Memory Excellence 33: 1986

33. 1986

Nothing is real and everything's blurry

A brown landscape moves around me

Everything I knew, I left it behind me

the wilderness closed in

Nothing is real and everything's blurry

A house springs up while I'm sleeping

My mouth is not fit to pronounce these names

of roads that run off like gnarled branches

Nothing is real and everything's blurry

I don't understand it. Let's start again.

This one is from the album Tualatin or the Voice of Shrillness, which mines my years of maximum adolescent awkwardness for song material. In 1986 I hit a certain developmental milestone, moved approximately 2000 miles, and got glasses, big horrible aviator specs no less. A rough year.

The third stanza owes a debt to the first story in Jason's graphic novel Sshhhh!

OK, song descriptions done - time to rebuild my archives!

Thinking about doing Bandqlamp even though I dislike Bandqlamp on principle - while I get the idea that it makes things easy for artists and encourages people to pay for music, I don't like the fact that it has basically domesticated DIY and put everything on the same template, one that revolves around money instead of music. Alternatives exist (e.g. archive.org) but can be clunky. I'll get things sorted out soon.

Memory Excellence 32: Don't Stand So Close to Me '86

32. Don't Stand So Close to Me '86

Make sure your ego is as brassy as your synthesizer
Make sure to visualize the subject of your fantasy

That is how you make it
But get thee behind me
That is how you make it
But don't stand so--

Ultimately I made sure that I'd blend into furniture
My ego was the tarnished nickel of endless broken strings

Every greatest hits album has to have a song called "Don't Stand So Close to Me '86," right? I think it's the law.

This one is from an upcoming album tentatively entitled 99 that is going to have 99 super hits. I have a long way to go. Having a baby and a side hustle really limits one's ability to crank out super hits in the garage. But I'll persevere.

Memory Excellence 31: (You're Never Alone with a) Delay Pedal

31. (You're Never Alone with a) Delay Pedal

I bought a copy of myself
from a box
and took it out - to repeat:

Took myself to the garage
Took a copy
Took myself - to repeat:

Endless copies
Infinite garage
Which one is me? To repeat:

Endless selves inside a box
I'm not alone
beside myself - to repeat:

Put myself inside a box
Waking up
to turn it off.

I got a Boss DD-3 for $5 at the swap meet and my sound changed. Oh the 1990s. I bought swap-meet delay pedal after swap-meet delay pedal and stretched everything out forever, hiss and crunch. Ravenous cavernous. Years of dissipation and navel-gazing while being dead sober. I didn't release an album for like four years during my period of maximum music playing. Endless delay pedal wankery in the garage. Delay pedals. Delay pedals. Delay pedals. I'm not alone beside myself.

Memory Excellence 30: Encyclopedias

30. Encyclopedias

I got a world
A world in the bathroom
I digest the universe
Page by page, letter by letter

There was a champion on Tic Tac Dough back in my formative years when I was watching Tic Tac Dough a lot who claimed that his success was due to a lifelong habit of reading encyclopedias in the W.C.  I have certainly done that to no end.  My current set of mid-80s Britannicas isn't quite as restroom-friendly as my childhood set of early-70s World Books, but still.

I really like the album that this song begins (Scripts) and would have liked to include more of its songs. Oh well. Gotta get that one back up on the internet.

Memory Excellence 29: Hallway Odyssey

29. Hallway Odyssey

I would like to kindly ask your forgiveness for not transcribing these lyrics. They're easy enough. They are directions. Now that I think about it, a debt is owed to Chris P's "Keep Walking," though this is, um, less infinite? And it will actually lead you somewhere very important if you start in the right place, i.e. my desk at my previous job.

Ring modulators. Love them. Thank you to Carlin for a completely unexpected and life-transforming gift of a ring modulator back in 1995. I still have it and still love it.

Memory Excellence 28: Edge Detector

28. Edge Detector

Generate the walls that form the corridors
for I'm the germ that walks along the corridors:
the edge detector, edge detector.

Generate the walls, for I'm the form called from 
the bad ideas of uninformed ham-fisted children:
edge detector, edge detector.

Show me walls and corridors and I'll detect the corridors.
Show me walls and corridors and I will bounce off 
of the former through the latter into ether. 
Edge detector, edge detector.

Generate the walls and make them labyrinths!
I'll make them into corridors that spiral out and sprawl forever,
never exit. I'm hamfisted. Edge detector.
I'm defective. Edge detector.

This is the opening track off Spirit Duplicator's Corridor Forever, in which every song is about some sort of corridor. This time, there are three songs with the same title ("Luscious Green Corridor"). I was feeling a little trapped at work and thought about that time that I tried to enter a "Mouse in the Maze" programming competition. My mouse was a bumbler.

Memory Excellence 27: Exotic Car Repair Across Street from Refugee Center

27. Exotic Car Repair Across Street from Refugee Center

I have seen much more than that bright idea that sold so well 
that bought you that car that's up in the air needing more repairs.
Hungry thirsty dream. I have lived that scene. I have come so far.
Far away from here where I chose to be where I hear we're free.
We're all broken in this broken world.

Cast your eyes to the fever dream! Hoists in traction!
In this dingy place like a broken laser to shine one day.
Shine on all these streets! Rev a turbo bleat! Spend so foolishly!
Live a fever dream and reverse the scene so it's me who pays.
We're all broken in this broken world.

Yeah, this song basically wrote itself. For nearly a decade I biked to my job at the refugee organization which was quite literally across from a shop that repaired Maseratis, Lotuses, Ferraris, all of them. I'd see our clients walking past these hobbled stallions out in the numbers and tell myself that I had to write a song about it. I did. Eventually.

Incidentally, I love guitar solos.

This one comes from the Spirit Duplicator album Eternal Youth and Obscurity, which had several other tracks almost make it. It's a good album, and as a bonus, I printed the covers on my Apple //c from high school.