The Annual NaPoWriMo Post, 2015

It's that time again-- National Poetry Writing Month. The idea behind it is to get people writing poetry (hence the name). The one "rule" I'm aware of is to write a poem every day. It needn't be a terribly long poem, and it needn't be shared with anyone. I've been sharing my poems here, though I've tried to restrict my writing time to be relatively short so that I don't try to be too perfectionist about things. I've "won" NaPoWriMo five years running, I'm hoping to make this my sixth!  I really enjoy the month, and my most-visited post on this blog is a poem from 2012's NaPoWriMo. Even better has been some of the camaraderie I've been able to enjoy and people I've been able to meet through NaPoWriMo!

In past years I've tried to have a theme-- in 2010 I devoted each of the 30 days to a different Major League Baseball team. In 2011 it was all chemical elements. Since then I've focused on space and astronomy. I kind-of plan to do the same this year, though I'm going to allow myself to wander off into other topics if the mood strikes me. I'm on a spate of extended travel, so if I'd rather write about the Alps I'm going to do that. :)

In the past I've also made an offer to my gentle readers, which I'll again extend: I will happily host any poem you'd like to share. You can do it anonymously or credited. Just get ahold of me here in the comments (or otherwise if you have other means) and we'll work something out.

Come join us, won't you?


Intro posts for:
NaPoWriMo 2010
NaPoWriMo 2011
NaPoWriMo 2012
NaPoWriMo 2013
NaPoWriMo 2014

The Astronomers Song (Part 2)

Way back in 1990 I wrote "The Astronomers Song", which has been a bit of a go-to song of mine ever since. It focuses on three giants of Renaissance-Era astronomy: Tycho, Kepler, and Galileo. It's a fun little song, and I've always liked it.

Occasionally, I'd think about adding more verses. Over the last couple of days I did just that, adding some much-needed diversity to the mix by singing about Caroline Herschel, Maria Mitchell, and Annie Jump Cannon.

I also happen to be at the telescope right now, observing at the Radcliffe 1.9-m at the South African Astronomical Observatory in Sutherland. I'm in the middle of a long trip and brought my guitar along for company. The observing cadence right now has basically 10 minutes of exposures, then a minute or so of setting up the next one, then 10 more minutes of exposures. Every hour or so there's about 10 minutes of monkeying around to find a new target.

I figured I'd put those two things together and record a quick video of the new verses to the song, which I'm dubbing "The Astronomers Song (Part 2)". I look pretty bleary because I'm in the middle of an observing run and I'm getting over a cold, so please don't judge. :)

Also relevant music:
OBAFGKM (song in question in the lyric "the mnemonic lives on in song")
The Astronomers Song (In-Jokes with Myself version)

Down From The Skies: Silver Anniversary

OK, here's a song that's always held a dear place for me. I wrote it 25 years ago today during the on phase of an on-again/off-again relationship. I'd recently been to some kind of Laser Rock show (as was the style back in the late '80s/early '90s), with a mix of psychedelic music rather than the usual Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin focus. I remember coming out of there and thinking I wanted to write a song like "Magic Carpet Ride", that Pat could use his fancy new phaser pedal on.

I'd also just TA'd the Intro Observational Astronomy class the previous semester, at a point when the aforementioned relationship was off again but she was taking the class. The second verse was a nod in that direction, with its mention of "so many nights spent under the stars" and reference to bringing her home (since as TA I dropped everyone off at their dorms after driving them back from the observatory in the Mighty EAPS Van (tm)). Between the time the semester ended and the time I wrote this song we were back on again.

This immediately entered the Dr. Lüst setlist, and we played it at both Battle of the Bands appearances.  Dan came up with the riff, which has stuck around ever since. When the relationship was off again, and as we came up with more and more songs we wanted to do, the song slipped out of the setlist. Without Pat and his fancy phaser pedal (or Dan and his keyboard), none of my subsequent bands picked the song up.

However!  I've happily stayed close friends with the subject of Down From The Skies, and it remains a favorite of hers whenever we're together and there's a guitar available. Of course, she also purports to like the songs I wrote about her during the off-again periods of the relationship, so the bar may be low. And while it didn't get onto The Red Album (which was mostly songs that Science Diet did), it did make it onto a subsequent album.

I present here four versions of Down From The Skies, because apparently I can't help myself.  They span the entire period from 1990-2015, from live with Dr. Lüst to live solo to a couple of Gedankenband versions.  Enjoy. But even if you don't, I know at least one person who will. :)

Down From The Skies (Dr. Lüst live at 1990 MIT Battle of the Bands)
Down From The Skies (solo live on Mars Hill, 1995)*
Down From The Skies (from 2005's Do Not Tip Or Rock)**
Down From The Skies (Gedankenband Unplugged version***)


*also about an octave too high for my actual range.
**Yeah, I'm sending you to the Bandcamp page to download or listen there.
***Blame Katsumi for the harmonica, I don't know what she was thinking.

Surf Titan!

Another oldie.  I didn't really intend to post anything so soon after the Passerby post, but it's the 10th anniversary of the Huygens landing on Titan and I remembered I'd written a Titan-centric song long ago.  So I figured I'd record it for posterity. Here for the first time ever:

Surf Titan!

Passerby: Not Quite Silver Anniversary

As I just mentioned on Twitter, I seem to have written a lot of my favorite originals during the winter of 1989-1990.  So you'll be getting some Silver Anniversary posts, just as I've marked a few other anniversaries.

This song, Passerby, is not quite one of them.  It was written 24 years ago yesterday.  That means in theory that I should have posted this yesterday, but I only just happened to notice and you know how these things go.  I was still very early in learning how to play guitar, and a lot of my songs went C-Am-Dm-something. In this particular case, something is Fm (which was super-hard as all novice guitar players know). The content was sort-of inspired by the Replacements song Skyway, which is needless to say superior in every way and is a fan favorite. 

I've always loved this one anyhow, which makes it a bit surprising to me that there are no versions on any of the Gedankenband albums, nor did I even record it with my old 4-track.  I think it's quite likely that I'll remedy that for real on the next Gedankenband release, but until then, for the first time anywhere:

Passerby (live to one-track)

2014 In Review

Time to recap!

I wrote 43 blog posts this year, including this self-referential one. Those included 11 songs specially-recorded for the blog, 5 songs from a party gig in 1991, and a few reposts. In theory I had upward of 5000 views this year, though I strongly suspect the vast majority of those are bogus. That just makes you, the reader, even more special.

Favorite song post of the year: Lo-Fi Mini-Concert. Even with all the distortion. That's what makes it Lo-Fi.

The majority of posts this year (as is typical) were for NaPoWriMo, which I completed for the fifth consecutive year and led to the annual spike in (plausibly bogus) site visits. Once again, I went with space/astronomy poetry, but with the added degree of difficulty of doing half of it while on another continent at a telescope. I did also post one non-NaPo poem.

Favorite poem of the year is a toughie.  No real grabbers for me, I'll pick two among equals:
Swapping Stories
The Summer Cottage

The Gedankenband and I did release an EP early in the year, called Unselectable. I had a post here about it because, you know, that's the point of a music blog.

Spotify:  I have made an astonishing (to me) $0.10 on Spotify this year. I only have stats for less half of the year, too-- I uploaded music starting in June and only have a report through October. I had a total of 29 plays of 18 different songs. 21 of those plays were from the USA,  second-most are from...Belgium.

My #1 song on Spotify is "One Thing to Do", with a massive 4 plays.

The Gedankenband Bandcamp site stats look like this:
There were 244 "plays",  with 94 of them complete plays.  The most listened-to song this year was "MarcoPolo", with 10 full plays.  Tied in second place with 5 full plays is MarcoPolo's B-side (an acoustic rendition of OBAFGKM), and "Lost in the Artifacts" from the Unselectable EP. 45 different songs got at least one full play this year.

There were 17 downloads (songs/EPs/albums all together). The most-downloaded item was the Holiday Single (of all things).

So, no real point here.  Just looking forward to a good 2015 and wishing the same for all of you!

Happy Chanukah 5775

The holiday season is upon us and Chanukah starts tonight, so I figured I'd record something seasonally appropriate for you-- a live one-take recording of the Gedankenband's Holiday single, both A and B sides. Admittedly, since the B-side was already a one-take thing you may not notice too much of a difference.

May your latkes be crisp, your gelt be tasty, and your dreidel always come up on gimel (whether or not you're #TeamAppleSauce or #TeamSourCream.

Judah and the Maccabees (live, acoustic)
Sevivon (live, acoustic)

Still available are the Gedankenband versions!