None of the songs on this CD belong here. At least, I never intended to have them here. In my mind, I was thinking, “There could be a DWAB guitarron CD… or there could be the Chinese instrument CD…” The song “The Little Man” was supposed to be its own mini-CD, and I had such a good collection of songs that John had helped me on that I was even going to do another DWAB “John Lyons” CD.

But, as you can tell, these “ideas” didn’t quite materialize. Maybe it’s because I can procrastinate when it comes to some of these ideas. Maybe it was because I was afraid that if I did not put these songs on a CD soon, I never would get around to doing it at all… I don’t know…

In a way, though, it works in much the same way that my music “works.” There is no grand plan, but somehow, at least to me, it works out in the end, and I am happy. Something happens with the way the songs are thrown together, where after a while, I can even fool myself into thinking there was a plan.

There never was really…

Most of these songs were recorded on my own, between 2000 and 2002. Some are ancient in terms of the actual recording (”The Little Man” and “The Strumstick Songs” for example). Others are ancient in terms of when they were written, but have only recently been recorded (like the creatively titled “New Old Song.”)

But, these rambling notes aside, just give the songs a bit of attention for a couple of listens, and remember, it was all very well calculated… it is actually a part of a big plan of mine…

~ Ananda

So, here we have it. A few of my Amy songs. I usually make up the lyrics as I go along—just as a reminder. But I tend to only sing them to one person… Anyway, some of these have made their way from being just “sketches” to being actually well-recorded songs, but many have not, and this can serve as a document reflecting the first true collection of Amy songs.

Cover photo by Brian Tamborello - Thanks!

The Songs

T | H | E

A | M | Y

S | O | N | G | S

• Wondering
• Melody Undecided
• Oh! Massive, Massive, Macho Man…
• Elaborations
• Those Few Seconds
• Christ
• Oh! Massive, Massive, Macho Man…
• Melody Undecided
• Gnirednow

• The Jazzy Bagpiper (created using the Mod Plug Tracker)
• Layers (layers of samples created using Rubber Duck and sequenced with Magic Music Maker (MMM))
• Soundtracks  (Magic Music Studio’s (MMS) midi program)
• The Hard Rockers (MMM)
• Blatantly Stolen (a DWAB enhanced (or is it ruined?) sample from a Slapp Happy song. MMM)
• Driving On (random samples sequenced with MMM)
• Squeeky Deek and the Record Cutters (Mixman)
• DWAB Classics (Music Write Plus)
• Whiner (MMS)
• "Wanna Hear Something Funny?" (MMM)
• Rainy Days (Mixman)
• Birds and Oboes (MMS & MMM)
• Trompling (the limit for odd sounds from Mixman. How unfortunate…)
• A Day at the Zoo (MMM)

The Sherman’s box began some time towards the end of 1997. The DWAB vs. Ben 7″ was successfully completed for Christmas 1997, and I was busy thinking up a new storm ideas to keep me busy during 1998. The original home of this music, and the reason for this release being titled as it is, involved actual Sherman’s cigarette boxes. The boxes would have ideally housed a cassette and some miniaturized reprints of some of my more recent artwork. Then personal computing and the addition of a CD burner to this PC entered into the picture. I said to myself, “I really do not like tapes one bit, records are too expensive for me, and no one else has yet realized the wonders of MiniDiscs. I guess CDs might be my best option.” Thus, the original idea I had, (for which lovely Amy had painstakingly saved the boxes in which her bad habit was packaged), was no longer implementable. Shame shame.

Slight observation will reveal that this release is mostly instrumental. I think that A good Feeling should provide an adequate response to why I decided to perform the songs in this manner. Some further observation will reveal that the computer element of music has also begun to play a small part in my creations. At the same time, I have expanded my collection of toys, and I have had some wonderful people willing to whittle time away with me and show me their take on music. The results are occasionally a bit odd. But I love them. Their sounds fascinate me. I cannot help it.

Recording Notes

All songs recorded at 2657 Foothill Road except: A Good Feeling V.1., which was recorded while driving around in a 740 GLE Volvo. Orson Welles and What Happens When DWAB Goes Dancing were done entirely on the computer using a program called Magic Music Maker. Ultra Pop was recorded at a practice space downtown for “Something Like That.” Beckoning at Mayhem was recorded in an Isla Vista apartment’s living room. A Quick One was recorded by the incredible John Lyons at “The Living Room” some time in 1997.

Lyrics

A Good Feeling…

The sounds are being replayed loudly in my head. Sometimes I think maybe too loud. Maybe it’s just noise. If I stop to concentrate on them for too long, they start to sound like an orchestra on stage tuning up. Everyone is throwing out their two seconds of a melody before reverting to the overwhelming overload of beeps and rumbles. And yet there seems to be perfect continuity and logic - a sense of direction. It’s not about music. It’s about sounds and what you choose to hear. The sounds of the cars going by on Foothill Road while I strum my acoustic guitar - or the sounds of my breath on the quiet parts of my songs. It seems like these must all be entirely necessary. All adding to the noise that I am creating. It’s all getting so very loud. My head is filled with incredible ringing sounds. It is tiring to stay awake, but it is well worth my effort. I don’t think that the sounds will ever stop. And that is definitely a good thing indeed.

When I was trying to figure out what to do for the cover, the thought came to me that many people ask me, “What does DWAB mean?” I decided to use this question as the basis for the cover, and with the help of some friends, came up with an (incomplete) list of DWAB acronyms. The list of acronyms can be found at the end of this post.

As you’ll see, a lot of them are silly. There are a few inside jokes, such as “Dinner with a bullet” is in response to another local band, “Picnic with a Gun.” Also, within this list lies the original acronym for DWAB.

Anyway, more about the CD… The John Lyons Sessions were exclusively acoustic, and originally instrumental. The songs were originally recorded in 1996, and a long time later, I decided to try recording vocals over most of them.

Additional Notes

The One Final Episode in Our Attempts at Persistence CD varies from the record in several ways. First of all, the tracklisting is different. The 10″ was a combination of songs 1-4 plus several acoustic songs. Since the acoustic songs ultimately ended up as part of The John Lyons Sessions I figured it was not necessary to include it here. Instead, the CD version can be seen as a collection of structured DWAB songs featuring David Hanna on drums. I say “structured” because David also appears frequently on The Exciting Nights of Discordant Torture, but the songs on that release are largely improvised. For One Final Episode in Our Attempts at Persistence, we typically practiced songs for a couple of weeks before going in to record them, essentially minimizing the “improvised” feeling many DWAB songs tend to have.

As for the packaging, the cover of this CD comes from the poster that was included in the 10″ version. The face used for the back cover was the image used for the 7″ single. The 10″ also came with a thick booklet with lots of stories, poems, and drawings.

These notes are not included in the CD version of the release (mostly because not everything applies, and finding the space to put all the notes can be tough at times….

About this tape:

This tape is a representation of a musical side of DWAB which is not nearly as exposed as I think it ought to be… which, due to the limited availability of this release makes this tape sort of a hypocritical production.

But that thought shall be put aside, and the tape exists, if only because its existence is of immeasurable importance to me.

Many of the songs found on here were recorded on my own in my bedroom on a little 4-track. They are very reflective of the very first DWAB songs especially in the spontaneous nature of their creation. In other words, most of these songs are not pre-rehearsed or pre-planned… The evening just called for some musical excitement and I grinned at the opportunity.

Often, songs created on such nights are performed by lonesome me, although as you can see, the majority of these songs employ the fine talents of at least one other person.

Whenever I can, I try to refrain from relying solely on conventional instruments. Or, at the very least, to refrain from using them in an entirely conventional way. Absolutism is neither possible, nor is it desired in most cases, and I do not have the musical knowledge necessary to break conventional methods of performing. Blah blah blah… feel free to read on…

About some of the music:

Most of the songs on this tape are previously unreleased. Here are the exceptions: You’re Doing It Wrong, First Poem For A Friend, Confusion Corner, Kiss, Leer Hjitum, and Conformity. Of those, You’re Doing It Wrong and Leer Hjitum appeared on a compilation cassette titled TOCMOS released on Loquacity Recordings. The Kiss version on this tape is a slightly longer, slightly remixed version than the version found on the original DWAB tape Music For And About Gods. The other three songs which are previously released all appear on the DWAB 10″ One Final Episode In Our Attempts At Persistence released on Reality Control? Recordings. Of the three songs, First Poem For A Friend is from the same session as the 10″, and is simply a remixed version. The version of Conformity is one of the older versions of this song (the earliest version of this song is virtually an instrumental (slight vocal work), without a drum machine). This version added a couple of parts along with drums and vocals. Similarly, the version of Confusion, Corner on this tape is an earlier version, without drums. There is an entirely different sounding song on the Music For And About Gods tape which uses the same lyrics. The same can be said for Elaborations… The words are the same, just sung to a different tune. A song worth mentioning here would be the one titled Rehashed Music. The title of the piece refers to the bass line, which, many years ago, was an introduction to a Jeberrekeñelle song. The introduction never had a title, so here, I am calling it what it is… Blah blah blah… yes folks, there’s more to read…

Actually, the text that followed talked about the included artwork (which is now included in the Ananda & Ben live CD since it is more appropriate there). The original 25 copies of this tape came in cardboard boxes used to ship artists’ paints. The boxes were roughly 4.5 inches square, and 1.25 inches deep. The covers had four or five variations of brownline prints of large format photo negatives. Inside the box, there were several different things. First, there was the tape, minus a case, but housed in a paper sleeve wrapper hand stamped with a hand-carved rubber stamp. Second, there were two wood-block prints, printed on decorative paper. Third, there was a Xeroxed 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper folded up into eights. One side had the tracklist, lyrics, and performers. The other side had miniaturized reproductions of the artwork now found in the Ananda & Ben CD. Finally, there was an 8 page blueprint booklet with a chipboard cardboard cover containing the above text and a little more.

After the first 25 tapes had been distributed, I reformatted the Xeroxed page to fit a cassette format, and created a few regular cassettes for people who had heard about the release and wanted a copy.

… the whole deal behind DWAB, since I know you all want to know just what the hell is going on here. Simply put, DWAB is jus another idea of a way for me to pass my time, and I owe a certain amount of credit to my little brother, Shirvan, with whom I did the first DWAB song.

Some of this tape sounds like shit. Or all of it, if you’re fussy about sound. But I didn’t get a four-track until about half of the way into recording everything, making me rely entirely upon multiple tape decks (and luck in timing) to layer my hundreds of tracks.

DWAB songs are usually “just done,” meaning that they aren’t really rehearsed…. They are just made up while being recorded. I don’t know why I like that style of production. I just thought it seemed fun, and I liked the result of the first song and I thought that I would work with that further….
… and some newly updated notes about the recordings you are listening to…

I can still remember it all so clearly. I was playing in a “band” called Distortion, and we would get together on weekends with a Casio keyboard, a couple of buckets, a ghetto-home-made-mixer, a guitar, and a microphone, and work all day on these absolutely horrible songs. I was the singer… if you could call my monochromatic vocalizing singing.

That musical excursion fizzled fairly rapidly. The house on Mission Canyon Road was quiet for a while. Until the day that Shirvan joined me upstairs, and we set up a collection of tin cans with pennies on top to make them rattle, and I stuck a microphone inside my battered, out of tune guitar, and we hit record and ended up with an incredible beastly blast of improvised noise that was entirely fun and impressive to me.

Shirvan and I did, in twenty minutes, what the four guys in Distortion had labored months towards. But then again, Distortion was a band, and DWAB certainly was not….

My general technique for composition became calling up a friend and asking them to come over to accompany me while I rocked on. I had about three tape decks, with each tape deck being a different “track” going into the home-made mixer, the output of which went into a fourth tape recorder. That was my high-tech, multi-track studio.

Eventually my grandfather suggested that I look into what I might need to make better quality recordings, and he bought me a bare-bones four-track recorder, which changed the story entirely…. Most of the longer songs on this CD are from that later, more controlled era. The more we listen and play, the more we learn….

… and some noteworthy differences between this CD and the original cassette(s)…

The original official cassette version of Music for, and About Gods was a full 74-minutes long. This was more a matter of convenience on my part. A friend of mine needed bulk 74-minute blank tapes, but only needed 50, so I bought the other 50 from him.

The music on the cassette was presented in a continuous manner. There was no blank space on the original tape. As a song was ending, I would fade in a piece of music by groups I enjoyed listening to, then fade in my song.

In this “condensed” version, I have cut out some of the songs that were unbearably deteriorated by my excessive home-style multi-tracking, and have minimized the amount of non-DWAB music. All songs now appear as separate entities.