NaPoWriMo 2014, Post 1: Three Muses

Welcome back, Erato, for your yearly trip
to reside here on my humble site.
I ask you for a little skill so that I can equip
some quality in everything I write.

And once again, Urania, you find some extra time
as the winter fades and summer draws e'er close.
So I ask for inspiration as I begin these rhymes
so that I can worthily compose
a month's worth of poetry--30 days of verse
dedicated to your heavenly charms.
And if you notice that my work is going bad to worse
don't hesitate to sound all the alarms.

You're off the hook, Euterpe. Go on and take five.
Your sisters have you covered until May.
Though guitars may be idle my love for you survives
and if perhaps you think you'd rather stay
I wouldn't have it any other way.

The Annual NaPoWriMo Intro Post

Every April since 2010, I've transformed my music blog into a poetry blog for National Poetry Writing Month (aka NaPoWriMo). This April will be no exception.  The idea behind NaPoWriMo is to write a poem every day for all 30 days of April. While not required by the "rules" of NaPoWriMo, I also strive to post that poem here every day. This is sometimes complicated by travel (as will certainly happen this year), but I try to do this on a best-effort basis.  And, you know, you get what you pay for as far as free poetry.

In 2010 I wrote a poem about a different Major League Baseball team each day.  In 2011 it was poems about chemical elements. In 2012 and 2013, however, I turned vocation into avocation and wrote space poetry, which I also plan to do this year.

As in the past, I know some other folks will be joining me in NaPoWriMo with space themed poetry, most notably Christine Reuter (aka tychogirl), Amee Hennig (aka astropoetamee), Alex Parker (aka alex_parker), and Noam Izenberg (aka iyzie) . I also expect Jennifer Grier (aka grierja) and Michele Bannister (astrokiwi) to take part in NaPoWriMo though they may keep their poems from the web in order to allow them to appear in publications.

NaPoWriMo is about getting people to write without worrying about having it be perfect, which pre-empts the whole process. I encourage all of you to write something! In previous years I've come up with free verse, sestinas, sonnets, haiku, and a whole heck of a lot of doggerel. It doesn't need to be a poem every day, it doesn't need to be The Rime of the Ancient Mariner or Leaves of Grass. It doesn't have to be anything you share with others, it doesn't have to be about planets or space or science at all. But if you want to try your hand and are willing to share but don't have a venue to post what you want, I'm happy to do so here. I'll post it under your name or anonymously as you wish, with any accompanying text you like. If you can find this blog, you can probably find my contact information either in my profile here, or on Twitter (@ asrivkin) or elsewhere.

After The Judgment Day

It feels like I haven't picked up my guitar in ages, so I thought I'd indulge myself a bit today after a crazy stretch. The most proximal crazy was moving everything out of the house in Pomona NY where I lived when I was in high school, in preparation for selling it (hopefully the closing will be this week). I've been using Twitter to chronicle the various bits and pieces of my childhood that I ran across. These two elements come together in today's post, sort of, as I wanted to record something relevant to the house.

In retrospect I was always writing lyrics, which segued into writing songs. I have a few different candidates for my first "real" song depending on definition. Some of them were written in the house previous to the Pomona house. Love at First Sight was written there, but there's already a Gedankenband version of the song. Kumiko was also written while living there, but with somewhat different lyrics.   Watching Rainbows is a personal favorite, but I'm saving it for a landmark anniversary this fall. So I turned to After The Judgment Day.

The song was written at the behest of a very-short lived band I was in. I'm not sure we ever even played together for more than an hour or two of practice. The name came from Jon the lead singer, who took the first initials of our names (Tracey the keyboardist, Darren the bass player, Jon, and me) and came up with the phrase. It was the first "band song" I wrote but not the last, with songs for Dr. Lüst, Jury Rig, and even the Gedankenband getting songs (Out Of Our League was written as a Science Diet equivalent but doesn't mention the band).

The lyrics for ATJD are a bit awkward, but were earnest. :)  I wrote it in March 1986, so it just turned 28. Recorded, as is often the case, solo with my guitar using Audacity. I hope you enjoy it!

After the Judgment Day

New Gedankenband EP: Unselectable

Link to Unselectable on Bandcamp
1. I Think I'll Fall In Love With You
2. What Am I To Do?
3. If I Can't Be
4. I Still Reckon
5. Lost In The Artifacts

I'm only too happy to report the availability of a new EP by Andy Rivkin and his Gedankenband: Unselectable. The songs have appeared here on the blog in acoustic or demo versions (or in one case the final version) over the years, but the majority appear in full band versions for the first time on the EP.

As usual, the EP is downloadable for free, though you may also choose to pay something for it if you like. But having people download and enjoy it is most important for me. :) 

Previous LPs, EPs, and singles are also still available, linked from the main Gedankenband page through their covers.

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)...

2013 in Review

I suppose I'm not immune to the urge to look back and sum up.

This will be the 51st post to this blog in 2013. The majority came during National Poetry Writing Month in April, but there was a somewhat-steady stream of music, both originals and covers, and both informal and...less informal we can say.

There were also videos!  In fact, the two most-visited posts of 2013 both featured videos:

1. We Didn't Start the Science (for my 10,000th tweet)
2. The live solo acoustic preview of the song MarcoPolo

MarcoPolo was the only new Bandcamp release this year for the Gedankenband and I, featured along with its B-sides in this post:
3. MarcoPolo, the single!

And I was filmed performing MarcoPolo for a European planetary science audience, presented here:
4. MarcoPolo, live and under duress!

Other originals featured on the blog this year included (link to music, not the post):
5. Dear Kate Bush
6. Bisbee Blue
7. But Of Course
8. Congress St. Blues
9. I Still Reckon 
10. Solitaire: New Deal
11. Ceres Ferdinandea I: The Monk and the Prodigy
12. If I Can't Be
13. (I Couldn't) Keep Taylor Swift Happy

All the poems were pretty much collected in April, here in reverse order:
14. April 2013 on the blog

Though one poem snuck its way into May:
15. NaPoWriMo Bonus Poem

Thanks for reading, or listening, or whatever it is you're doing. I hope to bring you back for more in 2014!

Potentially Coming Attractions, and a Question for You

As 2013 starts looking for its coat and does a last round of goodbyes before heading for the exit, I'm thinking about another music release. While most of the visits to the blog come during National Poetry Writing Month, I do think of this as a music blog first. Since the last full-length album, The Cheese Stands Alone, I've put a couple of EPs up on Bandcamp (Local Technique and Not for Having, But for Tasting) as well as a couple of singles. And it's looking like the MarcoPolo single will be the only music released in 2013 on the Gedankenband site (though some bits and pieces are here on the blog).

So the question is whether to try another full-length album (Cheese was released in 2009) or do another EP in early 2014. I can collect 4-5 songs easily enough between songs I've been working on, songs I've posted here in demo form, and songs I'd like to record, but I could alternately compile the last two EPs with a bunch of newly-recorded songs and make a full album.

I recognize I don't get a lot of people reading this (which is fine), and I get very few comments. But if you do have an opinion, please chime in. Would you be more interested in a 4-5 song EP or a 15-20 song album (with half-ish of the songs having been on previous EPs)?