221 years ago, across the street, or not

Improbable experiments!

I know I promised a closer look at my new comics, but for now, a trip down memory lane. It was caused by a brief spurt of self-reflection, by which I mean “I was listening to myself.” It happens. I heard that Prince only listens to himself, but then that goes against the fact that he loves Joni Mitchell, so I don’t know.

Anyways, this post is dedicated to a very old “album” I made, called “The Sun Has Feelings Too.”

It was made in 2003, I think, which puts me as a young ol’ Sophomore in High School, still going by “The Mazz.” It was more or less made in a week, sitting down at my massive digital recording unit (which I called “The Beast”), and just making a song, no matter what came out. What happened to come out though actually happened to be pretty good. Most of them didn’t sound as though I made them up on the spot. It’s hard to go back in my head and think about what inspired these songs, but i’ll do the best i can.

1. Sinking (i was clicking the keyboard on and off at the beginning to make that sound. “The Beast” had the best reverb effects, I used them non-stop on everything)
2. Entrance (i was trying to write a sort of manifesto-kind of song. there was a song called Exit that i wrote later, which I now have no idea where it is).
3. Whales (named after the weird effect I put on it)
4. Majesty (the giant feedback at the end was a total fluke. this is probably the best performance i turned in, knowing a lot less of ‘how to play instruments’)
5. Never You Mind (i think a lot of these songs were titled first, then written. there’s some great accidental guitar parts in this one)
6. Intermission (trying to be all dark in this one, i think there’s a nine inch nails song that this accidentally sounds like.)
7. Jest (I don’t know how this song sounds so good, to me at least. i know i was listening to a lot of Eno at the time, and that had something to do with it, not that this sounds anything like Eno. it’s a shame i don’t still have the hard copies of these songs, otherwise I’d totally go back in, remove my silly vocals, and make a new song out of it)
8. Close The Door (I think I shut the door when I went in my room to make this, hence the title. my dad said of this “why is the piano playing so naive?” to which i said “it’s supposed to be that way,” but really, it’s not)
9. Friend (i hate this song. i mean, sort of. i’m just embarrassed that in my attempt to write a bowie song i ended up writing about a dwarf. and i don’t even think i’d heard The Laughing Gnome at this point!)
10. Kayla (named after my gf at the time, this long moby-lite song was a real trial to play, but i think i did a pretty good job. one time i made up fake joke lyrics for it, but i don’t remember them).

Anyways, it holds up better now, as a curiosity if nothing else. Prepare yourselves in the future for more posts about “ian’s formative high school work,” because it’s all darker and downhill from here. No more lilting instrumentals, it’s death death death (nothing’s changed, oh no).

The Sun Has Feelings Too