This is an odd version of the old Jonathan Richman song.

I paid my son 2 euro to sing on the one section

If you don’t know Jonathan Richman, look him up. In the seventies he ad a group called the Modern Lovers. I believe they briefly tried to sell him in the UK as something he wasn’t and he didn’t catch on. Basically he was a big kid who would write songs about little dinosaurs and monsters in the supermarket and sang them with a stuffed up nose like a little kid. This was so endearing that, surprisingly, he  caught on with lots of punks in the US. I’d say his biggest hit was “Roadrunner”. I also think of a song called “Pablo Picasso was an asshole”, which was hilarious if a little thin.

Watch and listen to Jonathan Richman singing I was dancing in a lesbian bar.

I wanted to write an uplifting song about being dead.

When I recorded the pianos, I intended to rerecorded those parts later on electric guitar instead. But on listening back, I  thought better to leave the pianos as is. I wanted to make sure a song about death would have every chance of being upbeat and bouncy, which, of course, piano is really good at. Some people find death to be a downer.

Unfinished

I gave myself a 2 hour challenge and came up with this. Well, okay, I rerecorded the vocals the following day. Fluffy and meaningless, but tight and clean.

Recorded this one a while back but only just got around to fixing the mix. Now I oughta get around to recording the proper words for the second chorus — Oops! Cant seem to find them now that I’m looking! Damn.

Take me
with you
to a party, that’s something to do.
Now I’m sorry
you’re such a dick to me.
Everything you said
was way way over my head.
I cant keep up with you
you make me feel so dumb
you make me feel brand new.

Outside. No more
clever stories your friends are all bores
alone I spot a girl
Lying in a puddle of gin

???
???

I’ve been too busy for the past month to put up any new songs. Not because I haven’t recorded any but because I haven’t finished any. This one I did a month ago and was holding on to until I found some time to progress it, but I got tired of waiting.

You are a dot there below.
I sit back neasous
nearly vertical
in the air.
Now I cant see you anymore.

This is an old recording that I have here resung, remixed and rejigged. I always liked it but the original melody as sung was a bit of an “estimate”. If you heard the original, I apologise.

Fairly happy with the sound of the guitars here, which was odd because they sounded awful through my amp in the room. To me, getting good recorded guitar sounds is alchemy. What often happens is I get the git sounding great in the room and then it sounds like crap on playback. Further, the same guitar and amp with the same settings might sound completely different on 2 different days. Is this humidity… tubes… ? I’ve never known.

This is another song I wrote on vacation in France this last summer.

I was thinking about how many of my songs I cant play for my little boy. With this one I set out to write something with the optimism and playfulness that he expects from the world and that he, and all small children, have themselves. The words were just recounting our trip to the beach that day which was pretty exciting. We took a pedal boat out to an island in the lagoon. While my boy wasn’t looking, I buried a toy in the ground and drew a quick treasure map. We only pretended to have crepes at the underwater restaurant.

Not sure about this one. When I recorded it, it seemed like just a throwaway. That is, no lyrical idea, no (initial) musical idea, just something tossed off for a bit of fun. For some reason however I quite like it. Is it just me?

I’ve done a number of vaguely country songs over the years – I’ll have to dig some of those out.

I believe this is a traditional song. I’ve heard 4 versions of it over the years.

This version here vacilates between starkly-simple and kitchen-sink-overkill. The kind of overkill that is so easy and fun these days with digital recording.