Okay so we’ve got two originals on either side of Radiohead’s “Lucky” this week. My Life is a rewrite of my oldest surviving song and is really in the demo stage right now. If it ever shows up anywhere else it might be in a drastically different form. But for now here it is.
Also, I apologize for the inconsistent track naming. I’m going to get it fixed soon.
=Z
I enjoyed having the week off to reflect and work on some different stuff, so I’m thinking of slowing the pace down to every two weeks. Whatever form the next release takes, its going to be very different than this, so its good to work on that for a week, then come back to this for a week.
Anyway, here are Frightened Rabbits’ “The Twist,” and Steven Van Zandt’s “Patriot” sandwiching the acoustic version of Rockstar. I shouldn’t have to point out the contrast between my take on the narcissism of commercialized music and these two songs, which are both very honest and un-commercial, but there you go I just did.
So here they are.
Only two songs today to round out the first half of the album. This take of Trouble isn’t perfect, but its got something that makes it too good to re-record. I didn’t play Summer Babe at the show, but its too much fun to leave off here. I might take a week off to the let first half of the album sink in, or I might not, I haven’t decided yet. I’ll let you know by next Tuesday at the latest.
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Three originals this week to balance (read: make up for) the three covers from last week. Really though, it was only Cannonball that sucked, and only a little bit. In retrospect I probably should have done a second take on that one. I got a little greedy. It happens.
Only one of these has ever been recorded before, and in a drastically different form. So here we go.
Housebroken & Hungry (acoustic)
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Three covers in a row this week. Once you have all six, listen to them in a row. I particularly love the transition from Saturday to Into the Mystic. I hope Van Morrison doesn’t hunt me down for that one.
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So I played that BuskAsOne show in April, and I would have loved to record it, but I just don’t have the gear. And past experience has taught me that a half-assed effort at capturing a live show results in a worse than half-assed sounding album. I figured 22 tracks of street sounds and drunks yelling at me was maybe a little TOO avant garde. So I decided to just “perform” the songs in my apartment into a room mic, so that everyone who came to the show and everyone who couldn’t make it could have a copy of the raw, acoustic performances. No restless production or miniscule tweaking of reverb filters and track dB’s. Just a big ass album of acoustic songs, with plenty of mistakes and uneven sound quality.
This is the result. Its like a live album, but slightly better. And its like a studio album, but noticeably worse!
I’m going to release it in chunks of two or three tracks a week, in order, roughly copying the setlist I played that night. There were a few songs that didn’t make the cut that night, but that I included on this album. It was supposed to be 12 covers and 12 originals, but two of the originals got cut in the interest of time due to equipment problems. So there will be weeks of just originals, and there will be weeks of just covers, but the first week is a mix of both. Enjoy.
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The links to the songs will be down for a day or two while I get the remixes uploaded. There weren’t supposed to be any delays, but I’m having issues with file size, so bear with me.
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Alright, here is the info as promised. I’m going to be playing the northwest corner of 2nd & Market streets in Philly on April 24th from 8pm to 10pm. All the money that ends up in the guitar case goes to LearnAsOne to help them build schools and teacher’s homes in Africa. Check out the previous post for more info on the charity, and if you can’t make it to the show please consider going to www.justgiving.com/ZachThomson to contribute to the cause.
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Don’t want this to start sounding like a blog, but I wanted to post a quick update to explain the lack of new music. First and foremost I’m remixing the EP, cause, lets be honest, it sucks. There’s a lot of potential there, but with just a little work its going to sound a lot better. This is in prep for trying to get it up on some other sites. Second, I’m putting together a setlist and rehearsing for a sidewalk show I plan to do in support of LearnAsOne during their BuskAsOne week. I’ll post time and place in a few days. Then finally, as always, I’m writing and recording so much that its difficult to get stuff posted. There’s a long queue of material that’s almost ready to go, but I need to get some artwork for it, and I need to decide on the release order. Its coming soon enough though, and its some of the tighter and more fun stuff I’ve worked on.
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In a kind of deference to Arjune’s post over on Scientific Progress (http://arjincharj.blogspot.com/) after his kind shoutout i’ve decided to post this song as the fifth and final track of This is Peculiar EP. I think I realized a while ago that the EP was essentially ‘done’ after rockstar, and that’s why it took me so long to get a fifth song out. But who says EP’s need to be five tracks? I decided I made my point with four songs, so I shelved the original fifth and wrote this instead as a kind of exclamation point. besides its all about having fun, isn’t it.
no music videos yet because my fucking camera broke, but the intent is there, as is the intent to begin releasing one off tracks with their own artwork. that should start happening soon.
the transformation complete, i hope you find it as satisfying as i do
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