Trex - Riding the Greyhound

I was almost ready for the trip to Alaska. This quick song has a nervous impatience to it. Or maybe that's just my imagination.

What sort of "blitz" takes seventeen minutes??? This one! It's actually pretty cool in parts.

Wow, ambition! Where art thou nowadays?

I was trying to play punk on piano while warbling like Johnny Rotten. So, do I get an F or an F minus?

I was getting ready to take the bus across the country. The music is very "lumbering". Like a big bus. It fades into the distance. Like a big bus. Right?

At first, the muffled bass sounds cool. But then you realize that the recording is just horribly distorted. As for the music, well, it's not too bad. For improvs, it's pretty good. The delicate chords at the end are particularly nice.

This is a bouncy, silly ditty about the pets. 2/3 of the way through I broke a string. And sang about it, of course. I kinda like this one.

This rocking instrumental was inspired by the pets. It's a little sloppy in the beginning, but is the kind of music I love to create on piano; it's got a steady beat and is almost 100% solos.

Do you hear that metallic raspy sound in the background? That's the broken string from "Have You Seen the Dogs". It kinda sounds like a hi-hat, making this song even cooler.

Yet another song about the dogs. The singing is painful, but the melodic idea is kinda of nice. I like this one.

I didn't, and don't, think much of my singing. Do you? Didn't think so.

It was almost time to leave for my trip... I was trying to be pensive, but got too excited. The thoughtful riff gets impatiently loud at times. Oh well, the wait is almost over.

I'm guessing that this was recorded the same day as "Itching to Go".

This is the last song that I recorded before embarking on my first Alaska trip. I left Charlottesville on 1997-06-26, so I'm guessing this was recorded a day or two earlier.

The music is fast, determined, and full of risk-taking. There's a lot of emotion in here, and it's not wimpy, lovey-dovey emotion. I like this.

The long fade at the end symbolizes a bus fading off into the distance.

I had just returned from my first Alaska trip, and was rusty. Very rusty.

The sad thing is, you probably can't really tell that I was rusty, because even my "good" playing sounds pretty awful. Sigh. Well, welcome back Trav anyway!

This gentle instrumental was the first song I recorded in my grad school apartment. I used my dad's acoustic guitar (as I had in Alexandria). As you can see, I hadn't improved at all, and as of 2007 still haven't.

I was taking a class called Distributed Information Systems (DIS). It was kinda scary. I ended up getting an A. Yay me!

Too bad my musicianship isn't on par with my nerdiness! Well, you don't have anything to worry about here; no music, just talking.

This chant was recorded the night before a big presentation. I sound pretty drunk.

This is about students getting so stressed out that they kill themselves. Yay!

Well, I survived. So that makes this a comedy! Just like "Blame the Game". I guess I was making fun of the students who were stressed about classes. I was stressed a little too, but not that stressed.

Singing about ex-girlfriends is so cool!!! Well, maybe not. But it's a certainly a cathartic opportunity, and one that's hard to pass up.

Actually, the really spooky thing is that I met Giovanna exactly five years later, to the day! Weird.

I think I was hung over. This instrumental guitar improv isn't that bad, though. Sure, it's sloppy and out of tune, but I like the aggression that pops up here and there.

I'm not sure if I recorded this on the same day as "Hanging Over". It was definitely between then and 1997-12-25. I don't know about the alleged "catchiness", though. It's okay, but nothing special.

Not quite punk. Okay, not even close! Not even close to being close!

This is a lame attempt at playing rock.

This is the original version of "Save the Histrionics". I had returned to my apartment after celebrating Christmas with my parents. This is short and rough, kinda like a demo. Yeah, a demo for a Trex song; that's not saying much!

I was tired of emotional girlfriends. At first I wanted to write a song about pushing all the histrionics onto the "b-sides", but then I realized that "c-sides" was even more remote.

I had never heard the term "c-sides" before (except for the obvious un-punny "sea sides"). Since then, however, I have seen "c-sides" in a few places. Copy cats!

This is an almost-funky guitar version of "Anchovy Rock", which was the Anchovies's theme song.

This might have been recorded in 1998; I'm not sure.