IPECAC - Gourmet

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!