IPECAC - Fake Reverb 2

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.