"musical" endeavours

Despite nearly universal discouragement, I have nevertheless gone to some lengths to capture the essence of my caterwallings in the form of musical recordings. ("Hi, I'm Dave, and I'm a struggling musician.")

Because no one will let me put them anywhere else, I've decided to cast them amongst the virtual sands of the Internet's beaches in hopes that some random soul will stumble upon them and be inspired: "wow, if this guy can record this stuff and not get arrested or have his site shut down, then I'll be top of the pops this time next week..."

Ahem. Anyway, without further ado, I humbly present to you the following wee nuggets as a character building exercise. To my knowledge, no one has suffered any lasting ill effects from having a listen, but I'm making no guarantees...

Just when you didn't think it could get any better, the possum brothers (my friend Jonny Farren and me) got our %#$&@! together and recorded some stuff - just in time for Jon and my great friend lil' Roobie to shoot through to Ireland! Drat and blast. I'll miss them, but we'll meet up again, perhaps for a catch-up and a whirlwind European tour sometime later this year... <cough>

Update (sometime in June 2002) I visited Roobie and Jon in Dublin (6-11 June) and had a great time travelling the countryside, visiting the castles, seeing countless other amazing things (walls, forts, airports) built by stacking bits of stone on top of other bits of stone. Seems like the one thing there's plenty of over there (besides Guinness and Irish people) is stones. I have pictures, but haven't had time to put them online yet. Will do so asap, so check back.

Update (28 Oct. 2002): the pictures can be found here in the "UK and Ireland" album. It was great to see Roobie a few weeks back when she came back through Christchurch en route to Sydney, her new base. Looking forward to a jaunt over that way to pay her a visit!

If you'd like to hear the (sometimes bitter) fruit of our groggy, slightly hungover efforts (which, in an unwarranted fit of optimism and bravado, we're calling "thrive"), here they are, raw and uncensored (all but one are first cuts - I'll leave it to you to guess which one had the benefit of a second attempt!), in the popular but proprietary (bad!) MP3 format - sampled at 192kbps, for those who care - and now in the open source (and better quality) "Ogg Vorbis" format - they're pretty big (3-9 mb) so you might want to organise a coffee while you wait:

1. life, in a nutshell [mp3, ogg] - a barenaked ladies song (4.5mb)
2. babylon [mp3, ogg] - an outstanding david gray song (5.6mb)
3. couldn't have come at a better time [mp3, ogg] - a lovely ditty by luka bloom (3.4mb)
4. four cold walls [mp3, ogg] - a davey lane original (6.1mb)
5. say hello, wave goodbye [mp3, ogg] - by soft cell's marc almond as redone by david gray (8.9mb)
6. jane [mp3, ogg] - another barenaked ladies song (4.8mb)
7. cliched title for kris [mp3, ogg] - a gorgeous wee lucksmiths song (2.4mb)
8. man of constant sorrow [mp3, ogg] - traditional (as heard in "o brother where art thou") (4.5mb)
9. like this train [mp3, ogg] - a muttonbirds masterpiece (5.5mb)
10. jane - alt take [ogg] - the only other take made during this session... (4.8mb)

If you want, you can also download the liner notes and songlisting in postscript (3mb!) and StarOffice/OpenOffice.org draw formats (you might need to right-click and save-as on this one). Here's another version of the liner notes, including the Splunge songs (below) as "bonus tracks" for the masochistic... (PDF, Open/StarOffice formats). Warning: you might have to scale the PDF version up to say 105% for proper sizing...

Update (15 Aug. 2003): A lot's happened since the recording of "thrive" - Jonny Farren and Roobie are now together again in, as one might expect, Sydney, Australia... Mr. Jonny possum himself is in NZ for a few months doing some work and making sure he can retain his NZ residency, which means, yep, you guessed it, we might again inflict ourselves upon your hapless ears. Nothing definite yet, but watch this space...

Update (11 Sep. 2003): Jonny Farren's just back in Christchurch for a 3 month sabbatical, (he's now based in Sydney where he'll likely be opening the Sydney branch of Marshall Day Acoustics) and he was given nary a moment's peace when Penny, Polly, and David Bennet (the birthday triumvirate) decided that the Possum Brothers would perform at their 2nd annual PennyPollyDavid birthday celebration - 104 years old (in total)! Anyway, the event was held at the venerable Wunderbar in Lyttelton last Saturday night, and somewhere between 50 and 100 people in Carnivale theme clothing (fruit baskets and PVC aplenty) had a blast with dancin', socialisin', limbo-in' and listening to a few ditties from the Possums. We did a couple new-to-us songs, and a few olde favourites. Jonny even called Ms. Polly Thomas up on stage to sing a song - and we did a rousing rendition of Herman The Worm as a sing-along. It was a good night. I'll post pictures in the gallery as soon as people give me some (there were lots of flashes, so I'm assuming there'll be some piccies)!

Oh, I've also uploaded newly ripped Ogg format versions of the thrive songs (see above) that remove a bit of the chatter and a few wrong notes... and I added an (the) alternate take of Jane for download, too, just in Ogg format, because I don't normally bother with MP3 anymore, and Oggs are supported by most MP3 players anyway.

And if those tracks weren't punishment enough for your sensitive ears, here're a few more tracks uncovered in my odds 'n' sods box... Back in 1993-4, in a fit of constructive furvor, a few of my friends and I set about to start an a cappella (that means no instruments were abused in the process of recording - just voices and ears...) group - check out the original call-to-arms. These tracks were recorded back in 1996 by a subsequent incarnation of the resulting group, Splunge, at Seattle's Brickhouse studio by a very cool guy called John. The album was called, for reasons that might become obvious, "Conversation Killer". Heady days indeed.

1. the grinch [mp3, ogg] - Fine work from Eugene (not his real name) and Trick (not all of his real name) on this Warner Bros classic.
2. running to stand still [mp3, ogg] - dispite a sour note or two from his backers, Chauncey (not his real name) displays his bono vox on this organically arranged version of the U2 song.
3. 29 ways [mp3, ogg] -a Marc Cohn song, solo by Dahl (his last name), not long after his historic win on Wheel Of Fortune (the real thing!) of US$30,000 and a gazeebo.
4. istanbul [mp3, ogg] -olde but goode. I especially like Trick's (not his real name) allusion to Disney's Alladin, barely audible in the background. Solos by Shaun (his real name) and Ass (misspelling of his real name).
5. violent love [mp3, ogg] -credited (as far as I know) to Dr. Feelgood, this one is great to play on a first date. Humphrey (not his real name) outdoes his bad self on this one. Nice scat solo, too.
6. rhyming song [mp3, ogg] -a tip of the hat to a true hero, Jim Henson, who altered the world for the better with the Muppets and the Children's Television Workshop (makers of Sesame Street).
7. what is the shape of the earth? [mp3, ogg] - One of the guys in the group, "42" (not his real name), who worked for Microsoft at the time, remembered this song, absurdly enough, from a primary school film strip he once saw. He arranged it based on his childhood memories, and thus leapt Splunge, with both feet, onto to the "chant" bandwagon that was rolling roughshod over the music world back in '96.
8. mary anne [mp3, ogg] - a Marshall Crenshaw tune. He's a great song writer, shame you'd never know it from listening to this ;o).
9. brown eyed girl [mp3, ogg] - Van Morrison's 1967 classic, almost unrecognisable in this enthusiastic rendition. With Prime (not his real name, although possibly my nickname...) doing his best Van-Man impersonation.

I'm just sorry we never recorded a song by Hubert (also not his real name), the great "Trigonometry Rap". Pure genius, despite the fact that he worked for Microsoft.