, for Your Love I just did it live (obviously). 

Dear Kate Bush

Songs at the bottom!

First a bit of near/medium term planning: Thanks to all for the positive response to the "We Didn't Start The Science" video! This post doesn't have any geeky rewritten pop songs, so be warned. :)  I plan to do National Poetry Writing Month again on the blog in April, and also to get a few music posts in before then. In particular, I'm hoping to post the first part of my Ceres rock opera (which is technically not an opera, I think). I've also been toying with a longer-term project of writing Schoolhouse Rock-style planetary science songs. The initial reaction has been positive, but of course that's entirely been from friends on Twitter. :)

OK, today I'm posting two versions of a song that I've been working on for a while but will clearly never put on a "proper" EP or LP like the ones on Bandcamp. I'm not sure exactly what started me writing a song "about" Kate Bush, but I started nonetheless. I wanted it to be a complicated, way-overproduced thing vaguely reminiscent of "Hounds of Love" (in fact, it was a cover of Hounds of Love that helped spur me on).  But I never could sing it worth a damn. I posted an instrumental version of it here (in fact it was one of my very first posts) and thought I'd figure it out later.

And so I did! I realized I should have Meredith sing it and that would work better.  Unfortunately, all of the techno wizardry needed for the various parts (including the 100% auto-tune that I think helps lend...something to the song) mean that the vocals sound odd in an unintended way.  On top of that, the sample of "The Man With The Child In His Eyes" means that I'm reluctant to put it on Bandcamp.  So I'm putting it here (and below) instead.

The second version is just me and my guitar.  I originally recorded it for a friend, and for completeness am putting it up here (and below). It's much much simpler than the way I imagine it (which is more like the "regular" version), so I don't want to put that on Bandcamp either.  And if it's not going to be on a proper release, I might as well put it here. :)

Dear Kate Bush: Meredith vocals, full Gedankenband
Dear Kate Bush: Andy and guitar

Video: We Didn't Start The Science

I do a lot on Twitter.  I'm probably use it more than any other social media site.  My handle is @ asrivkin, though you're much more likely to find this blog via Twitter than find me on Twitter via this blog. 

Anyhow, as I was approaching my 10,000th tweet I thought I'd do something fun. My 5,000th tweet found me at a famous landmark, but timing wasn't working out to do something similar for 10,000. So instead you get a video!  I did the "special effects" with Photo Booth-- it would likely have come out better if I'd allocated more time to the process and some effort into getting some better lighting, but perhaps it fits the DIY nature of things better this way.




"We Didn't Start The Science" appears a few times on this blog and elsewhere.  I of course didn't write the music. Because it's a cover it's not eligible to be on my Bandcamp site, but that doesn't mean I won't point to it and recent releases there anyway. :)

Back on Mars Hill

I've been traveling since, well, 2011 2012. The last few days have found me in Flagstaff, at Lowell Observatory staying in the chalet on Mars Hill. It's really a great place, sort of the Wrigley Field of American astronomy, and it still retains a lot of its late 19th/early 20th century charm. I've been lucky enough to spend two long stints here: a month in 1989 for Astronomy Field Camp, and the summer of 1995 for a graduate student program.

The 1995 graduate program coincided with the yearly undergraduate internships run by several Flagstaff-area astronomy institutions, and there was a group of about 10 of us (graduate and undergraduate, plus a high school intern) who hung out together much of the summer. At one point they heard me play guitar, and humored/cajoled me into playing a "concert" for them one night up on Mars Hill.

Since I'm staying on Mars Hill again, I thought I'd post a few of the songs that they recorded from that night.  They're not great recordings, plus Get Out of My Life is notorious for being a swear-filled monstrosity, but I don't think people listen to any of the songs I'm posting, so I think I'm in the clear. :)

1. Another Margarita
2. The Astronomers Song
3. Get Out of My Life (aka Psychopath) VERY NSFW!!

UPDATE: I should have included a link (or two) to the song I wrote that summer, Crunchy Granola Girl. I didn't perform it since it wasn't written yet, but I did record a 4-track version (one of the first posts on this blog!) when I got back to Tucson and it was the anchor song of Do Not Tip or Rock.



Bonus Anecdote: That summer was also the only time I played an open mic night (at least prior to the AGU one). Get Out of My Life was a crowd-pleaser, though of course the crowd was small. Near the end of the summer, Tim Spahr and I were bowling when a large, drunk-looking biker type aggressively came to our lane. I thought it was to beat us up since we kept having malfunctions, but instead he said "Hey, you're the guy who had that lunatic song!".  

Liara

tl;dr? song link here: Liara (mp3)

I just finished Mass Effect 3 on our Xbox a few days ago. For the uninitiated, it's a sci-fi role playing game with combat elements that involves saving the galaxy from genocidal invaders, putting together a team in the course of the game to do so. The first two games establish the nature of the threat to the galaxy and are where most of the new characters are introduced, while the third one deals with actually fighting off the invasion.  The game trilogy has fans as devoted as any movie or book series, and at least touches on deep moral and ethical questions, even if it doesn't always resolve them. 

As with many games of this type, the relationships between characters develop with time (and with how you treat them). Many of the characters are "romanceable", several to players of either gender. This is true even though relatively few of the romanceable characters are human. Both of these facts were somewhat controversial when the first installment of the game came out, and both centered on an alien character of the asari race named Liara-- the only non-human romanceable character in Mass Effect 1, and the only one romanceable by either gender.   

I've been using the same character (Mordechai Shepard) for all three games, importing him from one game to the next as each installment became available. While the ending was...not what I was quite expecting, I'm thinking I may start again from the beginning in 2013 and play through all of them without having to wait for years in between. The one major change I imagine making in the next playthrough will be romancing Liara. She's not the favorite character of the fanbase (that crown probably belongs to Garrus, though Tali has a strong contingent), but certainly some of the sweetest moments in the series involved her. While other romances and squadmates from the first installments may lose faith in you or get drawn off on their own obligations, Liara never does.

So, even though I'm 43 years old, I wrote a song for a blue alien character in an Xbox game. It's just me and a guitar, basically just a demo.  It may never get more developed or better performed than this, but after spending hundreds of hours with her over the course of 5 years or so, maybe I'll rerecord it at some point. :)

Here it is:  Liara (mp3)

Live at AGU!

Howdy from groovy, rocking San Francisco. I'm here for the American Geophysical Union Fall meeting, one of the major annual gatherings of planetary scientists (along with, in this case. oceanographers, atmospheric scientists, geodesy people, geophysicists, and all the other disciplines that comprise earth science).  It's a giant meeting, with something like 20-30,000 attendees.

This year for the first time, they held an Open Mic Night. We had a great turnout both from performers and the audience perspective.  Naturally, I couldn't resist signing up.  I managed to whip through two songs in my 5 minutes: OBAFGKM and the Planetary Blues (which was a slight reworking of the LPSC Blues, which itself was a reworking of the LPL Blues).

The crowd, who were mostly geologists, didn't get the whole Oh Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me (Right Now Smack) reference, though they were appreciative.  All in all, it was a very fun night, which led into the rest of a fun evening with old friends. I'd particularly like to thank Luke and Barbara for showing up!

They were sporadically videotaping the event. I have no idea if I was recorded for the official video.  I did get a recording of myself using my phone. The sound is heavily dominated by my guitar (the wonderful Washburn Rover), and my voice is a bit buried, but that may be for the best.  And, after all, that's what this blog is for.

So with no further ado, here's my two song set at the AGU Open Mic Night!

(And with only additional ado, here's my link to the blog post on space songs I've done, including OBAFGKM yet again: link) 

The Cheese Stands Alone, now on Bandcamp

As of today, all of the music I've recorded and "released" can be found at the Gedankenband Bandcamp site. The last album to move over, The Cheese Stands Alone, is now available there. As with the others it's "pay what you like", from zero on up.

This blog was originally started as a place to host TCSA back in 2009. I've rerouted all the links to the songs to the relevant Bandcamp ones. However, since the blog has evolved into a place I put recordings of cover songs, demo bits, new rerecordings, and poetry during National Poetry Writing Month, all of which I plan to continue.

Thank you for reading (even whoever is reading the element poetry from Russia), and enjoy!