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Dan Pope and I (Kevin Dowd) have been playing music together
since the late 1970s.
We played in bands, but the larger creative outlet
has always been writing and recording.
Starting around 2011, we began writing and recording
with the following ground rules:
- We have one evening to write and record a song
- There's no going back and fixing it the next day,
with the possible exception of re-mixing.
It's great fun.
Nothing gets old.
The result is always a surprise.
The latest...
October 27, 2024
Well... see for yourself: Halloween.
October 20, 2024
Another messterpiece, Can't Fortget Her.
There are just a few instruments.
We used an online text-to-speech system for the French woman's voice.
Je' taime.
September 28, 2024
Story of My Life was written by me while Danny took a nap.
Another friend had given me this Roland keyboard that is supposed to be for live performance (but is
too complicated for that).
It has the ability to layer sounds, like many.
What's weird is that one of the four sound layers is percussion--a drum set.
So, while you're playing a melody, you get snare, cymbal, etc.
What good is that?
Well, it cracked me up, and the result (almost finished) is The Story of My Life.
The second offering is Country Gentleman, a
song about a country town where everyone wants to be a surfer.
The reason for the song is that my wife gave me a lap steel guitar two or three
Christmases ago and I finally tried it out.
What fun!
This is an A-side.
May 11, 2024
Two songs were completed last night.
The first, Someday has a great foot-stomping beat.
I'm not sure about the lyrics and melody....
The second, Everytime is a jazzy lounge piece
that ends with the singer engaging the crowd.
I played the piano like a drunk, which makes me laugh but bothers Danny.
April 28, 2024
There's been a lot of activity. I haven't even captured it all here.
Last night, Karl in the Graveyard.
Last week, Wubba.
The week before that, The Devil.
December 23, 2023
Two weeks we made our annual Christmas song, but it was naughty and won't be getting any presence here.
Last night, we made a groove based on a random phone call we received at the office.
Someone called to yell at us for robo-calling them, but we don't do any of that.
They left a message.
So, them complaining about us harrassing them became them harrassing us.
Well, we included them in the groove, and got the last word.
It's not good, frankly.
And publishing it here is a form of self-reporting.
But, it is evidence that we're not dead.
So, enjoy Robot.
October 29, 2023
I said I wouldn't do this, but I fixed up a song that I really like, and one that really cracks me up.
It's called Don't You Know.
We created the song in the mid-1970s.
We played it as an instrumental at coffee houses and even have an ancient recording of it (on cassette).
The song was unkindly named for a girl who had her own song that was probably
also called Don't You Know.
It was boring and interminable, and she repeated the phrase over and over.
We added lyrics to Don't You Know one night in February, 2022.
We also glued a Beethoven diddy onto the end of it.
Today, I fixed up the vocals a little bit, including the addition of some female
voices.
I cheated and used a Yamaha product called Vocolo.
Anyway, there's a new copy of Don't You Know occupying the
spot for the old one.
October 7, 2023
Last night we produced a randomly-named song: Endless which turned out pretry good, I think.
I haven't listened to it since last night, so I am not entirely certain.
Dan said he liked it.
He even called me today to say he liked it and he barely has a telephone.
While I was copying it over to the website, I noticed that there are a bunch of other
creations that never got catalogued.
This is probably because they're bad.
But, I link them here for historical completeness:
Wonder, and
Wind from the ....
I presume this is supposed to be "wind from the east", but I don't remember do the song.
And there's one by Bob O'Brien that Dan and I recorded several months back:
Ocean Blue.
September 20, 2023
After another long hiatus and a couple of really bad pieces (which might be
included here eventually anyway), here's Quantum Angela.
See also Precious, similarly motivated.
February 9, 2023
After a long hiatus, we're back at it—making half-masterpieces
in the course of one evening.
This one commemorates the recent Chinese balloon incident.
July 8, 2022
The wheels are coming off the bus.
Sabotage abounds.
Years, I haven't laughed so hard as when I blew up
this song: sabotage23.
Dan was making coffee in the other room.
"What can be so funny?"
I couldn't even respond—laughing too hard.
The song was called Garlic Boy, and it stunk, alright.
We tried again a month or so later.
Here it is with no lyrics at all: Garlic June.
And here's what it was supposed to be: But Your Name Is.
And here's the latest, called First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians.
It need lyrics, as you can hear.
February 26, 2022
We've recorded some pretty rough stuff lately.
Too much pizza, a penchant for sabotage, the futility
of existence all contributed.
For the first year since who-knows-when, no Christmas song.
But plenty of failed experiments.
The can be found in the unclassified list, starting with
Don't You Know, which is
a song about a stalker.
It contains hidden references for someone we know.
It even includes a little Beethoven riff, which is also a clue
(for him).
The rough patch of new songs ends with
Weather Channel. I said this was too awful to publish,
but it has since grown on me, given how bad everything else
has been lately.
I think you'll like it.
October 21, 2021
Last night, we did two songs--Halloween songs.
It took us to 3 AM, and we used the same words (basically)
for each song.
Are they good?
Well, you can get to the end without screaming...
Momma's Out Drinking on Halloween and
Daddy's Staying Home on Halloween.
Happy Halloween!
There was another song between August and today that never got posted.
The singing was really awful.
The music was like something from a weather station radar map update.
Is there anybody out there?
Write me at freetrial@bonerpilz.fun.
Seriously.
August 16, 2021
This last one is my fault.
I wanted to do something different.
Enjoy Bad Hearts.
August 8, 2021
Been slow going lately, with summertime and an office move.
Two new masterpieces adorn the collection--both illegal
because they once again break the rules.
The first, Aliens was written by Danny in the 1970s
and resurrected in an act of laziness on my part.
If it matters to you, all the keyboard parts are from a Roland D-10,
vintage 1980s.
The second song, Graduation was already partially composed
by Danny when we started.
That left me to decompose and add a melody.
It's kind of country/western with some yawning gaps in the
action.
Pleasant, though.
June 4, 2021
We had a trainwreck last night.
It's called Faireport.
Halfway through, the words are "This is the worst song we've done in
three months...."
Enjoy, you imaginary fans, you.
May 26, 2021
Four more creations and a skeleton from the closet this month.
The latest one is Danny's Song (no, not Loggins and Messina).
This song is illegal because it wasn't entirely created in one night,
and those are the rules.
Rather, Danny brought something he'd made up in advance.
It started as a kind of guitar funk—no words or anything.
But, the rules of the game were being violated, so I attempted sabotage
it by loading it down with instruments.
I played John Bonham heavy drums behind it and added a saxaphone part
from Street Trash—a scene where Frank finds a dead woman's body
by the river and finds it "interesting."
Anyway, it turned out pretty good even with the sabotage, and even though
it's kind of a pussy song.
Some lyrical elements stolen from Shakespeare.
Then, there's The Wrecking Ball, which we probably wrote during the
last moments of Charles Grodin's life, accidentally.
The song is kind of styled for The Heartbreak Kid, which Grodin
starred in.
I've never actually seen the movie.
Grodin became a talk show host and polemicist.
I don't like it when actors become politically involved.
I mean, how do we know they're not acting?
Next, we have Strummy.
Strummy isn't finished; we ran out of time and didn't get to the words.
But the melody is played on a Salvation Army Store guitar.
It's very pretty, and will get words someday.
The reason it is called Strummy is that we wrote it together solely
on guitars, and it came out differently than the usual bass + keyboard
combo.
The fourth new song is a little freakish and attractive
It's about a Carny, his trailor, his victim.
The chord progression is a little nutty, but it really came out
nicely, methinks.
Listen to Sygardaddy.
And then there's Zogart,
Look in the B or C sides.
As ever, it's all done in just one night.
But, as we get older that night gets later and later.
-Kevin
You can write me at freetrial@bonerpilz.fun, if you dare.
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