I'm getting songs together for a few split 7 inches I'm doing this year with other pals (exciting details coming soon!) and I wanted to get a jump into '09 and bang them out as soon as humanly possible. The writing part isn't hard. For me it never really has been. If you give me from midnight until about 7am to be alone in a room (can be wicked freezing or sauna-like, no matter) and armed with a guitar that possesses at least 5 strings that stay in tune, a capo, a comfy floor to sit my ass upon, a pen, a pad of paper and a trackable recording device, I'm a motherfucker that will produce some motherfuckin' songs.
They all might not be amazing but I guarantee, I will churn some tuneful stuff out.
And if that comes off as boastful, it's really not. At this point in the game, my prolific songwriting has about as much worth to most of the rest of the world as someone who is able to eat a ton of hot dogs or pie at a food-eating contest but who never quite takes home the grand prize.
Only, songwriting is a little less entertaining :)
Now, before you go calling the whaaaambulance on me for feeling sorry for myself, just know that in the solitude of my very own existence, and I really do mean this, I sometimes think that I live solely to write songs and maybe that's not such a bad thing. Good songs, bad songs, songs with meaning or songs about nothing in particular. It doesn't matter. I love doing it so much, I barely care that most of my songs are unknown to most other folks on the planet or that I'm not making money with them like I maybe could be.
Anyway, I'm currently having a really productive writing/recording run these past couple of weeks and I've written and demo-ed a couple of new tunes that I'm going to be properly recording for these upcoming 7 inches and, because I'm such an impatient prick and cannot do things correctly, I'm posting a couple of these songs up on my Myspace page for you to listen to when you get some time.
My usual disclaimer: these songs aren't exactly finished. I'm already hearing a word or line in the latest song,
"Masterpiece, Unfinished" that is annoying the crap outta me and I'm sure I'll be changing those shortly.
Oh, by the way, the title of that song came as a suggestion from
Grub Dog, a longtime friend and one of my favorite singer-songwriters of all times. He heard the song, caught a line of it and suggested the title and I like it. And when guys like Grub suggest something, I can hardly not follow his advice, y'know?
So yeah, thanks for that,
Grubby!
I should have another song up in a few days. I still need to fix a lyric and get a title for it but I'll have it up.
One last thing, and this is for the techies out there, I recorded on my
Tascam MKIII 4-track cassette machine, using an
AKG C-1000 condenser mic and roughly mixed down directly to my
Sony dual CD deck.
There's something slightly humorous about me and this particular 4-track and I have to admit something here that I'm a bit embarrassed about. I've had this 4-track for quite a few years now and you would think that I would know all there is to know about it, right? Nope. I have never messed with the
NR (Noise Reduction) switch on it, ever, and just a couple of nights ago I finally did. I recorded with the switch in the ON position and while I was listening back, I flipped it off and was amazed at what I heard. Everything was all steely and shimmery (I wish I was better at describing sound) and there was a strange compressed feel to the sound. But it had this really great, lo-fi "wall of sound" that is tough to get when recording digitally.
Whatever it is, I love it! I'm now hearing that certain little trebly extra something that I have always loved about early
East River Pipe or
Guided By Voices or
Smog recordings and I think that's pretty neat.
Of course, the overall noise of it could definitely get annoying quickly but I have a feeling I'm going to be messing with a little before I go back to what I was doing on it before.
So, there it is. If you listen, I hope you like. If you don't listen, well, go fuck yourself :)