Check out my Album: "All This Useless Beauty". Americana songs reflecting on bad times and good. Thanks for listening!

I try to write with rich lyrical details and self-deprecating humor about the human condition. Plus, that unique Shade Structure sound!  It sounds best with headphones. Thanks for any comments, reposts or likes.

Discography: Available under Album tag on my Soundcloud main page. Free Downloads/ Always Free
* The Curse Of A Good Looking Ghost (2024)
* Low Profile (2024)
* Smilers (EP 2023)
•Short Songs For Tall Minds"  (2022)
•Friends, They're Gonna Get Your Story Wrong (2021)
•A Suburban Dadaist With Some Store Bought Beats (2021)
•All Feel and No Technique (2020)
•This Is How I Spend My Nights (2019)
•California Songs (2018-2019)
All sounds contained within are home-made/DIY recordings. Most songs are short stories, as I am influenced by Musicians & Writers like Raymond Carver, Warren Zevon, Mountain Goats, Tom Waits, Mark Eitzel,  Randy Newman, Destroyer, Steely Dan, Captain Beefheart, Loudon Wainwright III, Leonard Cohen & The National. Most songs have the lyrics on the song page. Thank you for listening!

"Magic is what we do. Music is how we do it." -- Jerry Garcia

Welcome to my page, my peers, associates, friends, and musical family. I'm a lifelong, multi-instrumentalist musician who records prolifically and joyfully. You'll hear me play guitar, bass (regular four string, and four and five string fretless), mandolin, banjo, keys (piano, organ, synth), lap slide, sitar, and sing on my recordings here. I've been in a few dozen bands in my life, playing everything from bluegrass, jazz, rock, jam band, reggae, funk, afrobeat, Middle Eastern, traditional Irish, singer/songwriter, pop/covers, to experimental/avant garde. 
  Since I found SoundCloud a couple years ago, I've found many talented, creative people with whom to create music. However, in the summer of '23 I formed a band called The Eclectic Collective with some of my favorite musicians I've met through here. It started as a loose collective of musicians and coalesced into a core group of musicians who find other musicians with whom we'd like to make music, then run their songs through our process, and in effect add a full band. That core of The Eclectic Collective includes Tez (Llanpsych), J.J. Terrel, Ken (K2 and the Three), Stephen (Texmex Shaman), Chris (cgmaness), and Mark (mistermark). A couple of other musicians are frequent collaborators, as well, including Artur of Surfers Like Us, and Steve Vervaet of Steve's World. 
  The magic of music is amplified exponentially by each person adding to it. So, we really try to add our sorcery all kinds of music from all kinds of artists. Sometimes, we keep it within the group, but a lot of what we do is collaboration with other artists. Therefore these days, 100% of what I do is collaboration, within the group or with other artists on the side.
  I, and we, are also available for hire if you have a song or lyrics and you really want to add bigger instrumentation or a band and good production to it. 
  A small sampling of the artists whom I consider primary influences, and whom you will hear coming through my fingers include Phish, The Flaming Lips, The Grateful Dead, Radiohead, Rye Cooder, Steve Earle, Miles Davis, Fela Kuti, Arcade Fire, Mikey Dread, Yellowman, Purpleman, The Meditations, Michigan and Smiley, Lee Perry, Dillinger, Django Reinhardt, Impossible Recording Machine, The Allman Bros Band, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Bela Fleck, Les Claypool, Sam Bush, David Grissman, John Prine, Talking Heads, Beastie Boys, MMW, Moe., Morphine, Ween, John Abercrombie, Dave Holland, John Scofield, Victor Wooten,  Cannonball Adderly, Thelonious Monk, Flea, Parliament Funkadelic,  Frank Zappa, Prince Paul, Pete Rock, Thievery Corporation, Amon Tobin, Chet Baker, Joao Gilberto, Stan Getz, Astrud Gilberto, Carol Kaye, Tame Impala, Mumford and Sons, Japanese Breakfast, LCD Soundsystem, Beach House, Sean Lennon, and Billy Strings, but of course there are many more. I also really like and am influenced by traditional Iranian, Palestinian, Indian, Sri Lankan, Sudanese, Mauritian, Somalian, Egyptian, West African, and Syrian music. I welcome anyone who plays non-western music to contact me for a collaboration, too.
 I'm overjoyed to have found my community on SoundCloud. This is a truly unique forum where everyone is sincerely trying to build each other up. The profoundly supportive and positive SoundCloud community has really opened up an exciting new world of collaboration for me. That is the main reason I'm in the Cloud, actually, to connect with other musicians and make music that I enjoy listening to, and hopefully others do, as well. I am ALWAYS looking to collaborate with interesting musicians, mostly though BandLab, which is where I record almost exclusively. It's a solid, free digital audio workstation hub where you can share recording projects, even if it's not where you make your recordings.
  Everything I do is live instrumental, not programmed, and using no computer beyond my phone. That's not to say that I would be opposed to using that kind of tool, it's just not my preferred medium with which to paint. If you like my music, please share it. If you want to collaborate, my BandLab handle is @bingo_pajama. Feel free to contact me at cornbreadband@hotmail.com, as well, even if you aren't on BandLab.
  If your music is primarily AI, please don't come around my page, as I'm not at all interested in complimenting a machine.
  Here's a link to music I've recorded live with a group of musicians here in Pittsburgh called The Northumberland Street Ramblers.
Check out The Northumberland Street Ramblers on #SoundCloud
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/fU4Me

... возможно, это гитарный лоу-фай хип-хоп...//...perhaps it's guitar-based lo-fi hip-hop...

main page
https://soundcloud.com/john-palmer
A page where I can share some of the great music here on soundcloud 
https://www.youtube.com/user/externalcontrol
https://www.youtube.com/user/worldinsideaworld
https://open.spotify.com/artist/5O3DVQrinTJHbNYJCFLlyE

Songwriter, founder of the groups Shanghai Atraxion, NSA, General Tzu, ElectroMachine 2.0, Arsenal Fighter, Tsunami ... Neoclassic Specialist (Mainly rewrite many works of the directory in electronic version). Some special albums: "Industrial Windungen" realized with sounds of forges and foundries, "Jamais Vu" realized in Pau in France in 5 days. Mutations (The four Seasons)
Also producer of more than 250 albums.

My music is dependent on where inspiration takes me. I hope you enjoy something here!

Please, follow my MAIN ACCOUNT - DOLLY DEMELI !  🙏😊💟🌺🎈
A playful, joyous mood, happy vibes, uplifting tunes - EDM & Dance are my favourite. 💟🎈
Creating music is amazingly FUN and all I want is to share JOY!!! 😍😊
Love and Respect to everyone who spares time on my playlists and tracks. I'm deeply honoured and I thank you all immensely!!! 🙏😊💟🌹

There is so much talent and variety here, and most of the people are pretty cool too. I love being part of this community. Listening to your music and being heard in return is enough.

Still reading? OK I'm gonna muse a bit. It's hard to fully convey how much this forum has meant to me. There are people I've never met that feel very much like old friends -- and in a very real way they are.
If I follow someone I make every effort to listen to and support their efforts. It's certainly not a transactional relationship but I do tend to limit my follows to people who engage in mutual listening and engagement.

But wait, there's more!  I embrace, celebrate, and revere the artistic creations that come from the heart regardless of skill level.  But, forgive me, but, goddammit there's too much production of soulless, empty same old shit music out there. I can't hang with downloaded shutterstock vocals, banal boy/girl BS lyrics, and recreations of the sounds that have already been done to death for years. Still with me? OK better to distill my relationships than engage in faux bonhomie.  And if you get what I mean more power to you.

ExternalControl is following