first post.

i have done what every invisible cucumber-brandishing lizard never told me not to do, and started a blog. truly the end is nigh.

really, this is just so i can keep track of musical happenings, and perhaps motivate myself to become somewhat productive again. i’m not sure how often i will add to this, and i doubt the results will be anything anyone else will enjoy reading, but i guess you never know. eventually there will be MP3s and other such exciting things.

so. i used to be insanely prolific, recording cds about as often as i sneezed. i’ve come to realize that this was basically because of two things:

1. just about all of the songs were improvised out of thin air while recording. i had been “writing” this way since i was about ten years old, so by the time i was sixteen and had more than a rented keyboard and a tape recorder at my disposal, i had more or less honed my craft. it wasn’t uncommon for a 75-minute album to be finished in two days. the results were often pretty twisted and haphazard, but that was kind of what i was going for.

2. i didn’t have much equipment, and i had no idea how to use what i did have. i didn’t have any mic preamps, compression, limiting or eq, and i didn’t even know what those things were anyway. some of the cds from 1999 and 2000 will attest to the fact that i was flying by the seat of my pants. there’s lots of ugly digital clipping and low frequency mud. gradually i started to learn about gain-staging and other such things, mostly through trial and error.

over the years i amassed more equipment, taught myself how to use it, and things started to sound less frightening. i was still pretty prolific, even once i started actually “writing” most of the songs instead of improvising them into existence. then, one day early in 2006, i decided it was time to get a new mic preamp. from what i had read, this thing was the holy grail, or a magic bullet, or beautiful hummus…what have you. it would take my music to a whole new sonic level. i got the thing, and it wasn’t cheap. it also didn’t sound any good. it’s quite possible i was doing something wrong, but it just wouldn’t work for me. i traded it in for something else and got different mic preamps. these really were something else, putting my previous pres to shame. they also revealed to me that many of the microphones i had were pieces of shit. i had been singing into a rode NT1 for a few years (or seven albums), and through the old pres it sounded nice and present without being spitty, with just a touch of eq. now it was a sibilant beast that i would never be able to use on anything ever again, unless i wanted my ears to rebel against me and detach themselves from my head to end the pain.

i ended up spending virtually the entirety of 2006 revamping the “studio”. i started building up a collection of good microphones. i bought a few new guitars. i souped up my bass with new pickups. i got a reconditioned wurlitzer electric piano, which was something i had been lusting after since i was a kid. i got a few more mic preamps, just for fun. i did a little dance without any pants. and all the while i was writing songs, coming up with ideas, and stockpiling them, preparing for the day when i would have everything i wanted and musical sex would ensue. it never really occurred to me that i had become what is universally known as a “gearslut”, and the desire to acquire sexy musical equipment had taken the place of recording with whatever was at hand.

that day of sexiness did arrive, and i was ready to throw myself into the music that had piled up with sweaty abandon. i had a few different projected albums flying around inside my brain. and then, three drug dealers moved into the other half of the old duplex i was living in with my dad, and seven years of peace were shattered in an instant as they began running a crack house. recording was all but impossible when they were throwing rap & crack parties at all hours of the day and night. the rap music literally shook our walls. i could write a novella about the experience, and about how no one was interested in doing anything about the situation (because, while they acknowledged that there was indeed a drug house attached to us, it wasn’t attached to them, so it wasn’t their problem). instead, i’ll just say it was lots of fun, and my sleep was messed up so many times by the late parties that i’m still trying to restore my sleeping patterns to something approaching normalcy today, with mixed results. i was able to get a bit of recording in when things calmed down for brief periods of time, but i didn’t even put a dent in all the songs that were screaming for love.

after seven months of crack house hell, we moved into a new house in august of last year. it was far from the ideal place for us, but i ended up with a larger space for my equipment, and for the first time in years i could finally use everything and even walk around in there without tripping over something. one would think that this would make for the perfect environment in which to plot my musical revenge, and it would have, had i not suddenly found myself feeling a strange sort of lethargy. even putting aside the sleep issues, it was as if there was some strange vapour hovering around me, killing my motivation at every turn. songs continued to come, ideas were flying around left and right, and yet i had no drive to record any of them. it all seemed like too much work now. if i could have cloned myself, it would have been fine, but i imagine the johnny clones would have eventually grown unhappy and plotted to overthrow me as their leader. it was bizarre to be perhaps the most inspired i had ever been in my life, at least from a musical standpoint, and at the same time completely devoid of any motivation to harness that inspiration and run with it. i didn’t “release” a single album in 2007, and i haven’t gone a year without making at least a handful of albums since 1994. somewhere, a bloated brontosaurus descendant was grinning and itching his distended belly with one very long and yellow tooth.

to make a long and ponderous tale slightly less whatever-it-would-rather-be, here we are in february of 2008, a year after the crackheads messed up my flow. i now have more music piled up than i know what to do with, and no one is going to help me make sense of it all. so i thought, “why not start a blog no one will ever want to read, where i can be ridiculously long-winded and sort through all of this stuff? maybe it’ll have the side-effect of motivating me to get off my ass and become somewhat prolific again. maybe i will post MP3s for flirtatious squirrels to listen to, just like back when i had a website, only without the extra grated cheese.” and so it begins…not with a bang or a whimper, but with a curious sound pitched somewhere between a dog laughing and a cow giving birth.

or, to get to the point, here are all of the projected albums i need to sort through and either bring to life or euthanize:

THE ANGLE OF BEST DISTANCE

a gigantic labour of stuff. this began as a few different albums. one was going to be mostly acoustic, one was going to be electric guitar-driven and something of a return to the raw full-band sound of old, and one was going to be piano-driven and more ambient. maybe there would be some synth-based non-pop in there as well. then i got tired of keeping track of what songs were going where and thought i would just throw it all together, even if it meant putting together an album that was made up of several cds. maybe each disc would have a loose theme, or at least a title that would make it seem so. titles like “held is not holding” and “pretty straight poison”. i could try to do something ambitious with the packaging. maybe i would even print the lyrics. it felt like it would be an ending of some sort…maybe the death of a certain way of working, and the start of another. a clean break, put under a microscope. there are now so many songs meant for this ridiculously ambitious album, it’s kind of terrifying. almost none of them have been recorded, and some of them are still works in progress. a saner person would downsize and break it up into smaller pieces, but i’m determined to see the bloated thing through to the conclusion it deserves, even if it takes me until 2010…and it very well might.

PÈRE FANTOM-VISAGE

once upon a time, there was a two-man band called papa ghostface. we made some pretty twisted music that i’m still not sure what to call. it was sort of a genre unto itself. there was a great burst of productivity in 1999 and 2000, and then an accidental band of a different name was formed and papa ghostface was put on the back burner. there were occasional recordings here and there (some of them eventually compiled as KISSING THE BALD SPOT), but they dried up after the band’s demise, as gord (the other half of our two-headed beast) went onto other things with surdaster. at this point, there’s a very slim chance that a new papa ghostface album will happen. and by “very slim”, i mean “slimmer than my waistline was in the first third of 2002, when my favourite pair of jeans started falling down all the time”. see, there was something of a papa ghostface reunion near the end of january, and one new song was recorded, but it’s beginning to look like that may be all that comes of it. still, even if that’s the case, i think i might end up recording an album on my own using the band name. i kind of miss having a PG cd to confuse people with. it would be a good excuse to dip back into the demented waters of old, and to see if i can still hack it on the spot like i used to. also, there were some ideas we never fully developed that i’d like to try fleshing out. more importantly, the album title is too fun to ignore. max marshall sent it to me in an email, and it took me a few days before it occurred to me that it’s “papa ghostface” in french.

THE CHICKEN ANGEL WOMAN WITH A TRIANGLE (*finished*)

should there be a “the” before the title? should there be dashes? i don’t know. the idea was inspired by the design on some sort of bag anna had with her when we were drinking coffee at taloola before i left the crack house behind. i forget what the image was exactly, but there was a girl with what looked to be a halo above her head, smiling and standing with something in her hand, and she had wings of some sort. i misinterpreted her to be a chicken-angel-woman who was holding a triangle. and then i thought, “i kind of like that…it could be an album title.” i’ve written several songs on the six-string banjo, and i’ve been toying with the idea of throwing most of them together, along with some mandolin songs, on one album. something kind of scratchy and rustic, or as close to that sort of thing as i’m likely to get. if nothing else, it’s an excuse for an interesting album cover.

THE TIGRESS & HER MOLTEN FAMILY, IN SIX PARTS

another title that just came randomly out of nowhere. it made me think about getting back into longer song forms, and some fun potential song titles fell out, like “part one, in which the tiger eats his tail” and “part two, in which the tigress says, ‘why didn’t you tell me you were hungry? i could have made you a nice salad’”. it could be something of an illustrated book, like a twisted children’s story, with a scene for each song. the title and song names would make it seem like a concept album, but it wouldn’t be, because the lyrics would have nothing at all to do with tigers. i’m not sure if this will ever come to fruition, but it’s fun to think about.

OUT-TAKES, MISFITS & OTHER THINGS (1999-2007) (*finished*)

many songs have fallen by the wayside over the years—some of them among the best things i’ve done. i’m working on putting them together in some sort of sprawling collection that will probably be a 2 or 3-cd set. i’ve got about half of the songs mixed so far. a few need some serious work, like vocals and instrumental parts that were never recorded. i’d like to have this finished before 2008 gets too ripe, and there will be some sort of booklet in which i tell exciting stories about all of the songs (i.e. how they came to be and why they didn’t come out sooner). it’s all endlessly arousing, i know.

DUST

an excuse to dust off some of the many songs that were written but never recorded, for various reasons. hence the title. although the title will probably change. there are some things i’d still really like to tackle, that i just never got around to recording because there were too many other songs to think about. “emilio estevez” was the hit single i never had, and if i had recorded it back in 1999 it would have changed the course of my whole career. or not. what career? exactly. this is something that could easily turn into a long term project with several volumes, because there are more than a few songs to choose from.

DREAM SONGS

songs that came from, or were inspired by, dreams. since i figured out how to remember my dreams on a regular basis, there have been some interesting pieces of music in some of them that i’ve remembered. maybe i’ll include the dreams themselves in the liner notes to make it more interesting. i’m not sure if this will work all that well as a cohesive album, but it’ll be an interesting project to attempt. and there’ll be some pretty catchy tunes, like the “running-back-to-mars montage” and “things that hurt”—captain beefheart’s take on 80s pop.

OTHER PEOPLE’S SONGS

something i never thought i would even think of considering thinking about: a covers album. this may never happen, but the legwork is there. of course, that never stopped me from aborting projected albums in the past. potential covers include songs by the eurythmics, john cale, mary margaret o’hara, kylie minogue, my bloody valentine, dan hartman, the psychedelic furs, cassie, and on it goes. what can i say? i was a child of the eighties. and some songs just seem ripe for reinterpretation/deconstruction, regardless of how much i hate most pop music. i’m convinced “love is a stranger” will work as a slow, narcotic crawl, emphasizing the longing and stripping away the pop appeal. i also still have a dream of covering the theme from “inspector gadget” as a smooth ska number at around 160 bpm, complete with horns and female backup vocals. i can hear it so clearly in my head, it’s not even funny. someday it’ll happen.

A BOX OF FIRE

can we say “ridiculously ambitious”? yes, i believe we can. this is a projected concept album that would be some sort of mixed media thing…basically, i would have to write a book before i could write the songs. it’s complicated, and would take a long time to explain the plot and how it all works. this is another thing i will probably never bring to fruition, but it would be interesting to try, particularly since i don’t write much in the way of fiction anymore.

so those are the main things. there’s also the idea to record some sort of documentary following the making of an album or several, but i imagine that would get kind of bland after a while…static shots of just one guy doing everything and talking to the camera. and other ideas. too many of them.

i guess we’ll see what happens.

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