So this is Creep Steve, the final version. It features a (IMO STELLAR) special guest appearance by my buddy W. Mark Wilson on guitar.  I got a ton of great mix advice from Jim, Mike and Dave on this one – and I used it as a learning experience to try and up my game and get better quality mixes. 

Creep Steve kept his beard clipped neat
His corporate ladder was your hierarchy of need
Spewed fresh critique as the plot unfolded
If it breathed he had to control it

Creep Steve, Creep Steve, Creep Steve

Creep Steve was really living now
Beating dead horses and worshipping cows
rolled like Beethoven in his crypt of a mind
malformed, abstract, impossibly blind

So myself and a crew of like-minded assassins
waited in ambush to kick his tight ass in
We opened maws and we sharpened our tongues
Distilled cannons, dictates and fact sheets
We filled vials with head lice and malice
We lit torches just to storm his palace

Dermo, Davy, Ska and I were tossed
When Steve didn’t show and our paths didn’t cross
He was off, he was gone and we were lost
We were lost…

A very quick and dirty unplugged version of a song I originally wrote and recorded back in 96. It’s acoustic, vocals and kids bongos. I recorded this, liked the result and got the idea to start working my way through my ‘back catalog’. And so it goes…

Big Decisions

A good friend of mine lived on the Hudson in Nyack. At night a few good friends would get together and walk down the path to the riverside, drink beer, smoke funny stuff, hang out, shoot the breeze, joke, laugh ALOT and look out over the water at the bridge.  The night was so dark and the water so placid that it almost looked like a continuation of the land. I mentioned to Kieran that it seemed like I could walk right out over the water to the bridge. He laughed and said – ‘there’s so much shit in there that it might actually be possible’ – and another song was born.

The lights on the bridge were soft and reflected on the water in a way that reminded me stars in the night sky.  The shit became ‘the rich brown earth’ and the lights became ‘the pale glow of ‘ radiation.  I was madly, deeply, insanely and secretly in new un-professed love at the time, and somehow all these elements mashed into a reflection on discovering the possibility /seeing small signs that the person I loved might feel the same.

I wrote this tune and originally recorded it on my 4 track circa 1991. I re-recorded this ‘un-plugged’ version on acoustic and piano a couple days ago.  I dragged out my rarely used Gibson hollow body for this one. I’m fairly happy with the result, and the recording quality is worlds away better than the pooped up original

I’ve been playing this song to myself on acoustic and in my head for about 12 years. I wrote it shortly after my daughter was born. Before my daughter was born I had a vivid dream of her face, and my dream came true. I don’t usually get write out lyrics, but what the hell…

Elizabeth
Elizabeth
Was the answer to questions
I hadn’t heard yet

With pursed up bird lips
and black pools of eyes
I dreamed of her face
I held her and smiled

For the rest of our lives
I’ll be waving goodbye

My normal routine of listening to it on my morning commute and coming up with lyrics as I drive just isn’t working.  I played it for a couple good friends – two friends that could not possibly be more different – and both remarked something along the lines that it is a departure, in a good way and style wise very different from most of the stuff I do. I think maybe it has kind of a World Party kind of vibe and I imagine singing it in a totally campy Morrisey style, but I don’t think I want to goof on this one cause I think I actually like it.

It features the usual cast of characters – the Steingraber piano, p-bass, Les Paul, ampeg, Guild Jumbo and Addictive drums played with my little simmons kit.  The vocal intro is 9 tracks (why didn’t I do 11) of me singing “Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah” into an SM7B broadcast mic.  It was a placeholder but it stuck.

Blah

In retrospect I was actually HAPPIER writing goofball songs about nothing.  I was reminded the other day when I broke out the synths and drum machine in an effort to capture the sound of a band known as Hotel Limbo.  I was working through my old routine. Drums had to be no more than 4 measures with ABSOLUTELY no variation, cheesy and way too loud.  There has to be at LEAST one arpeggio line with a lot of velocity based resonance.  

When cutting vocals in those days it was MANDATORY to eat the mic, talk the lyrics and drown the whole thing in reverb. Extrapolating and riffing on a theme – really cracking myself up I remembered that there must be EXACTLY ONE repeating figure relying on a fairyesque  tine  patch, again soaked in reverb.

Of course nowdays the les paul and ampeg have to feature prominently in every song  I do. An absolute must. So I had to add the smoke of the les, spring reverb and tremolo but decided to keep it to a repeating line of single notes.  I feared at first that this might be inauthentic, but after a quick review of my material from 1986 I realized that many of my tunes featured a reverb soaked, chorused out les paul playing single note lines.  At that point In time I could barely play chords. I guess the bass is the only area where I was not true to my old school ways. I rarely if ever used a real bass on my tracks in those days as I couldn’t play bass and always had the Korg synth handy.

The final authentic note to the song is that I didn’t finish it.  In those days I NEVER FINISHED ANYTHING and I can prove it

SO here is the song ‘Feeling Neutral’ by Hotel Limbo from the album GO. Thank’s to my friend Lar Duffy for the idea, and apologies for not following through on his original vision for Hotel Limbo. I promise to address this in the future.

Feeling Neutral

What do I know started life as something to play along to while I practiced bass and piano. I was looking for a big, fat, round bouncy bass sound ala Macca.  Kelly commented that she liked it and thought about muppets dancing and singing along.  I explained that it was just me goofing around and practicing, but once she said something I had to ‘finish’ it.

Drum wise I was feeling a driving 60′s Motown beat, but if Ringo played it. I wanted the drums super compressed, and the bass to be much louder than the drums. Guitar is the Les Paul through the Ampeg 15 watt.

I kept fooling around with it and thought that it might be cool to add some bg vocals – I didn’t know that they would end up sounding  like a weird version of the Association.  I knew there had to be some B3 on it somewhere… And of course a song isn’t a song without an acoustic, and once the acoustic is in you gotta have 4 tracks of hand-claps.    I compressed the living hell out of the stereo mix and added some tape emulation to make it sound ‘vintage’.

The lyrics are intentionally obvious and goofy – It was another imaginary Ringo vehicle.  It would be a stretch to say any of my stuff  has a ‘message’ – but the lyrics are inspired by my draw dropping reaction to the things people ‘say to other people on social media sites when in political mode. As far as the lead vocal – it’s like the kids always say – you get what you get and you don’t get upset

What do I know