Musical Lunch

Recently I have had the pleasure of coming across a sort of audiobook of one of my favorite novels (and movies for that matter) being William S Burroughs' Naked Lunch.

I was desperately hoping that the recording was by Burroughs himself which to my excitement it turned out to be.

The recording ended up being only excerpts from the book, though one of the first things which popped into my head was to use some of the readings for spoken word pieces, so I immediately started working on some tunes to back the legendary Burroughs voice.

I was very tempted to do something weird and abstract but then decided that something melodious and rhythmical would also be nice. I remember hearing a few years back the album that he did with a hip hop band (Disposable Disciples of Hiphopracy I think it was), called Spare Ass Annie, and how it suited his voice well.

The only drawback with the voice recording is the quality, it's not great.

Enjoy the Links below.

Cheers
Ecca

The Black Meat

Meeting of International Conference

Tubby Fear.

It's amazing how someone's offhanded comment can inspire you when you play them a song before you put lyrics to it, The guys got together and recorded a song last Tuesday and I hadn't recorded the vocals to it yet ( Wayne had written them).

Upon playing it to Jen she shook her head and commented what provoked us to write a kids song and that it should be the new teletubby's theme as it was all jangly and ska like

It inspired me to put alternate lyrics to it (after I recorded Wayne's written ones as to not disappoint him), yet I couldn't resist the temptation to record the alternate version as well. Upon mentioning this to Billy he liked the idea and encouraged me to do the deed, so posted below is a tune called 'Teletubby Nightmare' with the lyrics so you can all sing along....

Just for reference, Ragdoll productions are the Teletubby Production Company, Tele tustard is preferred Teletubby food, and Linda Blair starred in the Exorcist movie for the uninitiated.

Enjoy !

Cheers
Ecca


When I lay myself to sleep
Freddie Kruger he don't bother me
My tormentors come from my TV
Ragdoll productions and the BBC

Teletubby nightmare

Well Alice Cooper welcomed me to his
Now I know just what evil is
Just like he told me, there is no escape
Baby talk and colored suits
Take me to my darkest place.

Watching Linda Blair seems like a comedy
It doesn't seem to strike any fear in me
But when you mention the names of tele crew
It makes me projectile vomit tele tustard spew

Teletubby Nightmare

Have a musical weekend

What a great weekend I've had.
Basically all I did was play music and hang out with Jen, perfect as far as I can tell.

Thursday night was a great night as usual at Jake's Jam, with some regulars and old friends turning up and having a good ole play together. Yes it can get loud and messy at times, but what the hey, we're all having a great time.

Friday night, I was asked to play with a local 50's - 60's rock and roll outfit. Great band, tight, all fine musicians, and as expected I had a ball. First time I had played with them, it felt so natural and after a few apprehensive numbers, I felt totally comfortable. I was actually asked to join them the following night at another gig, but i had a daytime gig to do, so unfortunately had to decline.

Saturday, Jen and I joined a group of musicians offering an afternoon of entertainment for a charity function. We had a great time and were well received.

Sunday Jen and I sang and played at a local market, which went really well, we had a friend of mine with us playing guitar, and banjo, and it sounded great. Looks like it is a regular gig every 6 weeks or so. looking forward to it again in April.

The guys were around again yesterday, we worked on a new song of Wayne's (which I hope we didn't mess around with too much as it ended up sounding quite Ska), i put some vocals on it today from Lyrics Wayne game me, but I thing I will rewrite them to suit the style more, it will be a surprise post in the not too distant future.

Today I will leave you with another tune I did on the new keyboard, it is a Prince style number, take a listen if you want, and feel free to comment.

Cheers.
Ecca


Suzie's Emancipation

Bit of Everything

Welcome back lovelies... thought I'd post a short entry today to let you know what's been happenin'.

Musically Ive been doing quite a bit of composing, I may have mentioned in an earlier post that I received a great keyboard for Christmas that has some quite impressive sounds and musical accompaniment styles. Basically in an effort to be as varied as possible I'm going through the styles and trying to write something from each genre, it's been getting quite interesting. I've so far covered, Disco, Guitar Rock, Trance and a few others. It's a bit like giving a child all these different ice cream flavours to try out. :). I am currently putting vocals on the Guitar rock track, so expect to see it posted here fairly soon.

It looks like this week is a going to be a busy one for performing, starting on Thursday night at the regular Jam ( If i make it..) , Friday night at a local RSL with a 50-60's rock and roll band, Saturday at a regular Charity Gig Jen and I play at and finally on Sunday at a Blues Gig with a friend of mine at one of the day markets up here on the Central Coast. I think by Sunday afternoon my fingers may need a little rest.

I've been checking out some cool stuff on the web of late.
Managed to find the complete Cremaster Cycle series which I am slowly getting through ( its difficult at times). If you are not aware of Micheal Barney's Cremaster work, do some googling, it's quite interesting stuff. Very artistic and symbolic, and beautifully filmed. Don't try to watch it without some background knowledge as it will come across very disjointed and weird. Winkipedia has some great background material on the project.

I have also come across some Charles Bukowski recordings of him reading his poetry and short stories. A friend of mine introduced me to his work a few years back (gave me a listen to a spoken word recording) and I found it quite interesting. This latest one though still interesting needs some editing, because you can clearly tell he is pretty drunk and it is a little hard to tell where his ranting ends and his poetry recital begins. Also it sounds like it was recorded outside of a studio, because some of the production (especially microphone feedback) is pretty poor.

I have given a provided a link below. Be prepared though if you are unfamiliar with his work, it can be quite hard hitting and brutal. Maybe another googling job for yaz.

The boyz have been getting together to do some more collaborative recordings, and to finish work on some older numbers, we managed to get one of our favoured vocalists to come over and put vocals down to a tune we recorded some time back, it seems to have turned out OK though I had major hassles with my setup, I think I must have had some system tray programs running which seemed to have been interfering with my sound card, anyway we managed to rectify the problem after many false starts.

Link is provided below.

Hope you enjoy your homework if you wish to accept it, and see you next time...

Ecca



Bukowski

Prison

Catch Up

Wow it's been a while, I haven't posted here since way before the holidays, don't ask me what I have been up to, i cant remember back that far.

I had a good break though, and spent New Year watching the obligatory fireworks, and making a few of my own with some of my nephews. Jen was off work for 8 weeks, so we spent a fair bit of time together and did some handy stuff around the house / yard.

Musically, the end of the year was fairly hectic, though the beginning of 2009 has been rather slow on the gig front, but I'm working on that.

The boys have been around a number of times and we have dabbles around with some new tunes and such. One of which I have posted below, so check it out if you want, if you don't then 'boo to you' who cares...

I got a great new keyboard for Christmas from my folks, one of them auto everything jobs, so I'm using it quite creatively to explore as many music genres as i possibly can. i even whipped up a disco tune the other day which I am in the process of throwing some vocals onto, so listen out for that one soon.

Oh I also managed to pick up a cheap 35mm SLR camera off ebay over the last few weeks, so I will be adding some of my weird shots to the blog posts.

There you go, a quick update. hope the next one doesn't quite take so long.

Cheers.
Ecca

Nothin'

A little Ambience

Though i enjoy collaborating with my musician friends and creating improvised pieces which usually end up sounding quite rough, I still enjoy sitting back with a nice sounding vsti and layering up a tune. one such piece called 'Sultan's Funeral' which was written a short time ago.

I didn't think too much of it when I wrote it, but listening back to it now, it seems to have a solemn feel and a strange appeal. Anyway I've linked it below so dim the lights or turn them off completely, sit back in your favorite recliner and enjoy the ride. maybe you can let me know where it takes you in the comments.

Cheers
Ecca.

Sultan's Funeral

How do you Feel?

Been a little quiet on the collaboration front lately, but yesterday my mate Wayne broke the drought by saying he'll pop over and make some music , so after a quick call to Billy, we had a trio set up to lay down some tracks to a new song.

Wayne has a rough demo recording of a song he had come up with which we listened to and thought we could redo with a few more instruments and some solid arrangement, so we got down to it.

Wayne laid down his rhythm guitar track (which was initially done in Acid, though then we changed our mind and decided to record in Audition as a straight recording rather than loops, so we had a bit of a slow start). I then added some bendy steel guitar bits in the intro, whilst Billy added some fancy pants guitar bits in the intro and instrumental sections.

Wayne was ready to add his golden voice, and recorded the first verse, and then decided it would be great if each of us wrote and sang the lyrics to each subsequent verse. Because the song was called 'I Feel', I could be forgiven into thinking I was in the middle of a Music Therapy songwriting session, as I would often do something similar with teenage clients as a songwriting exercise.

Anyways, we each put down our vocals, and we thought of putting down some fretless bass, but then opted for the orchestral feel of a deep cello for verses and strings for refrain. We put these down in a few takes.

We then decided some backing harmonies would be appropriate in certain refrain parts, and huddled around the rodes mic to add these. They turned out nice, though Billy reckons they should be louder (may make some subtle changes later).

Billy then came up with a tail part to end the song on the guitar, and we recorded this on the end of my pedal steel track, and amazingly the echo on the p/s track worked great with this tail run.

There are still some additions to be made, like a phasing on the rhythm guitar, and adding of some piano, but the song stands pretty solidly as it is.

This one's for you Wayne mate, hope you like it.

Take a listen from the link below, and let us know what you think. Enjoy !

I feel

I feel tired.. off to bed.
Cheers Ecca