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)? 

(I Couldn't) Keep Taylor Swift Happy

Time for an original. This one is admittedly quite goofy, inspired by pop music exposure over the past few years and imagining singers might actually be like their personas.  I'm not sure if this song will go anywhere, if so it'll probably need a re-recording from scratch-- this was done on two tracks, with the vocals needing several takes. Actually the vocals probably still need several more takes, and it could stand to be mixed better. And it maybe should just be the first verse alone.  But we are where we are.

So with no further ado: (I Couldn't) Keep Taylor Swift Happy

A questionable tribute to Lou Reed

It's been a busy month but I hope to get back to some music in a (slightly) slower patch between now and late January. However, I would be remiss not to commemorate Lou Reed's passing somehow. I admit to only a passing knowledge of his music outside of the "hits", though he touched the lives of many of the musicians I hold in esteem. REM's Dead Letter Office, which I bought in '87 when it came out, featured 3 Velvet Underground songs, serving as my gateway, and the band did other VU songs at concerts I attended.

And my college band, Dr. Lüst and the Chiefs of the European Space Agency, did a VU song as a major part of our sets early on: White Light/White Heat was how we'd end our sets, with Doug the instigator and singer. He was a big David Bowie fan, and our version was based on Bowie's (inasmuch as it was based on anything). I just liked the "flip out on G7" at the end. After a year or so it dropped out of the sets as our repertoire evolved (or something).  I include below a version we did one night at WMBR when our friend got us access to the studios for some recording in 1990. We'd tacked it on to a band intro song called "Dr. Lüst on Safari", which I excised and from which faded in.  For the curious, I'm on drums in this band.

For the second song I decided I'd just record Sweet Jane, my favorite of Reed's, cliched choice or not. On Twitter I called it an "indestructible song" and there's no better way to test that than have me play it...

Once again:

White Light/White Heat (Dr. Lüst)
Sweet Jane (solo acoustic!)

Another silver anniversary: If I Can't Be

Song link at the bottom, just like it was fruit in yogurt!

I've written songs (goofy songs, at that) since I was a kid. I also got into the habit of keeping a journal relatively early on.  So I have a pretty good sense of when various songs of mine were written. As I barrel through my 40s, some of these songs are getting pretty old. It's not surprising, of course, living as we do in a universe where time passes.  Still, anniversaries are things it's been interesting (for me at lest) to keep track of, as I've done both in depth and in more cursory fashion.

This past Thursday (the 5th) was the 25th anniversary of one of the songs I associate most strongly with college. I'm writing this post on the day itself, but I'm not posting it until the weekend since I'm doing the Ceres Google Hangout with the Dawn E/PO team today and want to keep my Ceres post up for an extra day or so. So we'll celebrate this birthday over the weekend. :)

I was a drummer first and foremost (and really, only) when I got to college. I dabbled a little bit with a goofy Casio keyboard, but never had lessons. I couldn't sing (still can't) and couldn't read music (still can't, unless tabs count). But I did have the foresight to decide that if I was going to procrastinate in college I'd do it with something useful-- learning to play guitar.  The floor I lived on had a communal 3-string guitar, which no doubt led to bad habits I kept when moving on to a 6-string.

In any event, I wrote a couple of songs on the 3-string guitar, which I inflicted on my dorm-mates while sitting in the hallway trying to learn to play. Two of them, Katrina and the Zen Master and Beneath the Milky Way, have both been recorded a la Gedankenband. But the first song I wrote, 25 years ago this week, was this one: If I Can't Be.

I played it a lot in 1988-89, but as I came up the learning curve on the guitar and wrote other songs it fell out of rotation, so to speak.  It didn't help that the 3-string got "fixed" and became a 6-string, and while If I Can't Be is pretty easy with three strings, it gets daunting very quickly for a novice with six strings (at least this novice).

I have a couple of very early recordings of this song (from 1989 and 1990) but both are so cringe-worthy I can't imagine putting them up here.  Instead, here's a newly-recorded Gedankenband version, which may (eventually) end up on the next album/EP/single:

If I Can't Be

(Edited 16 Feb 2014, new pointer for If I Can't Be)

Ceres, and the Ceres Series

The Dawn spacecraft is en route to the "dwarf planet" Ceres, with arrival in 2015. Ceres is a really interesting target, and we're going to learn a ton. It's of particular personal interest since I've been studying and writing about it a lot, especially in the last few years.

As part of the lead-up to Dawn's arrival, their EPO (education and public outreach) team has been organizing a set of Google Hangouts with scientists to share their impressions and expectations of Ceres. I'll be joining them for the hangout on 5 September, at 1 PM EDT, it should also be available in their archives. The event page (should be found) at  http://plus.google.com/events/cstdr6jkeceic04mkfomdbr3s8k

And, naturally, I've been working on a song about Ceres for a while. Unlike my song for Vesta, the previous target for Dawn, this one is more like a rock opera.  However, since there aren't individual parts to be sung I've been calling it a "rock narrative". The song is written, but I've only recorded the first part, which I present here in demo form:

Ceres Ferdinandea I: The Monk and the Prodigy

While I'm at it, I'll also link to the collected astronomy/geeky music I've made through the years.

I plan (hope?) to finish the entire Ceres recording in plenty of time for Dawn's arrival!