Sunday, September 27, 2020

"Gordon Ward Interchange" Video!


I had fun making this video!  I hope you have fun watching it!

Sadly, the Crisco Disco cassette in the video is long out of print, but you can still score Yeast?'s first 7" here!

Sunday, September 20, 2020

New Recording!: "Gordon Ward Interchange"


I always liked this song because it's fun to play.   It was one of the first songs I wrote on guitar.   It was probably written 30 years ago now.   It first appeared on a little solo cassette I did called Wright, then it appeared on the Crisco Disco casssette by Yeast?, which was also pretty much a solo record.  I wrote it while I was in The Escaped Fetal Pigs, but I don't think we ever played it much if at all.  Yeast? the band seldom played it if at all.   And then it kind of disappeared except when I'd break it out on my own.   This might be the first time a recording of it ever had drums on it (even if one of the "drums" is just me slapping my thighs).  It probably is better with just vocals and guitar, but I enjoyed fleshing out this version into a bit of a noisefest.  The song's just about thinking about a lost love. The weirdest line in it is based on a closed movie theater whose marquee kept losing letters until finally it was down to "e", "ich", and "ing".   There actually is a Gordon Ward Interchange near the Ohio and Pennsylvania border where I-80 and the old State Route 60 meet (now called some other route number).   I have no idea why it's named for Ward.  From what I remember, he was some sort of television anchor.  Maybe it's named for a different Gordon Ward entirely, but it works to bring up the idea of crossroads (this way to New York City; this way to San Francisco; this way to Pittsburgh; this way to, um, Sharon, Pennsylvania USA?) and making choices, most of them apparently bad, since the speaker (singer since it's a song) apparently is feeling regretful.

One thing you won't regret is reading my latest novel (unless you pee your pants in public from laughing too hard)!

Sunday, September 13, 2020

Video For "The Cult Of Pogo And Porky Pine"!

Here's the video I made for the new recording of "The Cult Of Pogo And Porky Pine". We had a lot of fun making it. Thanks to Walt Kelly for the all the great comics!

For more fun, please read my latest novel!

Sunday, September 6, 2020

New Recording!: "The Cult Of Pogo And Porky Pine"


This is one of the first songs that I ever wrote once I learned how to play guitar. It was fleshed out by my buddies in The Escaped Fetal Pigs:  Mark Justice on guitar, Jim Grant on bass, and Simon Luke on drums.  It might be the earliest of my songs that I still play regularly, mainly just to have a primarily Pigs song in my setlist.   I never really played this one with other bands like I did with "Candle" and "Hatebomb".  It was written almost 30 years ago now in October 1990.  The only song older in my current set is a cover of a Billy Bragg song (my last remaining cover song in fact).  I really liked Walt Kelly's classic comic strip Pogo, so this was a tribute to him, imagining a kind of crazed cult that treated Pogo like it was The Bible.

Hey!  I can think of worse religions!

It is a simple song but always fun to play.  You can check out a Pigs version here and here and here and even one we played switching instruments here (in fact, the last song we ever played).  It might be the song we have the most videos up of, I guess.

For this version, I played everything.  It's fun to play with just guitar and vocals live, but since I can do multitrack recording at home, why not add some rhythm tracks, background vocals, and oddball noises?

If all goes well, next week I'll post a video for it.

If you like this kind of silliness, then please check out my first novel, The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus!