** PLEASE DESCRIBE THIS IMAGE ** BD's Solo Audio Archive: 1980-????
Unreleased tracks, one-off oddities, and other curiosities from various eras, all featuring only meself.

For a collection of old things I've done with others,
have a look here.

The Dawn Chorus (2018)
In 2017 I was given a 200-year old upright piano which hadn't been tuned in at least that long. This was a half-hearted attempt to write something on it. I also used this piano on a couple of songs on my 2018 solo album l'Isola dei Lupi.


The Pshent of a Skunk (2015)
Nothin' fancy here, just a little piece for nylon-stringed guitar, drums and bass.


I Should Have Listened To You. (2015) Lyrics here.
Originally concieved as a song for Arx Pilosa, it came out like different pieces stuck together. Would have been better to have used these various ideas to make two or three songs instead. However I do like some bits, the verses...and especially the "incompetent" first minute or so!


The Isotope The Isotope. (2012)
As you must have noted by now, for example the opening section of the song above, every now and then I like to make stupid, incompetently performed, badly recorded songs. (Some say that's all I've ever done, hahah) so here is one from September 2012.


Going Nowhere. (2012)
I finished building my new personal studio made of straw bales, earth and wood in Spring of 2012, moved my gear in, and came up with this little tune just to try out the new space. Also to try flatwound strings - D'Adarrio Chromes - on my old Rickenbacker 4001 bass for the first time, rather than the GHS roundwounds I'd been using since the 70's. I've stayed with the flats ever since! The title refers to the ending bit which seems to ascend forever yet never arrive...it wasn't planned, just happened by chance as I was doing the vocals so I went with it. I have since learned this effect is called a Shepard tone.


It Wasn't Meant to Be. (2011) Lyrics here.
A song I'd planned to include on Bob's Drive-In, but felt it never quite made the grade so off it went to the musical recycling bin. I do like the guitar solo though, and re-used the chorus idea (at 1:10-1:20) in a song on my Lawn Ornaments album, Perpetual Lamps.


Badgered. (2010) Lyrics here.
When I read this and pondered whether I'd rather be haunted by a headless badger or a badger's disembodied head, I whipped up a song and recorded it on my Zoom H4n 4-track recorder, using the built-in mics for everything except the singing, that was a Siede PCME mic, and an Oktava MK319 on the bass amp. Mixed in mono. I sent this to one of my music heroes Jon Anderson who replied "cool song...do more animal songs...many animal songs..." which was a big thrill for me because Jon was one of my major musical everythings.


Trashcan of Love. (2008) Lyrics and illustration here.
I did this for an online compilation of 60-second "furry" pieces, which isn't available anymore. I recorded a different version called Letter of Complaint on my 2016 album Arx Pilosa.


Post - Shunned. (2006)
After I finished The Shunned Country, which consists of 52 extremely short, tightly composed miniature songs, I needed quick relief from the nearly two years of condensed, highly concentrated songwriting, hence this long, shapeless multitrack improvisation, whose only structural element was watching a stopwatch so I could leave pauses on the overdubbed tracks rougly at certain intervals of time. I placed my Bruno Royal Artist guitar on a stand directly in front of the Fender Twin Reverb amp's speaker, and played the guitar with another guitar pickup, plugged into the same amp. I never touched the guitar with my hands - just held the pickup above, and/or pressed it against the strings. Overdubbed a few of those, did a bass track the same way, then a track of non-rhythmic drumming, and don't think I ever even listened back to the whole thing! I just wanted to do it.


Untitled Banjo Song. (2005)
I recorded this as a track for The Shunned Country, and though it's a neat little piece, something about it bothered me - I still don't know what - and anyhow the rest of the album was nearly complete and this felt superfluous.


Someday. (2003) Lyrics here.
The piano came from a cassette of me improvising on a beautifully dilapidated piano, recorded in the mid 1980's in Denver. In 2003 I added the drums, bass, guitars, voice, and a barely audible and amateurish "Some Enchanted Evening" found on an unlabeled cassette I picked up off a street gutter in the early 90's. It was never really more than just something to toy around with, but it has a nice atmosphere and really like that bass solo! The lyrics were composed by cutting up two cut-ups of two different lyric ideas I'd written.


The Unused Announcements. (2002)
The original working title for what became 13 Songs and a Thing was Some Recordings of Pieces of Music With Instruments and Voices on them, and I planned to include announcements between songs, of which only four were recorded before I decided not to include them. I still think they're amusing. The background music in the first one is me on bass, Ron Miles on trumpet, Eric Moon keyboards, Mark Fuller drums. the second is me solo, the third and fourth is me and Eric Moon. The fourth announcement was to introduce The Great Escape, a song I recorded with Peter Blegvad, which strangely enough, I had planned to include on the album. Which goes to show what I always say about 13 Songs and a Thing: I didn't have much of a direction for it!


Pleasant Valley. (2002)
The lyrics are from a book summarizing each of H.P. Lovecraft's stories in a few sentences, this one was for In the Vault. While the protagonist in the story is called Mr. Birch, I changed it to Smith for reasons unknown. (This information included for the appeasement of you Lovecraft scholars). "It's the story of Mr.Smith, an undertaker who was not particularly conscientious as to the manner in which he carried out the professional duties of his trade. But he came to have sound reason for contrition the night he was trapped in the receiving room of the Pleasant Valley Cemetery."


Muranda. (2002)
The basic track of guitar, recorder, and voice was made on cassette in the late 70's, I added the drums and second voice in 2002. It was a contender for 13 Songs and a Thing but it's not much of a tune and the album was already going in too many directions at once. It's a nice little curiosity on its own though! The words came from a notebook of poetry written by one Katie Floyd which I found in a dumpster outside a run-down hospice in Denver Colorado in the late 70's:
"It's always cold in the city, but Muranda lives in the sun, and calls out "here kitty kitty", and "I don't want to see anyone"".


The Roger Variations . (1998)
Thusly named as it contains musical references to some of Roger Miller's songs. After I finished my album Medallion Animal Carpet which includes a medley of noisy, shambolic, lo-fi country-rock tunes, a record label asked me if I'd be interested in doing a whole album for them in that vein. I was tempted, and did record a couple of potential tracks for it including this one, but stopped there as I felt I'd already done enough of that sort of thing on Medallion Animal Carpet.


One Dyin' and a Buryin' (Roger Miller cover). (1997)
Here I do a version of one of my favorite tunes written by the late great Roger Miller. Recorded in 1997 just after I'd finished recording Medallion Animal Carpet and was still in that same noisy mood. Posted with kind permission of Mary Miller, Roger's widow. Thank you Mary!


Deserted Downtown Denver. (1986)
This one has a long story behind it - read it here if you like.


Guitar Solo. (1980)
There I was, 23 years old, in my tiny, one-room, 75-dollar-a-month apartment at 1205 Washington in Denver, on a summery afternoon in 1980 - hoping the landlord wouldn't come knocking at the door asking for the rent I could never pay - with a cheap Epiphone electric guitar I'd fitted with a telephone mouthpiece microphone and a "head" pickup above the first fret a la Fred Frith, a dilapidated acoustic guitar, a borrowed reel-to-reel tape machine and a little 4-channel Teac mixer I'd re-wired so the inputs and outputs fed into each other (they call this "circuit bending" today) all feeding into a cassette recorder. At times I leaned the guitars against the tape reels so they'd be "bowed" by the edges of the reels, and you can sometimes hear the ambience of the street below through the open window via the Epiphone's telephone pickup. If you think you recognise a funny noise now and then, could be you've heard it before: I've used snippets of this recording in a song or two from The Skull Mailbox and Other Horrors..


Back