Incident at the Hatfields - 2006

https://soundcloud.com/urlp/sets/incident-at-the-hatfields-2006

Home recording gear, musty old basements with sweating bricks, mastering with Nick Ryan over at his Dostoevskyean basement on Capitol Hill, title added to give the whole thing a kind of Hitchcockean family story 'In Cold Blood' Capote sort of thing/feel, and all that for absolutely no good reason at all. This album or 'groupings' or what have you are an attempt at making a real album out of home recordings. I have nothing against studio manifestations, but the grime and sweat and basic American rot-stench was too powerful in these songs for it not to be an album.

Preparations

All eyes drear in midtown evening and

perhaps the world over.  Baby son Jesse

abruptly coils thick beef stroganoff

noodles into his mouth.  Sleep at one time

crept over the cities of ancient Egypt and networks

of tiny alleyways and yellow lit

windows were fed by soups of skies

                      and stars

no different than our current midtown

ramshackle existence ‘cept the public

transit snarls and roars outside

where once the buffalo crowded the

plains and the ancient hunt was

on for the season as the summer makes

preparations to bake the world.

- - - - - - - -

(March 29th, 2014)

Alien Invasion (from The Doneofits upcoming album Whore Bomb)

https://soundcloud.com/thedoneofits/alien-invasion

Lyrics:
I, I was born
Close to the floor
Close to the floor in the mid-west

Up above my head
Were silver space ships
With the darkest lining

Then for no rhyme and
For no reason
They landed with their space guns

Aimed right at the eye
Of every
Bureaucratic station

So sail right into the clouds
It has been this way forever
The earth crust tells a tale
Things have been this way
forever
AND THEY'VE BEEN HERE ONCE BEFORE!

Landing on the White House
Back yard
Like it was a golf course

'Take me to your leader'
Was what they said
But there was no one standing

So they brought out
All their plagues and
Dropped their bombs
We're fleshy tombs within their cook book

So sail right into the clouds
It was been this way forever
The earth crust tells a tale
They have been this way forever
AND THEY'VE BEEN HERE ONCE BEFORE!!!!!!!

- - - - - - - - - - - -

The Lost Agency

The ramshackle kitchen, coffee is

on and hot, not quite as bone-chilled

as it has been for some

time now, February moving over

to its middle ever slowing days

yet fly by blink of eye and

where did all the time go.

No rules to govern the lost agency.

Sundown will-of-its-own rules.  Wind

gust by window frames ever waiting for

the self same chill to leave my bones.

Saturday into Sunday, slog bogged

convenience store coffee after a short

stint of a drive over newly snowed

streets, thin sheen of angel flaked

snow yet potentially treacherous.  Other

drivers cautiously follow and lead

ruby-red brake lights and wet wind

shields, slaver of drooling windshield

wipers, ice and mud slush.

- - - - - - - - - - -

(February 8th, 2014)

The Great Lasagna Feast

The great lasagna feast about ready to be

cooked up in the cold chill kitchen of a

February Sunday.  I ran to the store and

pulled what seemed like a thousand

different items off of various shelf/freezer

fridge locations at Bakers on Saddle

Creek and Leavenworth, intersection

complete with giant Catholic cemetery

and Quick Stop not to mention Jiffy Lube.

The quiet traffic hum of Sabbathy Sunday.   

Kitchen now full of food-scent, savory

sweet cooking smells as outside is

white cold-chill, chalky grit-white

skies and temperatures low enough to

ping the tips of your fingers raw.

And all those summer foxes long since

scampered off to warmer climes with their

narrow snouts and piles of hunters on

horse back and 100 yelping barking

hunting dogs chasing at the fox heels.

Escaping wealthy goblins

and bridge trolls, the careening death

stench across and through opulent creep

                     rooms.

Straight out of Union hall sweats and

election year madcap set ups, these

guests will arrive this evening for the

great Sunday Sabbathy lasagna feast

currently boiling sizzling spitting on the

stove top.  Guest are old friends of

my mother’s.  ‘Were it not for charity /

I’d lay me down’ and during my great

last marital toss-up-divorce

at the end of 2010, these soon to be

guests sheltered my son and I, helped

keep us off nightmare streets and out of

soiled bathroom stalls, crummy cold wink

bum corners and sticky midnight

blood lettings.  We owe them the

savory warmth of this evening’s

Sunday lasagna cook up and

all the warm laughter to be had as

midtown cables hum and children

scream around at our feet.

- - - - - - - - -   

(February 9th, 2014)

The Downloadables #2 - The Second Tracks

https://soundcloud.com/urlp/sets/the-downloadables-2-second

Just as I did with The Downloadables #1, I've went through my playlists or 'albums' of my stuff and chose the 2nd track of each to be downloadable. I strongly implore you to listen in your vehicles and yachts and jets or if you're out walking around with shoes falling apart but happen to have some kind of listening device of modernity (etc blah blah) then give a listen and own it. Why not. ; ) Enjoy or destroy.

Roughs 5 - Ashes and Rainbows

https://soundcloud.com/urlp/sets/roughs-5-ashes-and-rainbows

As far as I know (and I might be wrong) this'll be the end of the Roughs recordings, at least until I start recording on a home multi-track device again like the BOSS Digital 8-track I was using with Roughs 5. The 'Roughs' end here because now I record with Pro-Tools at home and most of my work has been thrown in to The Doneofits, the band I am currently in with my wife Ashley. At the time this was recorded, Ash and I were seeing each other but not married yet. It was recorded on my BOSS in a tiny kitchen that was my 'girlfriend's' at first before we got married almost 2 years later. Particularly, They Won't Find a Thing didn't go over very well with the neighbors sandwiched in along side our apartment. I think they thought I was losing my mind. Enjoy or destroy!

Show Less

Acoustic Ramblings - #1

https://soundcloud.com/urlp/sets/acoustic-ramblings-1

When I was 13 years old (this was back in 1983) I received an acoustic guitar from my parents as a Christmas present. I was begging for a guitar and they finally got me one. As soon as I received it, I locked myself in my room and as my mother says 'You never really came out of your room.' I suppose that's right. At any rate, the majority of the songs I write begin with the acoustic even if I've multi-tracked layers of crap over the original intent. So I thought a listing of primarily acoustic guitar songs was in order. Enjoy or destroy! ; )

The Downloadables - #1

https://soundcloud.com/urlp/sets/the-downloadables-1-the

I decided to make the first track of every grouping or album that I've posted downloadable. So go ahead and burn these off and listen to them in your car late at night when the wind howls and you're nodding off at the wheel. Tiz a great time fer it. Enjoy or destroy. ; )

The Old Pinging

Response mechanisms,

spearmint chewing

gum of an old body politic.

Fingers out probing the

air for direction

to see if the frozen rain will come.

As pointless as it may seem,

nobody really knows

why the old pinging returns

to glaze the world

over in a frozen halted

            stream.

- - - - - - -

(February 2014)

Mogwai - I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead

Best of Johnny Cash - playlist

And the Sea Did Rage - 2007

Recorded with Nick Ryan out of his apartment in Denver Colorado with hi-fi mics and a Q-base system. The idea was to be as 'acoustic-singer-song-writer-indie' as I could beings how I was going through a separation and divorce and lost a whole shit ton of gear as well as a way to keep up with a band since I was taking care of my son Max (now 11 years old) all on my own. The album reflects an old way of doing things completely rotting away and a new approach ready to follow.

https://soundcloud.com/urlp/sets/and-the-sea-did-rage-2007

Time Marches On

The evening folds

itself coldly,

pockets of

wet and ice,

gray forgotten slush

bordered

by sidewalk salt

white stain and

a thick sheet

of ice slicking

the dark pavement

of my driveway

and the splintered

old garage

at an unrequited slant

begging time to stop

gravity yet moves onward

like a delirious dream

of white walled infinity.

- - - - - - - -

(February, 2014)

Renegade Musics for a Dilapidated Economy pt. 3

https://soundcloud.com/urlp/sets/renegade-musics-for-a-2

A Denver Basement pt 2

https://soundcloud.com/urlp/sets/a-denver-basement-pt-2

Cat Power - We All Die

Subject to Heaps of Days and Kitchen Evenings Within the Wilderness

A stick of incense lit up in the 4:15 PM kitchen

filling the room with a delirious sandal

wood parchment hut smokey-ocean

beach scent.  Ashes from night-before

float off as silent as death or bold

faced nothing.

Subject to heaps of days until one day

falls over chosen where

car tires roll-hum over the secret

swish-hiss interstate and all that

full mooned wilderness surrounding

twist gnarled thorn branches

growing dry and arthritic out of

stink-ass mud sucks where clouds

of flies buzz and nuzz together

under the hot summer season.

Dull-brassed gleam of bronze gold-plated

marble, the tried and true stiff prick

phallus of the plains, the Nebraska

state capitol surrounded by ramshackle

ages-old neighborhoods full of silent

porches and crooked windows

glowing in warm lamps.

Sundown Sunday wrapped up cozily

into family, children sitting around

the island counter watching Rocky and

Bullwinkle on the computer screen

and the old ways of the old humor

wrap themselves around my kid's minds

and disperses the cold germ of

history into scratch radio signals

peaking at the sky invisibly.  Deep

in the chilled shades of March, out of

evening doorways, the radio insect

chirp can be heard droning into

talk shows, focused media

chaos long past the old polka shows

and War of the Worlds fantasy.  Orson

Welles memory, whiskey bit Citizen

Kane basements full of Nebraska

               cobwebs.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -  

(March 16th, 2014)

Arrival

Do not trouble yourself about the wilderness.

There’s always some kind of road will get

our souls through, but a question remains

as to the validity of any road.

Native Nebraska tortoise, made his way

slow as endless summer hell-fire across

some tar-streaked highway in 1991 McCook

Nebraska.

The calm lumbering bumper-pace of the tortoise

with it’s hard shell soft gleam under the

merciless sun, made it to the ditch on

the other side - would die some other time,

not yet road kill lump at the shoulder of the road

quietly rotting bump stench with a buzzing pepper

of flies and salt of rice-bit squirming maggot larvae.

A tiny hotel bathroom window -

you can’t crawl out through the crimp glass,

you can only wait for death to slowly arrive

                    with a petulant knock

                    on the paper door.

- - - - - - - - - - -

(March 16th, 2014)

A Quick Back Alley Snort

In 2004 I began catching the stench

of my own unfulfilled morning quake

tremor, it turned normal faces at the bus stops

into devils as the world kept spinning

albeit dirge like circular walk back

                 then.

There were the open jagged snarl shape of tin gutters spitting

and groaning out slavers of rainwater

and the ground was slicked-down drool

near the street curb.

I offered my whiskey up in 2008 to a

faceless waiter in the back alley, appreciated

the quick snort and warmth in-belly

as a new president took office and the

old world shifted away forever.

- - - - - - - - -

(March 18th, 2014)