This one is from a punkier era. I was living in Philly on a diet of whiskey and weed (and the occasional cheesesteak). I was rich in the sense that I had everything I needed and casual gigs could pay the rent with enough surplus to pass the evenings in a sometimes pleasurable delirium and often all-consuming void. Surrounded by other artists, writers, part-time hustlers, and video-game enthusiasts with a job to feed to the lifestyle, there was never the judgement of who had more or less, whose dress was fanciest, whose apartment was biggest, who had a car.
We were happy to get where we were going and do what we were doing. It seems quaint now to think there was a time when I wouldn’t pay more than $400 for rent, when $7 could net a burger and enough beer to wash it down, when the afternoon was a time for citywide specials (PBR and a shot of Jim Beam, usually) or “Kensington Happy Meals”—the former, with a hotdog and some piece of crap handed out by beer distributors.
When I’d think, man, I’ve done everything there is to do today, there’s still cash in my pocket and daylight to burn. Guess we’ll fire up the Gamecube. Guess I’ll nurture my relationship with Ol’ Grandad and watch my roomie play Resident Evil 4 again. Oh, it’s night. Oh, it’s late. People are coming over, let’s put on some records and drown out the sound of the neighbors screaming and fighting.
Now I don’t even drink. If I ate a cheesesteak I’d probably die. They were never that great to begin with (yeah, yeah, fight me about it if you want, it’s pigeon gristle and canola oil with industrial dye) but for a few bucks with cheap cold beer they were paradise.
I don’t know where the song title comes from. Well, it was edgier at first, but I toned it down. Now people know who I am and I need to cultivate at least some veneer of…something.
I composed this on a 2001 MacBook Pro, with dying speakers screeching over the infarction of the motherboard. For all the absolute crumminess of the setup, the mixing could be worse. I like how the guitars pulse and grind at the beginning, and then yield to what I see in my mind as a smooth red and purple velvet batter. The original files were lost when that old laptop swelled up like a metal boil and I decided that was probably a health hazard in some way or another (I dutifully recycled it as ewaste, so it’s probably a bento box for sea turtles now).
I’m entirely self-taught. I can’t even read music. I don’t know what half the buttons on my DAW do. But I can see the music and experience that strange fascination with creation that lets me sit and stare at a screen for unfelt hours and hours, picking and scratching at electronic bits and boops until they resemble the visions in my head.
If you like this enough to listen to it elsewhere the link below will take you to all the various music services where you can find it:
And the album artwork, a synthograph made with Stable Diffusion:
Naked