I wrote this song on a bus trip from Boston to New Bedford, MA, in 1990. I demoed it for the first time that same year but wasn't entirely satisfied with the initial recording, so I redid it three years later. More than a decade after that, I retooled it again for Bedsit Poets, and we ended up putting it on our second album, Rendezvous (Bongo Beat Records, 2008).

Box of Urchins Not Received

Entourage (1993 demo)

Well, this is the big one—nearly 21 minutes long, as the card in the cassette proclaims. That card also notes that "Last Call" was completed May 30, 1989 (I was 17). This was after at least a couple weeks of composing, recording, numerous attempts at bouncing down to make space for further parts on my Tascam four-track followed by more overdubbing, and mixing. The inspiration was Alan Hovhaness' Saint Vartan Symphony, which is similarly made up of many short, separate movements that are all closely related to each other. Although I was (and still am) inordinately proud of "Last Call," I never did anything more with it. I loved how it came out with me handling all the parts, and I didn't feel I could ever play it with a rock band. I've thought several times over the years about scoring it for some kind of ensemble, but what the exact instrumentation should be has always eluded me. It might be hard to approximate the sound of the lead "voice" here, which was produced using the wonderfully malfunctioning reverb channel of an SR (Sears Roebuck) 40XL amp.

Last Call to the River

The last of several attempts at this song beginning in December '92 and going into the following year. When now comes, it's always just begun.

Here Comes Now (remix)

Not a lot to say about this track from November 2003—I just like it.

Belong in This World

When I finished this lengthy tune sometime in 1988, I felt like I'd made some real progress as a composer. But it took a while to come up with an arrangement that satisfied me. This is the final demo of three; the first was solo acoustic, and the second one was also four-track, featuring a guitar part from my longtime pal Tim Mungenast. Twenty-five years after this last version was recorded, I cut another one—differently arranged once again—with a full band. It appears on my 2016 EP Germination: https://macrandall.bandcamp.com/album/germination

Category (1991 demo)

ENSEMBLE EXTRAKTE "NOTE" PROJECT - HOW DOES THE SMALLEST UNIT OF MUSICAL
 SOUND BEHAVE?

General context

Connections between the fundamental units of sound ("notes") in music are reflections of the way the transfer of meaning takes place between precepts of personal and societal, human and the "natural", in different cultures/subcultures. "Note"-relationships can therefore also deliver perception into transcendent connections
(beyond the quotidian/ human) through sound.

What we are dealing with in relation to the difference inherent in cultural terminologies for the "note"-concept are, on the one hand, metaphors. These metaphors ("notes", "swaras" etc) have become to be thought of as factual/literal objects. They are
therefore known as "sedimentary metaphors". But exactly for that reason, their root metaphorical meaning tends to structure our way of thinking about music on a subconscious level even more.

On the other hand, these differing note-concepts contain differing (sub)cultural disciplines of pedagogy, of training, and aesthetic education/taste and imply obeying a particular model, state or way of being through one sound at a time as they separate or differentiate themselves from the foregoing and oncoming notes.

This concert represented new ways to experiment, exchange and interpret the players "musical DNA", so to speak.

1. Sheng : Hunter - Brother 16.04

jeremywoodruff

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