Sessions From the Hut

I have, so far, wasted this entire day trying to find a good replica sound on Apple's POS Garageband for a Farfisa Compact Organ with vibrato. Considering I've only the unmodified software with no patches or instrument downloads or AU plug-ins to work with, the best I have come up with so far is the Dry Organ software instrument with the harmonic and cutoff steps options set to "small".

Who fucking cares? Right?

Well, I care, because tonight, Friday, March the 18th, will be the second annual opening recital for our mid-life crisis garage band. I'm as excited as a Norwegian can get, which is to say, for a cold people from a cold country, not very, or not outwardly. It's a terse, taciturn version of excitement. But I am excited. We will stay up to the wee hours of the morn, drinking and making bad music.

I am the keyboardist/alternate percussionist/vocalist/sound effects member of the band. Those titles are, at the very least, a conceit, as I really don't play the piano, or the drums, or keep time very well. Though I don't have much of a voice, I can at least stay in tune, and make interesting noises. This is sufficient to provide an ambient atmosphere to the performance, at least until I am told to stop, which happens pretty frequently.

But then again, our band is, quite awful. Really fucking terrible. So it really doesn't matter. One of these days, I'll set up something through a third party host for some of the tracks and then embed them here for your listening pleasure, and oh my, you will regret it.

(I think I've mentioned previously the band is known as, ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages... The Motherfucking Cocksuckers! And yes, I know, not the best name for a rock-n'-roll band. When my brother and his best friend first organized the band in his detached garage a year ago, many names were bandied about. Somehow, as a joke, the MCs were thrown out there, and there it is. At the time, they were intent upon coming up with stage names for their personae, and all I could think of was "So... are we gonna have a tree fort clubhouse too, and a secret password?")

According to my brother, last year we did 78 songs, which is to say we covered some 60 or so songs and created 10-12 originals. Those who have listened to the tapes agree that it is best listened to stoned, but rare favorable comparisons have been made to Spike Jones and Frank Zappa - in that we tend to do narrative pieces that are not very serious.

Last fall, during one late night critical review of the tapes, involving philosophical discussion and beers, my brother and I laid down some new ground rules.

We had kind of started out with one ground rule right from the start, borrowing from improv: Never Say No. If someone wants to do a cover, or wants to do something, whatever it is, we do it. The problem with this type of tolerant and creative magnanimity is that anarchy eventually favors the strongest personalities. Which is to say, upon review of the tapes, my brother and I agreed that a new ground rule is that the Kurman Brothers Really Need to Shut The Fuck Up.

Listening to the tapes, there were far too many time when someone would start playing something cool, and the idiot oblivious Kurman boys just  stepped all over it with  some stupid comment or musical crap. So, we are to police each other tonight. We'll see how that works out.

In the meantime, I'm back to finding that elusive high-pitched Martian space vibrato.