Bridge To Nowhere was done by my good friend Sara D. for Mopium.com.

Cure For Pain? was done in Photoshop by me.

Bottle Of Depression was taken by me using a Canon Powershot S100 Digital Elph. Special thanks to Holly for donating the cool bottle!

Blue Candle was also taken by me using the Digital Elph. My friend Charlie took me out for consolation drinks the day I got laid off. The bar was really dim and they had one of these candles on each table. I thought it might look cool if I shot it without a flash.

Sad Bastard Fights Crime was done using the Heromachine and Photoshop.

Mopium Fear Charlie was originally taken with the Digital Elph. Tweaking was done in Photoshop using the Dark Strokes filter. We were at 111 Minna Gallery one day for happy hour, and they had that weird stretchy material making an arch around the entryway. Charlie stuck his face into it from one side, and I took a picture.

I am licensed to drive in California. Someone told me once that scanning your driver license was a cool web thing to do. So I did it. I'll do anything someone tells me as long as they say it's a cool thing to do.

Hipster Youth was done in Photoshop using a WWII German recruitment poster for the "Hitler Youth" that I found on the web. The idea came to me after seeing a bunch of indie rock kids at a concert all wearing those annoying glasses. Depressing as hell. So I grabbed the poster, removed the offensive symbolism, and gave him a hip pair of the aforementioned ultra-cool glasses.

Second September - My first song that I put on the 4-track. It's a little uneven, the tempo gradually gets faster and faster (my sense of meter isn't very good), and the mix is maybe a little rough, but not bad for a first shot, in my opinion.

2:45 AM - One of my favorite songs by Elliott Smith. It's always had a special meaning for me; I just had to cover it. I'm not sure I really do it justice, though. At any rate, I played around with a few new things this time around, namely not using noise reduction and doubling the vocals on the last verse. I like it. Oh, and if you happen to BE Elliott Smith, or someone who represents him, and take umbrage to my posting this, just let me know and I'll take it down. Just please don't sue me.

Prayer For The Paranoid - Another cover, this one from a great band called Mojave 3. My voice cracks a few times in the beginning, but oh well. The guitar part was originally played at the same pitch as on the album, but I hurried it really bad, so I slowed it down using the tape speed control on the 4-track. This brought it down a step or so, and gave it a kind of languidness to it. I kinda like it. As with the above cover, if you represent Mojave 3, and have an issue with me putting this out there, let me know and I'll remove it.

Here Comes Your Man - Yet another cover, Sad Bastard style. This was my first effort with the BR1180CD, and I must say I'm pretty happy with it. I managed to pull this together in under an hour (and slightly tipsy to boot!), and it still sounds pretty ok from a sound quality perpsective. The guitar is off in some places (I blame the drink), but overall, not too shabby. Standard stuff applies: if you're a member or representative of the Pixies, don't sue my ass.

Mistakes Were Made - Hey, an original! Oh, but crap, it's just a spoken word piece with a bit of guitar and drums thrown in. And here you thought I was actually going to post another original song or something. I played around with the vocal effects on this one, adding in the little echo thing. Lesson learned: a little bit goes a long way.

St. Swithin's Day - My favorite Billy Bragg song, as interpreted by me. This took far too long to get right, and it's still choppy in places. *sigh* Oh well, it's better than the version I tried to do a year previous on the 4-track machine.

Still In Love - With many apologies to Mr. Williams. This is a good example of how not to do a cover. I've never actually heard the Hank Williams version of this song, only the Cat Power version. So for all I know, it sounds nothing like his original song. My voice sucks on this, the backing harmony isn't really a harmony, (it's just the same notes sung in a higher register, and that doesn't count in my book), and the lead guitar bits are uninspired and boring. Oh well, I'm still in love with this song, and felt like I should give it a whirl.

Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying - I finally learned how to play my favorite Belle and Sebastian song. Yay! If you tune your guitar down a half-step, almost all of the chords can be played in the open position, which is easier (for me anyways) and sounds better, in my opinion. So maybe it's cheating, who cares. Anyways, the big lesson learned from this cover is that I need to either invest in monitors or become more familiar with the sound characteristics of my headphones. The mix sounded fine in the headphones, but when I play it on my computer or stereo, all the bass is missing from the guitar and bass lines, and so the vocals come out sounding way too loud in the mix. Slowly but surely, I'm learning how to use this equipment...

To Be Your Breath - Recipe for weirdness: take an old tape you have lying around of your old band from college. Go to the end of the second side. Since your friend had used this tape before in his 4-track machine, the end of the second side contains some very strange noises, backwards, and slowed way down. Dump that onto your 8-track, add a guitar loop you've had stuck in your head forever and a day, and mix in a little bass guitar to keep things interesting. Then add a dash of lyrics sung through a mic that desperatly wants to be a lead guitar, and voila. Lessons learned: anyone can sound like a Trent Reznor knock-off if they have enough distortion in the mic.

California (All The Way) - My favorite Luna song ever, reproduced in a crappy manner by yours truly. I wasn't happy with the sound I was getting with just one guitar, so I doubled it up, one playing the open chords and the other playing the equivalent barre chords. Worked out allright, definitly thickened things up. The solos that Luna plays are too hard for my meager skills, so I just threw in some crap, kinda noodled around. Drums were mixed too low, I blame the headphones.

Jeane - The first time I heard this song was on a Billy Bragg collection of b-sides. I thought it was just OK until I heard The Smiths version (with Moz singing, not Sandie Shaw, though that's a good one too). Then I thought it was great. Now I'm no Johnny Marr, not by a long shot, but I'm actually pretty happy with my guitar work on this one. The only bummer is that I wasn't able to get the bass line to sound right, so I just decided not to include it.

Good About Me - This song is orignally by Joseph Arthur, one of my favorites. I had planned to do more with this song. After listening to the first take, though, I decided it had a certain lo-fi charm to it and left it as is. It mixed really low, though, so you may need to turn your speakers up to hear it.