One thing I've learned in the ten years I've been living in North Carolina, is that there really is such a thing as "Southern Hospitality". But, it's hard to describe in words. It's one of those things that can only be expressed in song. And so, back in 1998, on a record called "Context", I put together this little tribute to the good people of the south. It's called Y'all Come and it's based on something I heard on a Lawrence Welk show. And so, as you can imagine, it's about as honest and down-home as a song can ever be. All the warm welcoming joy of a Southern home is wrapped up in these short two minutes. We had a grand old time putting this together for you! All the family plays along on this one - Sanford is strumming the guitar, Clayton's on the banjo, Fuquay and Varina are singing backups, Garner's got a good grip on that washtub bass, and wee Moncure is tappin that triangle like a sweet little angel. I hope it conveys to you, dear listener, the flavor of true Southern Hospitality, something which is nearly indescribable in mere words.

Feel free to sing along! The words are easy!

And don't forget to eat your greens:

Here's a heartwarming song I wrote back in 1993, or therebouts, about a day in the life of a darling little schoolgirl named Ilsa. On this musical tour, we get to listen in while Ilsa chats with her teacher and fellow students about the mysteries of life - such as they are for 10 year old girls. You might be surprised how much there is to learn about your own life, by observing the life of a little pixie like Ilsa ! Ah innocent youth.

Nikon N80, Fuji Superia 400, 105mm macro
Wild Iris, Rocky Mountain Ntnl Park, CO

Modesty forbids, but objectivity demands, that I point out how this song surpasses even a master work like Vintage, Like Old Times in sheer brilliance of musicality and technique - I was really in the zone for this one. The delicate but intricate guitar work on display here is truly top-notch. I dare say that even the great Esteban would be hard-pressed to duplicate the agile, yet tasteful, runs I pull off here. And careful listeners will be pleased with the subtle way the dialog from the nearby television interacts with the gossamer backdrop of electric and acoustic guitar, forming a whole that is far greater than the average of its parts.

Ilsa is an early masterpiece from Smaller Animals and it has stood the test of time, touching the hearts of dozens over, lo, these near-15 years. I hope it touches your heart, in a nice way. But, no refunds can be given, in case it does not.

Here's a little song I wrote, it's called Vintage, Like Old Times. It's about family and friends, and good times had by all, in the long long ago, in the before time - as the lyrics make clear. For me, the whole thing comes together in the third chorus, where I modulate, twice, on the word "love", as a choir of angels, summoned by the outpouring of pure love and generosity I'm recalling, sprinkles golden raindrops upon my forehead (played here by the tubular bells and Glockenspiel); that's where the heart is. That's what it's all about. I hope you feel it, as I do. And I hope this nostalgic look back at traditional family values and the meaning of inter-generational love finds a place in your family's songbook, as it has mine. Music is the gift of one heart to another; it's love. It's all you need. It's all there is. Enjoy. Peace out. Please don't litter.

So, what's there to do Friday night, if you've already seen season two of Alias ? Ah, here's an idea!

Continuing in the same spirit that caused me to post the last set of songs - that a song invisible to the world might as well not even exist - I'm going to post all the studio^*-recorded songs from bands I've been in. (and because Bobby L's been posting a bunch of his stuff, I'm inspired to do the same)

There are, in my completely biased opinion, some really good songs in here, and there are also some decent performances. And there are even a couple of songs where the song and the performance are both good! And then there are some real clunkers... c'est la roche.. But I love em all, cause, well, I'm like that.

These are 96kbps MP3's, which means they sometimes sound a little tinny and strange.

Update: I had to remove the links to the individual songs, because I broke the bank on my web hosting storage limits; so you can grab all the songs, here: Nora (13MB), Hector (32MB), fieldfresh (33MB).

So, in reverse chronological order...

Nora
Nora was a short-lived band that only managed to record four songs before I ran off to get married. After I left, the band kind of disintegrated. That's unfortunate, since I think there was potential there - even without me! Belly was a big influence, as were the various British shoegazer bands (MBV, Blur, etc.).

These songs were recorded in a real studio, though because of the cost, things were a bit rushed and the mix is a bit weak - like, where's the bass? and, why didn't we fix those sloppy sections? Oh well. Two of these four ended up on red-swirled 45s that we made and then failed to sell (I still have a bunch in my closet). I think some of the other band people might have some live recordings that I'd dearly love to get my hands on - I know we had some other good songs, though they're fading from memory, fast. But, I just don't know where any of those people are these days. Jen, Mark, Gerry, Will, Me.

Nora's Songs

• Dummy. I love this one. The drums are great, as always - Mark rocked. This came from the other guitar player, Will, who's playing the guitar with the giant-whirling-turbine effect on it. I'm the Cure/REM/Cult lead over the top. This one got airplay... once... late-night... on a Sunday. We didn't quit our day jobs.
• Sweet Thing. A ballad! Jen wrote this. It came out pretty good. This, and Dummy, were on our 45.
• Riot. The music for this one is mostly mine. The guitar lines were things I'd been playing around with for years, inspired, like many things I've written by the Sundays' guitarist. But Jen's vocals make the song, IMO.
• Needle. Our big swirly epic. I think this came from Gerry and Will. The performance isn't ideal - the song's always better in my head.

Nora's Songs (13MB).

Hector
Before starting Nora, Gerry The Bassist and I were in a band called 'Hector'. Hector was a power-pop band, in the style of Big Star and late-era Replacements, formed by singer and chief-songwriter, Don, who started the band with a "guitarist wanted" ad in a local indie paper, which I answered. Unlike Nora, we recorded most of what we wrote; and we did it all in Don's basement on his 1/2" Tascam 8-track. We probably recorded more than we played out, even, which is fine - sometimes that can be just as much fun. We had two different bass players, and I think they're both on these songs, though I don't think I could tell who's who on some songs - the time line is a little fuzzy in my head, so many years out.

After the drummer, Sean, became a father and had to quit because of time demands, Gerry and I kind of walked away from the band and started Nora, without formally telling Don that we quit. Sean was a great drummer - a great natural feel - and teaching a new drummer all those songs felt like too much of a drag. It was a crappy way of handling the situation, I'll admit. But Don and I still exchange emails from time to time, so it's all cool now, I guess. Don, Sean, Gerry/Nick, Me.

Hector's Songs

• Somewhere Else. One of our first, one of my favorites, one of the few Hector songs I contributed any significant writing to. I'm still a little proud of the chords in the bridge: Gmaj7-F#m-E. It's not your typical garage band progression.
• Cop Or Junkie. Don wrote and recorded this with an earlier band, but I think our version rocks much harder. For a long time, I thought the name was "Copper Junkie".
• Don't Know. Another good song from Don. I'm not entirely embarrassed by my little solo in the middle of this.
• Tomorrow Never Knows. It's not the Beatles' song, but it's a good song, anyway. Another of my favorites.
• Rustbelt. I love Don's lyrics, though they're mixed way too low.
  

• Wow. I wrote the music for the first part of this (I was in a Superchunk mood), and then Don tacked-on that big wide-open jam-on-two-chords at the end. A ton of fun, live. I would literally grind picks into powder, trying to play that high A chord as fast as I could. This and 'Satisfied' ended up on a 7", after remixing at a real studio.
• Satisfied. A little bit of the Replacements' 'Unsatisfied' at the start. My mom liked this side of the record better; I liked the Wow side.
• Blood On The Streets Of New Haven. No relation to the Doors' song - Don just liked to use lines from other songs as titles, I guess. I like this one, too. IMO, Don was a great songwriter. Hope he's still at it.
  

• Naked. I can't remember if Don confirmed if the lyrics are about a real event or not. Love the song, though.
• Drag. Yet another good song, but my playing is ass. I'm really sloppy here. I was playing this cheap plastic Ibanez "surf"-style electric guitar that looked cool but never seemed to be loud enough, was too thin sounding, had no sustain, etc.. Should've never bought that thing - I was constantly fighting it to get a usable sound. Should've used the good ol' Tele.
• Skunk. This was one we reworked from a thing I did with my previous band, fieldfresh. It's a little fast here because we ran out of room on the cassettes we were putting together, so when Don mastered it, he turned up the speed on the 8-track machine, and shortened the song by just enough to make it fit. I'm playing that same crappy plastic Ibanez here, but kicking my trusty American Metal pedal (yeah!) in the loud parts fixed the lack of punch.
• South. I was never really crazy about this one.
• Last Night. Really never crazy about this one. Always hated playing it. Don't even like hearing it. I'm glad there's that big MP3-stutter near the end.

Hector's Songs (32MB)

fieldfresh
fieldfresh (named after the Canadian dairy company, by Joe, the founder, singer and bass player, who sometimes visits this blog), was my first official band. When we started, the only person who could really play anything was our drummer, Bobbie. She left, then we got the drummer for the RIT jazz band - who was fantastic. I was always amazed that a guy that good would play with the rest of us (which is not to slight Bobbie, but, well, JoeS was awesome).

The first eight songs were recorded in the RIT music studios by a film student (who is now a developer at Borland - you can't hide from Google, Mr Stuntz). The drums sound great - very expensive microphones, IIRC - but there's a lot of effects over everything else. The effects make the finished recordings sound a lot more polished, true, but we really had more of a raw, in-your-face aesthetic, IMO.

The rest of the songs, on the other hand, go all the way to the other extreme; they were recorded in a basement, live, except for vocals overdubbed later (in a film developing closet, IIRC). We were, I guess, 'grungy': Mudhoney, Sonic Youth, Dino Jr., the whole Sub-Pop scene. We played mostly RIT apartment parties, for a couple of years. Then I quit, out of the blue, one day - don't remember why. No harm done, in the long run. It couldn't last forever! Joe T., Joe S./Bobbie, Me, Jason at the very end.

Note, a lot of these songs have NSFW lyrics - if you couldn't tell from the titles.

fieldfresh's Songs

• Cut Me Loose. This was always the first song of our live shows. I like this one.
• Blinded. I like it, but this recording smothers the song a bit. It should rock, but gets buried in reverb, instead.
• No More Words. Great little rocker. And it's the only solo of mine that I really like.
• Pissin. 65 seconds of rawk, including the drum solo.
• Salo. After the Pasolini movie, a little of which is included at the beginning. The whole thing is flanged so much that it sounds like it's underwater.
• Dog Poop Bus. Heh. It's "SubPop God" (almost) spelled backwards.
• Both Sides. This was a ton of fun to do live. Bask in the glory of the flat-fifth power chord. Pretty happy with how this one turned out; except for all my little guitar clicks and squeaks, it pretty solid.
  

• 6 Not 7. This is the first of the basement recordings. These became our "Stinky" cassette release. Don't remember what the title means. I am reminded, in comments, by Joe, of how this was named: Sonic Youth has a song on their Sister album (Stereo Sanctity) that starts out with Thurston yelling "Seven! Seven!"; so, we did Six, Not Seven.
• Crocodile. If I remember correctly, I wrote "I am a crocodile. I've got a two foot smile. And I will eat all your little cats, motherfucker." on the whiteboard in our apartment one day. Then Joe read it and used it for the lyrics.
• Liquor Box. Plumbing the depths of dumb. Still, it's fun.
• Bomb / Touch Me I'm Sick. This is a sped-up Mudhoney cover, with a little lunatic Johnny Cash-esque thing stuck on the front. Terrific fun to play.
  

• Evening News. IIRC, so-named because Joe's bass bit in the 'verse' sections sounds something like the intro music to a local news broadcast.
• Hell Is Like A Toothache. Dude, it's in seven - count it off if you don't believe me ! I certainly was, when I was playing it. And it's sloppy !
• The Legend of John Holiday. This didn't turn out so good - my fault, I had to do my guitar part separately for some reason and couldn't seem to get the timing right on the breaks. So we shrugged and moved on.
• Bend Over. We called our first release (the songs recorded in the studio, and then sold on cassettes) "Bend Over". Then we wrote this song. Fun to play.
  

• Yr Ma. Wow. What a mess. Last verse: "She's my little love salad / With a double chin / Carrots, lettuce, vodka / Ugly as sin."
• People Suck / Don't Change. "People Suck" was Joe's chance to rant about the world; and it was my chance to choose what we did in the middle part - we'd get there and I'd pick something, sometimes we'd improvise something for a while, sometimes we'd do a whole song. On this day, I chose INXS's "Don't Change". IIRC, the master tape got fucked up somehow and the levels on this song go all over the place, nearly ruining the middle of it. Still, I love how it turned out - it is Total Rock Action. And it's my favorite part of this group of songs.

fieldfresh's songs (33MB)

I'm posting these without permission from any of the people who were in any of these bands. And I hope that's OK with them.

I have a band, called "Smaller Animals". No, wait, I am a band called "Smaller Animals"^* - it's just me... except when I get other people to help, and even then it's still mostly me, but with guests. We/I do mostly what people call "experimental" guitar stuff - that is, it's the kind of stuff guitar players do when they're not working with anyone else, and so there's nobody there to tell them to quit fucking around. I doubt it's interesting to anyone else, but whenever I finish an album I send it around to select friends, just so I can say it's 'out there'. I don't even play these songs for Mrs Cleek, because I know she won't like them.

Happily, I just finished another album's worth of stuff. I've already sent out all the CDs I'm going to send out, and I've decided I'm going to put this one on the web, too. But first, a little explanation of what it is, and isn't...

It's me playing various guitars, recorded to my now-retired Tascam cassette 4-track (next album will be recorded on my cool new digital 8-track). The sound quality varies from weak to ass: between the tape hiss and distortions, my lack of patience with sensible recording practices and simple laziness, the sound is sub-lo-fi; if the name "Portastatic" wasn't already taken, I'd have claimed it for myself. There aren't any vocals: I've done vocals in the past and have finally decided it's best if I just don't do that anymore. The songs typically don't follow conventional structures, and standard musical theory only gets a couple of chances to speak: these are like radio jingles for a world where Sonic Youth is a hot wedding band. The playing and arrangements and mixes are sloppy: close is close enough. I'm not a flashy player: there are no flashy solos or Hott Lixx. Half of these songs are probably impossible to duplicate - it's nearly all improvised, I don't keep track of the tunings or chords I use, and happy accidents during recording and performance are the rule. But, at least they're all really short!

So, in a nutshell: this stuff isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, and it's not meant to be.

OK, have I sufficiently lowered your expectations? I hope so.

Here it is. A 96Kb/s copy of: Smaller Animals, Decisions. (Warning: 27MB ZIP)

Maybe I'll post the CD artwork later.

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* It's a non-coincidence that a software company I am associated with is called "Smaller Animals Software, Inc."; but the band and the software company aren't related in any, umm, legal, financial or material way. If you happen to work for the IRS, or the NC Dept of Revenue, or NC Secretary of State, please consider that an un-official disclaimer.

I got myself all worked up over the idea of doing a mash-up of Big Black, Black Star and Big Star. And then I went and did it.

Here it is.

It's not quite as exciting as I wanted it to be, but it might be the best I can do...

It's a blend of two or three live songs from Big Black's Pigpile (Steelworker and Fists Of Love, for sure), two songs from Black Star (Definition and another one I can't recall right now) and two from Big Star (Feel and Nature Boy).