adrian is rad

A couple weeks ago I went swimming. The next day my left ear felt a bit weird and my hearing felt muffled. I thought there was some water still in it. After a few days it still felt weird so I had assumed it had developed into a minor ear infection, “swimmer’s ear”.

After two weeks, I decided I should have it checked out. I’m going to be place next week where it’ll be even harder to go to a doctor, so with the help of some coworkers I went to a doctor this evening and he checked me out.

There’s no water, ear wax or ear infection in there. The doctor things it’s noise trauma. Basically (hopefully) short term partial hearing loss. (Ironically, I’d light-heartedly talked about thinking I was going deaf in my left ear because my ear buds were breaking about 3 weeks ago.) His instructions: no ear buds/ headphones and try to limit limit noise for a few days.

The short term is unpleasant: no ear buds at work (at night I can play music softly on speakers that I have) means no music and I don’t like being without music. It makes me antsy. I’m going to be on planes and trains for most of Friday, alone and that would be a particularly nice time to listen to some tunes. More than it being nice, at times I almost find it necessary. After a bad or long day, after a frustrating decision, when I need to drown out this foreign world or mitigate loneliness, music is often my first resort. It may not be the best thing to turn to but it’s certainly better than turning to the bottle. This is a bit distressing.

The longer term, the prospects, the possibilities, at least, are traumatizing. That there’s even a possibility of longer term hearing loss is scary. Music is a big part of my life and between being a college radio DJ and having a music blog it’s more like a vocation. That that might be endangered or altered permanently is not a prospect I look forward to.

Just to note, I’ve always been very careful about the volume of my music on earphones and other people who try my headphones often think I listen to music too softly. I wear ear plugs at concerts, even advocating them publicly. If there’s one probable culprit here it’s listening to music on the bus and/ or while walking along streets here. Both are quite noisy and can encourage a louder-than-healthy volume on ear buds.

I’ve been doing this in stealth for a couple days, but I feel like it’s time to announce my other blog. It’s a music blog.

I’ve felt for a while that I was writing too little about music for this to be a music blog and too much about music for this to be a personal blog. In one case, outside readers see too much personal ranting and in the other, friends get alienated by the constant music talk , so I’ve split it off.

I’ll still be blogging here. I won’t be posting here about music, unless it’s related directly to me, like music I write/ record, radio playlists or if it’s a mixtape. I’ll be co-posting the last two of those.

I feel a bit weird about it—I’m always written this for myself and maybe a couple friends, but writing about any specific x is an admission that someone wants to read that. Now I have a whole blog where I pretend that people want to read my writing about music.

Andy said that yesterday: “I had embarrassing teen years.” He was going through some boxes of stuff that his parents wanted to get rid of to make space. I laughed at him. I’m not embarrassed by my teen years, I thought. I did alright with them.

Here’s one gem Andy found yesterday:

[yeah, I should crop this and make it a smaller file.]

It’s the original lyric sheet to the Where’s Luke theme song. This was when we were preparing for the coffee house that they hosted at Westminster Presbyterian. I think we might have just been asking Colin if he’d be our drummer.

Tonight I went through my drawers in my desk tonight. I was laughing again, this time at myself. Despite myself I did have an embarrassing adolescence. I found all sorts of ridiculous things that I saved. The pot of gold at the end of the embarrassment rainbow was the half-drawer full of love notes, poems and drawings from a high school girlfriend. I was smiling so much at the ridicilousness of it that I almost cried.

I had a dream last night where something had happened where I’d been signed or discovered or been given a good review online or something and suddenly I was going to play a show as a headliner. I was trying to get enough material together. I was going to play some originals on wurly and guitar. I was going to play some old songs (Greetings from Johannesburg? Where’s Luke??) and some new stuff. I wasn’t very good at the songs and playing wurly and guitar (in the dream, of course not in real life) so I needed to practice. The night of the show came and the openers went and were good and I was thinking I shouldn’t be the headliner of the show. Then it was my turn to play and I realized that I really hadn’t practiced much and I was totally unprepared.

I don’t remember my dreams much.

I’m all musicy lately, but here are three more things of interest:

• Sort of an update to that Sufjan @ Zellerbach post: the East Bay Express has an interesting article about how the Pacific Mozart Ensemble got to sing with Sufjan
• TW Walsh is now giving away (free! with artwork!) his band, the Soft Drugs’ latest EP, In Moderation. Solid stuff and I particularly like Defending the Paint (mp3)
• It looks like Dave and I (as Greetings from Johannesburg) are going to enter “Thaw” in Salon’s Song Search Contest

Colin pointed the Album-a-Day project. It looks pretty cool. I remember Jesse and I were going record an album in a weekend once. That never happened.

see also: the covers contest

Here’s a contest that can send you to Austin City Limits for three days to blog about the festival. I’m probably going to enter a spruced up version of this post. Wally, you should do this.

And this is a songwriting blog with some tips and whatnot on various aspects of songwriting. I’m not sure I’m picking up all that they’re putting down, but it gets the mind going.

Both of these, I think, I got from largeheartedboy.

• I should go to more risk concerts, fewer good concerts by bands I’ve seen before. For instance, I should see Danielson in a couple weeks and I probably shouldn’t be sad that I missed the Mates of State a couple weeks ago (I’ve seen them 8ish times)
• I’m trying to decide if songwriting taking into account all or almost all of my musical influences is possible. I like a lot of music. I like indie rock, post-rock, old-timey/ early american field recordings, celtic, african, other world music, motown (and other early R&B/ soul), oldies, some hip hop and the list goes on. In the past, I’ve managed to combine some influences together in my songwriting: the Greetings from Johannesburg stuff was largely an experiment in fitting world music ideas into indie pop (”Thaw” is based on the Balinese Ketjak rhythm, “Bitter” has Senagalese sabar drumming, “Nashville” cops a brazilian drumming line, “Drunken” has a 15 beat long beat-cycle). I also combined—in my opinion successfully—motown, indie rock, african drums and a banjo (which I couldn’t really call “old-timey” or country either) on one of the covers contest songs. But really, there’s a ton more stuff out there and floating around in my head. I always thought music had to be segmented a bit. Like Where’s Luke? was the folksy mostly-acoustic group, the Grievance Committee was going to be my post rock band. But many great bands aren’t like that: many of them combine a lot of disparate influences to make their music. I don’t know if I have the ability to do that.
• I’m thinking of trying to write some hip hop instrumental/ base tracks. I’ve been listening to a little bit of hip hop recently. I don’t like a lot of hip hop because a lot of it is a) musically crap and b) lyrically stupid (sometimes well-written but still stupid). Personally, I think a lot of the hip hop paradigms are stupid: songs about smoking pot and being misogynistic toward women aren’t for me. There is some hip hop out there that has good music and that tackles complex issues in the lyrics. I’m getting off on a tangent here. My point here is that a lot of hip hop has crap music and so I’m thinking of writing some hip hop music. I don’t think I could MC well, so I’ll either leave that for someone else or leave them as instrumentals. Any aspiring MCs out there?
• At a certain point I stopped really getting jazz. Most music has tension and release. Often in jazz the tension comes from dissonance in the harmonic structure and progressions. I don’t always find the way this is done in jazz satisfying. (On the other hand, I’ve really come to appreciate some “new” jazz, like Magali Souriau’s “Dersu Usala” which is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard.)
• I mostly don’t like this dance indie rock that is all the buzz (and has been for a year or so). It doesn’t get me going.
• I’m thinking of spinning of my music stuff into a separate blog and turn that into more of an mp3 blog. It’s probably be over at the new me. It probably me mostly indie rock mp3s, but I’d love it be a place where I could equally post Sacred Harp field recordings and rare Motown tracks. I don’t know what would be left here, though, as half of what I post here is music stuff and I’ve already moved most of my photo stuff over the godhatesmath.

I’m thinking about getting an analog drum machine, partly inspired by how awesome will oldham sounds with his Maya Tone one on some of his recordings. Any suggestions as far as models?

In the meantime, I found a pretty awesome virtual analog drum machine playground. I like a few in there. The Yamaha MR-10 has a nice set of features and sounds pretty good.

Entries for covers contest #13 were due on Tuesday. I finished mine Monday but was waiting for other to come in. Dave says he has one recorded.

The original, to remind you, was You Can’t Hurry Love by the Supremes.

Entry:

• Adrian
• Dave

I’ll set up voting and put Dave’s up if he ever gets it online.

I recorded mine while hoarse from yelling during last week’s game. I’m not particularly happy with it.

I haven’t really enjoyed the covers contest for a while and I don’t think I’m getting much out of it anymore. Add that to the fact that we’re not getting three entries any week and it’s about time to shut this thing down, so this will be the last of the covers contest, quite possibly forever. Thanks to all that listened and voted on the songs.

[Update: Dave finally got his cover online. It is posted and linked to above.]

Watching the Penguins the other night, Mike pointed out that Ryan Malone (USC HS, class of ‘98) plays for them now.

It got me thinking. Ryan was on my school bus for many years. Coming back from elementary school, we (the boys, at least) would sing on the bus every afternoon. We only sang two songs: “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling” (Righteous Brothers) and “Barbara Ann” (Beach Boys).

We have 3 entries in this week’s covers contest. The original, as you may recall, was “Continuous Hit Music” by American Analog Set.

Here are the entries:

• Dave
• Andy
• Adrian

After you’ve listened to all of them, you may vote on the best and most original versions.

The song for next week will be “Fake Plastic Trees” by Radiohead (Original). It was Dave’s turn to pick.

I guess those covers will be due Monday December 19 at midnight local time.

The results of the voting for last cover (”Smooth Criminal” by Michael Jackson) were as follows:
Best:
Adrian 1
Dave 5

Most Original:
Adrian 2
Dave 4

Congrats to Dave on both.

While getting my song recorded for this week’s cover’s contest, I ran across some old recordings I made. Some were total total crap of course. None were really polished and done, but some I liked anyway.

So I decided to share with you a few of these “lost songs.” These could also be called “unfinished songs.” Note that all of these are completely embarrassing in their own ways.

Freak in Me formerly known simply as piano1. I recorded this partly in the practice rooms at MIT so it had to have been July 2003. I haven’t touched it since. This may well have been the first thing I recorded with my own protools set up and microphone. The piano part sounds like a lot of the piano parts I wrote in those years but it’s good. The end is a bit freaky. I think I wanted that juxtaposition between the prettier piano part and the ending.
Freak in Me

Freak in Me (first.class.airline remix) While we were on our roadtrip, zooming across Colorado probably, our very own Andy was remixing piano1. All of the sounds in this song are from my version of the song, just heavily processed. This amazed me then and it amazes me now.
Freak in Me (first.class.airline remix)

Not now I guess I recorded this last January. It’s about a girl, of course. Some multi-parted song action, with my first recording of a wurlitzer.
not now

Highland Cathedral and Wings and Murdo’s Wedding My friend Indy was getting married and I was going to play the pipes at his wedding. He wanted to hear some of the options before the wedding so a few weeks before, I put these down very quickly using my fireside pipes. I hear tons of mistakes throughout (and my pipes aren’t 100% in tune), but that’s because I hadn’t actually learned the songs yet, I was just running through them from a book. I haven’t played much of the pipes lately, but maybe I’ll start playing again.
Highland Cathedral
Wings and Murdo’s Wedding

Just a quick reminder that the the cover for covers contest #11, continuous hit music is due next Monday at midnight.

Get yours done now, or get psyched to hear a new set of covers.

As I announced a couple weeks ago, we are restarting the covers contest. Today the first entries are in.

This week’s cover was Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson (Original).

The entries:

• Adrian
• Dave

(Andy’s may come later.)

I found this a pretty challenging song to do a cover of. Basically what I found I had to do was listen to it a few times and then not think about it for about a week and a half and then record my version.

After you’ve listened, please vote for the best and most original cover versions.

Update: Andy’s announced the next song, for cover’s contest #11. It’s Continuous Hit Music by American Analog Set (Original). Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, we’ll have three weeks for this so entries will be due December 6, 2005.

So I finally put a new head (Remo Renaissance) on my strange-sized banjo (11 1/8″ medium crown, a 11 3/16″ would probably have fit slightly better). I put the bridge and strings on and tuned it up and it sounds pretty good. It’s not all that loud though and the bridge looks like it’s sagging in the middle a bit. I’m thinking I haven’t tensioned the head enough. How do I know how much to tension the head? Tarky? Andy? Jesse? Anyone else? Also, is it safe to just tune the strings down a bunch and then tension the head more or should I take the strings and bridge off first?

That’s right, it’s a return of the cover’s contest, with some slight changes.

A reminder of the rules and the changes thereto:

1. Andy, Dave or I are the lead for the week. The lead picks the song to cover for the week. The lead rotates every week.
2. Anyone may submit covers. They are due two weeks after the start of the contest. (Note the change!)
3. There will be voting each week on the best cover and most original covers for the week.

The idea behind having two weeks to do covers isn’t, in my mind, really to spend more time on the cover, but to have more time for other things.

I also want to have a little bit each week about why the lead has chosen that song.

And now, the cover for contest #10
This week’s song is Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson (Original).

What Adrian has to say about Smooth Criminal:

I know this song so well and I’ve heard it so many times and yet I don’t know it at all. My understanding of the lyrics is completely wrong.

Submissions for this contest will be due by midnight (local time) Monday, Nov. 14.

The song for last week was Photobooth by Death Cab for Cutie.

The votes went like this:
Best Cover:
Adrian 3
Dave 2

Most Original:
Adrian 0
Dave 5

Congrats to Dave and me.

Alright kiddos, here we go.

The entries in the Covers Contest for this week’s song, Photobooth by Death Cab for Cutie (Original):

• Adrian
• Dave

Listen and vote for the best and most original cover.

The results for last week’s contest, the original for which was Matter by boom bip:
Best cover:
Adrian 0
Andy 1
Dave 2
Jesse 4

Most Original:
Adrian 1
Andy 0
Dave 0
Jesse 6

Good job, Jesse.

One last announcement for this post: We’ve decided to take a break for a bit. We may be back in a few weeks. Dave didn’t seem to have trouble finishing these but I’ve been scheduling my weeks around these because they take me a lot of time and Andy’s been having trouble getting them done, as you may have noticed. Hopefully you’ll see some original output from the three in the near future as well. If anyone would like to make their own cover contest with themselves, I’ll post a link to the result, just let me know. I can even pick a song for you to cover, if you’d like.

There’ll be a covers contest post next week to recap the results from the voting this week.

This week’s cover contest was for the song Matter by boom bip (Original)

entries!

• Adrian*
• Andy
• Dave
• Jesse

*I’d like to note that this one is not in stereo. It was done with one mic—banjo and vocals at the same time—all the way through, no overdubs or patch-ins.

Listen and vote for the best and most original cover. We have lots of entries this week so lots of votes would be good!

The results for last week’s cover of Consequence by the Notwist were:
Best:
Adrian 3
Dave 0

Most Original:
Adrian 3
Dave 0

Not that many votes but a clear mandate for ME. weeeeeeeeeeeee

The song for next week is Photobooth by Death Cab for Cutie (Original)

The cover for this week was Consequence by the Notwist. (Original version).

Here are the entries so far:

• Adrian*
• Dave

*best with headphones or stereo, like usual.

Andy may have one to add tonight. If you want to hold off voting for mine until you’ve heard his as well, that’s okay.

You may listen and vote.

Covers contest #6 Shape of My Heart by Backstreet Boys
Best Cover:
Adrian 2
Andy 2
Dave 3

Most Original Cover:
Adrian 4
Andy 3
Dave 0

Looks like Dave and I squeezed out narrow victories. Thanks for the votes!

Andy was also the chooser for this coming week’s song (cover’s contest #8) so currently we have no song for next week. This may be the end of the cover’s contest.

Update 1: The song for cover’s contest #8 is the Matter by boom bip (with Nina Nastasia) (Original).

Update 2: Added Dave’s cover above.

Update 3: Andy’s not doing a version of “Consequence” so go ahead and vote. I’ve gotta stop being nice and make the deadline the deadline.

The songs for this week was Shape of my Heart by the Backstreet Boys. (Original here).

The entries are as follows:

• Dave
• Adrian
• Andy

Some good stuff there.

Listen and vote.

The song for covers contest #7 is Consequence by the Notwist. (Original mp3 here).

The results for last week’s votes (for covers of Flying Pizza by Swearing at Motorists).
Best Cover:
Adrian 1
Andy 1
Dave 2

Most Original Cover:
Adrian 3
Andy 1
Dave 0

I’d like to point out that Andy did not submit a cover so even though I left him in the poll (out of sheer convenience) whoever voted for his cover is dumb.

In other news, Dave and I are the big winners, though Andy was apparently more original than dave when not submitting a cover at all. OH SNAP, dave!

Last week’s cover song was Suspicious Minds by Elvis. The voting went like this:
Best cover:

• Adrian 1
• Andy 3
• Dave 2

Most original:

• Adrian 1
• Andy 2
• Dave 3

Andy and Dave are the big winners.

This week’s song is Flying Pizza by Swearing at Motorists (Original mp3).

The entries:

• Adrian*
• Dave

*like many of my covers, but particular with this one, listening in stereo is better.

Listen to them and vote for the best and most original here.

Next week’s song is Shape of My Heart by the Backstreet Boys. (Original mp3) (Note: this is Dave’s choice and the owner and proprietor of adrian is rad and adrianbischoff.com disavows any association with the choice of this song.)

Alrighty.

Results for contest #3 which was Sassafras Roots by Green Day (Original).
Best Cover:
Adrian 1
Andy 1
Dave 2

Most Original Cover:
Adrian 3
Andy 0
Dave 1

So it looks like Dave takes the best cover and my all-casio rendition takes the most original.

Here are the entries for this week:
Andy
Dave
Adrian

The original is Suspicious Minds by Elvis.

Please listen and vote for the best and most original. I’d like to get the voting numbers up a little after a slightly disappointing showing last week.

The song for contest #5 is Flying Pizza by Swearing at Motorists (original). Take a listen. Just a reminder that though the songs are chosen by Andy, Dave and I, anyone can enter. Entries are due next Monday night at midnight.

[Update:] Anyone have ideas for new or different voting categories? Are the current ones good or would something else be better? Or should I add categories?

Last week I wrote about the covers contest #2 entires. The results are as follows:
Best Cover:
Adrian 3
Andy 2
Dave 2

Most Original:
Adrian 1
Andy 1
Dave 5

Looks like Dave and I are the big winners for this week.

This past week’s cover was Sassafras Roots by Green Day. (Original).

The entries:
Andy
Adrian
David

Listen to them and vote for the best and most original cover here

The song for covers contest #4 is Suspicious Minds by Elvis. (Original). Entries will be taken until next Tuesday. Start recording!

Results of the voting for covers contest #1 entries:
Best cover:
Adrian 1
Andy 5
Dave 1

Most Original Cover:
Adrian 1
Andy 1
Dave 5

So the big winners were Andy and David.

This week’s song is Wait by Secret Stars (original). Here are the entries:

• Adrian
• Andy
• Dave

Vote here for the Best and Most Original cover version.

Covers Contest #3: Sassafras Roots by Green Day (original) Entries will be accepted until next Tuesday.

Last week, I announced the Covers Contest.

A brief recap of the idea of the contest:

• Andy, Dave or I are the lead for the week. The lead picks the song to be covered. He posts the original. The song will be announced each Tuesday and linked here.
• We each do cover versions of this song by the following Monday and post them online as mp3s.
• You, the readership, listens and votes.
• Lead rotates to the next person and he picks a new song.

The original this week was Never Ending Math Equation by Modest Mouse.

Listen:

• Andy
• Adrian*
• David

*[update: new mix]

Personally, I found it pretty hard to conceive of and record a cover in a week–especially because it took until Saturday to get my laptop to a point where it’d run Protools again. A week definitely doesn’t give you time to make things perfect.

Vote for the best and most original cover. Voting will be open until next tuesday.

You can also comment here about the songs, if you’d like.

Covers Contest #2:
Andy’s choice. Original: Wait by the Secret Stars. Entries for this will be accepted until the end of the day next Monday.

Dave Franusich, Andy Chadwick and myself, the members of the seminal Upper St. Clair indie folk band Where’s Luke? have started a new competition. It’s called the covers competition. It is a weekly competition and this week is the first week.

The idea of the project is this:

• Andy, Dave or I are the lead for the week. The lead picks the song to be covered. He posts the original. The song will be announced each Tuesday and linked here.
• We* each do cover versions of this song by the following Monday and post them online as mp3s.
• You, the readership, listens and votes (either by email or on another webpage with little buttons). Voting categories will probably be Best and Most Original.
• Lead rotates to the next person and he picks a new song.

*I’m thinking about opening up submissions to any one that wants to do a version…The lead would still be one of us three, though.

This week’s song has been picked.
Covers Contest #1
Song: “Neverending Math Equation”
Original Artist: Modest Mouse.

the original

Dave already has his version done (that’s actually what sort of sparked the idea). Usually the versions will be posted simultaneously.

here’s a partially done song that I worked on this weekend. I have a banjo part for the chorus and the verse and some vocals for the chorus.

I don’t completely hate how my voice sound here. Just mostly.

I had a guitar part in over the verse banjo part (the plucked part) but I couldn’t get it right so I took it out. Maybe I’ll try again later.

The click-track is not permanent (probably). It just needs the rhythmic backing and I haven’t done a real beat yet.

I’m not happy with it. It needs a decent beat and some more parts and a vocal melody.

I am not in South Africa; rather, I’m writing about my band with David Franusich entitled Greetings from Johannesburg.

The reason for writing is that it looks like we’ve finished the 6 song EP, finally. The mixes and mastering aren’t done but the writing and recording are.

MP3s of the songs are here if you’d like to listen.

The most recent changes were on the song Nashville, which I changed around on Saturday. On the other end of the spectrum, I haven’t touched Bitter in over a year and Thaw in over two.

You can comment on the songs, if you’d like. We also are looking for better titles for some of the songs and for the EP in general if you have ideas on those.

I have been thinking about this for a while and I got reminded by Gwen Stefani’s appearance on Letterman backed by a marching band.

For those of you who don’t know, I did marching band for four years. I sort of hated it, but I was also damn good at it. I like indie rock. I have for years. Put those together, and boom! You got a promising concept here.

[Here’s a decent primer on marching bands if you’re unfamiliar with stuff.]

This is my idea: approximately a 30 piece ensemble, definitely a bass drum or two, and a snare or two. probably snare-mounted high hats. Maybe a quad or a quint. Definitely a glockenspiel. It’d probably be brass heavy. A couple trumpets and trombones. A tuba holding down the bassline would be cool. A sax or two. Flutes and clarinets could probably be skipped. Eh, maybe a clarinet or two would be cool.

All common instrumentation thus far. It’d be cool to have guitar with one of those wireless do-dads. A bass might also be cool, but if the tuba/ sousaphone can do it, that’d be better. Other things that could have pickups and a wireless do-dad: ukulele, banjo, 80s-style guitar pianos.

Singing: I think there’d have to be a lead singer, but also plenty of chorus/ backup parts by the people on the field. Thinking about this for the past few days, it might be cool to have the singer be the conductor on the platform out front. My most recent thought would be that there wouldn’t be a conductor (phasing shouldn’t be a problem with a <30 person band) and everyone would do formations. (I did mention that, right? that everyone would do formations. Probably not super complex ones, but it wouldn’t be one of those band that just walks on the field, plays and walks off. There’d be no pit.) The time could be led from within; this would make speeding up easier, I think. So maybe the guitarist is singing and playing and marching with everyone else. The problem with that is that people like looking at the singer/ lead man while the thing is going on. hmm.

Uniforms: there’d have to be uniforms. I don’t think just t-shirts and jeans, but also not normal marching band uniforms. maybe jump suits? there’d have to be some hat, too. Marching bands have hats.

Songs selection and styles: indie rock. I think a lot of it would be post-rock. It’d be important to do mostly original songs, but some covers would be alright. Imagine a nice build going on the field while they are all stationary, then the drums come in and the mass of people start coming toward you and changing formations and stuff. I think it’d be pretty sweet.

Excuses for not doing this right now: it’d take a lot of time to start up and there aren’t people in the area that are that interested in indie rock bands. I think if I lived in an area with a higher concentration of people of my interests, it’d be easier. Like Cambridge, MA.

During all my years of high school, I played trumpet in the pit orchestra for the high school musical. Much of the time was boring and we were under-recognized for our tremendous skill. We were also some of the only people to see the musical in its entirety many times—many of the leads and chorus members only saw the scenes they were in—to the point where we knew all the lines and scenes in the musical, putting us in a unique position to make fun of it.

An that’s what we did. Jeff Miller and Colin Ashe, still friends of mine, started with a small-scale parody of Cinderella. The following year was the first real Pit Skit with Toilet Paper Man, a parody of Music Man, where a man comes to town to try to sell toilet paper to the people. The next years were Brig-a-Mart, a story of a Canadian convenience store that was stuck 10*pi years behind, a parody of Brigadoon and Joseph (or was Jorje) and his Amazing Techinocolor Pimpcoat, where I played the lead, a parody of, well you should figure that one out by now. The three that I did (Toilet Paper Man was the first) were a lot of fun. We wrote and rehearsed these two-act, 20-30 minute elaborate skits complete with props, a program, and plenty of sexual innuendo. They were performed over two nights at the pre-show meeting. We regularly would have to ask people to not laugh as much because we didn’t have that much time and they were missing our other funny lines.

What got me thinking about all this was a scene from Brig-a-Mart that still makes me smile. In Brigadoon, there was a scene in which the guy from the present is talking to one of the stuck-300-years-in-the-past Scottish ladies that goes something like this:

him: are you crazy?!
her: what is ‘crazy’?
him: insane.

And Brig-a-Mart, we had it like this:

him: are you nuts?
a guy-dressed-as-a-girl: what is ‘nuts’?
him [hands her a dictionary]: here’s a frickin’ dictionary. look it up!
a guy-dressed-as-a-girl [flips to page]: oh, I see, ‘testicles’.

The guy was played by Jimmy Cramer and the guy-dressed-as-a-girl by one of the best to ever play such a part, Pat Bird.

I should also mention that we didn’t rehearse with props. I would go around my house the night before and collect props. Sometimes we would forget about a prop and just fake it.

This all leads up to how the above scene played out during the perfomance. Pat and Jimmy were going along with the scene. I realized that the dictionary was still in the prop bag still. I reached into the bag and grabbed it. Jimmy’s facing me and Pat away from me. Let’s see how it turns out:

Jimmy: Are you nuts?
[I make eye contact with Jimmy and indicate the dictionary]
Pat: What is ‘nuts’?
[I toss the book. It makes a perfect parabolic arc over Pat’s head, clearing it by a couple inches. Jimmy snatches it out of the air just as he’s beginning to say:]
Jimmy: Here’s a frickin dictionary. Look it up!
…

I couldn’t have planned it better. I still smile thinking about it.

Any other USC HS people have fun Pit Skit memories?

to be clear, the links in this post are mp3s of music I made as part of my band with Dave, greetings from johannesburg. you may comment on them if you like. italics.

I busted out a new version of a lullaby last night. I moved the bridge around a bit and dropped the percussion out there for a pseudo-breakdown feel.

The older version, plus the other greetings from johannesburg songs I’ve been working on (and their old versions) are in this directory.

Rock on?

Dave did some 11th hour rewrites of Drunken before he left for today.

Here’s the new version.

The old version for reference.

He added about five new vocal parts, including a bit of an old Tommy Jarrell* tune. I like it now (for the first time).

*incidentally, Tommy Jarrell proposed the best way possible:

Tommy had known Nina about two years before he married her. He proposed while they were hoeing corn one day. He said “Nina, we’ll get married if you want to. But I’ll tell you right now, I make whiskey, I play poker, and I go to dances, make music, and I don’t know whether I’ll ever quit that or not. But, if you think we can get along now, we’ll get married - and if you don’t think we can, right now’s the time to say something.”

“Well,” Nina said, “I believe we’d get along all right.” And that was the way it happened.

I hooked up another wurly last night and wired in a vibrato kit. It “works,” though the tremelo is really wide and slow. It occured to me in the shower this morning what the problem may be.

[note: the vibrato kit is a misnomer. it is actually tremelo.]

to all the people who don’t care about Wurlitzer electric pianos at all, because it seems like every second post talks about them. As it turns out, I spend a good amount of my interesting, non-work time on them; that is non-work time that isn’t TV or making dinner or reading websites or whatever.

What do people think of the blog-title-continued-in-the-post thing that I did on this post and the last one? effective? confusing?

So I got to work on the final preps of what’s going to be Andy’s wurly. I’m going to ship it, so to reduce weight, etc, I’m going to take the bottom/ speakers off. I’m also going to add a line-out and re-route the power, of course. I’d done the power to this one already and the line-out seems pretty trivial so I set about trying to figure out how to take the bottom off. I basically spent 3.5 hours taking 8 carefully placed screws out. Now that I know where they all are and how to take them out without completely screwing up the hammer action of some notes to the point where I have to take off the pickup plate in order to fix my mistakes, I think I’d be able to do it in about half an hour.

I need to pick up a couple resistors and a capacitor to do the line-out line. should be fairly easy.

Other accomplishments of recent:

• went to Dittmer’s Wursthaus. got some boerewors, chicken apple sausage, weisswurst, thuringer bratwurst and ukrainian sausage for the game tomorrow.
• got some 40s and bad beer for the game tomorrow
• swam
• cleaned my room to some extent
• rehung my bike in the Jon Werberg-school of bike hanging (single-hook, by the seat)
• ordered a 50s reissue fender precision bass

So among my huge lot of Wurlitzer 206As I also got one 200A, which is a more popular model that includes vibrato.

So I tried to play the 200A last night. The keys hardly move and definitely won’t slide from one position to the other (up to down and visa-versa). I open it up and I really can’t comprehend what happened to this keyboard. There is masses of dust that’s black but has shavings of metal or something that sparkles. It’s everywhere. On the circuit boards, between the keys, near the pickups. I need a vacuum. I tried to use one of those pressurized air cans and it got freezing before half the job was done.

The felts on the keys that allow it to slide up and down are hard. They’re hopeless. There are two points at which it slides and two felts per point and 64 keys, so I’m looking at replacing 256 very small felts.

There are brown/ black stains in the wood of some of the keys. Mold?

Maybe they kept this thing in a damp area near the exhaust of a machine-shop sander or something.

On the good side, the electronics look fine and all the pick ups and felts/ action that aren’t the keys looks fine, flawless almost. When I forced one of the keys down it emitted a glorious tone with sweet vibrato.

[Update: Despite being sold as a 200A, I think this actually a 214W.]

I often mishear lyrics and often like my misheard lyrics better than the original.

I often base sets of lyrics off of a single line that I get into my head. Put these things together and I can write lyrics based on a mistake.

The craziest thing is that my misheard lyrics are my invention; that is, I own them and use them however I want.

Examples:
“Have you ever been honest now?” (misheard from “have you ever been all messed up?” from the song “One with the Freaks” by the Notwist)
and the one that caused me to write this post:
“There’s always the East Coast” (misheard from “it’s [blah] [blah] East Coast” from some Archers of Loaf song). I don’t know. I like that line a lot.