He's the one we all say "hail" to.

From “The Makers of Smooth Music”, here are some songs about Presidents:

• Richard Nixon
• John F. Kennedy Was Called Away
• Jimmy Carter Says Yes

I've posted clips of these before, but these are the full songs - bandwidth usage limits be damned! Here are the lyrics.

And some people think the recent Obama adulation is unprecedented. They are wrong.

Get Ready

Merry Saturday.

Here's a collection of short songs (21MB download). It's called "<void>".

These songs were written in the last month or so. And, out of all the things I've done under the name "Smaller Animals", I'm confident that these are the most recent, by far. I'm sure you'll agree.

So here it is: rough and ready to ... do whatever it does. I hope you make it a part of your X-Mas celebration.

It's a rut. It's a half-pipe, a local minimum, the bottom of a soup bowl. It's a pony who wandered into a valley he could not leave. It's the rolling of a marble, on the bottom of a boat at sea. It's this song. It escapes, but is frustrated and angry when it does. This is your song.

'Tis the season for giving! So here, dear reader, is my gift to you: a song about love.

To set the mood for this, picture yourself on a boat, on a river. There's a party. And there's a drunken band playing Sea And Cake covers on the top deck. And nobody's listening to them. Why would they ? And the boat's rocking to, and it's rocking fro, and you've been breathing diesel exhaust for an hour. To your dismay, you've eaten something salty and a little sour that's assaulting your pyloric sphincter. You fear, with sweaty hands and beaded brow, that if you don't do something about it now, the sphincter at the other end of your alimentary canal will soon have to deal with this shrimp or clam or oyster or whatever creeping sea creature had gone bad before you had to go and eat it. And the toilet's small and smells like ass, and there's a line of women an hour long in front of it anyway. So, you lean over the rail, throw your tie over your shoulder, and you sing, in the reds and oranges and tans of a shipboard appetizer buffet.

And that's where babies come from.

Once upon a time in Rochester, NY, in 1991 or thereabouts, there was a young man with a 4-track recorder, a guitar, a drum machine and a bass borrowed from the guy across the street. And one winter's day this young man cobbled-together a weak-ass little funky song without words or title. It used the FUNK1 program on the drum machine, but other than that, it had no soul and no reason to exist. But there it was, nonetheless, on that cassette inside the VistaFire 4-track recorder. And there was a track left over, unused.

That night, the young man and his six roommates journeyed down the road to an unassuming place called The Salty Dog, where they drank Genny 12-Horse and ate scores of chicken wings: three different kinds, including a batch of garlic-parmesan wings that were surprisingly good. They drank a lot. Their uproarious laughter filled the bar. In time, they left the bar and went back to the apartment, for it was late, and they were full, and out of cash. It was probably a Tuesday.

Shortly afterwards, back home, the young man and the other young man he shared the basement with were in the basement, eating potato chips (because they were young and they were drunk, they forgot they were so very full minutes ago). And then the young man saw the 4-track recorder, cued to the start of the song from earlier that day. Inspiration struck! He put on the headphones, pressed record, picked up the microphone and started, dear reader, to sing, drukenly. Though he had no ability and no right to be doing so, he could not resist - the muse could not be denied, you see.

First, he sang the customer guarantee from the back of the Wegmans potato chip bag, embellishing a bit where it needed more oomph. Then he sang about the young man he shared the basement with, Mike, the future-dentist, who was sitting on the stairs, not sure what was happening. Mike, who could not then hear, and had never before heard, the music, was puzzled, insulted and probably a little ashamed at what he was witnessing; and yet he was amused.

Then the young man sang of the rest of the roommates, Steve, Doug, Audrey, and the rest. Then he dropped the mic and lost his train of thought. With thirty seconds left to go in the song, the young man did what any reasonable man would do in his situation; he obeyed the muse! Dear reader, he picked up that microphone and started to sing again! He sang, in that shaky shaky voice of his, not of guarantees or his too-numerous roommates, instead, he sang of good things! He sang the delicious potato chip and buttermilk pork chop recipe from the back of the potato chip bag! Inspired, and yet barely comprehensible in its brilliance. And then he finished it off with a kiss. Mike sighed at the pathetic spectacle and sarcastically chided the young man, "Now that's a rap!".

But, Mike's derision could not erase what had just happened; the weak little song that should never have been born became the Smaller Animals classic, Mike. And here on this web page, I present it to you so that you can hear what true inspiration sounds like.

The young man has not drunk Genny 12-horse since.