A break from previously scheduled programming

...for some actual Christmas music!  Sarah and I played clarinet and bassoon in the orchestra of the Huntsville Christmas Festival, which our stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints organizes each year.  Nancy Law and Sarah Draughon do an amazing job selecting music, reworking parts for our orchestration, running practices, and leading the performances.  It's lots of fun to be able to still play real music from time to time.  All of the choir members and orchestra members are unpaid volunteers and only a couple are actual professional musicians or music educators.  We got to play 8 shows last weekend to Huntsville area community members.  Here are a couple of my favorite tunes from the performances, both arranged by Mack Wilberg:

Angels We Have Heard On High by are.kay.more

I Saw Three Ships by are.kay.more

Don't worry, everyone. I haven't forgotten about Good Lovin'. You will all get some more Good Lovin' very soon. I promise.

FIVE GOLDEN RIIIIIIIINNGGSSSAAA!

So, as we continue to stumble through the 12 Days of Good Lovin', our definition of a 'song cover' is broadening. You may have noticed from the very start that I've never actually posted a full version of the song, with all of the verses, etc. I even had the gall to fade several of the recordings out at the end as if to imply that I actually had recorded the entire song, but just didn't feel like posting the whole thing. Not so. Uncle Reeree is a lazy son-of-a-monkey's-Chief. After several hours I end up with one or two minutes worth of a song and I decide to call it good. Without the fades, each time you would hear the solo line wander from fun to annoying before finally ending up in the land of musical incoherence. Eventually the supporting chords would get tired of vamping and venture into an experimental modulation that leaves the bass synth still splatting back in the previous key. The drums would drop out altogether. The vocals would start fishing for potential harmonies or scolding children playing "catch the paint can" in the den.

Well, this time you get to hear a piece dissolve at the end. This next cover preserves the chords from the original Good Lovin', but fails to include any of the lyrics. Instead we have a short exchange between a British expert in something-or-other and a young student.

Good Lovin Dec 14 by are.kay.more

4 something something, 3 something else, 2 blah blah blah...

It's late, people, but I decided I would finish a recording and post it tonight. So I'll upload the tune, write a witty post, and then I will crawl into bed for five hours.

Let's see...wit...

There was a young lady from Niger
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger.
They came back from their ride
with the lady inside
and the I JUST WANT TO GO TO SLEEP! WHY DID I MAKE MYSELF DO THIS TONIGHT?!?!?

Why, you ask?

Well, my little padawan, it's quite simple.  It is a fundamental law of physics that if Uncle Reeree does not finish the 12 Days of Good Lovin' before Christmas Eve, Santa Claus will turn into a werewolf and eat all of the world's children.  I know, I know, you've never heard that before, but it's because I've shielded you from the harsh truth all these years.  It's a puppy-eat-puppy world out there and people need blog posts to frighten potentially ice-age-inducing asteroids away from the earth. 

So...this one doesn't fit into a genre as tidily as the last two.  I wanted to play with a vocoder, which is a device (or a program) that applies the shapes of my vowels and consonants to the sound of another instrument (an organ in this track).  The result is an organ that sounds like it's talking.  Neat, yeah?

Good Lovin Dec 9 by are.kay.more

Latin Good Lovin'

Wow, we're already to post 3 of the Good Lovin' project, and it only feels like post 14 or 15! 

Sometime in the 60's someone decided that everyone should have an electric organ in their home.  This was much to the dismay of the American middle class family, who had only managed to cough up the $4000 for an upright piano a few years before.  But, advertisements made it clear that there was joy to be gained from the electric organ that the piano could never provide:

Look!  Even grandma and Old Yeller have joined the party!  Plus, the electric organ wasn't just for family gatherings; it was the ultimate social multi-tool.  It could provide music for any social gathering.  There were song books with heavily boiled-down versions of everything from American folk songs to official state songs.  Some of the later models even had built-in drum machines and chord players that would help you play marches, fox trots, bossa novas, swings, and waltzes in your living room.  In the present age of computers, we take for granted the luxury of instant music.  But long ago, many an under-privileged child had to march in their living room in utter silence.  It was a pitiful scene. 

So, clearly the point of all that was bossa nova.  International treaties declared that all organs with rhythm generating capabilities include a bossa nova setting.  Digging far too deep into music history, we find out that bossa nova began its existence not as an organ option, but as an actual musical genre.  Shortly after high school, I remember hearing a recording of Astrud Gilberto singing Antonio Carlos Jobim's bossa nova tunes in Portuguese.  The songs were beautifully written and Astrud's voice was strikingly bare, with no vibrato.  There were elements of jazz, but it was so different from the hot and agitated American big band and bebop jazz.

As I was playing with the chords in "Good Lovin'", I decided to make the key minor, but preserve the chords otherwise.  After a bit of tinkering, some of the bossa nova influences surfaced, and I ended up with a nice Latin cover of the song.  I almost chickened out and just recorded an instrumental melody line, but Sarah insisted that I record vocals instead.  Sarah agreed to watch a movie with headphones on, so I could feel at easy trying out some Latin crooning in the music room.  I managed to translate the lyrics to Spanish (sorry, Antonio, I don't know Portuguese), but the translation's not great.  Instead of trying to translate it back, just be content to hear it and think "ooooh, it's foreign!"

Good Lovin Dec 5 by are.kay.more

On the second day of Good Lovin, my true love gave to me...

A lost Paul Simon B-side!

Okay, well, maybe just something that I recorded that sounds kinda like a couple of tracks from "Rhythm of the Saints" (to me).  Of course, Mr. Simon can afford to buy full African villages to provide him with backing vocalists, percussionists, and exotic instrumentalists.  I, on the other hand, can only afford to use my laptop and freshly sliced chunks of my self dignity to provide my backing vocals and instrumentation.

For anyone who's not familiar with the Rhythm of the Saints, here's an example.

Still, this was pretty fun to make.  About half of the percussion instruments are recordings of latin percussion instruments (cabasas, triangles, guirros, etc).  The other half are recordings of me tapping cups and pots in our bedroom with a digital recorder.  The plinky kalimba-ish sound came from my guitar, after I wove some nylon rope between the strings near the bridge.  I didn't take the time to clean up some of the lead guitar wanderings, but the 12 Days of Good Lovin isn't about polish, it's about output.

So here it is.  Put out, now, for you:

Good Lovin' December 1 by are.kay.more

The twelve days of "Good Lovin'"

Alright, people.  The turkeys have begun their annual journey from the oven (where mommy magic makes them appear), to the refrigerator, and then eventually to the sewage system.  You find yourself eating leftover sweet potatoes, cranberries, pumpkin, and other things that modern man does not ordinarily consume.  Each day the news paper contains about three times more glossy ad pages than dull new pages.  These things are all signs that Christmas time's a-comin', and you can count on Uncle Reeree to do his part to put you in the holiday spirit.

There are a few issues that keep OprahsFavoriteDeathMetal from being a conduit of Christmas cheer, though.  First of all, I generally don't like Christmas music.  Orchestral and choral stuff is very nice, but Nashville and LA have had to put their spin on the carols.  There are so very many popular recordings of old Christmas favorites, and the vast majority of them are suitable replacements for ipecac syrup. So, re-recording reeree-ized Christmas songs was on option, but the thought of "Silent Night" with a guitar solo makes even me cringe.

As an aside, I had been thinking about doing a series of themed posts.  When I was a kid, I remember a local radio station spent an entire weekend only playing different groups playing their own versions of "Louie, Louie" (originally by the Kingsmen).  It was fascinating to hear a simple pop song reinvented and reinterpreted dozens of different ways.  I thought it might be a fun project to find a simple and familiar song that I might be able to stretch a few different ways.

With these things in mind, I thought of a "Twelve Days of Christmas" posting series with a different cover of one pop song in each post.  Since 'good' and 'love' are words often associated with Christmas, "Good Lovin'" seems like a natural song to choose.  Come to think of it, it may even BE a secret Christmas song in disguise.  Let me ask google...

Hmmm.  Google had 71,600 responses to that question.  That's somewhat surprising.  I imagine that if Google had found only two answers, with one of them being "yes" and the other being "no," then they would be right one way or the other.  I'm clearly overlooking 71,598 other possibilities.

Secret Christmas song or not, it's what you will be getting for the next few weeks from Uncle Reeree.  This first one is a kind of electronic version.  I'm sure any old motown great would be thrilled to hear their tunes interpreted with drum machines, synthesizers, and delay boxes.  Enjoy:

Good Lovin Nov. 27 by are.kay.more

A very sweet love song

Yes, I have a sensitive side.  I may be a former bounty hunter, with 2 Mr. Universe titles under my belt, and a currently perfect record in UFC, but deep in my rib cage there are soft bits.  Through an agonizing process, I convulse until these soft bits liquefy in my lungs, and are coughed out as my arms twitch uncontrollably in an event that I call "me singing in the garage so no one else can hear me."

Here are the fruits of such an introspective, touchy-feely evening.  Find a quiet spot, put on a pair of headphones, and bathe in the beauty:

Hey Aunt Jemima by are.kay.more