#11 of the "Honey's Song" album. My goal was to write symphonies but the only classical chops I had was a few short Bach pieces and a few of my own solo guitar instrumentals. I decided to develop some orchestral chops by doing "summary vacations" at the end of my albums and play all the melodies from #10 back to #1 instrumentally with just the titles and the background vocals sung. This was the fourth one. The drum solo plays the MELODY of one of the songs! It was my biggest Internet hit. So many fans from Asia especially! I couldn't keep up. I fell asleep answering fans. I had to take it out of circulation. Now, it's back. Enjoy!

11 Summary Vacation IV

#5 of the "After" album. This one started out as a compulsive pop song just trying to be shallow and fun for radio maybe. But, it never ignited much interest and dived down to the bottom of the drawer. When it was time to rewrite it, one idea was kept and it morphed into a title that rhymed with itself. So, then it became a poetic challenge to make a song about the days of the week. It came out great. Rewriting is heavenly.

5 Tuesday Is Bluesday

#9 of the "After" album. My idol was Dylan and my favorite song of his was the famous "Mr. Jones" song. I liked it so much that I could not help but want to write a song like it. So, I did. The first draft was completely surrealistic, but the chords were way cool. I loved it. It was like the song, but it was new and different, too. Same tempo, similar rhythm, lots of minor chords, but different. Come mastering time, a new lyric emerged.

9 Extra Day Together

#11 of the "After" album. This is the third Summary piece I did as practice for learning how to write orchestral classical music. The title and the background vocals are sung. The principal instrument in the song plays the melody, except sometimes the bass plays the melody or it is whistled or a Melodica sings it. My friend Kevin Monahan would set up an exact drum machine click track and I would play to that. Enjoy!

11 Summary Vacation III

#1 of the "What We Did Tonight" album. My first fifteen songs were all protest songs at first, like my heroes Donovan and Dylan and PPM and Baez. This song was my "white man's guilt" song about racism against Hispanics, called "Manny's Song". My new bride found the protest songs "depressing", so I changed them to love/sex songs. These now qualify as Nikki Songs. Love and sex go together.

1 What We Did Tonight

#4 of the 'What We Did Tonight" album. This was originally an hypnotic, sort of monotonous like "Masters Of War" protest song against war. I was a huge fan of the famous folk duo Joe&Eddie, so I made this an homage to them. When it was time to master it, a new lyric came out about Perfect High School Love once again. Marriage In The Future was a favorite theme. I also wrote in a creative use of endless transposing culminating in a rousing bridge and then transposing two more times back to the original key. No falsetto for the female character because Eddie NEVER sang falsetto, though very high the whole time. I love singing like this. Non-stop harmony

4 I Can See It

#5 of the "What We Did Tonight" album. This was the last of the first gasp. I wrote 15 protest songs in admiration of my heroes Dylan and Donovan and Buffy and Joan and PP&M. As Fate would have it, there were 15 wars going on in the world at the time so I wrote "Vietnams Not The Only One". That one finished off my new wife's ability to hear my songs from the start. "Too depressing". So, I rewrote them all to be Perfect High School Romance songs which are now more appropriately the Nikki songs I would have written.

5 There Is So Much More

#6 of the "What We Did Tonight" album. So, I wrote 15 protest songs and then I finally wrote a love song. It was my second fingerpicking song and was first called "Day Of Reckoning". It was about love before I had ever had it, just acknowledging that it had become my paramount goal in life. Come time to master this forgotten old ballad, it just took a slight tweaking to turn it into current romance.

6 The Day Of Recognition

#9 of the "What We Did Tonight" album. I had so much fun writing "Moonraker" I wondered if I would write more since it gave me a chance to work on my favorite thing: unusual chord changes. Well, much to my surprise I went in a completely unexpected direction that had huge affect. I would sit on my front porch at night and play my songs quietly so as not to annoy the neighbors. One house off to my left was a huge house on a hill above all the rest of the houses on our block. It was so old it had GABLES. I wrote a New Age song about gables using a chord I made up which ends up being an intuitive bi-tonal chord of E and F#m to which I added a Bm7 and I had an ambient background to a wistful melody. When on rare occasions I actually played it for someone, I would tell them that my fluttering guitar accompaniment would eventually be a synthesizer doing chord "washes". No one knew what I was talking about because synths had not gone mainstream yet. Years later, I also WHISTLED those chords and that melody. Too much fun! Enjoy!

9 Love On A Cool Night

#10 of the "What We Did Tonight" album. I'm not sure, but I think Joe and Eddie had their big radio hit "Meeting Here Tonight" at this time, which would be why I wrote ANOTHER Joe&Eddie style song, this time without transposing every verse. It was a "Prophecy Song" about love BEFORE it came. It had that driving rhythm (with quarter note hi-hat) and my favorite key - Em. And those deep vocals.

10 What More Can I Say

#1 of the "What Will Love BeLike?" album. This is the first song I ever wrote. It is still the most popular one. Beginner's luck. I wrote it the day after my parents forced me to stop taking guitar lessons from Chauncey Romero. I asked him for the music to "Greensleeves" as a parting gift. I played the chords to it and figured out it was in 3/4 time and played the first two chords over and over until I finally dared a chord change. I got lucky the first time. It took several wrong  attempts on other occasions, but I found the magic harmony schematic and sang the melody to some questioning protest lyrics: "How Long Will It Be?" It was way better than I really was. I knew my Fate. The volcano of creativity never stopped. Music!

1 What Will Love Be Like?

#2 of the "What Will Love Be Like?" album. Technically, this is really my first melody. It was a slow instrumental ballad like "Sleepwalk" which my surf band the Marauders played at our last dance in town. A friend Mickey walked up and asked me as I was playing it what it was called. I answered at an opportune time when I didn't need to pay close attention, "It's called 'Slow'!" It was C#m to Bm over and over, which supported an endless stream of melodious improv, but I caught ONE melody and then threw in that dramatic A chord and I had my first melody. Later on, it got some words.

I Was Only Sixteen

#3 of the "Leave It In The Sky" album. This is an homage to "Friday On My Mind". It started as four tonic-to-fifth riffs called "Warthog Cycle", written during my year and a half of alcoholism.Bottom of the drawer until time to master and then I decided to follow the game plan of FOMM, but using my arithmetic. It's an amazingly complex song almost through composed without much of a chorus. Fun!

3 My Girl Friday

#3 of the "What Will Love Be Like?" album. This was The Song. It made it obvious that I was meant to write songs. It was first called "Child Birth Lament" and it was the only non-political, non-protest song of my first 15. It was about a fictional would-be father who first loses his first child, but then loses his wife, as men often did in the past I found out from my family history. But, it was the melody! It was great! I LOVED singing it. I sang it for a famous Hollywood producer while hitchhiking during the Summer Of Love. He said, "Heavy". First time I heard that word applied to music. Come mastering time, it became a story about the aftermath of my first time. It was fictional. I never ate midnight snacks ever. Melody!

3 (This Must Be) What They Call Love

#4 of the "What Will Love Be Like?" album. They weren't ALL protest songs! This one was for my German Project in school. I wrote a song in German and even made it rhyme! It was about leaving home and becoming an astronaut and a President. Come mastering time, I wrote a funny school story in English. This was my first rock song. I knew I had to keep it simple, but a later bridge made it complex enough.

4 Get Out And Run

#5 of the "What Will Love Be Like?" album. This was my first big hit and the crucial confidence building music experience I needed. It was originally a return to protest song called "Give Me A Future". I had feared I might be drying up after the last song, which mostly had RHYMED German lyrics to recommend it. The music improved at Mastering Time. This was so well-received that we almost did it in my second band, The Trolls, a rock band. The two Republicans who ran the band decided it was "too left-wing". I played it for my cousin who turned me on to Bob Dylan and after I finished, my mom, who had also listened, came up to me afterwards and with heartbroken emotion asked me, "Did you say give you A future?" And I had to give her the Boomer answer, "Yes." Come Mastering Time, it became a love song. It's still a hit and the box xylophone gives it a catchy bunch of pretty fills.

5 Give Me Your Future

#6 of the "What Will Love Be Like?" album. Well, I had my first hit and the Voice Inside said, "Don't compete!" Settle for less without thinking you've fallen. Maybe go in a new direction where you won't be that good, yet, but exploring passionately. So, I just got my next inspiration from a chord chart with new chords I hadn't tried. Boom! Out came this good protest song about what can a man do in such a bad world? It was better than I was. It was spooky. I was dealing with what I call The Invisible Other. It wasn't me. Oh, well, bottom of the drawer till mastering time and it morphed into a great love song.

6 What Can A Man Do?

#7 of the "What Will Love Be Like?" album. Most of my friends hated major 7th chords because that was the jazz standard chord and they hated their parents's music. Most of them had no idea what madrigals were. For me to decide to write an instrumental version of a melody I found using a maj7 chord and the plan to years hence write a madrigal bridge using the melody was the first step to my becoming a maverick obsessed with being original. I did study madrigals decades after I wrote this (inspired by seeing a white butterfly while hiking) and they NEVER EVER used a maj7 chord, but that didn't stop me. I wrote the first one. Maverick. Original. Love.

7 White Butterfly

#8 of the "What Will Love Be Like" album. I needed to write another rock song. The German lyric was the main attraction of my first attempt (the music and lyric were improved come Mastering time), so I wanted a good rocker to perform. Rock was just too simple for me to be impressed with myself, so this one went to the bottom of the drawer till Mastering time. It was a protest song kind of like "Masters Of War", my fave at the time, but not that much. Come Mastering time, it morphed into a sexy Nikki song. Love it!

8 Making Love Again

#9 of the "What Will Love Be Like?" album. It was FINALLY time to write a folk song. It was FINALLY time to fingerpick, my holy grail. I knew three songs that way, including "Don't Think Twice", which this one remotely resembles. It started out as "Autobiography Blues" and was yet another protest song about how I became an activist. But, come mastering time, it morphed into a true autobiography about the small orange grove town where I grew up. Plus, my natural take on famous Hollywood, where I lived for 3 1/2 years. Then, back to Redlands, the Navel orange capitol of the world at the time.

9 Small-Town Boy

#10 of the "What Will Love Be Like?" album. I can't even remember what this song was about when it was a protest song except they ALL were against war and racism. Come mastering time, it morphed into the perfect last song of the first Nikki album because she was a champion swimmer and we spent lots of time in her pool. She looks hotter than a sea otter's daughter when you spot her when she's underwater! Love is wet. Literally sometimes. Electric 12-string.

10 Spending The Day With My Baby

#11 of the "What Will Love Be Like?" album. As a way to practice classical music orchestral arrangement before I had many classical chops, I thought of making a mini-symphony out of the ten melodies on each album by recording them instrumentally with the title and the background vocals sung. This was the first one of four. They all came out great, but there was beginner's luck on this one.

11 Summary Vacation #1

#1 of the "Leave It In The Sky" album Though this one sounds like a drug song, it was really just influenced by "White Rabbit" when I was in my year and a half of teenage alcoholism. I became depressed and almost uncreative. After three albums in one year, I went to one album in a year and a half. They were depressive songs like "Waiting For Death" and "Warthog Cycle". This one song came before that.

1 Leave It In The Sky

#2 of the "Leave It In The Sky" album. The alcohol had not done full damage yet because I couldn't get drunk except when my rhythm guitarist's parents went someplace and we could drink their booze. I still could write music and this one made me confident that I could write a good Top Forty single for radio. But, the lyrics were mean anti-Nikki  fiction. Come mastering time, it morphed into a love song about reality being better than fiction. On the video, I play the wrong chords during the bridge the first time. Nice vocals and lead, though

2 I've Found Someone Nicer

#3 of the "Leave It In The Sky" album. I'm posting this song again so it will be in the right order on THIS album, where it belongs. It was originally just four Kinks chords played in 2/2 time called "Warthog Cycle" and relegated to the bottom of the bottom drawer. Come mastering time, I managed to remake the arithmetic those four tiny harmonies set up and write an homage to "Friday On My Mind".

#4 of the "Leave It In The Sky" album. This was written when I was still working my way up to literal alcoholism. This was a triumph that went in the middle drawer except I think it had some sad love ideas mixed in with the love wisdom. I already felt that both the melody and the lyrics were examples of quality. But, come mastering time, I changed just a few of the words and made it completely positive.

4 She Shows Me So Much

#5 of the "Leave It In The Sky" album. By now, I had reached the Getting Drunk Every Weekend stage. It wasn't that bad: I always bought a quart of Schlitz for 55 cents, so my expenses were $1.65 per week. But, it was curtailing my creativity. So, perhaps for the first time, I started a song as just a title and that lasted for awhile. I liked this title because Nikki had not sent me the Dear John letter yet. It was still not a finished song until mastering time when it got some tweaking but did keep some words. Music stayed the same.

5 Thank Heaven, I'm In Love

#6 of the "Leave It In The Sky" album. My creativity was waning. I could only get a catchy chorus on this one, so I decided to make this a talking song like "Big Bad John", but with a repeating chorus. It was a sort of summation of my year as a drunk. The year seemed to fly by and get more suicidal. So, the song went to the bottom of the bottom drawer till mastering time and then it became a cool talking song about 1967 and the Summer Of Love.

6 Where Did It Go?

#7 of the "Leave It In The Sky" album. By now, I had started drinking on Thursday and Monday, but never on Tuesday and Wednesday. That's how I pretended I wasn't an alcoholic. I did manage to write this whole song. It was called "Waiting For Death". I thought I was being bravely honest. But, song material? I was drunk. So, come mastering time, it morphed into "Celebrate In The Sunshine" with a wonderful Melodica solo (the last one).

7 Celebrate In The Sunshine

#8 of the "Leave It In The Sky" album. So, how did I pay for my $2.75 a week habit? I got a dream job for a book lover: a library page. I  was paid 92 cents an hour(raised to $1.03), but I loved it and it paid for my habit. I wrote this in my head while working, inspired by a pop song on the radio. I tried to get the band to do it, but the drummer was opposed, so we only rehearsed it twice, but never played it in public. The wonderful harmonic intro and new lyrics were added at mastering time decades later. It would have been good.

8 Sad, But It's True

#9 of the "Leave It In The Sky" album. Inspired by the success of "White Rabbit" I again wrote a Spanish Rock song. I knew I was going to smoke pot as soon as I could, so I wrote a secret song to my parents, who I knew would be upset about it. Also, Nikki was coming back, marriage plans and all! I knew she would be upset, too. But, something told me this would be the way out of alcoholism.

9 No Hard Feelings

Catchy, sexy Stones-like rocker with Dylan-like harmonica

Highway One

/ Lady Loveluck

This was sort of my second hit. "Your Eyes" was actually, but at the time that I wrote it, the Boomers hated Bossa Nova because it was the only competition The Beatles had. So, my second formula pop song written in a somewhat Beatles way became my second popular song. It is pure teenage pop as a matter of fact. This whole album, like the one before it, "What Will Love Be Like?", is about teenage love at its best.

02   Someday Soon You'll Be Mine

This is my second Bossa Nova song. It was originally called "Nikki's Bossa Nova" after my first sweetheart Nikki (who is back in my life again as a dear friend after 50 years!). Changing it to "You Are My Shining Star" made it universal and the music seemed to deepen because of it. Plus, I've learned how to solo on a wind instrument since then. Carol Catalpa and I sing this together on an upcoming album.

02   You Are My Shining Star

I make music in almost all styles including one of my own. I grew up next to the Mojave Desert in orange-growing country and moved to Hollywood twice and then moved to the ocean and organic farming in Santa Cruz. I love Bach...

Rin Eric

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