Between the spring of 2011 and now, I've done a whole lot of songwriting, rewriting, and recording. Many old songs and tapes were trashed, and dozens of cassettes have been taped over, sometimes not entirely so that the humor of random mash-ups can arise. There's one where I check in with Eckhart Tolle to see what he has to say as I'm taping over The Power of Now. He's always spot-on, naturally, further proving that the Now is perpetually available, even when dealing with pre-recorded mediums.
Yeah, cassettes are as dated as electric typewriters, but they sure do have their virtues. Not just the simplicity of operation, although single track one-touch recording certainly is simple. And dirt-cheap. I'm thinking more about how much one learns about the voice in such a primitive setting, where all hope for production enhancements is lost. You either keep it or try again. Some of the tapes are continuous 45-minute shows, most made implicit use of the pause button to create album-like consistency, and a few are collages with two or three undercoatings of me doing what I do.
Which is document my life - orally or vocally, spoken, sung, rapped, written, or improvised. Issues of the day are covered, and now that it is done, somewhere in the body of around 100 of these 60 or 90 minute tapes, at least one new version of almost every song I ever wrote exists.
And they can be cleaned and digitized in a jiffy. Which means I already have demos for all kinds of tunes that would be better off in the hands of other artists. All I really want to do is begin my interface with the current technology from here.
Every side has at least one cover version of a song too (kind of like my way of having a drums/space section in every show, as on a Grateful Dead tape). The electric keyboard Alcorn gave me has plenty of options, so there's never a glut of one sound or another. I wanted to be sure they were all worth listening back. It is like being a character in a Nick Hornsby novel, though. No one is expected to go through these tapes. The sheer volume of titles and performances therein is a private joy. We close this entry, then, as if this were a pure fiction and the song listing I've chosen to commemorate the close of this phase didn't (for you, dear reader) really have the lyrics and chords to go with it. This is the J-card for "SAV - Forever Sloppy" Side B, one of the last (recorded July 19 and 20, 2012):
11. Already Felt All Those Things
12. Love Can Be Thrilling
13. The Fat Angel (Donovan Leitch)
14. Til the Sun Finally Manages to Set (with Crush On You intro - hush!)
15. 2000 Year Blues
16. You Don't Really Know Me
17. Apatosaurs R Us
18. 'Til I Feel It
19. I Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way
20. Every Soldier's a Martyr
21. May This Be Love (Jimi Hendrix)
22. Just One Morning
