I got my kids a new computer which means I can now sneak in and do some primitive editing and add tolerable amounts of some of my boring pre-song patter onto these vids. I’m really happy with this guitar sound for the harder-edged older punky stuff when I play it unaccompanied. It’s kind of a rootsy, clattering, chug-a-lugging Bo Diddley-ish bashing of the strings in drop-D tuning with some overdrive and delay and tremolo. The song itself is a vintage Lead moldy oldie based on a cliche that hadn’t been so overused back in ’85 when I wrote it. This is also the first of two musics that accompanied these lyrics. This version from Return Fire is garage punk. We rerecorded it a la speedcore punk-ay two years later. 21 years later, on July 19, 2009, this vid was filmed at the International Church of South Florida by Jon Doozan.

Actually the first time I tried out a Coldplay song at church. It’s a bit of a train wreck due to my not knowing the words to the tune as intimately as I do now and guitar crapped out in mid chorus for a few seconds. Tried to make up for it by yelling. Hey, I’d only been listening to the band for a couple of weeks at that time. Filmed by Juan Pablo Camargo on May 31, 2009.

This goes out to the 300-plus people that viewed my train wreck rendition of Glass Of Water. It’s a punk-bordering-on-metal dismemberment of that gentle ballad about dead people by everybody’s favorite band that rips off U2 but sounds better than them anyway. Thanks to my fellow congregants at International Church of South Florida for their tolerance and support in my quest to irritate Coldplay fans, and to my favorite cameraman, the CEO of Techno-Coatings, Juan Pablo Camargo. This act was perpetrated on August 23, 2009. Thank you.

The last tune on Return Fire and I guess it was also my farewell to melodic hardcore circa late 1985. Metal and crossover beckoned after, for better or worse. The words are still actually pretty good. The military trappings and revolutionary metaphor made this appropriate to play on the Fourth of July weekend. Intl Church of SoFlo, July 5, 2009, Juan Pablo Camargo on the cam.

See, I really like to have the words memorized when I play at church because I look like a dork in this video peering over my guitar to look at the lyric sheet that was on the floor and which my man Juan Pablo Camargo mercifully kept out fo the frame. Nevertheless, I simply had to do this tune because the D-modal tuning worked wonders for it and I couldn’t wait anymore to get it out. It’s a ballad of love and loss (some of the losses are actually in the photos behind me on top of the piano) which I wrote in 1996. Intl Church of SoFlo, July 12, 2009.
Category: Music

I got my kids a new computer which means I can now sneak in and do some primitive editing and add tolerable amounts of some of my boring pre-song patter onto these vids. I’m really happy with this guitar sound for the harder-edged older punky stuff when I play it unaccompanied. It’s kind of a rootsy, clattering, chug-a-lugging Bo Diddley-ish bashing of the strings in drop-D tuning with some overdrive and delay and tremolo. The song itself is a vintage Lead moldy oldie based on a cliche that hadn’t been so overused back in ’85 when I wrote it. This is also the first of two musics that accompanied these lyrics. This version from Return Fire is garage punk. We rerecorded it a la speedcore punk-ay two years later. 21 years later, on July 19, 2009, this vid was filmed at the International Church of South Florida by Jon Doozan.

Actually the first time I tried out a Coldplay song at church. It’s a bit of a train wreck due to my not knowing the words to the tune as intimately as I do now and guitar crapped out in mid chorus for a few seconds. Tried to make up for it by yelling. Hey, I’d only been listening to the band for a couple of weeks at that time. Filmed by Juan Pablo Camargo on May 31, 2009.

Side one of the Lead’s first EP from 1985 performed on acoustic at church. I really don’t do justice to the first song, which Nina wrote (both her songs on that first EP just kicked – and they still do), and I loosen up a little for the second song which I wrote anyway. This is better on electric, even if there’s no bass/drums in the BG. Oh well. Have fun watching me be a shell of what I once was. Filmed by Juan Pablo Camargo, May 17, 2009.

The first song was first successful songwriting attempt to marry el rock punk with los lyrics Christian, back in the spring of 1980 as riots erupted in my homietown and we were preparing to get invaded by a bunch of Cubans in boats. The second song was written about a year later when I had a better idea of what to do. I heard the melody in my head Paul McCartney style as I was attempting to wake up to go wherever I was ‘spected ’round them times. That song made it into the live set of my first band the Visitors and both songs were recorded by Loogie Soup on their lone castanet release in those wild days of ’96. Recorded live at the International Church of South Florida by David Yuen on May 3, 2009.

Coldplay was a nice surprise to this jaded middle-aged man that I am. I’m no big fan of U2, but somehow I love these guys that are a semi-blatant imitation of that self-righteous overblown pompous Irish band (with a little “easy listening” style piano thrown in for good measure). Coldplay’s music is bubblegum for the 21st century, and I mean that as a compliment. So anyway I did this semi-punked up version of one of their ballads at church today, mostly because that was all my chops could accomodate with 20 minutes of practice the night before (like all good bubblegum, this band’s music can be played by most anybody in a few minutes). Filmed at International Church of South Florida by one Jon Doozan.  June 14, 2009.