Wild Is Wild

Wild is Wild

(Songs from 1992-93)

Playing at the New York Mills Arts Center, March 1998

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Songs from 1992-93. I call these the coffeehouse days. A lot of material was written to fill out two hours of background acoustic guitar playing in the coffeehouse - no singing allowed. Plus, in 1993 I started a new band called Deliverance, and wrote some decidely hard-rocking songs for that trio. These had a complex edge, under the influence of Primus and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Deliverance had two personnel incarnations, though, and what is heard here is from the later 1996 incarnation. Also in August, 1992 I went down to Cleveland and recorded an EP with singer Brett Kopf: Mane. Until I can put up that album as it is, I am piecing the various songs written by me in this year-by-year discography.

So, the three elements above conspire to make this "album" of 1992-1993 songs.

1. Wild Is Wild

A coffeehouse opener. This is the Mane version.

2. Called On the Carpet

A joke song from the day.

3. Bought a New Guitar

Written after a trip to a guitar store with a precocious tyro who told me that the only thing between her and music fame was a decent guitar.

4. Things I See #2

I don't know which was written first, but this one hasn't been recorded yet, so it gets No. 2. The performance, which sounds like I'm performing somewhere down in the bottom of cereal box, is from a gig in New York Mills, MN in 1998 (see pic).

5. 5 Days and 17 Nights

A performance in my kitchen, circa 2005, of one of my best songs from 1993. It is an ode to a loved one suffering from drug addiction.

When I see a room full of people twisting and moving hard
It reminds me of everything good about you and the things you used to tell me
And when I drive all day and all night in my quiet, stolen car
I hear what I used to go through - I never knew it was about you
And when I walk under the cold city lights I'm a soldier.
That's what I told her.

Five days and seventeen nights is what one hour feels like
All these years and I'm bad with names, I wish everything didn't seem the same
Five days and seventeen nights is what one hour feels like
If I had a soul I would be like you, instead I'm just a ghost who's paying his dues
Five days and seventeen nights - it's out of my control
Now everyone's a wisp and I see through them all.

Or maybe it's me that's fading fast
I must have been crazy to think that I would last
Now there's nothing that I haven't seen in my past
Nothing changes, nothing's new
How could I have known that it was all about you?

6. Untitled 93 Electric

A quick-n-dirty demo of the instrumental part to an unfinished song.

7. Things I See

Found on the Adventures of Freddy CD, but this performance is from Deliverance, 1996 (Me-Guitar, Voice, John Maloney-Drums, Jesus Contreras-Bass). Live-in-studio. Words are about sidewalk voyeurism.

8. Honor Among Thieves

Coffeehouse song gone electric in the Deliverance 1996 session. Relating the life of thieves to, what else, a relationship.

9. Bonedancin'

Also found on the Adventures of Freddy CD, and also from the Deliverance 1996 session. Brief, torrid story song.

10. Tornadonis

This was mostly written for the first Deliverance band of 1993, an instrumental. In 1998 I made a version for the band Machina and we played it together at a gig in Ann Arbor. By 2005 I had finally put together this recording with MIDI drums and bass, but living guitars.

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