I’ve been scarce around these parts lately because I’ve been putting just about all my free time into recording new tracks. I stopped chronicling the steps in Twitter because I really saw no point in it. What, are people reading my posts and going “Wow! He just overdubbed another guitar part!”? I don’t think so. Maybe my age is showing….

But back to the new tracks. I finally got the house to myself a couple of times last week to engage in chaotic noisy activities such as “playing the drums” and “recording a typical Frank’s Enemy vocal.”

The end result is four songs in the pipeline, to be released under three different names.

Here’s what I’ve got:

1. There’s No Stopping A Determined Asshole (Frank’s Enemy): 45 seconds of grindcore fun. With three different vocal tracks (good ice cream flavor names, I think): 1. hardcore screamo emo 2. high pitched black metal/grindcore shriek 3.cookie monster grindcore grunts. Plus one of my atonal lead guitar flurries. And a four second synth part, too. And I’m still 48 years old.
2. Submarine (Frank’s Enemy): Cover of a killer Ciro Diaz-composed track from Porno Para Ricardo’s masterpiece A Mi No Me Gusta La Politica… I’ll tell you right off the bat that their version kicks my version’s ass, but if it leads people into checking out the Pornos’ work because it is in ingli, it’s enough. My interpretation tries to edge the music into old-school hardcore with screamed vocals. The middle part incorporates Yoani Sanchez’ recording of a demonstration in support of PPR singer Gorki while he was in jail last August. I still need to overdub a lead guitar.
3. LBPunk4Xmas (Loogie Soup): Frank’s Enemy played two gigs and put out one tape in 1996 under this name, playing sloppy pop punk. I wrote this song a few years ago and pronounced it the perfect Loogie Soup Christmas song, if there ever was a reunion. No reunion ever happened but I did get a drum kit, so I recorded the drum part a couple of days ago. Very very garage-ey since I hardly know how to play the freaking kit, and I had to set the tempo on the slow side so I could keep up. I ended up with sawdust all over myself from hitting the cymbals too hard. I’m going to edit the crap out of it in the computer to try to minimize the unintentional humor. Still needs bass drums, git, voice, and some kind of sleighbell percussion.
4. I Am A Libertarian (Julio Rey): I feel a bit bad because I wasn’t too present in my blog while all the election crap was swirling around a couple of weeks back. This was mostly because, as I have stated before, I have nothing of significance that I can blog about that I cannot state better through my music. So I’d rather communicate through music as opposed to piling on more idiotic prose on top of what’s already floating out there in cyberspace (such as this very sentence). This song is my response to the election, and I still haven’t finished the lyrics. I wrote a first draft in 1993 in the wake of Bill Clinton’s election. This will be an update. So far all I have down are two acoustic guitars.