Hillsborough Bridge Song

For months now, I didn't know how to delete uploaded files from my typepad account. This kept me from attempting to upload anything, even though I have a large enough storage capacity. Well, tonight I stumbled across the page where I can delete uploaded files.

So, now I can freely upload and delete. Consider yourselves warned.

Over at my for-some-time-dormant-but-recently-ressurected blogspot site, Annekenstein Monster Music (which used to house this very Annekenstein Monster), I've posted a couple of songs that I and my friend Dave Stewart recorded years ago, under the rockin' band name of Chimp. But, since it's kind of an ordeal to get songs uploaded over there (don't ask), I kinda let that practice slide. Plus, it felt kinda stupid to try to keep two blogs going.

So, I'll periodically be posting songs here. A few of them will be somewhat shoddy recordings of otherwise excellent tunes of my own creation. Most of them will be songs by 'real' artists, songs that are currently making me groove and move, and that I think others will enjoy as well. If you feel inclined to download these songs, as a means to familiarize yourselves with artists you may not be familiar with, please do so. If you like the songs you download, perhaps you'll be so kind as to purchase the albums from which they come.

Each song will be available for an undetermined period of time, before it gets replaced by something else, so if you wanna grab, grab sooner rather than later.

Here, then, is my initial upload to The Monster: The Hillsborough Bridge Song. I wrote the lyrics for this song one day, years ago when there used to be a Greenbergs Department store (for about 5 minutes) on Queen Street, where Woolworths used to be, where GNK currently is. I was sitting on one of the curved wooden benches beside the concret bunker known as the Confederation Centre Box Office, and the song (most of it) came pretty quickly. The "Saturday nights" verse came a few weeks later.

As for the recording process, I'll not get into the details (you can read some of it at AMM if you want). Instead, I'll just once again state that, at that time, I knew very little about how to record music on a 4 track (today I know little more than I did then). I also had a limited amount of time to record a bunch of songs, so there was little time for going back and making songs better. It was very much a 'close enough, what's next' sort of affair. I didn't expect anyone would hear them really. Then this stupid internet thing took off, and well, here we are.

My singing on this song is just good enough for me not to be too embarrassed by it (that will come with future posts, if I get brave enough). Also, the guitar playing, while nothing special at all, is about as good as I think I'll ever get. My one regret with this song (and pretty much all the songs that came from this little singer/songwriter session) was that I felt it necessary to add an awful keyboard arrangement which is particularly horrific during the choruses in this song. I think my reasoning was that neither my guitar playing, nor my singing was strong enough to sustain by themselves, so I must add an ugly keyboard toot-thingy. Ugh. As in all of these songs (not to be confused with the rockin' Chimp songs), all sounds (unless otherwise noted) come from me, either as voice, (dis)harmony, and/or from me pathetically attempting to get sounds out of a cheap little Casio keyboard which I cannot play.