Trex - Wino Three Girls

This was my first admission of exhaustion. I think I felt overwhelmed by the intensity of the end of Five Dollar Drummer. I wanted to slow things down a bit, get loose and experimental.

This was probably recorded in January 1989, during or shortly after the final Five Dollar Drummer sessions.

Cheesy chord progression, out of tune synths, repeated dropouts in one ear, clumbsy cornet playing...

What a lame way to start the followup album to Five Dollar Drummer, which was my favorite bunch of recordings so far.

Wow, not much quality control here. This is very, very loose. It's funny at times, and almost catchy. Almost. Okay, to be honest, it's a mess. Sorry.

Babbling in (horrible) Spanish. I've kept the bad pronounciations in there. For your snickering pleasure.

Most of the lyrics were taken directly from a sequel I wrote to The Good Earth, which is a book we read for English class. I messed up the lyrics many times. The underlying music never changes key or rhythm until 5:28, when the song turns into a chaotic synth improv. Weird.

For some reason, this song has an "epic" feel to it. Despite the monotony and sloppiness, I kinda like it.

This is a short, slow instrumental filler. It's kinda boring. I got bored while I was recording it, and ended it abruptly.

I think the title refers to filling an IV. Hmm.

This sounds like martial music. It has a decent melody. I don't remember why I called it "HN Filler". What's the "HN" mean???

This was my solo version of "Tunes from the Bottle", which I also recorded with IPECAC (on Fake Reverb 2. Usually, my versions were demos which preceded the IPECAC recordings, but my notes suggest the opposite for this one.

It's an okay song. This version is just piano and vocals. It really sounds like a demo, doesn't it? Hmm.

I was talking about "Tunes from the Bottle".

Somehow Jessica and I acquired some helium-filled balloons. Dorkiness ensues.

Around this time, I started playing with the Anchovies. We often practiced in my parents' basement. Whenever Anand or Allen left the drums overnight, I'd inevitably gravitate towards them.

This is my solo version of "Schnell", which I also recorded with IPECAC (on Fake Reverb 2). The date of the IPECAC recording is 1989-06-09, so I'm guessing this was recorded around that time.

This is my original version of "Maybe", which I recorded with IPECAC and then later as Tripecac.

This version includes horribly out of tune singing, excruciatingly bad guitar playing, and cheesy keyboard drums. Enjoy!

Guitar, drums, and vocals, all in one song??? Yikes! And check out that drum solo in the bridge! Well, what I lack(ed) in talent I made up for in enthusiasm.

I wrote and recorded this for Allen Foster. I guess he was contemplating breaking up with a girlfriend (which he probably did).

This is a sloppy but melodic piano ditty that I never got around to recording with IPECAC or the Anchovies. It's horribly executed, but there are some neat ideas in there.

One day my friend Josh Hutter came over and we recorded some improvs. This is our immature introduction to the music.

We immediately segued into this rap improv. For music I fell back on IPECAC's "Repetitive Rap" (from Catharsis). Josh and I then adlibbed rap vocals on top. It's pretty sad.

I don't remember who "Chris" is.

Josh was tired of rapping, so we switched to blues. I couldn't find a decent chord. Not that it mattered; this just didn't get off the ground.

Josh got on the keyboard. I made up a rap about some girls we both knew. Mmm.

Note: For Josh's sake, I'll probably have to censor this before uploading the mp3.

This is a repetitive funk groove. Initially it sounds like a nice, focused antidote after the disorderly songs with Josh. However, it soon gets boring. In the end, we file it under "forgettable".

In a way, this resembles the progression of my music in general. I guess all musicians feel the same "smoothing out" of their music. Except Julian Cope, who gets rougher ever year. And The Fall... Gotta love The Fall.

Here's a second stab at the groove in "Funk 1". It's longer and sloppier than the first take. Why oh why did I even bother???

This is the weird climax to the album (Wino Three Girls). I was reading something, but I have no idea what. The lyrics are so surreal that I'm thinking they came from one of the Anchovies (Luke and Anand wrote surreal stories, but Jon wrote lyrics, and Allen is mentioned in the lyrics). Well, I certanly didn't make this stuff up.

The bass line is from IPECAC's "How Ya Is'n".

This is the audio portion of a video I made for English or History class. I'm not sure about the date. I know I recorded it after "Settlement of Southern Africa" (1988-04-10) and "Thirteenth Night" (1989-05-08), and the ending features the IPECAC version of "Anchovy Rock" (1989-04-13). So, this was recorded in May 2008 at the earliest, and probably not much later, since I would have picked a more recent song.

As for the audio itself, well, there's not much of interest. It's just a lot of boring talk and silly sound effects. The video isn't much better.

This isn't really part of Trex, is it? I might exclude it next time I do some spring cleaning. For now, I'll keep it on the end of Wino Three Girls, which has space for it. Let's call it a "bonus track". :)