Garden Of Blog

I just scored Evan Dando’s 2003 album “Baby I’m Bored.”

Remember Evan Dando?

Having laid down a click track for “Roadrunner Blues”, I tried an electric rhythm track over it and it ended up not being “Roadrunner Blues” at all. We’ll have to try again on that one. Once again the click seemed too slow. What am I thinking on these click tracks. Anyhow, we ended up with a little power chord progression to play with on that.

We also worked on a number that Michael cooked up with the drum machine and MIDI, which I then went over with some natural drums. Memory already foggy on what else we may have done this session.

We plod on.

“The February March” was looking like a throwaway, but we salvaged it be redoing one of the horn lines and adding an alto flute melody line. These MIDI sounds can be really gorgeous.

We also worked on a short piece for just electric guitar and voice which is essentially cathartic noise and yelling. Yoko Ono would be proud. It’s a stark contrast to “The February March” (a pretty little piece, I think) in its utter unlistenable-ness. We kept it to 50 seconds or so, mercifully. But it’s worth including to extend the variety of our little RPM album.

Breaking the two song barrier isn’t easy. We tried a dirgy piece with low horns we’re calling “The February March” but it needs serious help. Hopefully work on that some more next time.

We broke in the middle of the session as members of The Rhythm Ship filed in for our first ever Mindfest planning committee meeting. That’s right, we pulled off the last couple years over email. But as the event grows, we’re seeing an increasing need to get together and talk out the fine points.

After the meeting (bonus!), Jamie sat behind our house kit to bang out tracks for “The Condition You Describe” and “Grand Theft”. He even left his drum mics and snake to help us out. Thanks Jamie!

Well, getting to 10 songs by month’s end isn’t looking likely, considering we’ve only worked on 2 thus far. More likely, we’ll be shooting for the 35 minute minimum, and sticking some serious experimental fluff in there.

Nevertheless, “The Condition You Describe” got a nice boost last night when we found a killer alto sax sound in our collection of MIDI plugins. We also did some work on the intro of “Grand Theft” which remains molasses-slow, but now at least has a little more of a plan to it.

I’m having an awful lot of fun with this project.

Michael and I continued to work on the slow blues number called “Grand Theft.” And slow it is. Too slow. I’d like to redo this one, but there won’t be time within the month of February. We have to move on to the next track!

The happy news that the Hoxies will be visting later this month means that Justin will be on this 28 day album too. Yay!

Thus far we’ve worked on two songs, with lyrics. I am thinking we might benefit by doing something more experimental next time, to prime the ol’ creative pump and color outside the lines.

The collaboration with Michael is already paying off in spades. Saturday, he arrived with some software courtesy BitTorrent, and after a couple hours we were off to the races.

Welcome to MIDI! I always knew it would be fun, but not this fun! I had bought the Edirol UM-1X MIDI interface (USB) so I could attempt to hook my MIDI-compatibles (a Yamaha P-80 and a Boss Dr. Rhythm) up to my PC at some point. Now, we can record MIDI tracks right alongside the raw audio tracks in Sonar 4 (can Adobe Audition even do this we wonder?). Fabulous.

With the help of a couple Edirol plugins, a whole new sound palette has come alive for us. We continued work on “The Condition You Describe” with one of the bass sounds, and got a start on a song called “Grand Theft.”

I love MIDI.

Michael and I decided to meet Tuesday and Thursday nights 7-10pm, and Saturdays 1-8pm for the RPM Challenge.

February 2: We decided to work on a song called “The Condition You Describe” first. It has some acoustic guitar and vocals right now. I did some awful backing vocal tracks, one of them falsetto. Unlistenable. Already tired by 8:30pm, we sat around and belly ached about not having a real bass to track with. This led us to think maybe we could find some nice MIDI bass sounds and play them through my MIDI-compatible keyboard.

Frank Zappa’s 1979 Sheik Yerbouti made its way into my CD changer again. Oh, boy. Frank, Frank, Frank.

The lyrics on this album make MTV’s Jackass look like highbrow humour. With “jokes” (more like head-shakers) about tampons and “poop shoots”, titles like “Broken Hearts Are For Assholes” and “I Have Been In You”, Zappa really does top all his previous adolescent epics.

But the musicianship is among the best I’ve heard. He provides some really challenging material for his band, both instrumentally and vocally. There is a funny Dylan impression on “Flakes” among other interesting characters in what has the sound of a rock opera in many ways. Here is a more lengthy take on the album with some good song by song information.

… isn’t my favorite album title. But those saying Paul McCartney has made his best album in a decade might be on to something. Sure, the whippersnapper (read: under 50) who produced him this time might get some of the credit for the sound, but I think this batch of Macca songs could stand on its own with the “usual” production job. This is good stuff.

I especially like the lyric “waiting … for your friends to go” although you can tell Paul knows it’s good, too. He’s admirable for wearing his arrogance on his sleeve sometimes. He knows he’s the best songwriter of the (second half of the) 20th century. I’d be pretty pleased with myself, too.

The first Paul album I bought as it was coming out was Off The Ground which I still enjoy. This was quite likely one of the albums seen as less-than-spectacular to many, and I admit it’s no McCartney or Band On The Run. But I still find myself humming some of the tunes on it, and spontaneously. You know, when you have a song in your head which has not been planted there.

This latest album might be like that. We’ll see.

iPodder has officially changed its name to “Juice”, which I think is rather spiffy. Two letters shorter is good, and distancing from the iPod will limit confusion about needing an iPod to use the app (you don’t).

You can now download Juice here. Highly recommended. Get on board with the future of radio!

Reissues usually suck because they are totally unwarranted money making scams. But the Let It Be… Naked resissue is totally appropriate. For one thing, it’s totally apprpriate to resissue any Beatles, ever. Just give me more Beatles. Moreover, since Let It Be was The Beatles’ last album, it is great to hear the mix stripped right down to the band itself, with original orchestrations removed. For instance, the choral backgrounds in “Across The Universe” have been removed, and you are left to hear the more subtle psychedelic stylings of the circa 1969 Fab Four. “I, Me, Mine” is still my favorite cut, although “Get Back” deserves its classic status. Those two cuts changed the least, while “The Long and Winding Road” is noticeably more stark and haunting, moving from melodrama to drama. A win for Paul!

I know this was released a couple years ago now, but I never promised timely reviews, or any reviews. Just talking.