Had to use a mic stand and a pencil to keep tension on the loop while I dubbed it onto a cassette. Add some bass, trippy analog electronic beeping and rap vocals and you have my first studio track in 1994, The Man with the Actual Dope. It had a sample of a TV news reporter saying "the man with the actual dope" and the vocals actually had to be finished at my apartment because the music lab class was over. The "b side" to this was Baam! that had beat samples from The Accused, and Led Zeppelin, (same exact beat and tempo, exactly as sampled . . . conspiracy!) I dubbed a bass line and the lyrics included "Here we go in '94."

There was also a reference to smashing my hand in the reel to reel. Don't try to slow the rewind by sticking your fingers in the spinning reel. It is painful and bloody.

I was in a couple of punk bands and I used to record garage practice sessions with a boom box. I would try to set it in the middle of everyone's amps and the drum kit and put the tiny vocal PA right next to it for best recording mix under the circumstance.

In 12 months we had 5 different drummers and never quite got our sh*** together. One day before practice the guitar player was showing me his roomate's gun by pointing it at me and accidentally shot through the wall, killing the bathtub in the next room. At least the bullet was lodged in the bathtub and not me.

I don't know about art...or music apparently: KSDT the radio station from UC San Diego hosted a contest called Fortiate. The challenge was to create a song in 48 hours. At midnight on Sunday they announced the genres: Blues & Hip Hop and the topic "evolve."

So I took my beat sample from the Minor Threat song "Stumped" which isn't really punk but in no way sounds hip hop...unless you cut it the right way. I got a little blues inspiration from the Blues Brothers and laid down a funky bass line. I took what seemed like forever to write enough words, compared to the 48 hours I had. The song is fast and has 3 verses of 8 bars each and I ended up repeating some lines rather than including weak ones. Although I did not really talk much abo...

New song "Impolite": Another song that seems to have taken me a famously long amount of time to complete. The lyrics definitely have had plenty of time to be tested for the fun factor. If they are still fun for me to sing months down the road then they pass. I had an opportunity to try something new on this track. I don't really play keyboard but this song seemed to be begging for some campy, 60's sounding jazz organ. So I wrote and practiced the hell out of the solo at the end. I was able to bang it out on the first take. Yeah!

New song and some ancient history: After a long hiatus from producing music I have finally finished "All You Talk About is World Destruction." This song literally was like 2 years in the making because I started it and left off with it partially finished. You know important things like work. (You didn't actually think this was how I made my living did you?) Hope you like it!

I found my old demo tape from 1994 that has my very first songs on it "The Man With the Actual Dope" and "Baam!" and thought it would be fun to upload these to SoundClick. First I had to convert them from cassette to mp3, which unfortunately seemed to have turned the stereo originals into mono. Actual Dope has a funky bassline that is all but missing i...

see all 60 friends here »