No Shows

Action Cat

Hesitant Alien

Maya the Psychic

How It's Going to Be

Get the Gang Together

Drugstore Perfume

Juarez

Zero Zero

Millions

Brother

The Bureau

Into the Cave We Wander

Pinkish / Don't Try

Pinkish

Don't Try

Baby You're a Haunted House

Getting Down the Germs

Dasher (feat. Lydia Night)

Hazy Shade of Winter (feat. Ray Toro)

Happy Together (feat. Ray Toro)

Phoning It In

Some folks make hasty decisions
They live their life on the go
I can’t be bothered to give a damn bout anything and
Some people say I’m a pro

You’re busy climbing the ladder
I’m busy lying in bed
It doesn’t matter if anybody calls me names and
I’m gonna fuck off instead

Because

We’re gonna phone it in
We’re gonna phone it in
We’re gonna phone it in
We’re gonna phone it in
Don’t care just phone it in
Get bored just phone it in
We’re gonna phone it in

You busy yourself with fashion
I busy myself with fun
I’m busy painting these mini metal skeletons and
You say I’m dressed like a bum

You say that you’ve got a passion 
About what you’ve gotta do
You say you can’t wait to buckle down and start your day and
I’m less excited than you

Because

We’re gonna phone it in
We’re gonna phone it in
We’re gonna phone it in
We’re gonna phone it in
Don’t care just phone it in
Get bored just phone it in
We’re gonna phone it in

We are the ones
The ones who never give a damn
We are the ones
Without even a basic plan
Out in the sun
We are the ones enjoying it
You work too hard
I quit
I quit
I quit
I quit and

I’m tired of people complaining
My best is not good enough
I’m only doing the minimum to get me through and
If you don’t like it then tough

Because

We’re gonna phone it in
We’re gonna phone it in
We’re gonna phone it in
We’re gonna phone it in
Want pizza phone it in
Hate work just phone it in
We’re gonna phone it in

We’re gonna phone it in
We’re gonna phone it in
We’re gonna phone it in
----
Phoning It In. I’ve always loved the phrase and I was just inspired to write a song with it. To keep in spirit with the title of the song, I made sure not to try too hard on any one element. I wrote the riff quickly, wrote the lyrics quickly, we got the guitar sound quickly, and there was no overthinking or really changing anything. My only complaint about it is that I think it is a little too fast, so it forces me to sing harder to keep up, and it doesn’t fully sound like I’m phoning in the vocals. So I thought about slowing it down and delivering a more laid back vocal take. Just ever so slightly. I played the guitar, sang, No bass yet. Doug programmed the drums. Every once in a while we will have someone play drums on the songs, but usually only when we are finishing something for release. Otherwise, all the drums in the demos are programmed by Doug, and I think he does a really good job of making them sound kind of real and natural. I get attached to them. All of Hesitant Alien started as demos with programmed drums by Doug. He and I have a cool relationship, and have evolved together over the years since he engineered Black Parade, Danger Days, and engineered and produced Hesitant Alien. We work in the same space, the studio at my house, called Milk Friends. I just let him have the space I’m not using and he brought in all of his gear and works on various projects, recording, and mixes, and I would be in the other room, the office, writing comics. And every so often, when neither of us is too busy, we record things. I like sharing artistic spaces with people, especially Doug. It’s nice to have a friend that can record you when you have an idea, because I’m terrible at recording and I barely even know how to use Garage Band. So all the singles you have gotten from me over the last couple of years have been done with Doug and I, and then various musicians who would replace certain things, making them real, and sound better.

Distraction Or Despair

Phoning It In (2) VOC

This is one of maybe five tracks of me messing around with this Crate amp I got off of Reverb for cheap. It has a mysterious stain on the front that looks like someone had put a candle on top of the amp and the wax just dripped down the front. In the listing, the stain was described as “a stain that mostly comes off”. One of the things Doug and I were experimenting with for the last three months was how bad we could get stuff to sound. That’s not me trying to diss on Crate amps, as the very first amp I had— the one I wrote Skylines and Turnstiles with— was a Crate amp with built in distortion. But they do not have a reputation for being high quality amps, at least in the musical circles I was in. A lot of people get kind of snobby about them. But I think a lot of metal or thrash metal musicians swear by them. They are very crunchy, so I think that is why, since some metal has a lot of crunchy distortion. But we would turn the amp distortion on, and then run a distortion pedal through it, to see how fucked up we could get it. I’ll probably put the rest of the jam tracks up, but I think it’s a lot of the same riff over and over, since I didn’t know when Doug was in record-mode and I wanted to make sure I got the two or three parts down once I discovered them. This is just me playing guitar meandering through ideas, sloppily. Maybe some of these riffs will become songs.

Crate Amp With Mysterious Stain Jams

Crate Amp_02

Back before Hesitant Alien was a thing, and before I wanted to pursue a solo career, I wanted to start a band and just sing and play guitar, after my chem broke up. The name of the band was going to be Baby Animal Hospital (the record label hated the name, especially since it included both the words ‘baby’ and ‘hospital’ in the same phrase), and I did a bunch of rough graphic design for it, but in the end, it really felt like a solo thing, so that’s what it became. But when it was Baby Animal Hospital (I wanted something that sounded warm and fuzzy and loud, like the tones) I recorded this track with Doug for the opening of the record. The lyrics/sounds are just the word BAH over and over again, which where the first letters of each word of the band name, but that wasn’t intentional, I just liked the sound. And this was us really messing with auto-tune to try and make it sound like an instrument. It was supposed to be this track as track one and go right into Action Cat. Later on, I figured I would just make a zine with the name Baby Animal Hospital, but I didn’t get very far with it. Still like the name, and may do something with it in the future. Maybe one day I’ll share all the graphic design I did for it when it was a band, a lot of which was cut and paste by hand.

Success!

This was something Doug and I threw together for the release of Umbrella Academy Volume Three: Hotel Oblivion. Just something short for an instagram video. We did this really quick, didn’t give it much thought other than trying to make something that sounded a little like The Stooges. A few months later, I actually wrote a verse and some new lyrics and a new vocal melody for the verse, and then I kind of wanted to finish the song. Someday. Like most of this stuff, it’s me playing guitar, bass if there is bass, doing the vocals, and Doug programming the drums.

Welcome to the Hotel

This is the start of the Crate amp jam. Like I mentioned in the other post about the Crate amp jams, I wasn’t sure when Doug was in record-mode, because I was in the live room with the amp, so I just started playing. I feel like doing more of these Crate amp jams. I think we can get it to sound even more messed up. At one point, I think in a later track, Doug tried to do this thing where he put a glass bottle over one of the mics, to make it sound more messed up and kind of underwater. Oh and when I bought this amp, I also bought an old Peavy, which is another kind of amp that is cheap and you saw a lot of metal bands using in the 80’s. That one sounds pretty messed up too, and I think it also has built in distortion. The amps sound pretty different from each other though. I can’t remember which guitar I was playing for certain, but I am pretty sure it was the BC Rich Mockingbird Lindsey got me for Christmas, which I love. BC Rich is another one of these companies gear heads get snobby about, and the 80’s saw a lot of metal bands, all kinds of metal bands, use them. Thrash, hair metal, just all kinds of metal. The Warlock was everywhere. Years ago I heard about this successful musician buying up a ton of a certain kind of guitar, to corner the market on them, so I thought I would do what he was doing, but in the complete opposite direction, and buy up a ton of guitars no one really wanted and that wouldn’t really increase in value. Just to be a clown. I ended up not doing that, as that would have been a gross misuse of funds simply to make a joke, but I did eventually get one. I like the shape a lot. It sounds metal af.

Crate Amp With Mysterious Stain James 

Crate Amp_01

This one was recorded at the tail end of the Hesitant Alien demo sessions, just Doug and I. I liked it well enough at the time, felt kind of 90’s, didn’t end up putting any vocals on it though. I like the bridge a lot. Looking back at the whole thing, I like it, but not sure if I’m going to finish it. Guitar, bass by me. Programmed drums by Doug.

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