Totem Pole (1995)
This one was originally supposed to be called Ear Candy. I'd begun recording stuff for it in 1991, but work and family matters (a PCS to Italy) put it all on hold. In 1995 I jumped back into it, basically doubling the material for the album, and finished it in September.
As I don't normally sing (or speak)-and when I do, I hardly put any thought into the words-Totem Pole is a rarity. Not only are there words in some of these songs; the lyrics were deliberate, and in some cases, serious reflections.
In Cochran's Zoo I denounce the news media, and by extension the audience, whose schadenfreude were as despicable to me as the man defending an obviously guilty O.J. Simpson. Eighteen is my questioning of the arbitrary age at which we're all supposed to suddenly be adults. Three vignettes, separated by eighteen years (1959, 1977, 1995), wherein the first two are rife with blissful ignorance, and the third a not-so-rosy picture of an (ostensibly young) drug addict in a crime-ridden neighborhood.
Real is simply about someone who can't get anywhere in life because of his nightly reality escape. And Pulse-lyrics I wrote in 1986-are the thoughts of a hospitalized man, having just been in a horrible auto accident, and mourning the death of his girlfriend, who was with him and didn't survive the wreck.
Obviously The Blue Kentucky Moon and Rubbers & Cream are works of fiction-one dark, and one goofy.
In addition to the typical basement/garage musician weapons (keys, piano, guitar, bass, drums, sampler) I used a 50 cent double mijwiz (sounds vaguely like a sax, in TBKM) that I'd picked up in Jerusalem, an Appalachian dulcimer my stepdad made for me-and please forgive the horrible Irish (or maybe Scottish?) accent in that one-and two toys: an accordion and a recorder (also used in TBKM).
As I don't normally sing (or speak)-and when I do, I hardly put any thought into the words-Totem Pole is a rarity. Not only are there words in some of these songs; the lyrics were deliberate, and in some cases, serious reflections.
In Cochran's Zoo I denounce the news media, and by extension the audience, whose schadenfreude were as despicable to me as the man defending an obviously guilty O.J. Simpson. Eighteen is my questioning of the arbitrary age at which we're all supposed to suddenly be adults. Three vignettes, separated by eighteen years (1959, 1977, 1995), wherein the first two are rife with blissful ignorance, and the third a not-so-rosy picture of an (ostensibly young) drug addict in a crime-ridden neighborhood.
Real is simply about someone who can't get anywhere in life because of his nightly reality escape. And Pulse-lyrics I wrote in 1986-are the thoughts of a hospitalized man, having just been in a horrible auto accident, and mourning the death of his girlfriend, who was with him and didn't survive the wreck.
Obviously The Blue Kentucky Moon and Rubbers & Cream are works of fiction-one dark, and one goofy.
In addition to the typical basement/garage musician weapons (keys, piano, guitar, bass, drums, sampler) I used a 50 cent double mijwiz (sounds vaguely like a sax, in TBKM) that I'd picked up in Jerusalem, an Appalachian dulcimer my stepdad made for me-and please forgive the horrible Irish (or maybe Scottish?) accent in that one-and two toys: an accordion and a recorder (also used in TBKM).
© 1995 Phil Thompson. All rights reserved.