Tripecac - College Collage

The intro states that the song is about Jon, but it's actually not. It's a fictional story about posessiveness.

Not many people said they liked this song when I first recorded it. Perhaps it sounded too much like a "conventional" pop-song. I always liked it, though; it's probably my favorite song on the album.

The date is approximate. I know it preceded "Numb (live)", which was recorded on 1993-01-03, and I'm pretty sure I wrote it in 1993.

This "live" version of "Numb" my fifth (and hopefully final) attempt at getting the song "right". I don't like it as much as the version on Archives, although the bridge (or "middle-eight") is pretty neat.

The applause is fake (of course). I don't remember where I got it.

This pokes fun at the "neo-hippie" college girls spending hours and hours getting their "hastily-thrown-together" outfits just right. I think my sister was starting to hang around with that crowd by this time, and I regarded her latest "granola girl" fashion with a great deal of cynicism. I knew she was self-conscious but her clothes seems to insist that she wasn't. Pretentiousness is a real button-pusher for me. :)

This is about behaving crude and immature as a way of getting attention without seeming pretentious, although one could argue that a 20-year-old acting like a 10-year old is pretentious. This "regressive behavior" had been a habit of mine for a long time and was, I felt, just as immature as the fashion-babies in "Funny Head".

Some of the lyrics are pretty disgusting if you pay attention, but their juvenility is part of the story.

This little ditty is a belated funeral dirge for IPECAC, which had disbanded in 1990. I think my hope was to finally "put the lid on IPECAC's coffin" so that I wouldn't write any more songs about Jon or my old music. That's ironic, because the number of songs about Jon (and the rest of the Master Anchovies) dramatically increased over the next couple of years.

The shaker was one of the few pieces of acoustic percussion in Tripecac. I don't remember what I used for it.

I initially wrote this for Anand, who told me he was getting tired of being a student. For a while it became a "theme song" for me, at least in my own head, especially whenever I wasn't feeling enthusiastic about going to work or classes or anything "un-fun". It's not about depression; it's about loving entertainment and not wanting to leave it.

The intro is actually the ending from the previous song ("IPECAC is Dead").

There are actually some more lyrics which never made it into the song. They explain the context a little better:

AT START:
  "tell me about it."
  "tell you about what?"
  "well, how's school goin'?"
  "pretty awful, to tell the truth."

AT END:
  well you say that every morning
  when you're head's still thick and sleepy
  and you'd rather just keep on snoring
  well, what if you kept on sleeping?

This song, subtitled "Sophomore Blues", examines the darker, "downside" moments of the "hermitainment" (hermit + entertainment) lifestyle.

Sometimes, especially when you're a poor college student, it's possible to run out of fresh sources of entertainment within your "rompus room" (dorm room in my case). Instead of looking outward into the "Real World" for new sources and locations of amusement, there's often a tendency to remain in the same old familiar (but no longer entertaining) location, either out of genuinely unconscious behavioral inertia or out of a very conscious (even conscientious) task-oriented instinct to "fix the problem" (which is in this case the lack of entertainment options) before progressing to the next activity or location, which would be the leaving of the room to go outside.

It's kinda like cleaning up after yourself; you want to leave the room more pleasant than when you entered it. If the room is not "enjoyable" now, then instead of just leaving the room in its not-so-fun state, it's "better" to fix the problem before leaving. That way, when you do leave the room, you'll be happy when you're away, because you know there's something fun waiting for you when you return.

This work-first-play-later ethic applied to entertainment is, I have found, very effective at maintaining high morale and therefore productivity (which in turn contributes to high morale). The main downside is that there are definitely moments when you're struggling very hard to find something fun to do... way past the point where "normal" people would just give up and go outside.

In my case, a frequent "solution" was to start working on a song (e.g., this one). Of course, the actual lyrics in this song aren't all that intellectual. They simply express the feelings of wanting to break out of a period of monotony, but without really knowing how to do it. I think one day I was becoming frustrated at not being able to solve the "boredom problem" intellectually and started thinking about a more primal, "brute force" approach; hence all the references to blood, violence, and a "regression" to younger, simpler-minded days.

Blaa blaa blaa. Man, that was long winded. And boring. What was I thinking? Who writes like that anymore? These days we like short sentences. Or sentence fragments. Thanks to the internet, I think. Instant messaging in particular. Yeah.

If you think this is bad, just wait until you hear my 1999 album (South or Southeast)!!! (I'm not a very good salesman am I?)

Actually, the piano line that peeks through the backwards music is a carefully composed tune which I still occasionally practice today. It's probably the only Tripecac song that I can play in its entirety.

This was probably recorded the same day as "Buzz of Nothing".

This is about a white-water rafting trip in West Virginia, at least on the surface (no pun intended). Deeper down you might find some sexual innuendoes, but they may be just coincidences. I'm not sure; I don't remember my state of mind when I wrote it.

People seemed to like this song a lot. I don't know if they liked it because of the adventurous subject matter, or if they liked the music. I thought it was okay.

I think this is the first song I wrote with a "fantasy" theme. Although the plot is dorky, I enjoyed not having to compose lyrics about an arbitary subject matter (such as rafting). At this point, I prefered to simply sing (or in this case read) something I'd already written.

This song inspired me to turn to some of my old fantasy writings for ideas. One of the stories I found was "Band in the Land of the Anchovies", which I used as a setting for the rest of the songs on this album.

This kicks off the The Band in the Land of the Anchovies (BITLOTA) mini-album, which includes the rest of the songs on this CD.

In this song, our band (the Master Anchovies) orders pizza. Somehow we get eaten by Anand's cat (Mimi). We wake up in a strange land...

This is an instrumental "panorama". It tries to establish a "deep", mysterious mood, which clashes with the rest of the BITLOTA songs, since the story and music are so silly and hyper.

The ambient noises are Beth and I rustling papers and talking quietly in the background. It may have been intentional, but I probably just accidentally left a microphone on during recording.

This is just my reading of part of the story. It's on here for anyone who's actually interested in the plot. Hello? Hello???

This is probably the most "complex" song I have written, in terms of time signature, instrumentation, and lyrics.

There's some bad distortion on this recording, which turned me off to the song as a whole. In 2002 I found an earlier, less distorted version ("Anand's Journey (original)"), which is now included as a bonus track.

Anyway, the distortion on this particular recording really annoyed me. I also wasn't happy with the "flow" of the music; it seemed awkward. As as result, I think I developed an aversion to "intentional complexity", not just in music but in all forms of creativivity and behavior in general.

This returns to the "safe and easy" pop-reggae-funk formula in which I feel most comfortable. It was a reaction against the clunky complexity of "Anand's Journey".

This touches base with easy-listening jazz, which is my other "safe and easy" genre. It's a gentle and pretty little tune. However, like "The LoveFish", it seems out of sync with the rest of the BITLOTA songs.

This returns to the story of about Allen and Luke, which gave me an excuse to write another pop-reggae-funk song (since it was their "theme").

The lyrics describe the silliest scene in the play, in which jock strap testers hurl themselves against a brick wall as a means of testing their protective equipment.

This is told from the perspective of Luke, who is Australian. Hopefully this explains my lame fake accent. In the story, we're approaching a climactic confrontation. Not that anyone cares.

This was my first attempt to actually sing like a "normal" person. The music was funky enough for me to not feel self-conscious while I was recording the vocals. Upon listening to it later, however, I think I felt like I'd been pretentious.

Strange bit of trivia: I received an email in late 2004 from a guy who saw the lyrics to "The Battle" on the internet. He wanted to hear the song. I uploaded the mp3. He thanked me and said "the song was good". So far, that's my only piece of anonymous fan mail.

This is similar in spirit to "IPECAC is Dead". It's like a goofy smile, intending to dispel any airs of pretentiousness.

This is my favorite BITLOTA song. The refrain at the end got stuck in my head for days (make that years). To this day I can still distinctly remember the evening after I finished recording the song (and album) and was jogging to Beth's dorm in a triumphant mood. At the time, I felt it was my best song yet.

I wanted to end the album on a silly note, so I recycled a bit from "Gonna Die Today". I think this was the first time I ever used a "reprise" to finish an album.

More end-of-tape chatter. This one's more energetic and interesting than the one on College Collection. It's a little more annoying, though. Which is worse: boring or annoying?

Note that I called this album "1993 College Collection". I shortly afterwards renamed it "1993 College Collage" to distinguish it from 1992's College Collection.

I also referred to songs created in October 1992. This is before I moved "Early Release" through "Christmas in Cancun 2" (all created in 1992 to College Collection.

This is the original version of "Anand's Journey". It's less distorted. You can hear the vocals more clearly, and I made fewer vocal mistakes. The sax's reverb sounds better, too.

I don't know why I didn't use this version on the tape. Maybe I felt it didn't have as much "life"?