"The blog is dead, long live the blog!"

This is it, the official end of "Batholudens." It was a medium-length, pretentiously-named journey. A new, hopefully longer, and plainly-named journey is available at my new website, danbandstra.com.

That website even contains a blog of its own.

Even more excitingly, you can subscribe to that new blog at this rss feed.

Things are all a little stark over there right now. Relatively well-proportioned, but stark. However, as an added incentive to visit, there is a new song up.

Great Historical Writing

"As former President Richard Nixon pointed out in a magazine article not long ago, when a country has the blahs, it sometimes takes something exciting, like a war, to get everybody together again, hup-hupping along. And that is very true. Germany is an example. After World War I, everybody sat around cabarets getting drunk and perverted. When they got mad at Poland, they all felt better."

–Mike Royko, "Panama – the Ideal Enemy," May 7, 1976.

Faraway and Foreign

This book is highly recommended. By the way, I readily admit that blood and seawater have different saline concentrations. This fact was known to me even as I wrote the song. Here is a riddle: to what extent does this discrepancy affect the truth value of the song? The answer:

∆truth=±6.8

If you got a different (incorrect) answer then you may show your work for partial credit. Here is the song:

No. 31 Blues (Tell Her From Me)

I promise the title of this song had nothing to do with Mersenne Primes, gallium, Jeff Burton, or Actium. What does that leave?

Sarah You Been Scarce

From P.G. Wodehouse, "Jeeves in the Springtime:"

Bingo told me all this in a husky voice over an egg beaten in sherry. The only blot on the thing from his point of view was that it wasn't doing a bit of good to the old vocal cords, which were beginning to show signs of cracking under the strain. He had been looking his symptoms up in a medical dictionary, and he thought he had got "clergyman's throat."

From E.B. Shuldham, "Chronic Sore Throat: or Follicular Disease of the Pharynx: Its Local and Constitutional Treatment:"

When I have very lengthly statements to make, I have used what is called egg-flip– a glass of sherry beaten up with an egg. I think it excellent, but have more faith in the egg than the alcohol.

I have more faith in a sore throat than my regular singing voice, but only because it's more likely to make me sound a little like Jack Elliott. Here's a song:

Image Source: Bob Fahey's Web Site

The Very Thought of You

The song at the end of this post is my attempt to write in the "Dream Pop" genre. This is a genre worked by, inter alios, David Lynch. Here is the other song of this type with which I am familiar:



This song features prominently in an important (and, obviously, disturbing) scene in the show "Twin Peaks." The tune (but not the vibe) of the verse happens also to resemble Harry Shearer's theme song for "News of the Digital Wonderland." You can skip directly to the theme song in this episode of Le Show.

Harry Shearer's song isn't really Dream Pop, and neither is mine. I only say that because I largely worked it out during a hypnopompic reverie last week, from when I was asleep after the alarm went off until halfway through my morning shower. Here it is:

I Like The Noise You Make

Ten-dollar words like "preternaturally" rarely fit in any time or place, let alone in the second line of a song. It's a special occasion for a nerd like me:

Riding and Breathing

The inception of this song is only partially attributable to the current influence of Larry McMurtry.



Image Source

Once A Painter

Was that . . . a key change? I hope the rift in the space-time continuum is mended before any more untoward phenomena manifest themselves in our quadrant.

Little Machine / A Place To Land

The following song, "Little Machine," completes the album known to kids these days simply as "Hupp." Please note that it was not my original intent to rip off Henry Thomas, only a happy accident upon listening to the aural artifacts created by one of Apple Logic's trashier effects and trying to whistle along:

The next album begins, surprisingly enough, with a title track. Thus, both the album and the new song are called "A Place To Land." Here is the new cover, in all its glory:

And here is the new song, in all its pulchritude:

Don't Let Me Stop You

"It was said that American-born Father Joseph saw the hosts of Heaven 'laboring,' as the Shakers called these movements and exercises, and gave the vision to his people that they might use it in their worship. He was entirely lacking in natural ability for such dancing, but had such a keen desire to attain perfection that the 'floor boards of a vacant room over a shop on the premises were said to be worn smooth by his constant practice in these exercises.'"

-Cook, Shaker Music, 26, citing White and Taylor, Shakerism, 101.




Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Special Way I Feel

I recently checked "Happy Traum's Flat-Pick Country Guitar" out of the library, and my consultation with that book is largely responsible for the functional use of bass runs in this latest recording.

Not that I pretend to virtuosity by any stretch of the imagination. People who think they're virtuosi tend to look and sound like this violinist I saw on PBS a few nights ago. He played eighties pop hits with a full rock-orchestral backup, not to mention light, video and fog-machine effects. He seemed very satisfied with himself and his whole operation. His fans also seemed rather pleased with what went on. Their rapt smiles fascinated me in an anthropological sort of way. I doubt I will ever be so pleased with myself, either as a musician or as an audience-member. If you listen to the following song you might guess why:

Put This Round On Me

Like anyone else in America these days, I've been told to ask myself what Jesus would do. The question is not as hypothetical as it tries to sound. In other words, the historical record is clear: Jesus actually did things. He lived a fairly mendicant life and then he was killed. He also said what He would do if He were in our shoes, viz. sell everything we owned, give it to the poor, and follow Him. He wasn't kidding, either.

If we're not going to follow these straightforward instructions exactly, then we're supposed to apply them to every little situation that comes along, rephrased in the following way: "What would Jesus do if He were me and He didn't want to get rid of all his stuff and die?" Here is a possible answer to that question, as posed while sitting in a bar:

You Are Worth It Now

I was about due for another track, and so here it is. Let me tell you, I came this close to playing the whole thing on the banjo instead of on the guitar. Fortunately for all concerned, my banjo chops are simply not up to spec., so the project relied as usual on the ministrations of C.F. Martin and co.:

Molly Stranger

After recording this song, I remembered that when I was playing guitar in middle or high school, I used to dislike the sound of the top strings because they seemed too high or shrill. (Music-induced deafness has taken the edge off this a bit lately.) With this post as evidence, if this here song becomes the number one hit single in the world, when they do the "Behind the Scenes" secret expose, they will say that my autistic avoidance of the top half of the guitar's range is the source of my genius. I will laugh, because the true source of my genius is ***post edited to remove profanity***

Chris

I felt the need in this song to say the name of a person. However, one of the major pitfalls in folky-type music is when a song is obviously written in the voice of a man to a woman, or vice-versa. It can complicate the situation when someone else sings the song.

This can go wrong, as when Joan Baez sings, "If you were a carpenter, and I were a lady, would you marry me anyway?" Obviously he would, on economic grounds alone. Leave that song to the gents or sing it as written for an up-to-date gay-marriage message.

On the other hand, when Sophie Zelmani sings "Most of the Time," the effect is pure genius. As the song says, "Most of the time, I wouldn't change it if I could." But then she does change it, and she sings, "I can survive, I can endure. I don't even think about – him." When she breaks the rhyme, it feels like she's doing what Steve Earle once threatened to do, viz. standing on Dylan's coffee table in her cowboy boots. It is a good thing.

There is a third way, known as the "Kristofferson Gambit." So maybe it's in his honor that I thought of the androgynous-enough name, "Chris."

"Hupp" Will Go The Song

I think this might be my first ever use of a title track. I should have added in the drum kit to make it a more radio-friendly single.

If You Need Time I'll Give You Mine

Things we only realize post-mortem: a song can be the fault of the chapter you're editing all week (and the subject matter thereof).

Honey Did You Make

Note that this song ends with an impersonation of someone barely keeping his head above the water. Here is a pictorial representation for good measure.

"Hupp" will go the song.

Not much sooner promised than delivered, at least a down payment. Here is the start of a new album, called "'Hupp' will go the song." There are no guaranties, but maybe one of the later songs will go "Hupp."

The first track is "The Good Ship Bessie May:"