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Today I’d like to take a short break from the original tunes and share with you one of the rare 7” singles I’ve picked up here in New Zealand.

I found this little number in a mildewy box on the floor of an op shop in Whangawhanga. It’s credited to a group called Jet Merino and the Southern Men, on the Go Dink label.

The title is “Dag Rock (featuring Bongo Hamish)”. It’s the B-side- the A-side is “Hey Hey Hey (Buddy Buddy)”, listed as “vocal with instrumental accompaniment”, but is unfortunately (?) unplayable- it looks like it was violently raked with a fork.

I have no other information about this combo. The heavy green paper sleeve has “Mona” written several times in different colored ink.

Enjoy!

In the last post, I prefaced the gibberish of “Brazillians” with a homage to The Great Spirit of Unfettered Creativity. This week’s selection should probably have been left in chains in the Homicidal Maniac’s Basement of Bad Ideas.

But… well, what the heck! Anyone who I’ve played in a band with knows I have absolutely no shame. I suppose this week’s tune is an example of that, but more importantly another facet of creativity- the inane couplet that refuses to die. Kind of like a rash- you have to deal with it, to make it go away (or in this case, get it out of my head).

I remember exactly what I was doing when “Little Miss” came down from the heavens. I was walking in my new gumboots down a muddy rutted road. Glub, glub, glub, glub. Swinging along, as jaunty as one can be in mud. And then the heavens parted, and it hit me:

“Lil’ Miss… A’hm givin’ yew a liiiiddle kiss”!

-all to a catchy little riff, a close cousin of that Janis Joplin song whose name now escapes me.

Glub, glub…

Glub.

The damn couplet wouldn’t leave my head. When that happens it’s often the sign of something worthwhile. I usually try to work with it. In this case, the thing to do was to change the lyrics, which were acutely moronic. But- oh god, I tried. Nothing seemed to work as (ulp!) well. I tried to just forget the whole damn thing.

But it wouldn’t go away- Little Miss would not be denied.

The best I could do was to try to craft a lyric that warped the lowbrow horny redneck hook into something ironic. God help me, it became a love song to Lindy Englund, the infamous prison guard at Abu Ghraib.

So now, moronic was happily married to tasteless, virtually guaranteeing complete unlistenability. But the exorcism had to be performed.

The basic guitar idea actually came out sounding pretty good, which goaded me to continue. Since the whole endeavor was damned from the start, I threw in some sampled trumpets. “Arranging” them (ahem) was fun- but because I only have Garageband’s “musical typing” feature (which is exactly what it sounds like), and not a real keyboard, I struggled with latency problems: the notes lag behind your playing. Very frustrating, like trying to dance the charleston in ski boots. Oh well, it sounded good enough.

Singing it really brought the lamebrain lyrics home to roost. I don’t know what kind of voice could pull this off- maybe a Tony Joe White type- but I got into the mood as best I could. As I warned you- I’m shameless.

The recording experience did all I asked of it- it got the damn thing out of my mind. I did it about a month ago, and revisited it today to add sound effects and mix it, and I must say, I had to steel myself like you do before you visit a dentist, or a lawyer. But the overall effect- all right, it’s horrible.
I’m sorry! I’m particularly conscious of the impression it will make on my classical-loving brother, who taught my nephew to consider guitars and drums “sub instruments”, and has rarely heard what I do.

I guess this one’s for him.

There’s a theory that creativity is simply allowing unconscious impulses unedited flow. My favorite quote along these lines comes from a Jamaican reggae musician (whose name I can’t recall)- “Jah writes ‘em, I just sing em”.  I believe in this- from experience. When you let it, something does indeed swoop in and guide your hand. Then you do with it what you will…

“Brazillians” (sic) was the second thing I recorded with my new format (Garageband), a few months ago in Dunedin. The scene: Jakob, my flat mate, had gone off to Mt Cook on a weekend-long field trip. I don’t mind recording instruments with someone else around, but I don’t like singing- the space I’m in is just too whacky and intimate. With the place to myself, I recorded the first tune, which had been a-kickin’ and a-mullin’ in my head for a couple of years (“Iditerod”- I’ll post it soon), then, as the night wore on and I had a few beers, “Brazillians” was born.

The original idea was to wed a guitar riff that I had (that I thought sounded kind of Brazilian) with a lyric about a Brazilian ghost- my landlord Rafael, who was out of the country; I’d never met him but his presence was everywhere; the smell of fried meat, the smell of his baby, the funky décor, etc. I wanted to add one of those hushed bossa-nova vocals over the top of this, but never got around to it- by the time I got as far as what you’ll hear, it was 2 am, and I was kinda starting to like it the way it was.

The guitar was recorded with my H4 on my itsy-bitsy 1-watt battery powered Fender Mini-Twin. It was the first time I’d used a mic’d amp and I immediately preferred it to the simulated amp sounds available in Garageband. Most of the time on this admittedly throw-away tune was spent trying to make my Danelectro guitar sound like a bass- fussing with bass filters, blah blah. Funny thing is, when I got a real bass and revisited this tune, I preferred the original lo-fi pseudo bass, so that’s what you hear.

The drums are from the “loop library” or whatever, in Garageband. More on how lame this beat-farm is later, but this one wasn’t too bad, and the preset small room reverb setting really made it come alive. The same reverb is on the other instruments, and I think glues them together to sound fairly plausibly live-in-a-room-at-the-same-time.

The vocal… Jah wrote it; I just opened my mouth and wagged my tongue.

(Note about the mp3 player- if you hold the cursor over the song link just above, it pulls up a box with a player. That player is preferable to the usual blank-page-with-player that pops up when you click on the link, which, for some reason, has little drop-outs. Plus, you can look at the dog.)

Hello Whomever,

This is my first post in a blog created to share with you the music I’m writing and recording while visiting New Zealand.

I have a few qualifiers for the songs that will appear. Number one, I am only mixing on headphones. If you want to hear the music the way I mean it to sound, please listen on them too. Number two, you’re hearing an mp3 which is has a lower sound quality than the (heh) pristine original. Number three, I’m just learning how to use Garageband, so pardon me if the recording sounds crude or inept. Number four, I am crude and inept! I like it that way, at least when I and a few select friends (and my heroes) do it. So- nyeh!

The first piece I’m putting up is called Cat’s Feet. The melody came  while lounging on a couch in Waihi beach, on a sunny autumn day in April. Diane had played a bass line that I faithfully reproduced (ripped off). I recorded it last night, during a violent wind and rain storm here in Raglan, while sitting at the reception desk of the deserted hostel that is my current home, and job. I locked the door at 7 pm, and finished the recording at 1:30 am. The vocal/guitar was the last track. By that time, I was in a very queer mood.

The rhythm guitar is my Danelectro DC, unamplified. The little twangy lead guitar is the same, recorded at the same time as the vocal. Those were mic’d with my ZoomH4, a fantastic machine. The H4 is very quiet- the hiss you hear is the sound of the frighteningly strong wind that night. That noise reminds me of the reassuring sound of analog tape.

I like the feel of this tune, and a big part the reason why is that it doesn’t have the utterly noiseless claustrophobic sterility of a digital recording.

If possible, please listen to it late at night…