This is a print of the cover for the album that never was. Pre-CD, it was a 12 inch pic

My second year in the Middle Earth Dorms came with a bit more pressure, not academically, but socially. For some reason I was railroaded into being in charge of the annual Lorien Haunted House. (We survived – but I dropped a class, and kept skipping another, to do it.) What were we thinking? On top of that there was no way to top our exiting show at Cafe Brandywine offering of the Lorien Rag from the previous year. I was still getting random comments on it from people I didn’t even know. “Hey, weren’t you the guy who sang that song?” We had set our bar, and I couldn’t see a way over it.

Avast! Evidently, to show "wood" must have been offensive.

Never underestimate the influence of a random creative element (or a flammable accelerant). I was rooming up in 201B that year with Steve E, and I don’t even remember what the conversation was about, but it was probably about random chords, distortion, and punk rock. Anyway, I hit a simple three chord power riff over and over to illustrate some point, and our neighbor, Mike (the Freshman), dropped into a crouch and screamed, “SCUM!” I kept playing, and the next time around he screamed, “SLIME!” We were amused until the third time he Screamed “SAGA!.” Then we lost it in laughter.

Here is where I need to mention that S. A. G. A. was the Stuart Anderson Gourmet Association (aka the Soviet Attempt to Gag America), our cafeteria food service – which we used to blame all our woes upon. Bad test score? Well, you should have seen what they were serving for lunch, man!

And thus was born the Punk Band of Sensory Neglect! (Can you tell I was taking a psychology class at the time?) This band would hit everyone’s buttons so hard they couldn’t do anything but laugh. We would become every parent’s worst nightmare, the dregs of the music industry; we’d do it poorly, and we’d turn around and endorse the very things we detested. And so, I sat down from Mike’s beginnings and wrote the absolute worst song that I could. It was golden.

Someone out there has some post Cafe Brandywine pictures, but it’s not me, sigh.

The original Band Members were myself as Epsilon Minus (a Brave New World Reference for a new wave look) playing my old Electra MPC Outlaw guitar and dressed all in black (of course) with aT-shirt, bell bottoms and leather boots complemented by black wrap glasses and black lipstick.

Steve was Captain Cacophony, in Adam Ant-ish garb, complete with makeup, a beauty mark, and a full beard (very disconcerting). We gave him a single rhythm and a tenor drum that we liberated for a night or so from somewhere in the band department.

Jim (BOB), with his baby face, was James Mean, dressed in leather, denim, studs, and spikes with dark shades and some sort of dead baby doll handcuffed to him. There were some old upright pianos in the dorms, which he played.

Our front man was Mike or Mickey Mouth, who was all over the map. He dressed in bright green shoes and short shorts, and we stuck a noose around his neck (we had practice tying them during the Haunted House). What most people noticed, however, was his head. I took a skin head wig and shoved nails up through it to form a mohawk. Then I took some of that really cool telephone wire (the stuff they used to use with the bright stripes in different colors) and wire wrapped the nails like a fence, making springs and things shooting off his head. he also had no ears ounce the wig was latexed in place.

I don’t know what people expected, but at Cafe Brandywine 1983 they kinda went nuts when we came in, and even though Mike forgot the words half way through, they loved it. They apparently thought that was part of the act, and Jim and the rest of us just kept playing our “extended version” until Mike remembered.

I got called in to the housing office the next day. Oh no? What did we do now? I didn’t remember breaking anything or actually causing a riot, but someone from that very office had once told me that we had a reputation. He had said that we were usually very quiet, and then something would happen, and fingers would point our way. They never proved anything, and personally, I think we got more “credit” than was our due. we were all pretty clean cut, just off the wall. (Phil, don’t tell them about the flaming airplanes).

Anyway, I got called into the office, but not for trouble. They wanted an Encore for the top on campus housing staff. the problem was, we all had classes when they wanted the performance. Plus, there was no way I was gonna get Mike into that head gear again (I had shaved his neck – for his own good – when I put it on the first time.)

As it was, three of us cut class to perform, and we got Gina to Front for us as Hairy Deborah in bright green spandex, fishnet stocking and banana holsters. This end is offered as an explanation as to why Mike is not the voice we ended up recording. The original “live” recording evidently was garbage… So, we just sealed ourselves in a room for a brief while with a cassette recorder and then went to KUCI for the vocals. We never got it perfect, but then, it was funnier that way.

Sensory Neglect remained a background idea for some time to come, but I moved across campus to an apartment the next year and only brought the group together a couple of times. To our credit, SAGA was no longer the food campus food service the next year, but that was probably just because they were underbid by Servomation.

Oh, and the “Spinal Tap” movie came out the next year – which I consider a coincidence.

I later remember that Dave Godwin (Davy Moans) played with us on a pink noise generator (think digital fart sound machine) that we put together (we called the RUDE). We had a song about Wally George (portrayed with us by Phil). Wally seems to be gone now too.

There was some other stuff I put together over the next few years, but nothing tops Real Meat.

Those words, spoken by my first roommate in college, Ed Senechal, sort of… kind of… summed up our attitudes. We would all change the world, but maybe for only three minutes at a time. it was all in the “happening.” Many of us lived in a place on the UC Irvine campus called Middle Earth, a dormitory housing complex named after Tolkein’s fictional realm… and we took some sort of odd pride that we lived in Lorien, the kingdom of the elves.

Ed kicks back in our room in 104D Lorien. Boys and girls, he's listening to a tape - there were no mp3s then.

In between our rigorous studies of being full time students, we made and exercised various friendships. Some of these friendships may have lasted through time, often weakened by changing circumstances of geography until they are now more bonds of nostalgia. Some connections have been lost (Ed, if you’re out there, I’m still looking for you), and others merely maintained by what is now the internet.

Barb P. took this pic. Here I am at age 18 with my old Guitar sitting in the 101 suite of Lorien

And so, here is a musical snapshot of that time. If you listen to my music now and then, you may notice some similarities. The Lorien Rag is not timeless… on the contrary, it is an in-joke ridden picture of a specific there, at a specific then. I wrote it, and I confess that I now only get some of the jokes. Others are lost, even to me. From the reaction of the Middle Earth audience, packed into the inadequate commons area, there was something written in it for everyone, so even if you didn’t get one part, you got another.

Back in 1982, before digital recording directly into your computer device, we had cassette tapes, and if you wanted good sound, you needed pretty specialized equipment. So we didn’t record a lot. These recordings are from open microphones through the sound system, so there is no way to get the full effect of an enclosed space with multiple instruments. My hand scrawled notes list these performers for the Lorien Rag at Cafe Brandywine 1982:

Me (guitar and vocals)
Ed S. (toilet paper roll kazoos)
Barb P. (washboard)
Kevin C. (gut bucket – you can hear it until it breaks toward the end)
Ron T. (sparklets water bottle – he used it like a drum)

Afterward, I dismissed the rest of the band and gave them something a little more traditional. So my tag here is just Puff. I still have the tapes of all the other performers, but sadly, I have kept in touch with none of them.

Alright, when I’m invloved, cool is probably the farthest thing from your mind, but I still play with toys. They’re just usually things like musical instruments and pens these days.

I found this way cool unfinished wood castle on clearance at Michael’s over the weekend.

It opens up on hinges and has a special place to keep soldiers or chess pieces and stuff inside.

So far I’ve removed the hardware and now it’s about 80% primed.

I probably need to make some catapults to go with it.

Well, one thousand CDs – all with production problems. Here’s the fix: “A Gift of Christmas Music” in MP3 format for your iPod.

Last year I posted my version of “We Three Kings” for Christmas time. I was thinking of making it a tradition to give out some Christmas Music during Advent. And, now there was just this Facebook discussion about never escaping the clutches of the melody Greensleeves. Kevin F. complains that his music teacher is having him play “What Child is This” as a seasonal melody. Dustin C. then mentions that Greensleeves is like the Renaissance/Medieval version of “Stairway to Heaven.” Well, I beg to differ, but only because my version of “Stairway to Heaven” is actually based on Greek mythology, but I’ve got my version/variation of Greensleeves is right here for ya Kevin. Just download from the link and take this to your guitar teacher.

What Child is This (download pdf file link). It’s only nine pages, but guitars 1 and 2 are redundant.

You can find the original recording (before I notated any music) at Soundclick (listen to Greensleeves link). It was actually an improvisational piece that I did during the the olden KAF days.

Both of the above mentioned melodies/songs (W3K and WCiT), by the way, are on the new Christmas CD that came in last week. If YOU want a copy, just come out to St. John, and I’ll get you a FREE one off the rack. We have both a Christmas Eve candle light service at 11 pm and a single Christmas day service at 10 am this year. So, Get your CD before they run out! We’ve already gone through over 600 of them. (Unfortunately, there was a problem in production that cut about a second off two of the tracks – We do not recommend the company that replicated them. Those same two tracks, however, come directly from the CD Playing in the Water.)

We’re putting together a new CD for Christmas…. It’s sort of a last minute thing. but thanks to the internet and digital recording software, it’s a possibility. I already had quite a bit of material arranged, and some was previously recorded – not from my medieval CD.

I’ve got another contributor with a digital recorder and mixer in her iPad that has sent me a track of dulcimer and whistle to which I digitally processed with my own drumming. I’m waiting for another track n that.

I’ve got some base tracks set down for three other pieces that I’m working on too right now, and Trey recorded some piano midi data for four pieces on Wednesday. I would like one more that’s all piano. Dunno if it will happen.

So far, we have 23 minutes completed in eight tracks, and maybe another ten minutes in process. That should do it. We need twelve tracks in all, and I have eleven either finished or in process.

Not too bad for one week.

I’m being officially hired (sanctioned?, subsidized?) by the Norman Medieval Faire for 2012. All the faires that I was supposed to be at in 2011 closed (at least for the year). I didn’t get to the Renaissance and Fantasy Faire of the Ozarks because they scheduled themselves on top of Reformation weekend. Probably good for them, they seem to have thrived. I did show up unannounced at the Cherokee Strip Renaissance Festival and they were noticibly smaller than last year. I’m hoping that a faire as large as the Norman Faire can survive and break this streak. There were about 300,000 there over the three days last year. I’m also thinking of how neat it would be to visit the Wayzgoose again – sine this would be a 30th anniversary there for me. I think I knew about three songs the first year I was there. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find out an official 2012 date before the event happens. (April 21 seems to be the logical date, but just my luck it wouldn’t be after i got tickets.) They are not good about posting it (Actually they are pitifully poor in getting the date out in advance) and everyone I have asked says they will know the date when it is posted X-O

Can you tell what historical period/tradition we’re finishing up this week? There are no papers with a good papyrus pattern on them. This is the best look alike option for some ancient Egyptian lookalike scrolls, but it is patterned after bamboo. I do have some actual papyrus, but for a hundred kids, I have neither the amount necessary, nor the budget to purchase the real deal. I wonder if I could make something similar out of corn husks?

This one is a parchment texture, but it’s more medieval European than Egyptian.

Ilestne_video

I found this on the internet and I guess I find it amusing. The generic template knows nothing of the content, and the elevator music background is just too smarmy for words.

I found it here.

… and you can actually purchase this CD here.

OK, I finally got my audition box with all the requested information for the Norman Medieval Faire Finished. Checklist: Chapbook with the requested info, DVD, CD, pictures, rosary (for authenticity), reliquary, padding. Now I have an amazon box and air packs for padding the outside.