i got stoned and i missed it

MP3: Litho-Trippy (3.6 mb)

What a drag it is getting old.

Indeed. I've just had a medical procedure done on me called lithotrispy in an attempt to blast an obstinate kidney stone out of my body. This seems to be the best way to have these sort of things taken care of these days, but mine has been fraught with minor complications that have made it something of a bear to deal with. I'll spare you my moaning here (Lord knows Kate has heard enough of it, bless her generous heart), and should state for the record that all is generally well.

This month's MP3 is what I imagine the procedure would sound like if it were run through a digital audio workstation and sweetened a bit for the chill-out rooms. Don't be frightened, my love, it's all very harmless.

Here's wishing you a wonderful Holiday Season and a New Year filled with joy. Drink lots of water!

**Don't forget to check the Blog Archives to get the songs you missed!**

There are also official Marble Tea releases that you can download right from my website!


RECENT ENJOYMENTS
  

life on mars?

MP3: Life on the Moon (1.4 mb)

Another quick one this month. I'd really rather not live on the moon...Mars might be kind of cool, though.

** Don't forget to check the Blog Archives to get the songs you missed! (Or you can scroll down to see the most recent.) **

There are also official Marble Tea releases that you can download right from my website!

the tortures of the damned...

MP3: Ingrid Pitt Indeed (2.9 mb)



In the late 60s/early 70s, there was a midnight horror movie show called Shock Theatre that came on TV in Montgomery every Friday and Saturday night. I was glued to the set each week as they showed hours of famously frightening movies starring the black and white likes of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr, but the ones that really caught my budding eye were the ones by a British company called Hammer. These lush and gothic films, shot in technicolor and seemingly always featuring Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee (or both!), careened my imagination far into overdrive...especially when they brought out the busty actresses who were either innocent victims or vicious temptresses, but always alluringly sexy. What more could a young boy want?

This tribute to Ingrid Pitt - Hammer's Queen (what, you were expecting maybe Barbara Steele?) - is from the out-of-print Marble Tea CD 2001: A Case of the Tea, a collection of home recordings from earlier this century. Happy Halloween....

INGRID PITT INDEED


I've got a Hammer horror film in my head
Starring Ingrid Pitt as the Queen of the Dead
I walk into the laundromat
with red and ripped sheets
a roll of quarters in my pocket
so I can wash rinse and repeat

I've got a Hammer horror mood in my brain
Sheer white gowns and a castle in the rain
I step out of the restaurant
and fall to my knees
rip my shirt down to the waist
because I know that she'll be pleased

I've got a Hammer horror look to my face
Ingrid Pitt wipes her mouth on the staircase
I don't know where I was today
I just woke up scared
when she comes again tonight
I'll try to be more prepared

Ingrid Pitt
In the Vampire Lovers
Ingrid Pitt indeed
Ingrid Pitt
As Elizabeth Bathory
Ingrid Pitt indeed
Ingrid Pitt
In Sound of Horror
Ingrid Pitt indeed
Ingrid Pitt
Dah dah dee dum dee dah
Ingrid Pitt indeed

** Don't forget to check the Blog Archives to get the songs you missed! **

And don't forget that there are also official Marble Tea releases that you can download right from my website!

Hey. Go buy the new Max Eider album. It's FANTASTIC!!

walkin' with jesus

MP3: Iron Cross (4.6 mb)

Wilhelm, it was really nothing. And I swear to you there's nothing militaristic about this song. A dear friend gave me a beautiful cross made of iron as a gift, and that's all there is to it.

IRON CROSS

Iron Cross
Aye yay yay yay

I see you smiling
I see you laughing
I see you giving me

Iron Cross
Aye yay yay yay

On the road toward God
You need an accurate map
But there are so many
From which to choose

Iron Cross
Aya yay yay yay

You pick a path to go down
Find a spot and set up a house
Have you forgotten where you were
Going?

Iron Cross
Aye yay yay yay

I see you smiling
I see you laughing
I see you giving me

Iron Cross
Aye yay yay yay


** Don't forget to check the Blog Archives to get the songs you missed! **

And don't forget that there are also official Marble Tea releases that you can download right from my website!

Speaking of, have you bought the new Max Eider album yet? It's FANTASTIC!!

chocolates for breakfast

MP3: Chocolates for Breakfast (3.5 mb)

Pamela Moore wrote the book Chocolates for Breakfast in the mid-1950s when she was just 18 years old. Its story of upper-class teen-aged decadence in a world of martinis, long white gloves and Stan Kenton records - set, most notably, in Manhattan (but in Hollywood as well) - intrigued me from the get-go 'cause I'm a sucker for that whole nicely-dressed and overly-educated but still slightly ill-mannered mid-morning cocktail in an Upper East Side apartment liberal/bourgeois explosion kind of scene. The style and constraints - and the breaking thereof - create, for me anyway, a really interesting story landscape.

Back in the late-80s, after having read the book, I brought the song I'd written not so loosely based upon it to the band I played in called Blond Popsicle. We worked out an arrangement and played it live frequently (we even called our second full-length cassette Chocolates for Breakfast), but we never recorded it. That's a shame....

About a year ago the itch appeared to give it its due, so I sat down to begin recording. The project became a little too ambitious, and I soon lost interest in it. However, a recent cleaning of my hard disk brought it to my attention once again, and it's not as muddled as I initially thought and it certainly deserves an existence somewhere in this interconnected universe of ours. Even though this version is somewhat different, I'd be remiss if I didn't thank Steve & Kenny (and Jim & Toasty & Brent & Clark) for the contributions they made to the song back in those Popsicle days.

I hope you find it tasty....


** Don't forget to check the Blog Archives to get the songs you missed! **

senses working overtime

MP3: Old Letter Opener (2 mb)

I've just returned from my first visit to Seattle, home of coffee convenience and entitled pedestrians. A cousin was married in a park upon a hill overlooking water and that gorgeous skyline, and it was great to have some small semblance of a family reunion during that festive occasion. However, these things are often laced with a bit of sadness when family members that you'd hope to see at these events are no longer with us, and you feel a large gap where their presence might have been.

My father and his older brother both passed on within the past few years, and they were giant men with giant personalities - Greek gods they'd been called, though their blood was more Jewish than Athenian - so imagining them there was easy, and then disappointing in the light of reality.

Well, sorrow seems to be the standard springboard for creativity, at least that's what I've heard and been told. You wallow around alone in it and then let your feelings out in a beautiful piece of art. And that's where the trouble begins. Sometimes this beautiful thing is just an expression of depression, often conjuring tired imagery that we've all heard a thousand times before. At least that's what usually happens to me in these situations, and why I generally lean toward exploring things (serious or not) from a more whimsical vantage point: I hope to spare us both the cliches of sadness.

That said, there was an outpouring of songs when my father died, and they live in various states of completion and predictability. Here's one about the letter opener I watched him use since I was kid (it had been his father's before him), and which I now count as one of my most valuable possessions. The noisy and quickly recorded mp3 file can be found at the top of this blog entry.


OLD LETTER OPENER

I'm looking at an old letter opener
It's got to be 45 or 50 years old
The handle has your father's name engraved upon it
It's made of silver but in my opinion it's gold

The handle's kind of worn from your hands upon it
I can feel the imprint of your fingers where they would bend
As you opened up your correspondence with glee or horror
And I'm sure on occasion with some indifference

This was your father's key to the letters
It was your key too for a while
Now it's mine, and I'll keep it here with me
To open the letters that'll never come from you again.


** Don't forget to check the Blog Archives to get the songs you missed! **

catch a wave

MP3: Seaside Hula (1.2 mb)

What do you say we become little cartoons for a minute and hit the beach? I'll bring the hula if you bring the hoop....

and now for something completely different....

MP3: Mine All Mine (4.2 mb)

So there was this slasher flick that was looking for a song to compliment a scene where one evil, punkish sorority sister had kidnapped and seduced the devout and angelic girl she'd had her eye on for some time. The producers wanted something that blended the Jesus & Mary Chain, the Ramones, My Bloody Valentine...and XTC of all things. Hhhmmm. My noisy demo is presented here this month. It didn't make the cut, but at least I got another song out of it...

...and it let me explore that whole innocence defiled thing, which holds a certain attraction but often makes everyone involved want to take a long shower the next morning.

Oh, PS and BTW: there's a new single in the works. I hope to have it mixed and available within the month-ish. Acquirable via download only. Watch this spot for details....

MINE ALL MINE

I've been waiting for you like a night for a moon,
To hold it in its arms and to love it

Oh yeah Oh yeah
You're gonna be mine
You're gonna be mine all mine

It's not like you have wings and I'm pulling your strings
But my heavenly girl, don't you want it

In the fleeting of flight, I'll be your only light,
I'll be your start and end, and you'll love it

Oh yeah Oh yeah
You're gonna be mine
You're gonna be mine all mine

I've been waiting for you like a night for a moon,
To hold onto its light and to love it

It's just like you have wings and I'm pulling your strings
O my darling delight, don't you want it

Oh yeah Oh yeah
You're gonna be mine
You're gonna be mine all mine

the quiet game chronicle

MP3: The Quiet Game (1 mb)

When I was a young lad and my family would pile into the car for a long trip, my sister and I would - as children do - be quite loud and obnoxious in the backseat throughout the journey, deprived as we were of any of the usual stimulations and attention required by those of that age. (This was long before we even dreamed of having a portable DVD player to calm us.) In what was to be at once a successful and beautiful stroke of genius, my parents told us how to play "The Quiet Game" which was a very simple game to play in that whoever made any sound first lost.

Determined to be winners, my sister and I shut up for long stretches at a time, much to our parents' delight, though we weren't beyond trying to trick each other into laughing or screaming. Naturally, the rules were modified a little to prohibit any touching or prodding of the other contestant.

I've never been the quickest bullet out of the gun, but years passed before I realized the true purpose of that game, presented as it was in the spirit of fun. Both of my parents acted in the local theatre, so I'm sure that didn't dampen their persuasive skills....

Well, fast forward to now and I realize the importance of imposing my own Quiet Game upon myself. The world is too much with us, this is true. As fun as that can be, there come times when I need to let the world not be with me for a while so I can soak in the stuff behind the clatter and pull the magic back into my life (and hopefully spread it around a little bit). It seems increasingly necessary now that they put High Fructose Corn Syrup in just about anything you could possibly want to eat.

Anyway, one of the things that stayed with me from Haruki Murakami's book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was the magic achieved by the protagonist during his imaginative time spent sitting at the bottom of a deep, dark, quiet well. A place of silence and sensory depravation, where he was able to, if not unravel the mysteries of his life, at least journey through them toward some resolution.

A one-minute audio experiment from this quiet, rainy Jersey Shore day is at the top of this blog for your consideration....

time of the last persecution

MP3: Time Is Like A Dream At Dawn (1.2 mb)

I have a real problem with time, besides there never being enough of it. For one thing, I can't wear watches because there's some weird electro-magnetic current situation in my body that always causes them to quit working. It's true, and not a particularly rare condition from what I understand.

Setting our clocks forward for Daylight Savings Time rarely affects me since I have no solid comprehension of the passing of time in my day-to-day life anyway. It's like time really is a river, rolling into nowhere, but how can that actually be if time is round? And if it is round, is that why we're doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past? And if that's the reason, then why am I not getting any younger?

I have a real problem with time. However, I've always felt Philip Seymour Hoffman would make a delightful Cheshire Cat.


TIME IS LIKE A DREAM AT DAWN

She wants to make a movie
Based on the life of her cat named Cole
And she wants Philip Seymour Hoffman
In the title role.
But these things take time
And time is like a dream at dawn
It's gone by the time you wake.

i can see it (but i can't feel it)

MP3: Theoretically Being There (1.04 mb)

It's been a while since I read Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, but one interesting thing that stuck with me - if I remember it correctly...and so many times I don't - was that when the characters would "jaunte" (or teleport) from one place to another, it was important that they have an image of the place they would be landing set firmly in their mind's eye or else things could go horribly wrong.

As Dr. Mystic and I have discussed, there's a plethora of theories out there about making your life what it should be, and most of them hold to the belief that it's important to see oneself vividly being where one wants to be in order to...be there. That's oversimplified, of course. Basically, thoughts precede action and all that. Wanna be a fireman? See yourself fighting those fires, complete with coat, axe, badge, and boots, and see it often. Rock Star? Tighten up those pants, lad, and strap on a six-string in your mind.

Anyway, our cat Cosmo brings this down to earth. When he's about to leap onto something unfamiliar, he stares at it intensely, vibrates for a moment, and then jumps successfully to his destination. Kate and I call this the See It...Be It configuration. He sees where he wants to be, and then he is there.

With this in mind, I hope this simple song will provide some nourishing entertainment along your path.

THEORETICALLY BEING THERE

You can't be anywhere
If you're not already there

You've got to see where you want to be
If you want to be where you want to be
Coz

You can't be anywhere
If you're not already there

borrowed soul

MP3: Cheese (2.2 mb)

If you got a digital camera for Christmas, congratulations to you. But one thing has me puzzled: do we still run the risk of having our souls stolen in the picture taking process when film has left the equation?

As a way of somehow explaining what I mean, here's another one of those late-night 4-track recordings. Proceed carefully, children. Dangers lurk in even the most incidental appliances....

CHEESE

Today I had my picture taken
Today I had my soul stole
Today it went into a camera
And landed on the film roll

We took it to the drugstore quickly
Development in just one hour
It's rare that these things often happen
But when they do it's ACTION TOWER [...I don't know. Ed.]

I sat around oblique and friendly
Unaware I was un-whole
My friends took care of all the details
And soon they had the prints in tow

They put them in my hands discreetly
And magnetism did its job
It filtered through the waxy colors
And I had what was almost robbed

Cheese....