My Ambient/Chill Spotify Playlist, Track by Track

I recently claimed my Spotify profile, and in the process started to become familiar with all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes in their artists platform. One of the abilities they provide is allowing you to feature your "album pick." My current pick is "The Hidden Step" by Ozric Tentacles, a very interesting group indeed. Those are only temporary, though. In a couple days I'll be picking a new one.

Spotify also lets the artist feature one or more playlists in his/her profile, so I decided to put one together reflecting some of the music I've found interesting through the years in the general ambient or chill categories. This post goes into some of my reasoning for including each track. Of course I couldn't resist throwing in a couple of my tracks from Circadia, and I won't go into those here.

I suspect that if you listen to it, you may scratch your head as to my definition of "ambient." But I recently read an article rating the "50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time," and the author there basically said: "nobody really agrees on what 'ambient' means, but here goes anyway."

So, in that spirit, here goes anyway.

"Ocean Song" by Jon Anderson

Jon Anderson is best known to most as the co-founder and long-time lead singer of Yes. He's also had an extensive solo career and partnered on projects with Vangelis and other artists. This track opens  Anderson's first, and probably most influential, solo project, Olias of Sunhillow. This may have been Anderson's most ambitious undertaking as well; not only does he sing all the vocals, he also plays all the instruments, which included a lot of exotic stringed and percussion instruments, plus synths. The effect is like sci-fi/fantasy set to music, and I think it's really stood the test of time. To my ear, this track could have been recorded this year rather than over four decades ago. I remember hearing this back then and thinking to myself "I wish I could do something like that." I wrote little songs on guitar in those days, but in my mind I imagined them coming out with this kind of big sweeping sound.

"Tuscany" by Suzanne Ciani

I acquired Suzanne Ciani's album Neverland long ago during one of many flirtations I've had with "New Age" music over the years. I didn't know it at the time, but Ciani actually had quite a bit of cred in the electronic music world. One of her early albums actually made that Top 50 list I mentioned earlier. The development of technology and acceptance of electronic music has allowed Ciani to have some measure of well-deserved commercial success. She's adapted to changing times and technologies and is still going strong at age 71. You can find out more about Suzanne at her website.

"Glass Green" by Tim Story

During an even earlier flirtation with New Age music, I came across Tim Story's Windham Hill album Glass Green, and was immediately taken. I recently saw a video of Story performing material from throughout his career, and he described this phase of his career as "minimalist." I suppose you could call it that, but I found the sound on tracks like this one to have a richness that defied that label. I've always imagined that if Erik Satie composed in the modern era, his work might sound a lot like this. Speaking of which . . .

"Premiere Gymnopedie" by Erik Satie (perf. by Alexandre Theraud)

Thinking about Satie, I realized I couldn't leave him off this playlist. He, along with Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, were French impressionist composers of the turn of the twentieth century. The latter two probably had greater notoriety in their day, but Satie is remembered now as a father of the so-called "minimalist" style, as amply demonstrated in this piece, performed tenderly here by Alexandre Tharaud. Satie was also one weird dude, as this article from The Word Detective about the origin of the term "gymnopedie" will attest.

This piece has resonated down the years, and seems to show up in a lot of places where directors want to convey a sense of deep contemplation. For example, it's this piece that's playing in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Where Silence Has Lease" as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, having ordered the destruction of the starship Enterprise rather than submit to experiments by the alien Nagillum, contemplates his final moments.

"January Stars" by George Winston

This opening track from Winston's Windham Hill album Winter Into Spring is an attempt to directly convey to the listener the chilly feeling of standing outside in midwinter, looking into the vastness of the night sky. At least that's how I felt listening to the opening dissonant notes, intentionally held to wring all the ambiance possible from them. This is just one example of the commercial successful piano work that put Winston on the map throughout the early 1980s.

"Starport Indra" by Jonn Serrie

My recollection of Jonn Serrie is that he first made his mark in the 1980s composing music for planetarium shows. In fact, I was first exposed to his work in a strange way. Back in 1988 or so, some magazine (it might have been Electronic Musician) put out an offer to anyone who was willing to write album reviews. They would send you a tape, you listened to it, wrote a review and sent it back, and they let you keep the tape. I sent off, and to my surprise they actually sent me a tape, It was Jonn Serrie's album . . . And the Stars Go With You. I put on the cassette and was immediately blown away. At the time, he wasn't using really advanced equipment or anything. His backbone instruments were the Fender Rhodes electric piano and synths with heavy emphasis on string patches. But the way he arranged it all gave me that same sense of "faraway-ness" that I got from those opening notes of Winston's "January Stars."

I'm ashamed to admit I never submitted the review. When I contemplated actually writing it, I froze. I was so intimidated by the thought of writing something that might see national publication (even if in a niche magazine) that I procrastinated until the deadline had passed. I suppose it's only cosmic justice, then, that when I looked for Stars to include on this playlist I couldn't find it. However, "Starport Indra" makes a nice stand-in and demonstrates that Serrie, too, has broadened his palette over the years.

"Floating Lotus Flower" by Kitaro

Kitaro was one of those cosmic kind of people, but he's not necessarily as quiet as some of the other artists on the playlist. He's here more as a representative of a certain style of music that's associated with him, especially his approach to the synth as a lead instrument. Where typical synth lead players emphasized blinding technique, Kitaro worked to squeeze every bit of emotion possible out of single held notes. When synth programmers name patches after you decades later, you've done something right. This particular piece really emphasizes Kitaro's ambient, spacey side, as well as his affinity for combining Eastern textures with modern and minimalist elements. 

"Children's Song, No. 8" by Chick Corea (perf. by Mika Pohjola)

I first heard this piece on Corea's album My Spanish Heart. In the midst of all the other typical Corea fare, this really stood out for me. Later, I did some research and found out that Corea had written a whole slew of similar pieces and eventually tracked down a vinyl album of Chick performing a bunch of them. Eventually, I switched over to CDs and got rid of the record, which I now regret doing. Pohhola's performance here, while more than adequate, pales in comparison to my memory of the piece performed more legato and at a slightly faster tempo by the composer himself.

"Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano, Sonatas No. 14 and 15" by John Cage (perf. by Cedric Pescia)

Most people who know of Cage at all these days remember him as a guy who created daffy things like 4' 33" in which the performer sat down at the piano, opened the lid, waited exactly four minutes, and 33 seconds, closed the lid, and the performance was over. Critics derided this sort of thing at the time, but in hindsight one can see that it was ultimate "ambient" music. The "music" of the piece was the ambient sound of the performance venue: people shuffling in their seats, coughing, and so on.

Earlier in his career, though, Cage composed more traditionally. When he decided that traditional tonality was too confining, one of the solutions he came up with was unique. Cage experimented extensively with putting various objects inside the piano, such as bits of rubber, screws and bolts. He called the result a "prepared piano," which sometimes sounded sort of like a music box on acid, but could also yield some very compelling sounds, as is the case on the two pieces here. Although they play as separate tracks on Spotify, Sonatas 14 and 15 are actually of a piece, and are titled "Gemini - after the work of Richard Lippold" (a sculptor who worked in wire and was a contemporary of Cage).

Another reason I included these tracks is personal. Mr. Cage is the only person in this playlist I actually had the privilege of meeting face-to-face. This happened in 1981,when he came to Wright State University for the American premiere of portions of his Etudes Australes. I was a student there at the time, and for us it was a big deal. As a music student, I had been very interested in the work of both Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. I had the opportunity to both meet Mr. Cage and to hear him discuss his philosophy of music and art more generally. How strange to think that what he strove so hard to achieve in the 1930s and 40s is now available to anyone with a little money and the time to tweak a few parameters.

"Mood for a Day" by Steve Howe (Yes)

Honestly, I really only included this piece because I like it so much. It's not so much ambient as it is mellow, so I guess you could say it's more chill. I had a classical/folk guitar for many years (it's now my son's) and tried once to learn how to play this piece. No luck. It really does set the mood for the day - it sounds like sunrise. Another thing I'm thankful to Steve Howe and this track for: they served as my gateway drug to Segovia.

"Indian Summer" by The Doors

This is the only vocal on the list (even Jon Anderson didn't get to sing!), but when I think back about the things that ultimately brought me to the ambient realm, this popped up. It's easy for me to hear why, beginning with Robbie Krieger's exquisitely Middle Eastern influenced guitar lines, played clean on (most likely) a Gibson SG. Keyboardist Ray Manzarek keeps a low profile here, sticking with his Fender Bass Piano and the occasional understated organ chord. Drummer John Densmore also remains fairly muted, with snares off lots of reverb. Morrison, for all his well-earned wild child reputation, here reveals a sensitive, even tender, side. The overall result is extremely mellow.

"The Sentinel" by Jonn Serrie

This is another track that reminded me of Jonn's work on Stars, and well, I just owe him one.

"Woman at the Well" by Tim Story

This is also a repeat of an earlier artist. I went back through Story's tracks on Spotify and found this one. Although it's credited as part of compilation, it originally appeared on Glass Green. This track is my favorite from that album. It is more in keeping with the minimalist style he was working on at the time, and also illustrates his use of traditional instruments, like piano, marimba and vibes, alongside electronics, to achieve a very personal sound. It also reveals the underlying spirituality that drives this music, being based on the 4th chapter of the Gospel of John.

So, if you got this far, I thank you, and I hope that this shed a light on some of my own musical tastes and influences. I've documented some of those more fully in other parts of this blog, and I invite you to check those out if you're interested. Please check back this weekend as I'll have a new album to featured on my profile page.

Gloriously Baffling: The Real Story Behind "Sonny the Monster" (Part 3)

This is the third of three posts about my cover of the song "Sonny the Monster," which became part of the Guided by Voices canon when it appeared on the compilation Suitcase 3: Up We Go Now. This post goes into some detail about the arranging and recording process, so if you're not interested in that, you're welcome to skip to the last few paragraphs. If you haven't yet read parts one or two, you might want to check them out first.

Anatomy of a Weird Cover Song

The basic song structure of "Sonny the Monster" as I recalled it was verse-chorus, with variations in the verses and repeats on the tail end of the second and third choruses that functioned as a sort of bridge. The first verse is repeated at the end with a key change from G to A. There's a final repeat of the chord changes from the last line of the chorus (D -> c# min -> b min ->A) , and the song ends.

In the original, as I remembered it, the chords in both the verse and chorus are the same, power chords that followed the bass line exactly: G->F#->C->D repeated, until you got to the last line of the chorus, when it switched to a stepwise downward progression (C->b min->a min->G). I never cared for the power chords in the verse and chorus because to my ear they clashed with the melody, so I tweaked them more to my liking.

The verses I kept simple, just laying the melody over the bassline with no real chords until the final repeat of the first verse, right before the end of the song. When I wanted full chords at the end I played (in the key of A) A->E->D->E (a very Townsend-ish thing to do, I thought at the time). However, I left the bassline the same, so the E chord had a G# bass note. To make the chords on the chorus sound a little different, on the line "picks me off my feet . . ." I used a slightly different chord structure, going G->b min->C->D, which for me did two things. First, the bass line moved more naturally in thirds and fifths with the melody. Second, it distinguished the chorus enough that you could tell it wasn't just a repeat of the verse.

With all that established, now I had to record. I had accumulated a lot of gear over the previous few years. My main keyboard was a Roland Alpha Juno 2, but I also had a Yamaha DX-100 keyboard and Yamaha TX81Z and Roland MT32 sound modules. Even though I still had the drums I'd played since I was a teenager (including with Anacrusis), I didn't have a lot of microphones to use for recording them, so I augmented the rig with a Roland TR-505 drum machine. I rounded out the whole thing with a Fender Jaguar guitar that I ran through a little Gorilla amp, and my trusty Alvarez nylon string folk/classical guitar. My recording device of choice was the Yamaha MT2X 4-track cassette recorder. I rounded out the rig with an Alesis digital reverb. Of all the stuff I just listed, the Alvarez guitar is the only instrument I still have. I sold off all the rest in bits and pieces over the years. (It’s also the only instrument I did not use on “Sonny.”) Now, like many others, I'm entirely computer-based.

With sequencing and a number of different modules tied together via MIDI, I could do almost the whole arrangement of the song and then play back the sequence while recording it onto two tracks of my MT2X four-track cassette. I had to be careful though, since I only had about 4,700 or so notes to play with on my Yamaha QX7 sequencer.

I started by sequencing the bass on the Yamaha DX100. It had a nice, punchy bass patch called “Lately Bass” that I used heavily. That gave me a bare minimum musical outline that I could lay stuff over. Then I tracked the drum machine. I avoided just using canned patterns wherever I could, preferring to tap the drum parts out on the Roland Alpha Juno 2 acting as a MIDI controller. It could be painstaking at times, especially when I was trying to do more than two instruments at a time, like kick, snare and hat all at once. But I got through it. I wanted a fingersnap, but none of the tone modules had a sample for that, so I improvised and used a castanet sample (I think from the Roland MT32, though I don't remember for sure now). In like fashion. I sequenced different keyboard and synth parts. A tweak here, a little quantization there, and I was ready to track the instruments. (A note in passing: the pounding drum in the last verse that Wires and Waves called an "unnecessary double kick-drum" was actually an unnecessary floor tom.)

One of the great things about the MT2X was that it had six inputs that I could route to a two track stereo mix. That allowed me to have the synths/modules all output in mono to different inputs of the MT2X. The bass and drums were panned center, and other stuff to the left or right to give it a little stereo interest. (Track sheets? Are you kidding? I had stuff to do!) The last input on the MT2X I reserved for my Fender Jag, which I routed clean and panned a bit to the left, with lots of bridge pickup for a nice jangly sound. I played the Jag live along with the sequenced tracks as I recorded them. The only other instrument I recall playing live was a synth part I punched in (inserted into one of the vocal tracks) with the goofy little ghost sound (I think that patch was called "Goblins" or something) that leads into the third verse.

I wanted a big, thick vocal sound. Ever since I first heard the chorus of Lou Christie’s 1960s hit “Lightnin’ Strikes,” I’ve been a sucker for tight vocal harmonies. The trouble was, having laid the instruments on two tracks, I had only two left for vocals. Standard procedure back in that day was to record the backing vocals first. You started out with one of the backing vocal parts on, say, track 3 (assuming the instruments are mixed to stereo on tracks 1 and 2). You then recorded another backing vocal on track 4, mixing in the vocal from track 3 as you went. You ended up with two vocal parts on track 4. You could then repeat the process, going the other way, recording a third vocal on track 3 (and in the process erasing what was there before) and mixing in the two vocals from track 4, ending up with three vocal parts on track 3. (Rinse. Repeat).

The process was known affectionately as "bouncing." You couldn't bounce too much, though, because eventually you would develop tape hiss and the signal would degrade. I also threw in some reverb (thanks to my Alesis ProVerb) to good effect, as in the backing vocal that echoed the words "long black car" in the second verse. I think I did five background vocal overdubs in all, before going back to and recording the lead vocal by itself on track 3 (Or was it 4? Never mind.)

I put in one final touch at the very end. If you listen closely as the song is fading out, you may be able to catch a low, soft voice panned hard left in the stereo field. It’s "Sonny," cursing under his breath as he walks away.

Working with instruments going to two-track stereo and bouncing vocals around meant I had to do a lot of the mixing of the song as I was recording. If I went back and found that a certain vocal or instrument was a little louder than I really wanted after the fact, that was too bad (and it killed me). In the end, I mixed the instruments and vocals to the best of my ability (which wasn't super then for sure) down to a stereo cassette deck and took the tape around along with other music I’d done to share with a few close friends and fellow musicians.

I have a few of my recordings from the 1980s in mp3 format and maybe someday I'll stick some of them on Bandcamp or Soundcloud just for grins. Don't hold your breath, though. If anything, I'm sort of the "anti-Bob." I'm hesitant to put anything out there that I don't consider worthy (meaning most of it). I am definitely my own worst critic. It’s almost miraculous that I’ve put out so much stock music over the past four-plus years. The fact is, my cover of "Sonny" might have stayed buried, except that I had a brief stint in GbV myself in 1989, and once played the song for Bob. He seemed to get a kick out of it, and I remembered many years later while digitizing a bunch of my old stuff, and sent the mp3 to Rich.

That brings it full circle. By the time I realized that “Sonny” had actually seen the light of day, I found to my surprise that the song had taken on a life of its own. Mark Deming, writing for AllMusic, didn't have much positive to say about Suitcase 3 as a whole, but did single out "Sonny," calling it "gloriously baffling." (http://www.allmusic.com/album/suitcase-3-up-we-go-now-mw0001327408) Other comments I saw found it bewildering, to say the least. One poster referred to me as a “truck driver hick,” which is false. (I drive a sedan.)

Most of the true GbV fans who weighed in, though, seemed to enjoy it. I'm glad that the fans have had as much fun with “Sonny” as I did. Just taking this trip down memory lane has been fun, too. Who knows? After this, I might even try my hand at fiction. I know just how to start my novel, too.

"Over on the west side of town . . ."

For more on my history with GbV, click here.

Gloriously Baffling: The Real Story Behind "Sonny the Monster" (Part 2)

This is the second of three posts telling my story behind the making of my cover of "Sonny the Monster," which became part of the Guided by Voices canon when it was released on the compilation Suitcase 3: Up We Go Now. If you haven't read the first part yet, I would suggest starting there. 

Choosing “Sonny”

During the late 1980s, I was trying to make something happen with music again. I had gone to college and then graduate school. For a year, I actually worked on a Ph. D. in finance at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Unfortunately, I was homesick (I had met my future wife, who was back in Dayton at that point), and I found I just didn't have the chops for the advanced math involved. I dropped out of the doctoral program and came back to Dayton, was married and worked at Wright State for a year as an adjunct finance instructor. In the spring of 1987, the university fell on hard times and my contract was not renewed.

During the period between jobs that followed, I got intensely into doing music. Although I played drums and some guitar, I also identified very heavily with piano and keyboards. I greatly admired virtuoso players from the prog rock realm, like Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson. I also really dug jazz and fusion players like Chick Corea. The only problem was, I stank as a keyboard player. I had taken a piano course in college and barely passed. By the 80s, though, I was helped by a new technological development: the sequencer.

Several years before, the chief builders of synthesizers had gotten together and created a standard to allow their various instruments and gear to communicate back and forth. The standard was called Musical Instrument Digital Interface, or MIDI. A sequencer was a box that you could hook up to MIDI instruments to make them play whatever you wanted. This allowed me to overcome my fat, uncoordinated fingers. With a sequencer, I could record complex passages very slowly and then speed them up. With the fullness of time, I did develop some rudimentary skill, but sequencing sped up my creative process greatly.

I was doing a lot of writing in 1986-88 (not a Bob Pollard lot, but a lot for me). Most of it was a cross between what would now be called smooth jazz and New Age (which at that time was still actually, well, new). I also tried my hand from time to time at pop, country, love songs to my wife, and some occasional rock. I was talking back and forth at one point with an aspiring filmmaker in the area about potentially scoring an independent film he was trying to produce, but that never panned out. To be honest, neither did anything else, really. It was during a period some time in 1988, while I was in a dry spell trying to come up with ideas, that I remembered "Sonny the Monster."

Anacrusis was mainly a cover band at the beginning, but the band had developed at least six originals I can remember. "Daddy's in the State Pen" was a straightforward rocker about a wife beater whose son (the singer) has to grow up fast. "Somewhere Sometime" was a wistful ballad. "Fame and Fortune" was the band's signature song, a power ballad that Bob sang at times as though channeling Paul Rodgers. Recordings of those three were made and released and in the various Suitcases. You can find them on YouTube, although they're hardly the best versions. Another original was "Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia," which was later borrowed as the title for the GbV record on which I played. I found that song interesting because it had a slow verse that went double time in the chorus. (I can still hear the repeating "I'm goin' back/I'm goin' back."). "Status Symbol" was another rocker I’d forgotten about; thanks to Tony for jogging my memory. (Somebody once mispronounced it as “Status Stymbol” and that became its unofficial title.)

Then there was "Sonny the Monster." The narrator is a sad sack who's run up huge gambling debts that he cannot repay, and he now must face the wrath of the local crime boss, the title character. Sonny was based on a stereotypical local figure the likes of which you find in every town in the world of any size. One of Dayton’s most notorious at the time was a fellow named Bill Stepp. Tony Conley reminded me.

Bill Stepp was the godfather of the organized crime in the Miami Valley [Dayton area] from the 1960's through the 1990's. He was involved in extortion, racketeering, dog fighting, prostitution, loan sharking, and anything else illegal. He was an extremely talented street fighter and had a violent streak a mile wide. He was a true gentleman to those who didn't cross him and managed to avoid prison time all his adult life. He was the guy that put Larry Flynt into business and had some of the most dangerous men in the nation working for him that were scared of him. Some of which are now in prison.

In my choice to cover, "Sonny" I seized on one distinct advantage it had over the other Anacrusis songs: I thought I remembered all the words. The song was what I would consider a midtempo heavy rocker that made extensive use of power chords. So extensive, in fact, as to be harshly dissonant to my ear. I think several people tried to get Bob to change the chords, but he would have none of it. It was still a rocking song, but given my resources and the times, I decided to recast it as a contemporary, if quirky, pop song.

Next: Anatomy of a weird cover song

For more into about my history with GbV, click here.

Gloriously Baffling: The Real Story Behind "Sonny the Monster" (Part 1)

One day in 2015, out of curiosity, I googled "Sonny the Monster," a song I had sent off to gbv.com webmaster Rich Turiel back in the mid-2000s with a message to the effect that he should tell Bob (aka Robert) Pollard to feel free to use it. Lo and behold, Bob had taken me at my word. The song wound up on the Guided by Voices compilation Suitcase 3: Up We Go Now. Following up, I found a slew of articles, blog posts, and the like, as well as a fan tribute video of the song.

Of course, "Sonny" was not really a GbV song. It was, like many others, developed in other bands/projects and later sort of grafted onto the GbV canon. Although I received a writing credit for the track on Suitcase 3, I had almost nothing to do with writing the original song. For my version, I tweaked a couple of chord progressions in the verses and chorus, and added a couple of goofy little hooks. That was all. At the time I recorded the cover, I was oriented toward electronic music. I was working mainly with synths and a drum machine, and the production reflects that. Anyway, I didn't really want to reproduce the original version of the song, since I figured that had already been done.

In the comments for the YouTube video, I saw a link to a web page that supposedly explained the origins of the song. I followed the link, but the page was no longer active. Someone later went and found the original web page from Wires and Waves in the Wayback Machine archive and posted a link to it in the YouTube comments. However, that post only tells the most basic part of the story. I've decided to tell my version of the history of "Sonny." Any story starts at the beginning, but I guess technically most of the rest of this is a flashback. Anyway, it started at Northridge.

Anacrusis

Northridge is the name of the local school district in the eastern section of Harrison Township, Montgomery County, Ohio. It was a decidedly blue-collar community when I was growing up there in the 1960s and 1970s. Most of the people worked in industry in and around nearby Dayton. My dad worked at the McCall Company (later Dayton Press) as a job setter for decades. My brother worked for General Motors. Other folks in the community worked at one of the GM plants or at National Cash Register. At the height of its population, the district had close to 4,000 students. Now the number is less than half of that.

Musically, there must have been something in the water. People reading this certainly know of Bob Pollard. They might not know that Grammy Award winning songwriter Frank Myers also went to Northridge and graduated around the same time as Bob did. We were all developing musically in the shadow of a rich Dayton scene best known nationally for soul and R&B at the time, including artists like the Ohio Players, Roger Troutman (Zapp) and performers like Keith Wilder (who became a founding member of the international hit group Heatwave, along with his brother Johnnie).

Anacrusis is where I first hopped the train that would become Guided by Voices. Of all the members of Anacrusis and GbV, the only one I still have contact with is Tony Conley. Tony has honed his skills as a writer on his blog, Rock Guitar Daily, and is currently working on a forthcoming book, Paul McCartney: With The Beatles. He graciously consented to fill in some of my gaps in knowledge, especially about the origins and history of Anacrusis.

I remember the beginning of Anacrusis much better than the end. I had been hanging out learning to play guitar for a couple of years with a fellow by the name of Wendell Napier. Wendell could play guitar like nobody I had ever met, and to this day I've not played with many musicians who were more natural than he. We had gotten pretty good at playing together, so we decided to form a band and do a show. All in the same week.

My own call to join Anacrusis came around the time I was about to graduate in 1977, and I went to a rehearsal with the band. I think I told somebody something dumb like I really enjoyed singer-songwriters. That was true, strictly speaking, but I also had a fondness for jazz, fusion, and progressive rock (as anyone who's read my blog at length can attest). At the time, the band wanted to play hard rock, but not too much metal, and punk was just getting rolling in America in 1977. We dug right in, rehearsing a relatively short set list of covers, including artists like Ted Nugent, Cheap Trick, Blue Oyster Cult, UFO and similar stuff. Beside Tony and Wendell, the lineup included Bob on lead vocals and Mitch Mitchell on bass. The latter two of course went on to become founding members of GbV.

I was skeptical about all of this at first, but the musicianship was actually quite high, well above the average local bands. We played the gig at a place called Brookwood Hall, which was located in an area no longer open to the public off Rip Rap Road between northeast Dayton and Huber Heights, Ohio. We were a huge success and this gig led to another at the same hall, as well as a booking at a small nightclub on North Dixie Drive called the Domino Club.

We had about a one-month residency at the Domino Club, during which we allegedly broke the attendance records of a male stripper named Jeremiah Shastid. It probably helped that our crowd was decidedly more diverse, gender-wise. We quickly built a devoted local following and had become a tight musical unit. Wendell and Tony provided a potent two-guitar attack. Wendell was the guitar god, but Tony was no slouch. (For a taste of what he can do, check out his impassioned playing on "Look at Your Life" from the later Moping Swans album -- easily my favorite guitar solo in the entire canon of GbV side projects.) Mitch and I held down the bottom end with gusto, while Bob was already a high-kicking showman.

After a while, the edges frayed. I recall that Bob and Mitch started getting into the punk and new wave that were emerging in '77. The Sex Pistols were big, and Bob got heavily into Devo when they first came out. I remember Bob talking about taking the band in that direction, but Wendell wanted very much for the music to stay as it was. Me? I wanted to gig and continue to grow musically. It felt to me like Bob and Wendell's disagreement was turning into a power struggle, and it seemed that the band's momentum had stalled. Tony provided some great insight into this. It may simply have boiled down to “our lack of knowledge concerning what to do next, and how to do it.”

Eventually, I looked around and hooked up with a band called Wharf Rat. That band played a few gigs in the fall of 1977, including the October Daze event at Wright State University, before also stalling. Although I remained loosely associated with Wharf Rat for a while, I also flirted with the idea of rejoining Anacrusis a few times. In fact, I came around to a couple of Anacrusis gigs, which more often than not seemed to be house parties.

As the clock ticked toward 1978, I began to realize that my aspirations to become a full-time musician were not going to pan out. I had delayed entering college to try to get a music career off the ground, and that simply wasn’t happening. Looking back, what Tony sagely pointed out about the band was definitely true about me: I didn’t know what to do or how to do it. Truth be told, my head wasn’t in the right place to dig in and figure it out, and I lacked the maturity and courage to resist the path of least resistance. I ended up enrolling at Wright State, but maintained my ties to both Anacrusis and Wharf Rat while doing some wedding and society gigs around town on weekends and jamming with different people in different styles, including jazz, funk and experimental music.

As for Anacrusis, they limped along for a while before eventually splitting up. Tony relates that Wendell had become increasingly dissatisfied with Mitch’s playing and wanted to replace him. However, Bob probably made it clear (I’m just speculating) that he and Mitch were a package deal. Whether Wendell “fired” Bob as Bob later claimed seems moot at this point. It was over. Bob, to his credit, detriment or both, just couldn't kick the rock 'n' roll jones. Within a couple of years, he had planted the seeds of what became GbV. Tried and true fans know that story well, and I'll leave it there.

Announcing a New Series of Posts

Starting this Saturday, and for the next two Saturdays after (February 25, March 4 and 11) I'll be posting a series of three articles detailing a sliver of my musical life I've not really talked about before on this blog. It involves an obscure song I recorded a cover of about 30 years ago. The song was called "Sonny the Monster," and it wound up on a compilation by the legendary indie rock band Guided by Voices, whose leader and constant presence, Robert Pollard and I were in a band called Anacrusis in 1977.

Someone posted a link to an article, in the comment section for this video, that explained why the song existed, but I decided I wanted to tell my side of the story and talk a little bit about the history behind "Sonny."

The title of the whole piece is "Gloriously Baffling: The Real Story Behind 'Sonny the Monster'" and will roll out as follows:

Part 1 (2/25): An introduction and some history behind Anacrusis
Part 2 (3/4): The Anacrusis originals and the real reason I picked "Sonny" to cover
Part 3 (3/11): Recording "Sonny" and the song's legacy

Blog For My Father

Christmas 2014 has come and gone, and the year is winding down. This was a year of big changes for me, mainly centered around my dad, who passed away in September at the age of 90. Finding myself with a little down time at the moment, I'd like to take an opportunity to talk about what he's meant to me and my music.

A Milestone of Sorts

Everyone who creates stock music hopes that someday their work will be heard on television. Guess I can check an item off my bucket list.

So, Why "This?"

With the recent launch of my new website, I noted previously that this blog would begin to look more like a blog. So this post starts the "blog" era . . .

How I Got Into Instrumental Music (Part Six)

This post will be the last documenting how I got into instrumental music, and talks about how it all fits into how I compose now.

How I Got Into Instrumental Music (Part Five)

The last post in this series talked about the fusion of musical styles in the 1970s. This post delves specifically into the influence of progressive rock on me at the time.

How I Got Into Instrumental Music (Part Four)

For me, no discussion of my roots in instrumental music would be complete without mentioning the fusion movement of the 1970s.

How I Got Into Instrumental Music (Part Three)

I have more previews of new stock music coming this week. In the meantime, here's a little more biographical information about my lifelong fascination with instrumental music.

How I Got Into Instrumental Music (Part Two)

I've moved into a new place, but don't yet have a quiet space to work on music. So I'm still on hiatus. In the meantime, I thought I'd take some time to document a bit more of my musical background.

My Roots in Music (Christmas Edition)

Back in the summer I started writing a little about my earliest musical memories and how I got interested in instrumental music. One of my earliest memories was of Christmas time and getting to hear Chet Atkins.

How I Got Into Instrumental Music

I've started documenting a little about me and how I got into music. I grew up in a musical household. Mom had very eclectic tastes, but my older brother and sister were more into the pop music of the day. There was a lot of music you could hear on the radio, but there was also instrumental pop.

My Roots in Music

I was sort of half asleep and half awake yesterday morning and remember vaguely dreaming about things when I was a kid that got me started in music. So I think I'd like to document some of that here, starting with this little bit of trivia . . .