On 19 April 1997, I finally finished Where's My Muse?, which, at over three years in the making, was my longest [in-progress] musical project by far. To be honest, I think I felt more relief than pride when I put the final song onto tape!
Why did it take three years? Well... I can blame it on moving in with my girlfriend, on getting a TV, a new computer, a CD player, a full-time job... I can even blame inspiration-paralyzing trepidations of "living up" to my previous album, The Hermit (1994), which I considered my creative peak. Whatever the "true" cause(s) of the musical decline, the effect was that as the months and years rolled by, I found myself recording fewer and fewer songs per year.
In the Spring of 1994, fresh from finishing The Hermit, I recorded five decent-to-good songs: ("SPCA", "Solid Blue", "The Trap", "Another Anchovies Practice", "Where's My Muse"). Then came summer break, and a move off-campus to an apartment with a TV. The rest of 1994 was barren: I just recorded two "Sleeping Gas" covers in December (not on this CD). In all of 1995 I only recorded one song ("Return to Duckville"), which made it my least productive year for the last ten!
1996 started off just as weak. By May, I was feeling guilty and frustrated by my lack of musical productivity. I'd been fiddling around with a jazzy piano riff for a few months and decided to turn it into a song for Mother's Day. I added some lyrics and a bridge, and voila: "I Don't Do Hills", my first song in over a year! The immense satisfaction I got from finishing that song inspired me to start practicing more frequently, which I did until June, when I was sent to California on travel...
California was a 6-month tedious/adventurous "open aired cocoon" for me. I was living completely alone for the first time (in a motel), and didn't know anyone. I didn't have a computer (at first), a stereo, or roommates so I was "forced" to go out into the "real world" to find things to do. The amiable Southern California weather certainly helped!
One Saturday afternoon I was exploring a nearby college campus when I noticed a Fine Arts department. It was unlocked. I went inside and found some piano practice rooms.
"Cool!" I said to myself and commenced to bang away gleefully for the next couple hours.
The next weekend, I came back and played some more, and the next, and the next... until I was jogging or rollerblading to the campus three or four times a week. I started bringing notepads, and then a dictaphone, and soon found myself writing, practicing, and recording songs regularly, just like in the "good old days". This musical productivity made me very happy, and I kept it up.
When I came back to Virginia in November, I lost most of my musical momentum, thanks to a new apartment full of roaches and no nearby pianos. The week before Thanksgiving I found time to record "A Flat for Effort", my first guitar-only song in years. December yielded "Been Too Long" and its longer, evil twin "Been Way Too Long".
1997 opened up wimpily. I spent my weekends traveling or filling out grad school applications. But in February, I had some weekends off and managed to record five songs in just one month, a feat I hadn't managed in several years! March was taken over by beach week in Florida, a return trip to California, and girlfriend troubles.
April was pretty dead until the 19th, when I woke up determined to knock out some tunes... Six of them! Five were half-finished instrumentals and the sixth, "Artificial Life" was a hastily assembled just-get-it-over-with affair, but the bottom line was that I was finished! When the tape ran out half way through the backwards-sample "Here's to the Future", a huge smile lit my face.
Recording Notes:
I used a Yamaha SY55 keyboard workstation for most of the music, occasionally adding a Roland TR-505 drum machine or an acoustic guitar. I recorded to a four-track and used a cheap reverb box (perhaps too frequently!). I mastered to cassette using a Pioneer CT-W250 tape deck.
Here's the original tape cover (from 1997):
Here are some scans of the original CD cd (from 2000-12-24):
NOTE: Looks like my scanner's dying. These scan are blurry and the colors look awful. Sorry!
