The recording of Understand the Words was going steadily but slowly. In October 2006, I got former Frank’s Enemy drummer Alex A in to play drums on a few of the tracks. I put this sampler out in early 2007 when I finished mixing some of them. I also created individual graphics for each of the songs. They’re all in the digital booklet included with the mp3s. It’s also a five-song EP, despite the title, because Alex plays drums on four of the songs.

1. Great
2. Dead Aid
3. I’m Living My Lie
4. Love Is Pain
5. Fata Morgana

Words at Not Silent. Contemporaneous documentation at the blog.

(.zip/17.5mb)

In 2005 I started to record the tracks that would end up on Understand the Words as I actually released it in late 2007, reflecting my new direction towards the acoustic. I needed another sampler to hand out in the meantime, hence this second Understand This Sampler, complete with acousticky graphics for the label. The mixes here would be different than the ones on the final CD (except for Spiritual, I think). And dig the little crossfade between tracks 1 and 2.

1. Spiritual
2. Jacuzzi Days
3. Thank You For My Money
4. Man On The Mountain

More info and lyrics at my blog and Not Silent.

(.zip/17.8mb)

Five years ago I thought I would record electric guitar driven alternative rock at home and play acoustic versions of same songs at open mikes which ended up with me playing solo electric versions of the songs at the open mikes which sounded like crap and made me reconsider and go acoustic all the way. Read my blog for more if you want to know the whole tedious story. What we have here is three of the tightest rock songs I’ve been able to put together (with drum loops by Journey’s drummer to boot). It was my second or third try at mixing them, I’d been working on them for about three years on and off. I gave away a bunch of these as CD-Rs at the open mikes. Eventually, the songs ended up on my full length CD, Corinne.

1. Mr. Joyless
2. The Child Is Crying
3. In The Presence Of My Love

Lyrics and more useless details at Not Silent.

(.zip/9MB)

First finished product using GarageBand and I am not disappointed. Wrote the whole thing in the last couple of weeks. Soft vocal, acoustic guitar, bass played almost like a drum, rockabilly chugging guitar and some atmospheric GarageBand keyboards played on keypad. Straddles the line between folk and rockabilly with some drumless reggae backbeat at the bottom. Words are what’s left after the firecracker smell fades away on July 5th.

(.zip/26.3mb)

• Mr. Joyless
• That Was My Song
• The Child Is Crying
• Baby’s Eyes
• In The Presence Of My Love
• Not My Enemy

My 2004 expansion of the Astrid EP. Same four tracks as before plus two more. Still that electric guitar-driven pop rock with the touches of Caribbean and dance and jazz and grunge, even in the two new songs which start edging back towards punk. Read all about it at Not Silent.

(.zip/46MB)

1. Scooby Doo (Theme)
2. Mr. Joyless
3. I’m Living My Lie
4. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
5. LBpunk4Xmas
6. The Child Is Crying
7. If You Could Read My Mind
8. Great
9. Michael Iceberg

Read all about it at Not Silent.

(.zip/10.5MB)

1. Sing It Out (lo-fi garage punk)
2. I Can Testify (lo-fi garage punk)
3. Le Miserable (lo-fi garage folk)
4. I’ll Never Know (lo-fi garage punk)

My first attempt at getting my songs out, from 1982. You can stream the songs and read the whole story of its making at Not Silent. I added a digital booklet to the four song files, although the scan quality of the front and back covers was abysmal. I’ll rescan them sometime.

(.zip/11.9MB)

1. Donde Esta Tu Biblia? (new wave, ska)
2. Donde Dios Me Tenga (pop punk)
3. En El Mundo (new wave)
4. Vida Loca Vida Poca (grunge)

This is a project that my friend Al Valdes (my King James collaborator) and I recorded back in August of 1999 with our spouses as extra vocalists. It’s also the first and only time we recorded on something better than a Portastudio. Most of the tunes are Al’s (he paid for the studio). These four songs are the only ones released so far, and we didn’t get to that until 2004. We have four more in the can, plus a few Portastudio demos that I’m going to try to convince Al to let me put out as a full-length project.

(.zip/20MB)

• In The Presence Of My Love
• That Was My Love
• Baby’s Eyes
• Not My Enemy

My 2003 virtual release documenting my initial non-extreme experiments on ProTools Free. Electric guitar-driven pop all the way with touches of Caribbean and dance and jazz and grunge.

(.zip/53 MB)

1. Don’t Wanna Be No Gumby
2. Mission To Mexico
3. Johnny’s In A Cult
4. Peabody Went To High School
5. Movies About Jesus
6. Last Of The Nubs
7. The Monastery

All the original wacky hijinks, ripped and noise-reduced from the original 1987 cassette master with digital booklet including all original artwork and actual photos of the two guilty parties.

Musical styles in order of appearance are punk, reggae with a touch of mariachi, old school hardcore when it wasn’t old school with a touch of eastern dissonance, 70s style funk, classic rock when it wasn’t classic drenched in Neil Young guitar strangulation, country with a touch of spoken word, and Gregorian chant with no detectable intelligible actual words.

Big download, worth every meg.