Welcome. I put this page
together for friends and family so they could have access to some of
the music I've made over the years. It's mostly just one big page
(except for the "heroes" page) so you can just keep scrolling down or
you can use the links below to jump to a specific band or page.
If you left-click on a song it should stream. If you right click
it,
you can save it on your computer. This page is best viewed in Microsoft
Internet Explorer. These are WMA files.
These
are some songs I wrote and recorded in my bedroom over the past
few years.
Eleanor(lyrics)
I wrote this for my niece in December of 2001. I had just finished my
first semester back in school after having been away for over ten
years. I felt totally inspired by
this beautiful little baby. She was so whole and perfect I had
to write a song about her.
Bye
bye(lyrics)
Another song for Eleanor I gave her for Christmas in 2002.
January(lyrics)
New one I wrote in Jan 2008. My friend Josh Trufant helps on guitar and
backing vocals.
Tuned
out(lyrics)
I wrote and recorded this in January 2007 halfway through my 3rd
year
of medical school. I dragged my mbox down to my landlord's apartment
and borrowed his piano so I could flesh out the recording. It's still a
little rough around the edges.
Leave(lyrics)
Wrote this in 1999 after my band split up. The recording has two
parallel ukelele parts and a cello part I
put on later. The singing is pretty unsteady- I spent too little time
working on them at a point
when my singing wasn't too great anyway.
Unconditional(lyrics)
I wrote this song in the spring of 2002 and recorded it in my bedroom
on West End Ave. I was listening to a lot of Gene Clark at the time,
especially his song "Here without you". This song has an alternative
tuning (G tuned down to E) that gives it kind of a bittersweet feeling.
Blue Green
This is the band I had with my good friends Kevin
Mazzarelli (lead
guit), Jason
Connolly (bass) and Bob D'amico (drums). Trevor DeClercq played bass in
an early incarnation of the band and Matt Focht (Bright eyes & Head
of Femur) was the drummer for our first couple of gigs. It was my first
time being the
"lead singer" and I really miss playing with those guys. I loved this
band because my participation in it was for fun and for free and I
didn't spend a lot of time trying to get signed again. We
played many many shows and we recorded quite a bit. We made an EP and
wound up selling most of them during the last tour we did during my
spring break in 2002. It was a great trip- we opened up for the Frogs
in Madison Wisconsin, played dives in Toledo and Buffalo and had a
great time in Detroit. We also stayed at the world's seediest motel
somewhere in Ontario.
Kevin is presently the lead guitarist in the band Unlove and
also plays bass for our friend Jason Lowenstein (Sebadoh). Bob plays
drums in The Firey Furnaces. Jason Connolly is now the co-owner of a
cool
bar called "Fresh Salt" down by the old Fulton fish market.
Decide(lyrics)
I wrote this in the fall of 2000. I think I really was trying to decide
what to do with my life in every way. Recorded by Steve Revitte in
upstate NY
A/B(lyrics)
I wrote this at my friend David's apartment in Potrero Hill in San
Francisco during a trip there in November of 2001. His living room had
a great view and I spent an afternoon watching the fog roll in and
blanket the mission district. This song is about walking around with
the dread of running into someone you really don't want to see. Trevor
Declercq (who graciously hosts this website) played the most inspired
bass on this track. Kevin and I made the cool electronic sounds in the
begining with a memory man and some wierd device Radiohead had
apparently once used. Steve Revitte engineered it at RPM
studios in NYC. I think this was the first lead vocal I ever recorded.
That's
what it's like to be alive(lyrics)
Recorded by the great Steve Revitte at my family's house in upstate NY.
The line about the "lost highway" is definitely not a reference to the
TV show (which I've never seen).
Wake
up(lyrics)
I was really frustrated with someone when I wrote this in
2000. I guess that's pretty self-evident when you listen to the song. I
recorded the vocals at home and I think I disturbed the neighbors when
I sang it.
Lies
(lyrics)
This song was
recorded with the great Martin Bisi who recorded (among
other great albums) Sonic Youth's album "Evol". We tracked and
mixed at his studio in Brooklyn which is in an old converted civil war
armory.I've known Martin for years. He recorded some of the early
Halcion stuff in the early 90s.
Dedication(lyrics) I used to mix live sound for the Strokes when they were just
beginning to get noticed. I mixed a gig of theirs in Philly one
Saturday in the spring of 2001 and Liam and Noel Gallagher (Oasis) came
by to check it out. I knew I was witnessing something great whenever I
mixed this band. I had driven down on my own that day and on my
way back to NYC, driving through the Pine Barrens at night (any
Tom Brown fans?- "The Tracker"?) ,
this song just sort of happened in my head.
Hated
you so long
Kevin and I wrote this song together. I actually recorded this in my
bedroom with my acoustic guitar and my drum machine. For some reason I
think the drums sound cool (and real). Probaby from 1999
Cornelius
"The music business is a cruel and
shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps
run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side. -
Hunter S. Thompson"
This
is the band I started
with a friend from college. This photo was taken in Katz's deli by a
girl
named Eve Prime. I like how you can read "Ladies' Room" in the
reflection behind my head-but shouldn't it read backwards? Very
mysterious..In spirit the
partnership had actually begun back in 1991 when Paul and I were at
Columbia
together. After
a failed attempt to get something going down in Austin Texas (with our
good friend David Soloff) we didn't do much for a few years.
Back in NYC, I was busy playing bass in
Halcion and every once in a while we would meet to write songs
and play a bit. In
1995 I quit Halcion, Paul quit the band he had been playing in, and we
decided we would really give it a go for the first
time. I remember we were standing on the corner of Lafayette and 4th
street listening to the Afghan Whigs' "Gentlemen" LP on a walkman
and we agreed at that moment that we had what it took to make a record
like that. We started as an acoustic duo (I played guitar and sang
harmony
while he sang lead). Our first gig was at the Continental Club and
our second gig was at the CBGB Pizza Parlor. We finally
got a decent drummer (after suffering
through many bad ones) and after making an album on our own at Shelter
Island Sound on 21st street (with help from Aaron
Keane and Ray Martin) and
submitting it for an ASCAP showcase, we got a call from Nigel
Harrison. He was the former bassist for Blondie who also happened to be
an A&R guy for Interscope. Meeting Harrison made us realize we
really
could actually get signed. Many months passed, we got a lawyer and
wound up playing many nerve wracking but exciting
showcases in our basement practice space for the heads of what seemed
like most of the major labels.
Eventually we signed a record deal with Sony/550 Music, the same label
our friend David Poe was on. We made a record with Ted Nicely (who
produced the first few Fugazi records and some Shudder to Think albums)
and then promptly disintigrated.
It was a long and brutally painful saga and I'll spare you the
gory details. Stay tuned for the E true hollywood story-there's
definitely
one in the making...
Most of these tracks (except for Mexican Table Service) were recorded
by Carl Glanville between November 1998 and March 1999 at the Magic
Shop in NYC. The album was mixed by Chris Lord-Alge at Image studios in
LA. The band changed names several times for different reasons. We
signed to Sony under the name "Triple Eight" (named after the Triple
Eight Palace in Chinatown, apparently where the Dalai Lama goes for
lunch when he's in town). The
band was dropped from Sony in 2000 and the record was released
independently under the band name "Rivington" (location of our old
practice space) and the title "Happy on a sliding scale".
Guard
This was intended to be the first track on our first record. It was
written by Paul and features me trying to play a guitar solo that
emulates something off the Guided by Voices album "Mag earwhig". I
always loved to play this song live..
Mexican
Table Service
Recorded at a studio out near the Delaware Water gap in 1996 by the
emminent Ray Martin. This was the A side of our first and only vinyl
45" single (b/w "David"). I think we were very influenced by Nirvana's
"In Utero". Not to go on about my guitar solos but this one was a
keeper..
Indecision
Another great song by Paul. I almost had a meltdown trying to sing the
background part (I didn't succeed). I played the main guitar part on my
Taylor 510 acoustic. I arranged the string idea and Jane Scarpantoni
fleshed it out. I also played the organ which was such a key part of
the original 4 track demo. This was supposed to have potential as a
"crossover hit".
wait
there's more
First song we ever wrote together. It was concieved in my
bedroom on 38 1/2 street in Austin.
may
Another collaboration between Paul and me. For those who are
interested, this song is in kind of a wacky tuning- sort of a cross
between a Keith Richards open G tuning and a Lee Ranaldo tuning (Band:
Sonic Youth/Album: Dirty/Song:Theresa's sound world)
Yes my hair was blond. This band was the tormented
love
child of the brilliant
team of Dorit Chrysler and Chad Swanberg. Dave Soloff and I
responded to a very strange
ad in the village voice looking for a rhythm section that could
appreciate both Scriabin and My Bloody Valentine. I played bass in this
band for 3 years and quit
just before we were
about to
go on tour with Marylin Manson. They quickly replaced me with one of
our fans. Back in the
day, I wanted really badly to be in a glossy fanzine and with this band
I
got my wish many times over. I miss these guys and the good old days.
Dave left after a year and was replaced by Clem Waldman (UI, Blue Man
Group, Wisdom Tooth) and Clem was later replaced by Dave Barcow (who
had made a few records with the band White Trash).
Yellow
A side of Twitcher 45" single Yellow b/w Messy Marvin. Martin Bisi
recorded this. Very dark. I always loved Dorit's songwriting.
Messy
Marvin
the B side. The sound is a little early 90s CBGB scumcore
Bend
Down
Another "progressive" headbanger. Dorit (who is austrian) wrote the
words about some crazy witch that captures people in a trunk.(?)
With the Biology of No Importance
An homage to platonic passion. Pretty sublime guitar chords on this one.
Willard Moan
Willard Moan was the first
original rock band I
played in and the first band I ever wrote songs for. I have such fond
memories of the long
hours we spent jamming and collaborating in the basement of a certain
brownstone on 113th
street- really some of the happiest times in my life. When
I got to college, the electric bass was my main instrument (In the long
run, I wound up playing bass in two out of the four bands I played in-
I switched to guitar when I formed Cornelius). I
was first
introduced to Bowman Hastie (vocals) and Dave Soloff (drums)
by a friend from highschool (Gordon Clay aka Nappy G) just a few weeks
into my freshman year at Columbia.
It was 1988 and the
Red Hot Chili Peppers "Uplift Mofo Party Plan" was our inspiration. At
first I think our music was heavily influenced by the early
Chillipeppers, the Minutemen's "Double Nickels on the Dime", and
Frank
Zappa's "One Size Fits all". But Bowman's vocals were something
completely different and totally original. He was also an
absolute hurricaine on stage. Around the time of our last recording, I
was listening to alot of Jane's Addiction and you can hear it in some
of
the songs. After a few weeks of false starts with a
mostly no-show guitarist, we were thankfully introduced to the great
Josh Weisberg who was going to school at NYU. We started practicing
like fiends and wrote a huge number of songs very quickly. I think the
first song I ever wrote the music for was "Omnivore". We played many
sweat-soaked shows and opened many shows for bands like HR (Bad
Brains), Spin
Doctors, Blues Traveller, Yo La Tengo, the Dreyer Brothers and
Dreamspeak. In 1990, Dave
Graham, the son of the late rock impresario Bill Graham signed Blues
Traveller and started his own company in NYC called "Music Unlimited".
He tried to help us out business-wise but not much came of it. In 1991,
our classmate
Christina Wayne was interning at Rolling Stone and managed to get us a
spot in a "Ten best college bands" article (Peewee Herman was the cover
story).
We made three recordings during our time as a band. The first was
recorded in our practice space sometime during the spring of 1989 by a
friend of ours. The second two
were engineered
by James Kavoussi (of the band Fly Ashtray) at his studio in Soho which
was called "Toxic Shock". The second recording was done sometime in
90/91 and the last was recorded in the fall of 1991. We continued to
play shows through the spring of 1992 at places like Nightengales, the
712 club and the WestEnd. That summer Dave and I moved
to Austin, Tx to try to start a band (with Paul from Cornelius) and
Bowman went on to form Whizzy and later, Dreamkillers. Bowman is set to
release his latest solo effort called " '86 GL"under the name MC Extra
Cheese aka Red Lobster. In case you're
wondering, the real-life Willard Moan was one of Bowman's high school
teachers back in Oregon. In addition to our original material we also
played a number of covers including the often requested Black Sabbath's
"Wizard" and Led Zeppelin's "Heartbreaker"
Red shirt extra
From our '91 demo. Did you ever wonder what happened to those "red
shirt extras" on the original star trek series? The beamed down but
they never beamed back up.
BBQ
My brother always said we evoked "Mulligan Stew", the band featured in
fourth grade movies that would sing about the four food groups. I must
admit that here's something satifsfying about listening to (and
performing) songs about food. This track was one of the tracks from our
2nd recording effort.
Omnivore Also known as "Omnivore lord", this was our first big hit
(relatively speaking).
Rentacop "i went to dagostino 'cos i needed some milk sportin' my fila
(feeler) cos i got the silk". Another one of our early songs.
Corn
off the cob
This song has one of my favorite lines:"Stevie Nicks is in the house,
1970s sleek silk blouse". From the 2nd recording session.
Instrumental Last thing we ever recorded as a band. I think we cut this from
scratch because we had a few minutes of
studio time left. One of my favorite tracks.
