Song of the Day #16: "Blue" AND SCARLET STARLET RELEASE

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Hi,

My band finally released our new EP, Scarlet Starlet. Look!

Also Song of the Day. Also, my cheap-ass mp3 player crapped out. Both of the headphone jacks (it had two) are broken.

16. Blue
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Lyrics
When I'm blue
There's nothing I can do
Sometimes I talk it through
But I don't talk to you
Because I know
I'll only make you sad
And I'll feel really bad
And you'll feel really bad

When I'm sad
There's nothing you can say
To make me feel okay
I usually talk
When no one's there
It makes me feel insane
And soggy in the brain
But I feel right again

Song of the Day #15: "Hate"

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My new flat in Edinburgh has an awful, awful piano that's almost entirely out of tune and half the keys don't play at all. This was done on the few that still work. To distract from the horribly ill tuning, I recorded it on tape and then jiggled the tape recorder for vibrato. It sort of worked.

15. Hate
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Lyrics
I'm scared of you
You have sharp teeth
You're unbearable
I hate you

Your father is
A piece of flesh
An open sore
I hate you

Your body is
Bacterial
It smells like poo
I hate you

Your father is
A headless dog
A bleeding toe
I hate you

What About Song a Day?

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It's been on a brief hiatus, admittedly not because I've been wicked busy, but because I've wanted to relax between graduation and travel. It shall recommence Saturday when I'm moderately settled.

I realize that I promised a release of Milk and Cookies for last month and didn't. I did the album inserts and got the discs and everything, but I never finished it up and put them all together. So I guess it'll remain the free downloads for now. I have a couple later versions of songs on a hard drive which I formatted incorrectly and refuses to mount in Linux, but today I'm seeing if it'll mount in Windows and maybe I can get those off there and post them up here.

Oh yeah, and for those of you who follow The Alphabet, "Friend" is being initiated into the band. I have to find a sufficient organ sound before we can play it live, though.

We had an awesome show in Pittsburgh last night. I expected it to suck 'cause there was a hockey game on and there were TVs in the bar, but the audience was very attentive and appreciative and bought lots of CDs, and Pittsburgh won just as "Mind Is a Box" was ending so we got extra tumultuous applause and everyone was in a good mood. I hope they remember us as the band that was playing when Pittsburgh beat Detroit's ass.

Songs of the Day #13 & 14: "Mind_v2" and "City"

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Hi, I'm at my parents' house for a week before Scotland (so soon! Oh my gosh..) and my piano is here, but more importantly their baby grand, so I've been enjoying that.

I rearranged and recorded "Mind" which was Song of the Day #6. I decided rerecordings are okay as long as there's some kind of rewriting or rearrangement going on. I wrote a couple extra verses to "Columbus" recently and Forest and I bought an electric guitar named Jackie O so there'll be a new recording of that probably over the weekend, too.

"City" is about Akron, where my parents moved right before I went to college. I've never spent any longer than two or three weeks here, but that first chunk of three weeks happened to be a super-pivotal point, complete with geographical, educational, employment and romantic upheaval, so just about everything stuck with me hard and now it gives me this weird distant-memory ghost impression every time I come to visit.

13. Mind_v2
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Lyrics:
I don't mind cleaning up people's messes
If it means that I can pay my rent tomorrow
I don't mind getting on my knees
On the floor if it means that I eat tomorrow
I don't mind singing on the street
With a cap at my feet
And a megaphone at my lips
If it means I can pay the bills with my tips
Or maybe have a little bit left over for a drink
Before I scrub another sink
I don't mind

14. City
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Lyrics:
This city reminds me of
Memories I never made
But they all got the smells with them

I think I saw only one
Movie at Highland Theatre
But it's got that look to it

And Market Street sounds like
An album I listened to twice
And it sticks in my head so fast

I don't even know where I'm
Going but it's so familiar
I think I belong here despite myself

Song of the Day #12: "Good"

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I see a lot of people who have great lives: nice, financially supportive parents; educations; friends; their health. And they're grumpy all the time. Positivity is key to having a good life. Start today for only $19.99.

12. Good
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Lyrics
There are good days
And there are good days
There are good days when bad things happen

There are good dreams
And there are good dreams
There are good dreams when bad things happen

There's a good life
And there's a good life
There's a good life when bad things happen
And there's a bad life, too

But yours is good
And mine is good
So let's go help some others

Song of the Day #11: "Columbus"

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This song is about my love/hate relationship with my hometown: I miss it, I miss my awesome high school with its sweet 1860s campus, there are a few good places to get bubble tea, every June there's ComFest, there are definitely things in Columbus worth missing. But I also often feel like it's this cluster of oases in a desert of suburbia, and the desert is surrounded by the flat void of soybean farms that is Ohio.

11. Columbus
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Lyrics
Hey, Columbus
Every time I miss you and come running
You just disappoint me once again
Whetstone Park
Is great, but not the suburbs
And those keep getting bigger
Every time I come around

The cap over 670
Is made of styrofoam
And I wonder when I drive around
What happened to my home

2nd Worst Show Ever

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Some folks are under the mistaken impression that my band, The Alphabet, is famous. To disprove this misconception, consider the following:

• Last night, we, The Alphabet, played a concert in Pasadena, Maryland, at a restaurant called Cheeseburger in Paradise. It was, in fact, a weekly Wednesday night Battle of the Bands.


• We got this show because I am our manager, and for a number of reasons, not least of which is procrastination, I didn't start booking our tour 'til a month before we were supposed to play it, and this Battle of the Bands at Cheeseburger in Paradise was what we could get.


• The other two bands were called Harmsway and Less than Zero. Harmsway was a metal cover band. Less than Zero was a classic rock cover band. They were both local.


• We played last, after Less than Zero's set. We noticed as they were tearing down that they were taking the PA with them. This worried us, as we don't have a PA. Even if we did we couldn't fit it in the station wagon.


• Upon frantically questioning the woman who had been announcing the bands, we learned that the venue DID have its own PA, but that it had no microphones or mic stands.


• Parker unearthed one microphone from his bass case.


• Forest taped it to the cymbal stand.


• We then remembered that we didn't have an extra 1/4" cable for the keyboard, and furthermore that when we'd tried to use a borrowed one at our show the previous night, it kept cutting out and we ended up mic'ing the piano speakers, which worked just fine.


• Except this venue didn't have any more microphones.


• One of the members of Less than Zero kindly loaned us a microphone and mic stand.


• We began to sound check and discovered that both the PA speakers were blown.


• We had no way to amplify either the piano or my voice, other than the built-in piano speakers.


• We turned the piano up all the way, and I shouted, and Forest and Parker played very quietly.

So. The end. We made $20 in CD sales. Eight people had come exclusively to see us, which was actually quite impressive. In conclusion, we are not yet rockstars. But we will be soon.

[P.S. The worst show ever was in Kent, Ohio. The only audience members were the other band.]

Songs of the Day #8, 9 and 10

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Hi, so I was a bit late with these. On the bright side, I went steadily for a whole week! I wasn't sure I could keep it up even that long.

Just as a heads up, there will very likely be a bit of a break for a week or so as my band The Alphabet goes on mini-tour but I'll be back shortly. Unless of course I write and record songs in the car, which might happen, you never know. I may even enlist the boys' help in singing.

8. Room
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Lyrics
Where'd my room go
Where'd my room go
Where will I sleep now
Well, the weather's
Pretty good but
I'm not tough at all
I'm not brave
Enough to handle
What might swim my way
Maybe I'll go
Sleeping on the
Beach some other day

9. Swine
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Lyrics: [NOTE lyrics were co-written with Forest Christenson and Michael Vance, on the occasion of Forest contracting the stomach flu, which we briefly speculated was the infamous swine flu]
Forest took a shower
In early afternoon
He felt a little icky
And sticky in the poon

He soaped his chest all over
And soaped his furry ass
Wrestled with this pinky toes
And passed a little gas

He stood under the water
And stood and stood and stood
And tried in vain to conquer
His raging morning wood

When all a very sudden
A swine crashed through the door
And sneezed, and Forest toppled
In pain onto the floor

He died that day in agony
So far away from home
They flushed him down the toilet
He was whisked away to Rome

10. Ocean
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Lyrics
Let's go to the ocean
I can see a mist
The plankton will be glowing blue
The oysters will be pissed
We'll run along the sandbar with them
Spitting at our toes
The waves will lap our ankles
And soggy all our clothes
Let's bring a tub of hummus
And eat it on the sand
And play a little footsie
And I will hold your hand

Also, might as well mention friendlily that I'm a professional artist and musician (I just got my BFA on Friday, actually, so really an artist) which are jobs without paychecks or health benefits or anything like that; and I choose to give music away for free because a) nobody would listen to it otherwise and b) I love when people give me music for free and why not spread the happiness? On the other hand I do have to eat, so I really appreciate donations:

Song of the Day #7: "Pavilion"

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7. Pavilion
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Lyrics
We were up in
That pavilion
When the rain came

Raging down
Sweeping under

Dusting toes and
Soaking benches
Filling swing seats

Pooling at the
Bottom of the
Slide

We had hot dogs
Chips and Pepsi
In a bag by
The pond

Song of the Day #6: "Mind"

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6. Mind
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Lyrics
I don't mind cleaning up people's messes
If it means that I can pay my rent tomorrow
I don't mind getting on my knees on the
Floor with a brush if I eat tomorrow
I don't mind singing on the street
With a cap at my feet and a megaphone at my
Lips if it means I can pay the bills with my tips
And maybe have a little bit
Left over for a drink
Before I scrub another sink
I don't mind