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.

In salute to this year’s beginning of that great waste of time that is football season, here’s a country kickspitter I wrote 25 years ago after a rare second half collapse suffered by my New York Jets in 1984. Went over real well with the Dolphins fans in church today. Filmed at Intl Church of SoFlo by Juan Pablo Camargo, August 16, 2009.

The game that inspired the song is right here.

My vacation to Orlando last week gave me the opportunity to hit a couple of open mikes there (blog recap to come). In search of a connection to the local vibe I played this tune which I wrote about ten years ago about this mad keyboard genius who entertained at Disney’s Tomorrowland back in the late 70s/early 80s (MCS Facebook peeps, remember?). I speak of course of Michael Iceberg and his amazing Iceberg Machine (pre-digital, pre-sampling, all analog synths and tape loops). The song was written based on what might have happened to him since the early 80s, what with digital having overtaken everything and groups like Soft Cell and OMD making it big on just keyboards. It was a depressing scenario (after all, we’re talking about one of my songs here) that Google searching later proved to be untrue. It’s not really MIchael Iceberg for which the tear in the lyrics is shed, it’s for that fleeting moment you live through around age 20, when everything seems possible for that short time. Filmed at International Church of South Florida. Juan Pablo Camargo on the lenses. August 2, 2009.

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.