demo track #5

good afternoon! i have another song for you :)

this is another spontaneous construction in the studio, which i wrote up one day after school. i was a little bit frustrated about how a teacher was talking to me and decided to take it out on my guitar. we'll have to write the piece of shit a good essay, won't we?



and, how are things going? well, i think i've been clear that i'd rather kind of skip over this year. you'd think a high school teacher teaching a gifted class would be intelligent enough to know not to judge somebody based on their appearance. how did he get this job, if he's that stupid? i kind of get that i'm supposed to be incentivized to get a haircut or something, but i'm really not. i'm just disappointed that i don't just have to deal with this moron on a day to day basis, but that he's ultimately going to pick my letter grade. it's not inspiring, it's depressing. of what value is a grading system when you're being graded by shallow idiots? is this going to carry on for the rest of high school, or is it just a bad teacher?

ironically, this probably wouldn't have happened had i been allowed to attend the regular courses like i wanted to because my appearance wouldn't stand out nearly as much. there would be other kids that act and dress and think like me, so i wouldn't be singled out.

whatever. if he's going to curve me down due to my haircut and send me back to normal classes, that's kind of what i want, anyways.

it's lunch time. i'm being hollered at to come down and eat.

the new weezer record is a horrible disappointment, but not a horrible record in totality

as you don't know me, i should begin by pointing out that i was never a really big weezer fan. i certainly enjoyed the blue record, but it wasn't in any way a pivotal record in my life. i actually had to overcome a lot of internalized opposition to it before i could even give it a chance.

it was that stupid buddy holly song, which for a while in late 1994 and early 1995 (grade 8) just saturated everything. it was in constant rotation on muchmusic. it was on the radio once an hour. it was in people's walkmans, on people's shirts - you just couldn't get away from the stupid thing. as such, it became incredibly annoying. it was worse than that, though - as they were the cool thing, and i was anti-cool, i had an aesthetic obligation to dislike them.

what ended up happening was that i asked my old neighbour to dub me a copy of the most recent collective soul record (so that i could teach myself how to play gel out of the guitar world tabs because it was a really neat solo) and he put a copy of the blue album on the other side, without really thinking about it much. i realized there was a tab for say it ain't so in the same magazine, so i checked it out and actually had a lot of fun playing it. still, on first listen the record didn't really click. it came off as overly simplistic and kind of stupid; worse, it sounded like it was recorded through a tin can.

it turns out that i liked that collective soul record a lot more than i thought i would, so the weezer record was given more chances than i would have otherwise given it (as the tape had to rewind, anyways). what eventually ended up swaying me was the epic track at the end, only in dreams. i had to work backwards from that track. i also found that surf wax america reminded me a lot of geek usa for some reason.

somewhere around the 10th listen, the record finally clicked all at once and it ended up with some heavy play, afterwards. but, the truth is that weezer really wasn't in any way a natural fit for me and that i had to carefully work out it's aesthetic boneheadedness in order to get to the tasty marrow of harmonic complexity. so, you should keep that in mind as i describe my initial reaction to pinkerton.

the very first impression of the record was that it was incorporating a wider sound and that was a net positive. the first thing you notice is that the production is a lot cleaner and the second thing you notice is the use of things like synthesizers and percussion, which would have been very out of place on the first record. the presence of acoustic ballads (as well as some unexpectedly urban takes on rock music) allow for more tonal variety. so, the higher production value immediately jumps out as a net benefit and the immediate impression is that this is a more polished, produced record - and that that is a good thing.

on further listens, though, it becomes apparent that the disc is frontloaded to the first couple of tracks and that the songwriting takes a nose dive around the point that the tape flips. the vocals also begin to reveal themselves as hard to listen to because you feel embarrassed for the singer for singing them.

even recognizing these flaws, i think the record is salvageable by merely cutting it down a few tracks. i suppose you could argue that it would be very short, but that's a better outcome than publishing filler that is so bad that it makes you feel uncomfortable just listening to it.

as mentioned, it took a long time for the first record to click for me. should i be cautious with analyzing this one? i just don't feel that i'm going to come around to it the same way. but, if you were to trim it down a little, i would passively enjoy it well enough. i'm left to conclude that this is a mediocre record that has it's points of interest but simply doesn't impress.

track #4: neglected

it's sunday morning and i'm actually uploading the song early this week. i've been up all night again and am actually looking forward to a lengthy sleep.

three weeks into the school year, and how are things going? frankly, i'm just not really interested. i'd rather hang out downstairs and jam.

i don't want to suggest that i've developed some kind of anti-intellectual streak or something. i'm still in favour of education in an abstract sense, i'm just not really sure that it's really for me. i know i'm still young though, too, and i don't want to close doors and then one day wish i hadn't closed them. that's what the adults tell me, and i think it's good advice. so, i'm continuing to go through the motions with the least amount of effort and participation that i can possibly apply.

i've actually gotten in the habit of sleeping during morning classes. well, i'd be figuratively sleeping through them if i wasn't literally sleeping through them - it's french in first period (which i just can't pretend i'm interested in. i'm sorry. this is just inefficient and pointlessly redundant, to me. why can't i take science for the whole year, instead? i don't even have science this fall, i have to wait until next semester :\) and math in second period (which is just a free time slot - he literally just writes the chapters on the board). i tend to wake up halfway through math, then catch up on both subjects in the second half. because i can, i guess? i have english after lunch, and then exploratory - but i've gotten in the habit of skipping exploratory. they're literally expecting me to sit in a room and draw pictures made out of dots. it's fucking ridiculous. as busy work, it belongs in the fifth grade. "i'd rather be anywhere else, doing anything". so, i'm basically boycotting it and almost daring them to fail me....

we're looking at your university application and seeing you have As in math and science, but failed grade 10 pointillism. we're going to have to reject your application. i'm sorry.

right now, my head is just in my guitar and not in a classroom. why fight that? i mean, why not just self-lobotomize while i'm at it? if i'm getting something out of the music, and nothing out of the school, why immerse myself in the less fulfilling option? it's just masochism, really. i'm only fifteen, but i'm old and wise enough to realize that there's no inherent purpose or meaning in existence and consequently no use in torturing yourself for no good reason.

so, i've been coming home from school early and locking myself in the room until the sun comes up, then dragging myself to school and sleeping when i get there. if that's the choice i'm going to make, what do i have to show for it? what concrete results are there?

this brand new song developed out of a jam with myself, while inspired by the smashing pumpkins concert last week. it was actually very spontaneous; i just happen to have been recording, and i went from there. it was a situation where i really just let my fingers run loose on their own for the bulk of the recording....

the lyrics were likewise very much stream of consciousness, and the truth is that there's not much use in applying a level of thought to them that i didn't apply to them, myself. it was just what came out. i mean, songs have to have vocals, right? it's just what songs are. unless they're slow songs, i guess. but all rock songs have vocals. by definition.

track #3: i did your mom

i got home from matt's yesterday morning and went right into the basement, a little bit inspired by the concert. they played an extended version of silverfuck that went on for like 25 minutes; matt and his sister were both getting bored and fidgety, but i found the musicianship to be rather riveting. i know i can't play drums like jimmy, but i think i can play guitar a little bit like billy. i'm inspired to, anyways. he's such a big influence on my guitar playing!

i spent quite a bit of time jamming with an effects pedal, and that is probably going to be the next song. that's brand new! i already had the structure down for i did your mom, though, so i went back to that yesterday afternoon.

this is one of the oldest songs that i have. i think i wrote it one day after school in 1994 (in grade 8), half as a joke and half as an emotional release for getting teased. i've had it notated on my shelf, now, for two years, although it has evolved rather substantially, including quite a bit over the last few days. the entire middle section is pretty spontaneous, although i think you can also tell that the root of the guitar solo had been practiced many times. i spent a lot of time just jamming as i was recording this, which i think you can hear in all of the sounds at the very end.

the vocals are really intended to be funny and creepy at the same time, but i was only in grade eight when i wrote them and i think they're kind of immature, now that i'm in high school. nobody talks like that anymore. but, that's also why they're funny. i mean, i'm not writing music for grown-ups, i'm writing music for my peer group. maybe when i grow up i'll write music for grown-ups. for right now, this is really funny and creepy, and funny because it's creepy and creepy because it's funny.

i didn't really sleep last night, so i'm super tired. i may actually get enough rest that i can go to school fresh tomorrow. wouldn't that be crazy? who does that.....?

my first ever concert - the smashing pumpkins!

it's early in the morning, but i'm relatively well rested. i got picked up early at matt's after the show. i kind of wanted to get out of there...

and, with hair. thankfully.

i actually didn't have the slightest interest in shaving my head, but i was under quite a bit of pressure to. it hit me completely off guard. it's something to do with corgan shaving his head? i don't know, i wasn't able to make full sense of it. it can't be as simple as "i'm going to see a band with a bald singer, therefore i should be bald, too." - even if that's the most sense i could make of it. but, people did nonetheless shave their heads! i dunno. maybe i can be iha, then? i like my hair!

or, maybe that just reinforces my point about aesthetics? irony aside, how about this instead:

"i just want to be me." - billy corgan

eh?

i enjoyed the show, but i don't have any kind of reference point to compare it to because it's the only concert i've ever been to. well, actually that's not really true. i'd been to concerts with my dad before, but it was stuff he enjoyed and just happened to drag me along to: blue rodeo, jeff healey and i'm sure all kinds of other things i don't remember. these were at bars and open air festivals, though. this was legitimately the first concert i'd ever been to in a hockey arena.

was it far away? absolutely. was the sound bad at points? yeah. but, i actually had a decent view, if not the best sound, because i was off to the side of the stage.

as an aside, i'm pretty sure that a good percentage of the set was not actually being performed. but, that only takes away from the show if you can tell, and most people probably couldn't. they had all kinds of stage props on top of it that recreated scenarios in the videos (tonight tonight, rocket), so it's not like the question of whether they were actually playing or not was really central. that is, the show had a theatrical component to it. there were also several points - jams - where it was clear that they were playing, too. or, at least, billy was because he was obviously openly improvising.

dad and i talked about it on the way back, and he's glad i had fun but he also suggested that seeing a band in a smaller space is a lot more enjoyable. i think i can see what he means. i mean, it would have been better, for sure, if i had a more direct view. it would have been better if i was more directly in the stereo spread. it would have probably been better if there weren't thousands of people screaming, too. i can't compare yet, though, because i don't have the experience.

i'm glad i went. i knew all the songs. i sang along. i rocked out. i bought a hat. and now i can say that i've been to a concert....

it looks like somebody put some footage up already, how about that:
https://archive.org/details/tsp1996-09-13.ana1

i'm going to be recording for the rest of the day and all day tomorrow. maybe i'll finish a new song?

new adventures with an old favourite

it's always a magical day when a new rem album is released. i've been able to experience this four times now - out of time, automatic for the people, monster and, now, new adventures in hi-fi. you don't know me, though, so let's start at the beginning...

it was actually leonard cohen that wrote the song that i liked - first we take manhatten. i realized this after the fact. but, i misunderstood the radio announcer, who must have been referring to the song that played previous to it. so, i went to the public library looking for the rem record with this song on it. this was in 1989, when i was eight years old, and two years before rem would, ironically, actually perform a cover of this tune for a benefit.

i checked out all of the cassettes that they had at the public library - murmur, document and green. none of them had the track i wanted, but i liked the latter two enough that i dubbed copies of them onto a 90 minute tape before i brought them back (at eight years old, i found murmur to be a little bit too opaque). they both got massive play on my basement ghetto blaster for the next several years.

the initial reason that i found myself attracted to these records is that they seemed to transmit something to me that i was lacking in my life, which was a kind of intellectual guidance. i don't mean in terms of the lyrical content, which i did not understand well or at all, so much as i mean in terms of the aesthetic. i was an aloof child - bookish, introverted and very distant. i was naturally curious, but what i'd learned - even at that age - was that the people around me were not of much use in answering my questions. i was the kind of kid that knew the capital city of every country in africa, and the name of every moon of saturn. the reality is that the people around me couldn't even name the planets in order. they were constantly disappointing me in their inabilities to answer my questions, and in their own disinterest in the answers to them. so, i longed to be a part of something that would quench my curiosity. my aunt, who was then of university age, happened to overhear me listening to them (to her surprise) and she told me that this was what university students listened to. i grasped on to that. it was a way to connect with what i perceived was a higher culture.

to put it another way, i might not have understood everything that they said, but i knew they were smart and i knew that smart people liked them and so it made me feel smart to listen to them. you'll have to forgive the pretensions of an eight, nine, ten year-old child.

of course, the fact that these are very fun records, through and through, helped a lot, as well.

out of time dropped when i was ten, and i actually found it really disappointing because it seemed to shatter my perceptions. losing my religion was such a smash hit that everybody knew the song, which burst my bubble around them. worse, the band seemed to be being silly on purpose. it didn't seem nearly as smart anymore. i've gotten to know the record better since then, but i've never dropped my preconceptions - i've always ranked this near the bottom of their discography. it's funny how often a band's biggest hits are on their weakest records, isn't it?

when automatic for the people came out the next year, i had found some new favourite bands and had developed somewhat of a distance from rem as something i liked when i was younger. however, i gave the record a very careful listen and ended up absolutely smitten by it. i still didn't fully understand the themes explored, but the music captured me in ways that rem hadn't been able to, previously. few records have been more influential on me than this one.

by the time monster was released, i'd gone through the alternative rock portal and come out a pretty different kid. i had initially taken a pass on nirvana, although i did come around to it near the end of the nevermind cycle (i greatly preferred come as you are to teen spirit). rather, it was actually siamese dream that pulled me through the gates and turned me into a proper teenager (speaking of which, i'm going to see the smashing pumpkins tomorrow night. first concert ever!). that sounds like a perfect confluence, right? except that something seemed amiss about the record. it was just so glossy, so distant. after the raw, honest delivery of automatic, monster seemed like they'd retreated behind a thousand walls of emotional deflection. monster is by no means a poor record, but it is a very contrived one. it's almost not an rem record so much as it is a record by rem pretending to be another band - like it's their sgt peppers moment, but without bothering to tell us about the charade. i think i admired it more than i actually enjoyed it.

i intuitively look for patterns in everything, and so i was expecting them to bounce back on the new record. the single raised expectations, for sure. i've now spent the better part of the last two days listening to it, and what do i think?

well, i do think this record is a return to a more organic approach and that is very much welcome. the production is a lot more real, which is probably what i missed more than anything else. apparently, the tracks were mostly recorded at sound check. however, this is offset by two complementary tendencies. the first is that stipe is writing from a further distance than he did in the past, as though he wasn't able to completely drop the experiences of writing monster in character. the difference is that his new character is himself. this is kind of meta. but, he actually does a good job of explaining this, himself, throughout the course of the record; this analysis is actually broadly interpretive. the second is that the record picks up an experimental strain that they had previously left somewhere in the 80s and that i'm actually glad to hear them pick back up as it gives the record a much broader palette of sound. purists should really embrace the evolution, rather than complain, as it's actually an ideological throwback and return-to-basics. this record manages to do what almost nobody else has ever managed to do, which is to return to basics and artistically evolve at the same time.

it's hard for me to say how this record will be viewed in the long run. if it doesn't have the kind of smash hit that the last few have had, it may get overshadowed by the more successful records. that said, serious fans may also come to see it as their absolute pinnacle. perhaps a good historical parallel is to pink floyd's animals - a record that is often referred to as "lost" but that core fans almost universally see as their best record.

it's very early in the morning, and i've been up all night again. right now, i need to get ready to go to school; then, i need to find a way to get some sleep when i get home. i'm totally psyched about the pumpkins show tomorrow night.

but, i had to say something about rem this morning. the legacy of this record is not clear to me, and may ultimately depend on whether the history is written by fans or by sales figures.

the song from yesterday...

i'm just home from school, after taking a detour to the mall to pick up the new REM record. i haven't listened to it yet, but boy am i excited to!

how was the first week of school? well, it's kind of what i expected, but kind of not, too. the classes are full of the kids i expected that they would be full of, but it seems like "enriched courses" are the same as normal courses except that the teachers are less involved in the class. in math class, the teacher doesn't write anything on the board, he just assigns readings and homework at the beginning of the class and then goes into the other room to do his own work. in english, we read by ourselves instead of together. i guess the assumption is that we can all read? i'm not really getting the chance to be irritated by anybody, because everybody is ignoring each other. in fact, i actually kind of like this as it lets me retreat to my natural introversion. i'm no longer feeling like i need to put on a mask to communicate with others because that communication is no longer expected. right now, i'm not really finding myself missing the normal classes, but we'll see how long that lasts for.

it's kind of weird at lunch, because i know i'm never going to actually want to talk to any of these people. a strange truth is that the classes are almost all boys. the one girl i might want to talk to seems to be perpetually hiding behind what appears to be her boyfriend, and completely disinterested in conversing with anybody else. the guys at the front all want to talk about sports, even though none of them are actually good at sports. i don't really understand that, and i'm not at all interested in getting to know them. there's one kid in the back named ryan that i kind of get along with, as he's sort of punk rock. i think his parents were from pakistan, but he's culturally absolutely white - he doesn't even have an accent. i'm going to guess i'll probably be hanging out with him most of the year. if he doesn't get sick of me, i guess...

they put me in "exploratory" at the very end of the day, which is dangerous - i may very well skip it. it's not that i don't like art. clearly, i do. it's that i can't stand these directed outlets of official expression. i do not at all need this; i play an instrument. i read recreationally. so, it's just patronizing to me. pointless. a waste of time....

right now, i'm very sleepy as i did not sleep last night, so i'm going to give you a quick write up of the song i published this morning and then crash until the morning.

this is a brand new song that i wrote in my basement. it was actually intended to be a demo for a band with my friend matt, who wants to learn how to play bass and also wants to start a punk band. the vocals are really rough and based on something that he would say, but were written more as a placeholder than anything else. unfortunately, he thinks the song isn't fast enough. i guess he wants all of the songs to be really fast. that seems kind of silly to me...

i like the song, though - even if the lyrics are not meant for me. it would be a good pop song, played forwards. but, i don't want my solo work to be pop music. so, i took the song and pasted it on top of itself backwards, thereby creating my very first backwards guitar solo!



i don't know if this band with matt is going to work out. i really do think that this was a pretty good pop song before i ruined it. but, he's just all about conforming to a kind of pre-packaged identity and i'm not really sure it's one that i'm really that into. i mean, what's the point of starting a band if you're not interested in anybody hearing it? if you just want to play dress up and pretend? there's just a distance in maturity, i guess. he's not taking it seriously because it isn't real to him. he doesn't actually seek a real audience; it's just another rpg.

maybe i'll put aside some things for him as they come up. but, i think this is the last thing that i write explicitly for him.

new song #2...

this upload is a little bit late, but i had to sneak into the computer room to do it, which meant waiting until everybody fell asleep. then, it just takes so ridiculously long to upload on this 14.4k modem....

but, it's finally done. here it is right here...


i have school in the morning, which means i need to be on the bus in a few hours. so, i'm going to need to sneak back into the other room and get a little bit of rest. i don't really want to sleep on the bus, i take public transit to school, but sometimes my body makes that choice for me. i'll need to talk a little bit more about this tonight.

external links to recorded music

this is my very first recording!

i initially wrote this song in the wee hours of a morning in 1995, where it was recorded for future use by notating it on loose leaf (using a mix of tablature and chord blocks). it was slowly mutated into a final form over the next few years through solitary performance, and was eventually recorded in the summer of 1996.

the dream in the song is something that actually happened, although the concept was exaggerated for the track. there is a clear underlying misanthropy. but, it's more hands-off than the term usually implies. the song is not about starting fires, it's about not interfering in fires that are burning. all young people contemplate ways they can make a difference and "save the world" - literally or figuratively. but, is the world really worth saving?



i've also set up a youtube channel...
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXlH5Ds5mqClkdAUFJwQCNQ/

there is no code to get into enriched classes, but i wish there was one....

happy new year!

well, it's not really the new year, i guess, but it kind of feels like it. the roman calendar is heliocentric and resets when the sun reverses course and starts coming back towards us. how did we escape the victorian era without reconfiguring the calendar to the start of the school year, anyways? there are new beginnings to be found in the innocence of youth. yet, maybe such a concept of yearly rebirth was a little too pagan.

it's labour day tomorrow, which means i go back to school on tuesday. i'll be starting grade ten. it's not just a new year, though: i'm also being sent to nerd school. yuck :(. this is not consensual!

it's a little bit of my own fault, though. i tend to fool around in class. a lot. while i get almost solid As, the kids i'm distracting are not doing nearly as well. one may kneejerk into blaming the kids with the lower marks, but i've actually been fingered repeatedly as the root cause of the distractions. so, i'm a kind of an enigma. they haven't been able to figure out what to do with me; while they ought to expel me based on my behaviour, they just can't justify it because i'm an A student. what happened around the end of last year was that a cabal of teachers conspired with my parents to take me out of advanced courses and put me into enriched classes. the argument is that i'll be less bored that way, but that, more importantly, i won't be so much of a distraction to the students around me. everybody should win out...

...except that i know that the reality of it is that i'm actually going to be even more bored because i'm going to have to hang out with the nerds all of the time. the thing is that the nerds aren't really nerds. if they were legit nerds, i'd probably like them. the legit nerds are all in the advanced courses. what the enriched class "nerds" actually are are really the rich kids and they're actually mostly wannabe jocks. these are the kids that walk around in sports jerseys but can't make the school team. the only reason that most of them got separated out is because their parents demanded they get special treatment. there was no testing. there were no interviews. entry to enriched classes is dependent solely on maintaining an A average and being recommended by a teacher, which only happens with outside pressure. there are plenty of students in the advanced stream with higher grade averages.

how do i get out of this? well, i didn't have the choice. my parents would never do this to me under normal circumstances, but the cabal of teachers was absolutely insistent and they ultimately relented. the only way out of this next year is to get Bs this year. nobody's going to care, right? nobody's going to check my grade ten marks, right? i'm already thinking about a scorched earth policy...

what about the last week?

well, i picked up the new pearl jam record, no code. to be entirely honest, i'm kind of still processing it. i'm not too young to remember early pearl jam, but i'm pretty close; i was ten years old when ten was released (oddly enough...) and not really a fan of what i interacted with. i liked jeremy, but it was a distant appreciation rather than an active experience. i didn't like the other singles nearly as much. you have to understand that the headspace i was in at the time was not very open to anything that might be interpreted as "heavy metal". the reason is that i was growing up with a set of influences that saw metal as the refuge of violent drunks and uneducated losers. it took me a few years to realize that i was actually conflating an idea with it's anti-thesis and that my inability to differentiate between pearl jam and guns 'n' roses (and grunge and glam, more generally) was really just youthful ignorance on my behalf. in fact, pearl jam was exactly the kind of rock band i could get into, i just didn't realize it. i was eventually able to get into vs a little near the end of it's run, but it wasn't until vitalogy was released that i was actively converted into a fan. on some level, and notwithstanding my age, i may be a better actualization of what the band really desires as a fan. but, that itself - combined with my near violent aversion to 80s metal - makes me a very atypical listener. i actually tend to prefer their more experimental tendencies, as well as their punk sensibilities, over the cliches and muscular riffs. of their four released records, i like ten the least! but, the thing i like about pearl jam the most is actually the lyrics.

i'm finding this new record to really be pretty good on the few listens i've had over all night civ 2 sessions. it's kind of uneven, though, and i'm not sure how it's going to ultimately hold up as a result of it. vitalogy was also uneven, but it wasn't as pronounced. see, the flip of that is that some of the high points on no code are just that much stronger. the irony is that this exaggerates the weakness of the weaker tracks, which makes it less cohesive, overall. i'm still enjoying the record, mind you. i just wish they had cut a few of the slower tracks out. i don't mean the artsy ones, i mean the rural ones: off he goes & around the bend, specifically.



something, i did listen to a lot of in the early 90s, though, was REM, who were definitely my favourite band. so, i'm super hyped about the new REM album. i didn't like monster as much as their older stuff. it seemed kind of shallow, to me, in comparison. it didn't breathe or flow and kind of got boring under the monotony. but, i really really like the new single...

i don't know who the female singer is, though. is she actually singing or is she just an actress?

i've also been spending a lot of time in the recording studio in the basement. on the last update, i wondered out loud whether i should keep waiting for band members or just go ahead and start recording on my own. i've decided that i will be recording songs on my own with the intent of teaching them to other people when they're done. in fact, i have already finished my first song! in my next post, i will provide links to stream my very first song, recorded in my basement studio over the last week.