This one opens with some really unusual chords. The beginning of the recording is slightly cut off, so don’t judge it by that – wait until the melody repeats itself a few bars later.

I don’t really read music (sure I can identify the notes, but I can’t play from sheet music, only by ear). So, I don’t know for sure why this opening sounds so unusual, but I think it is because it doesn’t begin in a standard key of C. Maybe you know? In any event, it sounds rather sweet and sour at the same time to my ear.

That odd opening should be enough to make folks ears perk up if it was ever recorded properly. And then there’s a minor hook or two in the chorus as well – enough to keep the interest going, in my estimation.

This song has some very unusual words for me, as I recall, but unfortunately the recording is so muddy I can only resolve some of them. Still, I can hear enough to know that, like my poetry, the lyrics create unusual perspectives and juxtapositions. Perhaps someday someone will be able to decipher what I’m signing and send me a copy so I stuff in here and we can all appreciate it.

For almost every single one of my songs I can tell you what I was feeling and thinking when I recorded it, even if it was fifty years ago – but not this one. For some reason, I don’t have any major familiarity with it.

Perhaps the edge of dead brain cells is beginning to close in on me. Or maybe, even back then, I was too impressed with it. Either way, I’m not impressed with it now and don’t see much value to it. Yet present it here because it is next on the tape simply for the sake of being complete. Ignore it. Apparently I did.

Written and recorded in the early 1970s.

I call this one “Pound” because it was written to give me an excuse to pound on the piano. The only thing really original about it, in my opinion, is the third chord in the sequence which goes down when the normalized ear would expect it to go up. That allows for kind of a zig-zag effect: first chord, up to second chord, down to third chord, up to fourth and final chord.

Written and recorded in the early 1970s on our old upright saloon-style piano and a standard mono cassette recorder.

Though a lot of my early music is pretty raucous, several of my tunes from this time were very slow-paced, gentle, and pacific.

This electric guitar piece with voice but no lyrics progresses through some unusual chords, though it is hard to hear them due to slowly playing the notes of the chord individually, rather than as a complete chord all at once.

Add to this the vocal and the muddy sound of the original cassette recording and the chords that were the reason I recorded this one are almost lost.

Listen carefully, though, and you can just about hear them.

Written and recorded in the early 1970s.

This one intrigued me because of its odd harmony riffs and the playful, frolicking rhythm. I see it as a soundtrack theme for a children’s story.

Written and recorded in the early 1970s.

Something with a Latin flavor… I like this one because of the rhythm change-up toward the end of the main melody line – something to mix things around in kind of a stutter step before it ends up landing in the right place. Just an experiment in non-linear beats.

Written and recorded in the early 1970s.

I like this one particularly because though it is a simple tune, there are two nice hooks one in the main melody and the chorus. Each hook is due to an unexpected harmony caused by intentionally having the chording move in one direction and melody move in another. The chord progression or the melody progression by itself is not uncommon, but what is uncommon and unexpected is the combination of the two.

Written and recorded in the early 1970s.

This track is comprised of three separate short recordings from the same session. I just decided to leave them all together since they are musically related.

The first of the three is the only one with words, and placeholder words at that.

Here’s the lyrics:

Pack of matches,
lying in the rain.
Pack of matches,
striking up a flame.

What have you got for me, yeah.
What have you got for me.

Pack of matches,
lying in the rain.
Pack of matches,
doing it again.

What have you got for me.
Oh, what have you got for me.

Another one of my upbeat cheery ditties from my high school days.

When this short song came to me, I liked it because it reminded me a bit of some of the music of Harry Nilsson, of whom I was a fan.

Lyrics

Uptown, downtown,
all around our town,
people are smiling in the rain.

Here there, everywhere,
nobody has a care.
Everyone is happy again.

When doing a jam session, I usually start with a little prepared part – some fragment of a melody or chord progression that intrigued me enough to record it. Once I’ve played that part, I just keep on going as long as the Muse is with me, adding to the piece extemporaneously. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it all falls apart.

In this case, each new section fits right in and seems like it is part of a previously written complete song. Part of the trick is that when I play the prepared part and then bop out a good next section, I shove it right into memory and they repeat it again later in the song so it comes off as a pre-planned bridge or chorus.

In this recording, as I recall, only the first section was something I’d just written and all that follows are variations on the theme. In total, there are four sections, and after the last one I just repeat them all in the same order, and the result is something that sounds like a fully developed song that I had in mind going in.

Written and recorded in the early 1970s