Song Order and Other Info:
Here is the list of all the songs on the album, with a little info and insight into each one, what they mean and how they were made.
1. Looking For A Girl (1:28)
Written a few years ago, this was my attempt at writing a song in the style of the band "Guided By Voices," who are known for writing minimalist songs, that sometimes last under a minute. When your verse and chorus rock, why is it always necessary to add solos, bridges and special endings?!
So, with that in mind, I wrote this song in about 5 minutes, and always envisioned it starting this album!
2. Anton Webern Is Also Looking For A Girl (1:39)
This is music composed by Anton Webern, (pronounced VEYBERN) an obscure 20th Century classical composer. When I was in University, I had the Norton Anthology Of Music series, and in them were complete scores on abstract 20th Century music. Way back in the 80's, I input the notes into my computer, so that I could hear that flat, lifeless, Midi-version of classical music! It was fun, and I kept a cassette of it lying around for years, and decided to use it here. The first two sections of this song are the Webern pieces (interspersed by annoying guitar feedback that I did myself!), but the 3rd segment is something I wrote back in the late 80's for a radio station. Funny... they didn't use it!
3. This Started Out A Love Song (4:20)
It really did! This was originally a song done by One Hundred Days called "Julia." Nice enough song, but I was unhappy with the sentimental and sincere lyrics that Andy wrote. They were good lyrics, but I was hoping for something with a bit more edge to them, but had no ideas of my own at the time. Musically, this song was born during the OHD Feels Like Love tour, at a place called MGT, in December of 1996. The new lyrics came when I started this album project, back in June of 1999.
This recording contains some rather un-controlled drumming, but sadly, it wasn't me actually playing the drums! I programmed these drums using a Korg Triton, and did my best to make it sound like a real player, but I admit, the fills are really out of control at times, but as you will see, I left them as is!
4. Puke Stuff (2:17)
This was created specifically for this album. It was entirely composed on the computer, using Step-Time Recording, where each note was entered manually within a certain rhythmic template. I had an idea how this song would sound, but not really until I had finished entering all of the notes one at a time. When I heard it play back the very first time, I was pretty thrilled with what I got! It was inspired by a chord I accidentally came up with while in University in the 80's, a chord of clusters: F#,B,C, F, G, B#, C#, F# (with two hands). Basically, the melody and main themes are all based on those notes.
This song also contains a guitar solo by Andrew Brideau, a friend of mine, who can literally play anything. I wrote this solo on the computer, knowing that I'd never be able to play it. I knew that if anybody COULD play it, it would be Andrew. When I saw how easy it seemed to be for him, I asked him to play the solo for me.
The lyrics are word for word from The Real Frank Zappa book, a book about Frank's upbringing and history. Stupid, funny story, which I thought perfectly matched the musical insanity therein!
5. I'll Live On (4:00)
I wrote this while on the Feels Like Love tour in 96', but I never really saw it working on a One Hundred Days album, so I put it here instead. It's a simple production... acoustic guitars, washy electrics, bass, toms, and vocals. It's the vocal parts that define this song. I have often done my own drum parts with my mouth when doing my demos, and this time around, I thought it actually helped the song to have me chanting rhythmically in the background. Kind of weird lyrics on this one, but I enjoy hearing them from time to time.
6. If You Can't Beat Saturn... (1:29)
This was something I wrote assuming it would make good film music. Maybe it still will! This is just a few tracks of electric guitar and echo, with a neat computer-generated effect at the end. There were vocals on this at one point, but I lost them when I had a system crash on my hard disc recorder. Gone forever, but not all that necessary to start with!
7. Innocence (3:24)
This song has a long story to it, so I'll keep it brief!
Back in the mid-late 80's, I spent a lot of time in the studio, and I would often be there long after everyone else would go home, and I would setup gear and record demos. One night, I made up some songs, and this one came out. I always liked it, because it was improvised on the spot, but the audio quality was pretty bad. So, in early 2000, I decided to teach myself how to play this song, and then basically go back and in and cut it live, just like I had back in the 80's. The performance on the album version is in fact the last performance I did - Take 32!
8. In The Second Laughing Kitchen, Part Two (9:11)
I wish I could remember how this song really came into being. Somewhere in the early 90's, I made a Midi file of a song, but nothing ever came of it. It was just this big 9 minute instrumental bed. In late 1999, I finally realized what lyrics could go with this song - words about a dream I always have about returning to highschool as an adult. This song has lots of stuff in it, and lots of stories, so I'll save them for another time. Until you've heard it, it won't make much sense anyway, but basically... this song has XTC-style pop, Progressive-Rock-style sections, Bossa-Nova sections, and generally insane lyrics. The title says it all!
9. Kitchenaid© (1:16)
I love playing this one for my friends, because they always say "This sounds like a Beach Boys tune!" Well... it IS! I am a Brian Wilson fanatic, and as such, I purchased a 4 CD set of unreleased and unauthorized recordings from the never-released Smile album (from 1966-67). This set contains full bedtracks, beautifully re-mixed for this bootleg album. I took a bedtrack for a song called "She Gives Speeches", and basically put my own words and vocals over top. So essentially, this song is me, along with Brian's musicians. The lyrics are as silly as the Van Dyke Parks lyrics from the Beach Boy tune!
10. Peach Cobler (A Love Song) (3:31)
Generally speaking, I love melodic music. Give me a sweet melody and I'll come a-runnin'!! However... I also like innovative LOUD music. I'm not what you'd call a Death Metal fan, but I DO like some stuff in this genre, such as Fantomas for instance. This song came about upon me meeting an all girl Goth band called Kittie. I heard their demo and then went right home and wrote this song. Again, it would have been better with real drums (Gord Stevenson especially!), but I cheaped out and used the Korg Triton again!
For the record... I've never had a dog, and even if I had, I would not chop up his body to make Peach Cobler!! (that will make sense when you hear this song!)
11. When?!. (1:31)
When I was on tour with OHD in 96', my good friend Craig Douglas and I were joking about stupid ideas for songs, and we both thought it would be funny to have a song with only one word in it. A few weeks later on the tour, this sorry excuse for music came up! Hope you like it!
12. My First Space Helmet (1:27)
A piece of Instrumental music that I improvised many years ago. The only new element is me singing along with the melody.
13. No One Ever Lends Money To A Man With A Sense Of Humour (2:52)
For any Monkeys' fans out there, you will recognize the title from a scene in their movie HEAD, which I personally thought was awesome! The music is actually a deleted OHD song called "Just Because", which we simply could never get right. This is a re-write, and a little different from the OHD song. It is also one of the most complex mixes on the album, with lots of stuff going on in the mix. This was one of the songs I played real drums on, and it quite frankly, almost killed me! Click here to see some of the reviews on this song by members of www.garageband.com . Pretty funny stuff!
14. Only He Who Is Running Knows (for 2 Disfunctional Hands) (0:54)
P.D.Q. Bach fans will recognize this title, from the terrible comic opera The Seasonings! Anyway... another silly Classical thing I came up with years ago.
15. Commercial Break - Soft and Easy Favorites! (0:15)
This is an actual commercial I did for a local radio station back in the 80's. It's direct from cassette, so no extra points for professionalism!
16. Anymore (3:53)
This is the newest song on the album, written in early 2000, based on some pretty painful stuff I went through last year. I'll leave it at that for now!
(The drumming was easier though!)
17. Short Term Hearts (3:46)
This is one of those bitter tunes I seem so good at writing. I wrote the music for this back on the Feels Like Love tour, but the words came about much later. It's not very nice, but it's sort of my kick in the teeth to all of those record company people who made my life frustrating in the 80's and 90's.
Me bitter???? No!!
18. What A Rhythmically Radical, Yet Verbally Passe, and Temporarily Transcendant World (3:14)
This is an actual recording from my days playing drums in a dance band called "Madrigal." This is from a New Years Eve dance, where the band played the song "What A Wonderful World", but for some crazy reason, I had never heard the song before. This is for the drummers out there. I played this for OHD drummer Darryl McWaters, and I thought he was going to burst blood vessels from laughing. So this song isn't for everyone, but it's hear at the behest of my friends out there who demanded it!!
19. Louella's Kitchen (2:43)
I wrote this for OHD. We cut a bed track for it in 1998 for the Happy Hour album, but we decided to leave it at that. To save time and money, I decided to use the actual OHD bedtrack as my starting point for this tune. So, basically, the main parts are all being played by Andrew Horrocks, Tony Lind and Darryl McWaters. I added more guitars and keyboards, but otherwise this is an OHD performance.
20. Confusion's Sister (9:14)
This is the other big tune on the album. This was created back in the late 80's on one of those all night sessions by myself. There is no doubt about the obvious Brian Wilson influence on this song. It was obviously going for a new version of the Smile tune "Surf's Up," lyrically and musically. Rather than change that, I decided to just accept it as a place in time, and not try to hide the fact that I basically tried to write a Brian Wilson tune. That phase of my life, from 89-91 was a scary time for me, because I was so into BW that I could not write anything that sounded like me anymore. This is probably one of the few songs from this time period that actually worked. So, accept for the fact that this was all recorded from 99-01, it is a place in time, and I decided to change nothing about it. It's pretentious and humourless, but at this point in the album, I figure a little drama won't kill me!
21. He Not Busy Being Born is Busy Dying (2:02)
This is the scary part of the album, a piece of noise I made on a 4 track cassette back in 1987. I added some sounds from the movie "2001 A Space Odyssey" to make it even more bizarre!
22. I Guess This Is Goodbye (3:25)
I wrote this song back in 1998, on a very sad day, when I made my decision to get out of playing in OHD. It was a while until I actually made that move (early 1999), but this was the day when it all hit me that it was over for me. Now, after the fact and a few years later, things are not really over for me or for the band, but at the time, it really seemed like my life in music was coming to an end, to make way for my new career as a pizza delivery man! So, needless to say, this song at times sounds like a suicide note, so I left it till the end of the album.
23. Island Derry Air! (3:10)
Back in the 80's, it was more my style to end an album on an intense and emotional note, but those days are long gone. Ending the album on I Guess This Is Goodbye was just too dang depressing for me, so I threw this lovely little specimen at the end instead!! This is a cassette demo I made back in 1987, and nothing has been added to it. It is a silly thing, that I hope brings this album to an appropriate conclusion!