Songs from The St. Vitus School of Dance
For years, I have written poems and song lyrics. I have tried again and again to get people to compose music for my songs--to no avail, And then, along came GarageBand. So I started creating musical settings with loops for my own works.
  
[this is in progress]
 The CD, Songs from The St. Vitus School of Dance is my first compilation of instrumentals and spoken word pieces. It also features a song on which I sing. Those who know me know that I don't sing in public--but nothing ever stays the same.

If you are curious about the poems themselves, some of them are available in my poetry anthology, The Future's Passed, coming soon from www.cafepress.com.

  

Click on the song titles for a brief sample of each track.

All samples are reduced quality versions of the full audio available on the CD.
Name
Time
Designation
Notes
Guitar Rock in Blue
3:37
Instrumental
 Playing around with GarageBand, I decided to try to create a song that might be played by Blue Man Group (hence the "Blue in the title).
CyberLover
3:40
Spoken Word
 One of my commentaries on the online world and people for looking for love, perhaps in the wrong place; that remains to be seen. Here I use the built-in Macintosh text-to-speech function to narrate the story.
O2
3:32
Instrumental
 The title might mean "Oxygen," though technically the title is the second version of my 15th attempt at a GarageBand piece. I was designating them sequentially by letter, you see.
No Reply Needed
2:09
Spoken Word
 I jut decided to string together phrases from various spam messages ("Increase your penis size! Increase your bust size!") with a musical setting. If you deconstruct this piece, you will note that the repeated phrases tend to put the claims into question. Once again I used the Macintosh text-to-speech function. The text can be found here.
Roc Song
3:43
Instrumental
 A play on words; it's another rock song in GarageBand.
On A Rampage
3:44
Spoken Word
 The text comes from the early 1980s. A convenience store in Columbus, OH was nicknamed the Stop and Rob, so that helps place the date. I had no intention of doing any of this; I was just exploring a thought. Unfortunately, people do continue to do this regularly.
A Mirror
2:04
Spoken Word
 an some motel rooms, they put the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, so that if you close the door and sit on the toilet, you are confronted by--yourself, staring at you. Couple that with exhaustion from driving and "the classic thinking posture," and you have this.
Like A Ghost
2:47
Spoken Word
 I had a very prolific time of writing in the year 2006. At some point I realized I was coming back into contact with people I had known in past lives, and the whole thing convinced me that everything DOES happen for a reason. The text is found in The Absence of Shadows.
2Aetherna
3:05
Instrumental
 An instrumental that depicts the liftoff, flight, and landing of the starship traveling to bring humans to a new colony.
EZ Guitar
3:49
Instrumental
 Another play on words, and another rock song in Garageband.
Big Chuck and The Watchdog
3:17
Spoken Word
 The text is from the late 1970s. These were the nicknames of two real people, and some of the costuming details are correct. You may also find it odd to know that a girlfriend threw me over for one of them, and then my next girlfriend actually took up with me because the other turned out to be too old for her. I exacted my revenge on both of them by killing them fictionally. The second girlfriend went on to inspire "On The Skids" (see below).
Soul Screams
3:27
Spoken Word
 Another imagination-fueled exploration of an idea. I imagined someone cutting a person out of their pictures, and continuing to cut.... As a GarageBand piece, I tried to play with the notion of an audio "scream" produced by the keyboard and synthesized instruments.
Internet Women
4:38
Spoken Word
 Another exploration of the "Who are you, really?" syndrome on the World Wide Web. I once asserted that people tend to believe you are who you say you are, judging from my own experiments in this area. Add to that getting a series of emails from Svetlana who fell in love with me from my photo on Yahoo (which, no, I don't have) and a variety of other solicitous solicitations, and we have all the makings of this song.
Dancing with my Stalker
3:06
Spoken Word
 Inspired by someone on Second Life IMing me and asking, "So who is your SL stalker?" asserting that everyone has one. I told her I thought it was her. And then I began playing with the idea of internet stalking, along with a chance to laugh at myspace and its ability to not allow stalking, but to make it easy!
You Have Waited For
0:28
Spoken Word
 An announcement.
On The Skids
6:49
For years, I said about my first real girlfriend in college, "If I had married her, I'd be in prison today. Because I would have killed her." I always thought that might make an amusing song lyric. So, with GarageBand, I finally wrote the song. And yes, I sing it.