IPECAC - Complete IPECAC

This is the earliest IPECAC recording. Atypically, Jon doesn't play sax on it; he sticks to percussion (no pun intended). Our playing is very sloppy and repetitive, but there's a solid energy here.

The recording is sped up, so it sounds like Scat-Trav (1988-era Trex). When I was transcribing the lyrics, I had to guess who said what.

This is our earliest recorded version of "Trek", from back when I called it "Stop All Time". The talking in the beginning ("this is our second take") suggests that there was one earlier version, which we probably recorded over. It sounds like we sped it up using a dictaphone.

According to "Trek Chatter" (on Kim 13), we may have recorded this (and possibly "Piston Alley") at Jon's house about a week before my piano-only version, which was recorded on 1988-06-16. However, the percussion and screaming were usually things we did at my house, so I'm not sure.

As for the song itself, well, it's only a small part of the "Trek" suite. The performance is peppy, but sloppy. The sound quality is crummy (as is the case with most IPECAC). However, at least you finally get to hear Jon playing the sax!

Introductory chatter. It was part test, part joke. Like most of IPECAC.

This is the definitive version of "Trek". It's the first recording which contains all three sections: "God's Name", "Stop All Time", and "No Bull". I wrote out all the music by hand; it tooks me a few days to compose.

The first part ("God's Name") is painfully slow. Things pick up in the middle ("Stop All Time"). The last part ("No Bull") is okay; nothing special. Occasional bursts of static interrupt; I think the tape got damaged at some point.

But hey, I spent forever writing the thing, so we had to play it, right? Not only once, but three times (four if you count the short version on Apostrophe).

I'm pretty sure this was recorded after 1988-06-16, which is when I recorded my piano-only version of "Trek".

Also, although the tape cover says I played cornet, it sounds a lot deeper, more like a mellophone. Since I'm not sure, I'll trust the tape cover for now.

Jon wrote the music, and I wrote the lyrics (which make fun of complainers). It's a sloppy shambles. For some reason we liked it enough to put it on Best of IPECAC as-is.

Jon's sleeve notes for the Kim Edition of Best of IPECAC:

Better Drumsticks (Jazz/Fusion riff)

This song demonstrates a special effect which involves speeding up the tape. You will notice the almost superhumanly fast tempo as well as the abnormally high pitch. The vocals were not accelerated, however.

I don't remember why we called it "Better Drumsticks". Maybe the implication was that if we got better drumsticks, we'd play more pointless percussion jams?

Jon and I traded off vocals in the second verse, which was kinda a neat effect. It was often hard to coax him to sing.

This is a silly percussion improv. Jon picked the title. I had trouble pronouncing it. We both had trouble pronouncing our drum parts.

Not the most original title. It doesn't even have anything to do with the song, which is just percussion.

The only cool thing about this song is the ending. You can tell Jon and I were having a lot of fun! The glee in our voices tells you exactly why we were doing IPECAC, and why I have persisted in making [silly, noisy] music my entire life.

Jon wrote the music, and I wrote the lyrics (which originally appeared on Trex's "Five Dollar Drummer").

This was supposed to be our theme song. I wrote it before we changed our name to IPECAC. We might have performed it before the name change as well.

I distinctly remember writing the lyrics while sitting in the auditorium of my sister's middle school. I was supposed to be listening to her choir concert or a fashion show or something like that. I was really bored.

This was my first "pop" song for IPECAC. I wrote the lyrics and music. I think we actually recorded this after Jon's version. I flubbed several of the lyrics. The music near the end is even worse.

My original version (with completely different music) was recorded for Trex.

This is the second full recording of "Trek". I don't remember why we put both versions on the same album. We probably recorded them a few weekends apart. I think this second version has overdubs, unlike the first one.

The intro is pretty painful. So's the first section, with all the instruments out of tune with each other. The "fast" middle part doesn't change tempo like it did in the previous version. The third part seems the best; there's more harmony. However, even that has lots of tuning problems.

Overall, this version is pretty lame. My grunting noises don't help.

Somehow I got Jon to sing his own version of "Share, Peace, and Love". You can barely hear him. Fortunately. (He had a lot of trouble sticking to the tempo and pitch).

We might have recorded this one first. I'm not sure, though.

It didn't appear on our original version of Gourmet. I added it years later when I found it on an old tape.

More babbling. This is hilarious if you slow it down to half speed; it sounds like we're drunk! At normal speed, well, at least it ends quickly!

For fun, Jon and I switched instruments; he played keyboard, and I played sax. We didn't bother writing any lyrics, but instead recorded this sluggish, sloppy improv.

This is mercifully short. I think Jon was eager for me to put down his sax.

The Trav-on-sax thing wasn't working, so we moved back to our proper roles. This time, we decided to try to make something tuneful and rhythmic. We sketched out a rough idea and then kicked into a long disco-y jam.

Despite the long, atonal intro, and sloppiness, there are parts in the jam that are really funky. I liked this song enough to later propose it as the opening track of an instrumental best-of album (which we never created).

This ended up being one of my favorite IPECAC songs from 1988.

This is the first IPECAC song to use a guitar. It's pretty horrid. Jon played keyboard while I fumbled along on acoustic guitar and cornet.

Stick to keyboards, Trav!

We must've rehearsed this a couple times; it sounds too tight to be completely improvised. It's IPECAC at our funkiest. We liked this song enough to record it two more times later (on Best of IPECAC and Here and Now).

You can tell Jon was getting really good at sax. As for my cornet (or mellophone) playing, well... Ummm... I'm pretty sure I played sax in here too. The keyboard was on auto-pilot.

This is a simple duet with me and Jon on sax. I played the lower, repetitive part and Jon played the melody and solos. Credit for any nice bits should go to Jon. The honking is my contribution.

Near the end, Jon stopped playing our song and broke out into solos. At the time, I thought he was creating them on the spot. Years later, after I got into jazz, I realized Jon had been quoting famous solos.

Jon called this song "Junkie" on his Best of IPECAC tape cover. Perhaps that was a reference to Charlie Parker or John Coltrane? Or maybe he just thought it was disposable.

This starts off slow and dirge-like and gradually speeds up. Unfortunately, nothing cool ever happens. It just gets faster. That's it. No cool solos, no cool harmonies. No rhythms other than the canned keyboard drums. Just... faster. And faster. And then at the end it abruptly slows back down to a crawl.

The best thing about it is the title.

Horrid. What were we thinking??? Thankfully, it's very short.

This is mostly talking. It gives you a good idea of just how bad I am at sax.

This is our remake of "Apostrophe Song" (on Gourmet). It's a lot leaner and tighter than the original. Jon's solo is pretty cool; you can tell he'd improved tons over the past couple months.

Jon's sleeve notes for the Kim Edition of Best of IPECAC:

The Apostraphe Song (Band Theme)

For those of you who are confused, it might help to realize that IPECAC was originally called APOSTRAPHE. This is a fairly early song.

Nice spelling, Jon!

This is the final version of "Trek". The rhythm and tuning are more together than in earlier versions. It also feels faster. Unfortunately, the mix is wimpy and sterile; it seems too serious.

The third section starts off super-sloppy but gradually comes together. My cornet playing sucks, but Jon sounds great.

Jon's sleeve notes for the Kim Edition of Best of IPECAC:

Trek (Keyboard Feature)

This song has three movements. It is one of their oldest and best songs. At the end it breaks directly into their next song which is...

Benign between-song chatter.

NOTE: This was excluded from the Kim Edition.

This was my percussion-heavy political song. I wanted it to sound tribal and dark. It has a few false starts. Don't most coups? It also has lots of bloody imagery.

We probably played this in one take (with no overdubs). This means Jon played the keyboard while I sang and banged on pots and pans.

This was a remake of a Trex song. Only the words are the same; the music is completely different.

NOTE: This was excluded from the Kim Edition.

Jon wrote this short piece. We played it by the numbers. No improvisation.

Jon's sleeve notes for the Kim Edition:

Petrify (Short and Weird)

This is a brand new song that can only be found on this album!!! Wow!

We really liked this song's funkiness, but didn't know how to solo over it. It sounds empty. We were trying to do it all in one take (no overdubs), and wanted to avoid using my keyboard's canned basslines. Since my mellophone was the bass part, that meant I couldn't play anything else. Jon had to keep soloing on top. I think if we had allowed ourselves some overdubs, we could have done a cool version of this song.

Jon's comments (from 1988 tape to Kim):

Hallogen (Mass Improv)

There are two types of IPECAC songs: mass improvisationals and written songs. The best ones are written down, but this mass improve was included to provide a well rounded view of the group.

NOTE: The Kim Edition omits the talking in the beginning.

Nice grammar, Trav. Nice playing, IPECAC. This is horrible. Zero energy, zero ideas. I think Jon was tired of recording (it had been a long day) and my messing with his sax wasn't helping things.

Jon's sleeve notes for the Kim Edition of Best of IPECAC (on which it doesn't actually appear):

Junkie (Structured mass improv)

This song is basically one long solo alternating between the two musicians, while the other plays a jazz funk background.

This "interview" was included at the end of the Kim Edition (which wasn't re-discovered until 2007). It's energetic, juvenile, and occasionally funny, in that geeky IPECAC sort of way.

First, I interviewed Jon and then we swapped roles. The references to Here and Now imply that that album was either underway or completed by the time we recorded this.

Jon and I included this on the second side of the Kim Edition tape.

It's a very silly interpretation of The Serious Melancholic Sequal, which was one of my sequels to The Good Earth. It's pretty horrible, and is here for completeness only.

Jon's reference to Fake Reverb implies that this was recorded after 1988-09-24.

For such as simple orchestration (me on keyboards, Jon on sax, no drums, no overdubs), we got a surprisingly rock-ish feel out of this song. We ended up recording it twice more.

The original title was "Smooth Syrum". Perhaps it was intended as our post-Apostrophe theme song? We later renamed it "My Familiar" (on Catharsis).

This song is half reggae choppiness, half canon-esque sappy glop.

Yeah, these liner notes are getting less and less formal as I proceed through the albums. Oh well. So much for preserving IPECAC's dignity.

Snort!

Relentless, funky disco-jam. Nice solos by Jon. This is my favorite song on Fake Reverb.

It goes on a little too long, though. You can only get so many minutes out of the same canned drum beat and bassline before monotonotonotony sets in.

I think Jon hopped on keyboards and I squawked away on his sax. How else can you explain these awful sounds?

I'm guessing we did two tracks each. There might be some cornet in there. Either that, or two saxes. Regardless of which instrument is making which awful noises, this is pretty bad.

Dumb lyrics. I think they had to do with racism. Or nuclear holocaust. Or something like that. I don't remember. Like I said, pretty dumb.

The music is very simple too. I was trying to get poppier (and less jazzy).

I've seen two "Sun Green" references recently. One was a girl in the movie "Broken Flowers". The other is a Neil Young song from 2002. Does any of that matter? Not really.

Dumb song.

This upbeat instrumental jazz-rock-funk was my proof that I could "rock" on keyboards. The mix is gritty and the performances, though a little off in bits, are energetic. I really dig this. I wish we had done more songs like this.

I liked this so much that I remade it almost 2 decades later (see "Third Take 2" on Mouseculine).

This came from a practice book that Jon or I had. I have no idea who wrote it. It's really boring. Playing other people's music is not my cup of grapejuice.

This is another song from a practice book. Zzzz.

This was our first rap. It was completely improvised. It was fun to record, and still enjoyable to hear (at least for me).

We added bits of the lyrics to "How Ya Is'n", which later made its way to the Anchovies. So these silly, improvised lyrics got a lot of mileage!

Trav on guitar. Jon on keyboard. Ugh, right? Well, it's not that bad. It's surprisingly tight.

The lyrics are the best part about this song. I had written them several months earlier (see "Poetry Medley"). They might have been based on an actual event, but are certainly exaggerated.

Trav on sax, Jon on keyboards. Why did we keep doing this to ourselves? And the listeners - don't forget the poor listeners!

At least we named it appropriately.

Clankity clank! Hey folks, we've regressed to the Gourmet stage. This was our last encounter with pots-and-pans percussion. Enjoy it while it lasts.

This final version of "Hallogen" starts and cuts off abruptly. I think we recorded over most of it. It's not particularly special.

This is an instrumental version of "Share, Peace, and Love" (from Gourmet). It's the first song I remember recording at Jon's house, and the first which uses a piano.

This was named after a story that I had started. I think I wrote the music on 1998-11-15. It's a simple instrumental, built around a bass line. We recorded a new version of it for Best of IPECAC 2.

The date "Nov. 15, 1988" is written next to this song on the tape cover for Leaping Leper Limousine. I don't know if that means the song was written or recorded on that day. Since I had pre-written "Medea" but had the 19th written next to it, I'm guessing that we actually recorded "Five Through Night" on the 15th. That was a Tuesday, however; we didn't normally record on school nights. Weird.

This is a simple boogie-woogie. I played the piano part, which was pretty standard. Jon noodled around on keyboard, and later overdubbed a sax part. I may have overdubbed a second piano part, but I don't know.

I don't know how much of the writing was ours and how much came from a practice book. The tape cover says "theme decomposed by Travis and Jon". You can interpret that either way.

The best part of the song is the end. It's a chaotic free-for-all, containing more energy than the rest of the song (and perhaps all the other songs on the album combined).

This could have been recorded on either the 15th (Tuesday) or 19th (Saturday). I'm not sure. For symmetry, I'm gonna guess the 15th, so that the first 3 songs of the albums are on the 15th and the last 3 are on the 19th. Nice and neat.

The buzzing is from a signal generator which was Jon's idea for a "poor-man's electric guitar". Jon wrote the lyrics that he sang, and I wrote mine. We had different music in our sections too. The song feels schizo... like it's possessed by something (ha ha ha).

I think "Mayflower of death" was a reference to a computer game Jon had written. In his game, a Mayflower was a colonizing space ship. As for the "death", well, maybe it had guns or something?

It's funny that Jon flubbed "leaping leper limousine" both times. We later named the album after that line. If he hadn't flubbed it, would we still have named the album after it? I guess we'll never know.

It sounds like I played 2 piano parts. Unless I sprouted a demonic third hand for this song.

This was a simple jazz ditty that I had written previously. The title came from a play we had recently read for English class. We both liked this a lot, and later re-recorded it for Best of IPECAC 2.

This was IPECAC's first and only Christmas song. It starts off as "Joy to the World" but then devolves into chaotic buzzing and chanting.

We ended up playing a coulple Christmas carols door-to-door that year (I think), Jon with his sax and me with a keyboard. I'm pretty sure we were pathetic

"Numb" was yet another attempt on my part to push IPECAC away from jazz and towards pop/rock. You see, I wanted us to be a rock band, and Jon wanted us to be more of a jazz band. I think as long as IPECAC failed to meet either of our expectations, neither of us felt "gypped". "Numb" had nice lyrics, and a solid melody, but it failed to make us rock stars. Sigh.

I liked this song enough to end up recording it four more times: twice for IPECAC (on Best of IPECAC 2 and Fake Reverb 2). and twice as Tripecac (on Archives and College Collage). Unfortunately, none of the versions made me happy.

The panning is extreme. Jon's sax was in one ear, and my keyboard and voice were in the other. I don't know if this was intentional or not.

This was a silly story about lepers. We were on a leper kick. We had just finished Leaping Leper Limousine. We had also written and filmed a play about leprousy. What's with all the leper references? Well, I guess we thought it was funny.

The music is frantic. Lots of honking, shrieking, and staccato. The sax is way too loud. Yuck.

This was a complete impov. It's manic, both musically and lyrically. We recorded the keyboard with mics instead of plugging directly in, which gives it a distant sound. The percussion is really annoying.

This was half making fun of sample-heavy rap music, and half trying to emulate it. Rap was a compromise between my desire to rock and Jon's desire to play jazz.

Jon sang (basically) the same line over and over, and then I joined him about half way through. We then overdubbed vocal sound effects later. Real macho, guys!

This was our second version of "My Familiar", which originally appears on Fake Reverb. I like this version a lot better. It's super-sped up, though.

I sampled the narration and monkey noises for a later Tripecac song: "Millions of Monkeys" (on The Hermit).

This was our first song with Jon's keyboard, which sounded much more electronic than our earlier efforts. We got to program the rhythms, but everything was looped, and therefore repetitive. We learned over time that repetition favors simplicity. This album is full of "busy" rhythms that repeat endless and become annoying. The synthy sounds don't help. Jon's sax is drowned out by all the keyboard noise, too, which is a shame, because he was the good musician.

For the first song we chose to remake "Numb" (from Catharsis). I re-arranged the song heavily, moving lyrical blocks around like legos. Okay, that simile is about as playful as this song gets. It feels too serious, too labored, too devoid of humor. The only lively bit is the chaotic section near the middle, which was supposed to represent the descent into Hell.

The tape cover says that this is the "January version" of "Numb". I think all the other songs were recorded in February, making "Numb" the odd-ball.

Here we got a little simpler, musically a least. Unfortunately, the lyrics are still dumb, and there's very little humor. You can still barely hear Jon's sax above the heavy-handed synths.

And what's with the clapping? Was that our attempt to liven things up? Ugh.

This is the second instrumental remake of "Share, Peace, and Love"; the first was on Leaping Leper Limousine. It gets the Best of IPECAC 2 treatment, which means busy rhythms, annoying synth sounds, barely-audible sax, and annoying clapping. On the bright side, at least this is an instrumental, and the solos are pretty decent.

This is another overly synthetic-sounding remake, again with very little sax poking through. At least this one's instrumental. Also, the drums are simpler. Perhaps we were learning that more is not necessarily better?

Since these drums are much simpler than those of the previous song ("Share, Peace, and Love"), I'm guessing that this was recorded the next day (on the 11th).

We tried to gentle things up by remaking one of our lighter, jazzier numbers: "Medea" (from Leaping Leper Limousine). You still can barely hear the sax, but at least the drums are simple and we stuck with "conventional" sounding keyboard patches. Even so, it still sounds annoyingly synthetic.

Gradually, over the next year or so, we learned how to get Jon's keyboard to sound decent for us, but during these early songs it was really annoying to hear our nice songs get the life synthesized out of them. "Medea" is a sweet little song, and Jon's keyboard killed it!

At least that's how I felt (and feel); Jon might actually have liked the production. I personally think my cheesy Casio CT-310's canned rhythms had more warmth, which encouraged more spontaneity.

This song was mechanic and dumb to begin with, so I don't feel bad about killing it with Jon's keyboard. It starts out pretty awful, but then a surprising thing happens... It crescendoes into an intense keyboard and sax cacaphony which actually rocks! The energy only lasts half a minute or so, but it's inspiring when it happens.

We were finally managing to squeeze decent sounds of Jon's setup.

This was our third and final remake of "My Familiar" (from Fake Reverb). The keyboard drums are annoying and you can barely hear Jon's sax, but the rhythms were simple and the instruments not too synthy.

For some reason, the song sounds empty, particular after the dense chaos of "Lepercity". Overdubs might have helped flesh things out a bit.

We open the album with a sad story of alcoholism and gambling. Heavy topics for IPECAC! Hey, I couldn't help it; whenever I finished songs in those years, I brought them to IPECAC, and later the Anchovies. I put my solo efforts on halt during those times. So the heavy lyrics had to go somewhere, and IPECAC was my default outlet.

Meanwhile, my writing and playing had been improving over the months since the last album. I was taking jazz piano lessons and playing semi-regularly with the Anchovies. The music felt relatively full and natural, but my arrangement for this song left no room for improvisation, so it never gets very intense.

On an aborted album cover (where I called the band "Usupers"), I saw that my piano teacher, Art Wheeler had helped me write some of the music for this song. I don't remember which bits he contributed.

The "Usupers" cover was dated 1989-02-17. This suggests that at least one version of the song had been recorded before then, but I'm not certain. I'll guess for now that it was the IPECAC version although it could have been an early solo version. I know for sure that I recorded my Trex version (included on Wino Three Girls) on 1989-04-11.

Jon wrote this song. To me, its chord progression is a cliche. Did my songs sound like cliches to his ears too? How about to your ears? Does "Mean Machine" sound like a cliche? Do my songs?

Chord progressions aside, the solos are pretty nice. Jon was sounding like a real jazz musician by this point. He also probably got to practice this song a few times before I came over, which helped him plan his solos and boost his confidence.

Maybe Jon's motivation for writing songs was not to create an original structure but rather to give him/us something over which to improvise comfortably. That would be consistent with his method for contributing for the Master Anchovies: instead of writing new songs, he'd transcribe and arrange some of his favorite jazz standards.

Here come the busy drums again. I guess we hadn't learned our lesson yet. Sorry! Well, at least the bass line is simple.

There's no much to say about this song. The chorus is the only good bit. The rest is clunky, at least in this version. I recorded a solo version for Trex (on Five Dollar Drummer) but I don't think it's any better.

The music accelerates at the end. I don't know why. I wish the bells weren't so loud. Ugh. Next!

This was (or became) the theme song for the Master Anchovies. I'm pretty sure I wrote the majority of it, except maybe for the sax part. I don't think any of the other Anchovies had any hand in the writing.

I'm pretty sure Jon and I recorded this after the Anchovies had been playing it a while. We were trying to create a "solid" (and therefore definitive) version of the song. At the same time, we might have been trying to prove to ourselves (and the Anchovies) that IPECAC was better than the Anchovies at their own game. I did the same sort of thing when I recorded my solo version years later on College Collection.

This song became a calibration mechanism. We knew the music by heart, so it let us test different instrumentations and recording setups.

It was a fun song to play, and I like this version's steady rock beat, but I think I prefer real drums to the keyboard's fake ones. Also, there tended to be a lot more energy when we played this song live (with the Anchovies).

Jon wrote this music for an English class project with me and Luke Marshall. It was the background music for the closing credits of our sequel to the Shakespeare play "Twelfth Night"

The music is atonal, but memorable. It was hard to play (lots of wide fingerings), but I came to really enjoy listening to it. This was the last song that Jon wrote for IPECAC (or the Anchovies) and it was, in my opinion, his best by far.

This particular recording is a short version that Jon and I recorded by ourselves. As we did with "Anchovy Rock", we were trying to create a "cleaner" version of the song than the one we had recorded with Luke (on "Extras"). Yes, it's cleaner, but it also feels a bit empty; I prefer the full version.

This was a very simple piano tune that I named (partly) after my cousin (Kim Snell), whom Jon and I were mailing at the time. It's a nice tune to practice, but we never got a good recording of it. I think the keyboard drums detract from it in a big way.

Originally, this was part of an "Ethan Frome" soundtrack, which I had written for an English project. I don't remember the other parts of the soundtrack, and doubt that any recordings exist (unless Jon has them).

This was IPECAC's third and final version of "Numb". The singing sounds dead, exhausted. My voice sounds hoarse, which is strange because the preceding songs had been instrumentals; maybe it was a tough key or maybe I had too much candy the night before?

On the bright side, the music is less annoying than the Best of IPECAC 2 version. Jon's sax playing matches nicely with the backwards keyboard sound, and the synthy drums are low in the mix. There's also a bridge with a rap to spice things up and some playful harmonies at the end.

Jon wrote most of the lyrics. Other bits were improvised, and there's a quote from "All This is True".

Musically, it's very simple, just drums and a heavy bassline. There's occasional sax (during the chorus) and keyboard (during solos) but for the most part we were focused on the vocals. The only weird bit is at the end, where Jon launches into an incredibly adventurous sax solo and then the rest of the music gets abruptly shoved into the background.

We liked this song so much we brought it to the Anchovies. It was a favorite from day one.

In the late 1980s I sent lots of letters and tapes to my cousin Kim. I wrote this song for her, and then later brought it to IPECAC. I later recorded this as Tripecac on Archives.

This version benefits from a steady, deep bassline and Jon's soulful sax playing. On the other hand, the drums are still cheesy, the harpsichord sounds are annoying, my singing is often out of tune, and the tape gets mangled in the middle. I had pre-written my solos, which was sort of cheating, and kind of drained the life out of them. Jon's wailing sax towards the end makes up for it, though.

This kicked off our final recording session. Our idea was to sound "live". The distortion is horrible, yet somehow I love this song. It's the closest we ever came to "rock", which had been my dream.

This is my favorite IPECAC song. It's slow and mellow, but the solos are outstanding (for us at least).

We pretended that we were being backed up by a band called "Ammonia". This was supposed to explain the overdubs. We were trying to convince our listeners that we were a real band.

I like the relentless bass line. My solos are only decent, but Jon's sax work is great!

This was our only pre-written song on Live at Carnegie Hall; the rest were developed in the studio.

Unfortunately, the production is pretty bad in bits. The volume drops off near the beginning, and one of the keyboard overdubs is too high in the mix (and with no reverb). I also flubbed the bridge a bit by playing in the wrong octave. I still like it, though. It ends well, and finishes off Live at Carnegie Hall smoothly.

I'm not sure when we recorded this, since it wasn't part of any set of sessions. It might have been our first recording with Jon's keyboard (predating Best of IPECAC 2). It also could have been a warm-up for Live at Carnegie Hall... or anything in between. Since the drums were wisely kept simple, I'm guessing it came after Best of IPECAC 2 (which had crazy drums).

Musically, it was just an exercise. There's no melody or developed chord progression. Also, Jon's first note was a dud (which was rare for him at that point), which suggests that we hadn't rehearsed at all. Or maybe Jon was being intentionally atonal? Doesn't matter, really.

Despite the noodling and intentional jarring, this is actually a pretty soothing listen. I like the relentless bassline and metronomic drums in the first section. It was trancy, probably the closest IPECAC got to electronica or acid jazz.

The second section is a little less elegant, but it still floats by without getting cheesy or super-grating.

The short "Christmas in Cancun" reference near the beginning suggests that this was recorded around the time I wrote that song (late 1989).

We recorded this with Luke Marshall for an English project. I wrote the music, Jon and Luke recorded it with me, and then the class wrote and sang the lyrics in class.

I ended up remaking this as Tripecac's (on College Collection). I like my version better, probably because it has lyrics and all the parts are in time.

The clapping was to keep Luke in time; he had trouble matching tempos back then.

This was filler on one of the later IPECAC tapes. I think Jon played all the parts, because I don't remember being involved in any of it. This may have been from his solo album (I Am Not Spock).

This is another weird recording from Jon, found on the back of an IPECAC tape. I don't think I had anything to do with its recording, though I hear my voice in the background. Very strange.

At the end Jon talks about "Thirteenth Night". I think he was explaining how we should play it. This suggests that his solo songs were recorded right before we did "Thirteenth Night".

This was from a test of the opening credits for the "Thirteenth Night" soundtrack. The song itself was playing in the background (on my parents' stereo, downstairs); we captured it with mics.

This excerpt is probably directly from the full soundtrack.

This was the soundtrack to a movie that Jon, Luke, and I recorded for English class. It was a sequel to Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" play. Jon wrote the music. We later re-recorded it for IPECAC.

I really like this song. Luke played pretty well on it, too, much better than he did on "Demian".

According to the video, we started pre-production on 1989-05-08, which was a Monday. It's likely that we recorded the music on the previous day, which was Sunday 1989-05-07.

We wrote this for the Master Anchovies. This was our demo version. We used Allen or Anand's drums, which were left in my basement from a practice. Since there is only one sax part and two keyboard parts, I'm pretty sure Jon played one of the keyboard parts while I played drums.

There were three parts to the song. The first and third were hectic jazz/funk. The middle section was reggae. I think the Anchovies ended up only playing the middle bit; the other parts were too hard.

The first Anchovies version of this song was recorded 1989-12-21, so I'm guessing that Jon and I recorded this demo in the Fall of 1989.

This was our first mix of "Three Pointer" (from Live at Carnegie Hall). We really overdid the distortion on this one. You can barely hear the drums or any high notes in the keyboard. On the plus side, it sounds even more live, even more convincing.

This was an alternative mix of "Downpour" (from Live at Carnegie Hall). I'm not sure if it came before or after the album version. There's a badly overdubbed keyboard bit which starts off too loud and ruins the illusion of a live performance. Other than that, I think it's identical.

This is an excerpt from the second video that Jon and I made for my cousin Kim. The first video was mailed on or before 1989-11-13. This one was recorded on "Friday the 15th", which was probably 1990-06-15. (Clues include the shorts, the green lawn, the drum set, and references to girlfriends.)

Most of the video is boring, annoying, and/or offensive but the musical bits might be of interest to IPECAC fans.

Allen or Anand had left his drums at my house. Since Jon and I were filming in the same room as the drums, we kept gravitating towards them.

This excerpt is really short. I'm pretty sure that Jon is on the drums, but I won't know for sure until I watch the video again.

This is the second, longer excerpt from the video Jon and I made for Kim.

We were mimicking stand-up comedians, who were fixated with racial issues back then (this was the early 1990s). We took things to an absurd level. The humor might be thin, but I really like Jon's sax solo and the live drums. Also, it's neat hearing us improvise vocals on the fly.

Eventually Jon remembered that we were supposed to be making a video for my cousin (or perhaps he got tired of the metaphor). At some point, he put a big innertube around me to keep me from drumming (which didn't work); the "I know what to do" bit at the end was right before he walked to the video camera and shut it off.