Orphans (2004)
© 1993, 1994, 2004, Philip L. Thompson
Ah yes, a theme album. Specifically, it's a themelessness theme.
Little more than a collection of rejects from past work, stuff that was never planned to be part of anything larger, and bits of noise just a bit more substantive than things I'd never bother to publicize (and this would beg the question, is there anything I wouldn't publicize? To which I'd respond absolutely. Most definitely. Don't tempt me.
Some explanatory notes:
Little more than a collection of rejects from past work, stuff that was never planned to be part of anything larger, and bits of noise just a bit more substantive than things I'd never bother to publicize (and this would beg the question, is there anything I wouldn't publicize? To which I'd respond absolutely. Most definitely. Don't tempt me.
Some explanatory notes:
- Protototype. The first serious composition I made with my Tascam 488 (late 1991). Put it on tape, labeled it "protototype" by accident, and have stuck with the typo since.
- 3AWM (Three Angry White Men). Realized the main riff was a Metallica ripoff, so stopped refining this thing and added the silly radio DJ stuff at the end.
- Wrestlemania '96. Chris Sullivan, a friend I'd made while stationed in northern Italy, was just learning how to play drums. So he dropped by one day and we made this (he was literally only a few months into learning how to play--you should hear him now!). Fun stuff!
- Jarhead Salute. Wth good friend Terryl Bechtol on drums. Silly thing we put together for a friend who'd recently joined the USMC, and about to return home after surviving basic training.
- Snowboy! Goofy tune for a goofy homemade video a pal John Moriarty (the most obvious OSI plant I'd ever met) and I made in the early 90s. So proud.
- Spanish Song. The original recording, at the original speed. This was early 1988 or late 1987, in Mike Weaver's Shalimar, Florida trailer. While showing me how his Fostex 4-tracker worked, he programmed this drum beat (still one of my favorites) into his Roland drum machine and asked me to make something up to the beat. Using something I'd been toying with, I recorded the keyboard part of the song into one track while the running drumbeat fed another. With two tracks left I then played the guitar part into track 3, over tracks 1 and 2, but wasn't particularly happy with the guitar solo. Mike had me play the guitar part again, except instead of recording over the first guitar take he recorded the second guitar take into track 4 (muting track 3 so I wouldn't know the "trick" he was playing on me). When I was done with the second take he played for the song, with both guitar parts, which we both thought was better than the tune would be with an added bass track. I'd later remake the song for my 1988 debut ("P6") album.
- God Bes. This and Chaff are the only songs I recorded for an unrealized project to be called Chaff. Concept was this: fictional band with two bassists and a drummer (no 6-string, 'regular' guitar), where one of these personae also did the singing/speaking. Title "God Bes" was inspired by a goofy picture I'd seen while visiting Ephesus, of a miniature clay statue of a demon/imp whose erect cock easliy measured half the length of his entire body. Photo was in one of those cheap paperback travel books, available in no fewer than sixteen languages, sold outside big tourist attractions (this one being the Celsus Library). I'd picked up a copy, was getting a kick out of its laughable English, and stumbled upon the photo close up of a small statue depicting this priapratic deity. Caption under the photo simply read "God Bes." The absurdity of it all inspired the concept of a song wherein some pimp-sounding speaker/quasi-singer would taunt listeners with descriptions of his freakishly enormous dong, and all the conquests he effected with it. Very tentative/draft-version/sketch of the song that never was. The tapping bass solo thing--two copies of which exist (the better copy being on MOrphans)--was never named, and so it inherited the name of the doomed project itself.
- Gross Ernie (or Ernie Gross, depending on what mood I'm in when I write it). The above-listed Protototype is the first serious composition I made with my Tascam 488. This was what came before that. Quick test of the machine, sampling/burping/hocking noises etc.
© Phil Thompson, with help from Chris Sullivan (drums on Wrestlemania '96), J. Terryl Bechtol Jr. (drums on Jarhead Salute), and Michael Weaver (programmed drum machine on Spanish Song)
- Cycles. The oldest tune herein. And it shows. It's the first recording of me putting onto tape my fascination with the relationship between tonal frequencies and musical intervals. Though I'd later get my own Yamaha VSS-30, I played this on a coworker of at Steve Miller's VSS. Apparently this colleague of Steve didn't think too much of the thing, had brought it into work to show off the weirdness of the toy, and Steve had the presence of mind to ask to borrow it. So I spent a few nights during my visit with Steve that year (87) playing with and recording my tinkering with the VSS-30.