dracula cannon

here's something i'm particularly fond of. classic horror-punk band the misfits were just as big a part of my high school years as sleeping through class was and even if i don't listen to "static age" anymore i guess this is a good reflection of my roots showing through what i do now. i think it sounds like the theme song to a saturday morning cartoon until it gets to the trumpet solo, at which point it feels like more of a bullfight.

dracula cannon

since the song was thematically inspired by horror movies, i guess it's pertinent to throw in that i don't really get scared very easily these days, but i was afraid of everything when i was a kid. up until i hit about middle school, i couldn't walk down the horror aisle at blockbuster video without staying up all night with horrific visions of terrible make-up jobs and cheaply animated puppets covered in fake blood. in retrospect, i guess this was largely curbed when i started watching reruns of mystery science theater 3000 and learned to laugh at the whole thing. i still have a special place in my heart for "scary" movies (both well-done and not) BUT...

I AM TOTALLY NOT DOWN WITH THIS DUDE.

the only movie that still scares the shit out of me is the 1979 adaption of stephen king's "salem's lot". any other irrational fears i've ever had i got over long ago but barlow (pictured), the main villain from the movie, still keeps me from being able to watch this movie. i can't watch it all the way through. even if this movie was entirely soundtracked by simon and garfunkel i still couldn't take it. i even named the adorable beagle i was temporarily caring for "barlow" so i could try to associate the name with something a little more pleasant. it didn't work! i think the only reason i can even look at that picture is that i think he kind of looks like billy corgan, which i find hilarious. just imagine that dude whining out "cherub rock" or something and see if that doesn't put a smile on your face. even the pope would laugh at that.

ANYWAYS. that was kind of a tangent. but barlow and his ilk are why i made the song. i'm going back home to atlanta tomorrow and am probably taking a few days off to celebrate the new year/take bong hits with my roommates. happy 2008 everyone.

on the beach again

here's something me and ben did tonight. when we are left with my pc, a guitar and a microphone for a few hours we generally get a song out and based off of this, we find ourselves left with said items whenever possible. he did the guitar and i did the vocals, because his chord progressions are better than mine and i was the first to an idea for the vocal melody.

on the beach again

the song is named because the first few guitar tracks reminded me of my bloody valentine, which was the only band in the world that mattered to me from mid-high school 'til a year or two ago. my bloody valentine reminds me of the beach, probably because of the white noise of the ocean.

the mix was expedited for the sake of time; it has a muddy quality that kind of reminds me of something that'd come off an old tape. i already have something in progress that we started last night and i hope to finish that soon if spending holiday money doesn't consume all my time over the next few days.

a something at some point

here's a neat song from a little while ago. it's just me and an acoustic guitar, which is something i never do anymore because i am legally obligated to use a ton of production gimmicks and synthesizer noises on everything i do. i made a video for the song for a student project that involved hand puppets and vaguely resembled a sesame street sketch but it has gone missing to the endless, gaping void of lost shit (which has also recently claimed my fiery furnaces t-shirt and a bunch of old issues of nintendo power from the early nineties).

a something at some point

here's a picture of me from the holidays. it's the first time i held a gun (i'm 22, so you'd think that it would have happened sooner) but a recent viewing of mad max has made me want pursue vigilante law enforcement so i guess it won't be the last.



also note that buried under my prized gray hoodie is a deerhunter shirt. they're one of my favorite bands! i'll inevitably write a "favorite band" post soon. i considered photoshopping myself into the woods or something to say i was hunting deer in this picture for maximum appropriateness, but in reality, i'm just hunting lawn gnomes and "house for sale" signs.

friends from far away

here's another one! this is from the archives. this one's all me, as 99% of the things here probably will be. it's a sampler exercise more than anything; the drums are a stuttered sample from the intro of rick james' "ghetto life" (should i give that away?) and the little hook that sounds like a distorted synthesizer is a super-processed vocal sample programmed into a melody. so i guess saying that this one is all me is inaccurate.. it's me and rick james. or at least me and his studio drummer. i'll take what i can get.

friends from far away

it feels especially relevant to post this song now, because it's the time of year when everyone returns to their home town for the holidays and suddenly, things in that town appear to be bustling and full of life when they're otherwise dull and lifeless at any other time of the year. i keep running into people that i haven't seen since high school while visiting my family in birmingham (i now reside in atlanta) and the stock question in any of these cases is "what have you been up to?". after answering this question the first billion times or so, i've taken a liking as to approaching it as though i were filling in mad libs or something. "i've become a pool shark in las vegas!" or "i'm a jehovah's witness!" or "i'm kareem abdul-jabbar's personal chef!". the possibilities are endless.

post #1

and here we have.. a blog. i don't really plan on this being read on a regular basis by anyone so really, i see this as kind of an archive of my music and ideas that i can come back to in a few years when i have stopped making music altogether and reminisce on. i guess you could say i'm not doing this for any particular audience, or even the myself of today.. but instead, the myself of the future.

...

if you have stumbled upon this, i hope you like the posted tunes. help yourself to the complimentary kool-aid and vanilla wafers in the lobby. i'll update as much as possible, but as i tend to be a little unfocused, don't expect any consistency where quality is concerned.

to start things off, here is something i made with my friend ben on christmas day:

christmas 2007

i guess it's not particularly christmas-y, but i like it anyways. ben came up with the chord progression and i did the accompaniment/production. i'll probably sample this at some point in the future and make a real song out of it. maybe with a samba beat!