Category Archives: Music

Here’s something brand new. In fact, it’s so new that it didn’t exist earlier today. There’s no backstory to be had here – This track was driven by boredom and a desire to haul out the ol’ acoustic guitar for a change. A few hours later, here you go. The title was something I saw on a walk I took this evening to my nearby grocery store – a little dog backlit by a car’s headlights.

Backlit Dog

Recorded in Reaper with the Yeti Pro microphone; “mastered” in GarageBand. Guitars are in Open-D tuning (low to high: D A D F# A D). My slide playing is still a work in progress.

Artist depiction by Adam Donnelly

This week, here’s something different: A re-recording (in the most literal of definitions – nothing from the first recording was used here) of a weird little idea I concocted four years ago. The concept came with two simple rules: 1) The songs written for the track should be no more than one minute in length (I’m pretty sure the fourth one breaks that rule), and 2) The root note of a song’s last chord has to be the same as the next song’s first chord. The goofy “superhero vs. supervillain” plot that emerged in the writing process was unintentional but unsurprising.

So here you go. Ten tiny little songs… um… blended together into one large odd thing. Strange as it is, I’ve always liked this track and I had a good time redoing the whole shebang from the ground up (adding some extra stuff while I was at it). Too bad it’s probably next to impossible to perform live, huh? Oh well. Anyways, enjoy!

The Blendor

What’s this? Another song about baseball?! YES!… kind of. The big off-season drama unfolding in St. Louis surrounding Albert Pujols’ next contract has practically spiraled out of control simply by just sitting there. The situation caused one area writer to ask for a song called “I Don’t Want to Miss a Mang”. My friend Brian nominated me and suggested a metal song for this occasion. Well, far be it from me to pass up an idea like that…

This one was a bit of a workout for me (It’s always good to get the double kick chops back into shape, though). The idea was to make this an old school-style thrash metal tune, going back to Judas Priest/Motorhead days (but with growled/shouted vocals instead of actual singing). Since this is far from the first (or the last) big star athlete contract issue, I decided to make the words “explicitly vague” – the subject matter is clear, but no actual person is named. Incidentally, you’ll hear a reference to a certain Aerosmith song in the ending… Enjoy!

I Don’t Want to Miss a Mang

Picture from JoeSportsFan’s Tailgate

Track Four of Four. Yet another carol in the “Inevitable” category. This was the first Christmas carol I ever learned on guitar… which, given its simplicity, probably isn’t saying much. But either way, I still like this one, so it was about time to finally turn it into a punk rock classic.

The big reason why I like “Feliz Navidad” is the fact that it’s simple, direct, and to the point. But that’s not enough to carry a punk tune like this! So, in the spirit of “Last Minute Shopping” from last year, I decided to throw “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” into the track. This opened the tune up a little, curbed the inherent repetition, and allowed some room for a few jokes! The jokes, of course, had to be thrown in – of all the carols I did this year, “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” is by far my least favorite. For the record, this track is home to my other Christmas recording tradition – the “Holy crap!” sound file. Enjoy! Thank you for listening, have a great holiday, and I’ll see you in 2011.

Feliz Navidad

Previously: Angels We Have Heard On High ; We Three Kings ; Little Drummer Boy

Track Three of Four. File this carol under the “inevitable” category. I’ve been a drummer for over 13 years (as of this post), so it’s a given that I would eventually take on “Little Drummer Boy” one of these years. There were a few good places for jokes, and I couldn’t resist – like, say, pretending to be Joseph and grumbling about frankincense during the first verse. And, of course, you know what’s going to happen right after the line “I played my best for him”…

“Little Drummer Boy” was the surprisingly difficult tune of this year’s batch. The tricky part with this one lies in its structure – in the “arrangement” (read: piano reduction) I found, the vast majority of the chord changes happened in the middle of a measure, not at the beginning. I threw in two extra beats at the end of each verse, kinda for balance but also just to be a jerk. Either way, it was quite a bit of work but completely worth the effort. Enjoy and amble on back next week for Edmas 2010’s “thrilling” conclusion.

Little Drummer Boy

Previously: Angels We Have Heard On High ; We Three Kings