yymmdd:
100811:
Have done lots of them now but now going back to re-level a bunch arggg... is taking about a whole week to do just one tune... on "The BG8 Project" got Everyday (3:07) and Here To Stay (2:49) and
100720:
Haven't updated the site because opened big can of worms deciding to re-work everything from 2006... what a friggin chore... but if were to leave the old mixes up there for a comparison you would know (but do not want to have the extra files and links...) there was only two or three out of the 20 recordings that did not get re-mixed.
100629:
Redid California Soul (3:07) and started doing stuff from "The BG8 Project" also 2006 and uploaded new Moon Queen (2:55) version. What a difference (but also what an amount of time spent redoing these things...) Also just doing a "Best Of" for the -Quotations- from June 2005 (there were 38 collected that month sheesh...) then might collect new ones for next month. Got to finish theses other two S & G tunes right quick... People wanted to hear more/louder vocals so here yas go...
100610:
More progress on making the titles link to the lyric files in the -Top20Lyrics- section. Collected new quotes and proverbs for April but since May 2005 has friggin 38 in it going to just do a dozen or so "Best Of" for May 2008. In fact, so many of those older ones have so many in them perhaps should do some more "Best Of" files sheesh... Also uploaded another modified S & G tune .Richard Cory. (3:00) repleat with folk-style closely sometimes dissonant harmonies, please be advised most of these selected way back when often have dark lyrics... Ooops horoscope read would have to make some kind of correction - didn't know what it was referring to until realize ad/blurbed "Puppetman" (new) link filename as "Puppetman-new" then renamed old "Puppetman" to "Puppetman-old" and new "Puppetman" to "Puppetman" rendering those links with a 404 error... so just uploaded a "Puppetman-new" so clicking those links in all those places the ad was blurbed will work... doh... Also rebombulated Loves, Lines, Angles And Rhymes) (3:56)
100607:
Can not believe was too lazy to update site for month of May at all. Spent entirly too much time trying to use up all the paints on those 2 stupid old recycled canvases finally all that is left is black so am now putting black everywhere hahah... Doh... Couldn't really play due to that wrist injury anyway so messed around with remixing some stuff like from "My 5th Dementia" Puppetman (new) removed right channel synth altogether, edited 1st synth, re-EQ'd everything, raised nylon guitars and lowered electric guitars except made lead color guitar louder. Re-panned all the vocals and re-ran everything through filters and VSTs that was not on the system 4 years ago. Also started to re-visit stuff (on the very bottom of the) -Discography- from "Slidin And Garfunkin" like .I.Am.A.Rock. (2:10) and but of course; sped-up and rocked out per usual. 5-year-old cover projects started but never finished but still have a bunch of good bed tracks really don't want to waste so might do a few more, already started. Also started coding links in the Top20 Lyrics file, a chore that promise will finish soon. Still need to catch up on quotes or just do re-reruns again IDK.
100408:
Been tyring to do a little painting while the weather is nice. Spending too much time on trying to fix these old tape tunes - most of 'em are just jamming instrumental over pre-programmed polysequencer arrangements. But did find and upload the original version of "Sha" vocal with Alberto Reyes on cocktail drum kit and .Automatically. (1:22) on "Amusement Park" (1985) and .Time Of Your Life. (1:00) on "Hotel Rooms" (1984) but putting this stuff on back burner. Funny how used to record 2 or 3 of these per day sometimes and now is taking 2 or 3 days (or more!) to try to re-master just one of em lol... Tired of this hard wrist-brace for the carpal-tunnel (neglected to mention recently...) but almost all better so can start playing a bit more soon. But am still able to fuss around in the garden.
100317:
Here's 5 old tape tunes digitally remastered best as possible - maybe might learn new techniques sometime... .Slide Away. (1:26) on "Amusement Park" (1985) and .Rush It. (2:19) and .Waiting For Stars. (1:36) and .Bailys Bop. (2:28) on "Machines" (1985) and .Slow Swingin'. (1:46) on "Hotel Rooms" (1984) so far. Actually have worked on about a couple dozen already. Sure brings back memories. Damm /used to be a good guitar player... but those awful early synths and drum machines. Ack. Had totally stopped using that crap by 1990 and thought would become more of a purist - nothing artificial - for about 10 years until digital recording came into the picture (mixing/recording acoustic drums was a beyotch bizzle foshizzle...)
100307:
No new recordings for 2 months sheesh... Finally finished getting all 19 reels done for a total of 449 recordings on disc. Done. Most of it is polysequencer drone jam crap with a lot of "experiments" and most are under 2 minutes (since they are just sequencer verse/bridge over and over...) so will just chop many of them up. Some very difficult to digitally re-master yipes... /what-did-get-self-into/ Trying to get about a half-dozen uploaded in the next few days then put the project away for a while... a few tapes unable to salvage... is only archival purposes anyway... Ready for some new recordings... Have some new ideas... Going to just wait to finish "Xmas Vol.2" until next season.
100304:
6th Anniversary bgmatthews.com
100207:
No new recordings in January... too burned-out from cramming stuff end of last year... downloaded a half-dozen more reels to disk so 11 -1/2 down, 5-1/2 to go (takes about 4-5 hours per side of one frigging reel... For kicks ran one old tune .Slide.Away. (1.24) through re-mixing / re-mastering. Actually collected a dozen new .Quotes. instead of picking those "Best Of Years Ago" cop-outs... Painted over some tagging in the alley and now have artwork for 2010 lol... Had to replace desk-reference-monitors (Numark 20watts ok) old ones' amp blew up pr something. Did normal-people stuff: trim bushes, tie up trees, take care of flowers through winter. No ad/blurbing... Staying offline more... Facebook once a month maybe, MySpace now and then, refuse to Twitter...
100106:
Using a little math discovered that (think) during the server conversion/update accidentally somehow quadrupled the amount of (non-text/non-html) downloads (knew something was wacky...) and session time for September and October. Corrected and reflected in summary and top20tunes (which is now going to be the Top25Tunes...) Sorry only got half of the new xmas stuff done. Even webmaster needs holiday vacation... No time to collect new quotes again so another "Best Of" (and way back then was typically putting 20-30 items in monthly quotes file so might just be "Best Of mmm2005" for all this year, back burner, who knows...
091224:
Only was able to get half of -Christmas Instrumentals Vol.2- done and installed by Christmas Day. Was hoping to have "O Little Town Of Bethlehem" fisined by last night too but only got .I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day. (2:37) final mix uploaded. The others will just have to wait until whenever. Need to get xmas gift to self; 30-watt powered desk monitors when GC has big sale soon... Going to paint some. Not try to rush any more recordings through. Still need to download 6 or 8 old reels to disc before they turn to dust then sort through 300+ salvageable channels that can be processed, mixed and hopefully sound ok. Big project... A few art pages left to sort through and code... Someone mentioned how dull and "acedemic" the site looked and less "flashy" than other sites (this one and the 2 before it WERE "flashier") but went back to basics 3 or 4 years now. Might add some mouseover gifs at least. Might make a "view this site in white" thing.
091218:
These Christmas tunes are taking a long time since there is so much more in the way and other excuses, sorry. But there are 2 more now, .Away In A Manger. (2:31) and .Good Christian Men Rejoice. (2:14) and 2 more almost ready, and the rest... well whatever gets done by the end of the year will be whatever gets done. Still have 2 more to do on -Not Young Anymore- ("Old Man" and "Heart Of Gold") plus even 3 more 2009 originals that will eventually be added to -Angst Unleased- ("Everything's Ok", "Somewhere" and "Walking On Eggshells") as since all the bed tracks are already done, just need to finish them.
091205:
To prove really am working on the -Christmas Vol.2- collection, installed .Once In Royal David's City. (2:32) and .Coventry Carol. (2:46) and spent way too much time on "Good Christian Men Rejoice" so moving on... suppose whatever gets done by the end of the year will be what it will be... Looks like monthly downloads back to "normal" as the last 2 months I think were flukey but webmaster just copies the info from the host stats files (which are very few), don't care about most of that crap since site will always be ad-free... With the addition of these last 2 tunes makes 200 tunes on the site (does not count the lo-fi clips, that would be almost 400...) Updated the -Albums- page to reflect them all and be in synch with the -Discography- page. Will start collecting new quotations next year, another "best-of re-run" sorry...
091114:
Premature update date due to technical difficulties with new host server back office interface which once gotten into looks very good. Could not upload ftp for 3 days. Added .Cinnamon Girl. (2:45) and .Sugar Mountain. (3:20) and .Long May You Run. (3:20) to "Not Young Anymore. A couple more to go. Actually have bed tracks to 5 more but not doing all. Might make WAV files available for donation. Maybe even individual tracksyou can import into a multi-tracker and mix yourself. Upon reviewing referralls indicate many from France and China last couple of months (!?!)
091102:
Working on 7 of the Neil tunes at a time is too much - hoping to have 3 done real soon. Had been checking out how things sound on a portable mp3 player (crummy but tolerable maybe...) and after running some through a spectrum analyzer can't believe the awful gain and compression levels on some sample tunes and other recently downloaded (!?!?!) and many at 192bps too... why(!?!) not worth this site to eat the extra bandwidth... No time to get on usenet to collect quotes so another "Best Of" October 2004.
091007:
bgmatthews.com now has unlimited bandwidth! Host service had grand-fathered-in scheduled upgrade last month for next month, good thing too as am still bewildered at both the 4 times as many montlhy downloads (63,615) as well as almost 4 times the amount of minutes spent per unique visitors (was usually about 3.x - October was 10.x) !?!?!?! Entire trip was resceduled to add an additional 2 weeks in Indianapolis to visit with Dad... still got one more week here... will have been gone almost an entire month. Finally joined the living and got a GX800 16mb expandable mp3/wmv player
090918:
Was only able to get one other Neil tune done .WalkOn. (2:07) and almost finished "Long May You Run" before having to get ready for the airport but didn't want to rush it the way it was, will finish it right when returning. Going to be sitting in with several bands while away and on the way back. If itinerary gets scheduled enough in time will post the updates to MySpace/44488079
090907:
Was only able to get one Neil tune done .Mr.Soul. (2:45) since started too many at once plus working on Christmas Vol.2 as well... Not to mention continuing family super-crisis and will be in Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville this month and road trip back through Nashville, Austin, and El Paso. Record number of downloads for August at 14,474, lyrics too with 3,375 readings. Still going to do the "halfway" (No.97 Life Is Like Hard Candy......2:51) and "last place" tunes (No.194 The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes......2:49) because so funny that when listed in the -Top 20- "Pepe" at No.96 last month suddenly jumped to No.37 lol... A shame the Costello cover in last place... is a favorite...
090808:
Added .Tonight's The Night. (2:53) but was only able to get those 3 done by the end of the month... will add the rest in August, already have scratch tracks for tests, might dump a couple though: ("For The Turnstiles", "I Am A Child", "Cinnamon Girl", "Down To The Wire", "Like A Hurricane", "Long May You Run", "Mr. Soul", "Sugar Mountain", "Walk On") The top 3 in the -Top 20- all 3 versions of "Bye Bye" (still don't get this but so...) curious... halfway through No. 96: Pepe......2:37 on (Dead Pet Names - 2002) and in last place on (Seasons Beatings - 2001) No. 193: Happy Xmas (War Is Over)......3:46 Guess the -Top 20 Lyrics- makes sense ("Hogging The Covers" mostly) since they are instrumentals but still wonder why they never make the Top 20 tunes... And sorry no time to collect quotes last month so is "The Best Of July 2004" this time around...
090725:
Sneak peek at the latest cover demo project: "Not Young Anymore" about 10 or 12 transmorgified older Neil Young not-big-hits sped-up and rocked-out... The first 2 tunes: .The Loner. (2:53) and .Harvest. (2:34) the latter if you are not familiar with, is very slow piano, brushes, upright bass ballad... And how funny that last month's "Middle 20" had a few in the -Top 20- half-way through the month so far...
090721:
Modified already then... Chorus in .Disasters. was supposed to be intentionally humorous, but folks seemed to be laughing at it instead of with it - had doubts about it in the first place - then one of my reviewers said "dump it" so all that's left in it's place are a few "aaaaa"s in which originally the ending of choruses were complimented by the beginning of the two guitar solos. Original version on the CD. 167 of y'all got to hear it before it was changed anyway... Already got 3 of the new cover tunes done - going pretty fast - see how many can do this month...
090710:
Was going to re-do some takes of this .Disasters. tune started in February and thought might as well "finish" it. Might tweak it more, might not. The vocals are a disaster haha... Another mix version (for CD) has corny "thunderstorm" and other special effects out of the synth that will probably never get another chance to use... The -Top 20- is so skewed because people just click the most popular ones (the top 10 or so always get many hundreds of hits then goes down from there right quickly...) So did a "Middle 20" and might start doing a [-TOP 40-] once the site reaches about 200 tunes. Started pulling old data track files off storage of -The BG8 Project- and started messing around with re-doing some vocal EQ and compression and remixing. Will have all that done soon. Will sound better. Surprise new cover demo coming too. Can't believe used to put 25-30 quotations and proverbs in the quotes files in the beginning years...
090625:
Looks like y'all have been comparing the 3 different versions of "Bye Bye" on here (Top 3 !?!?!? so far for June) - almost want to go look for the original 1984 reel-to-reel version for you to compare but don't have the time to go hunting right now. Painted over the tagging over the globs of gray "Grafitti-Busters" plastered all over my walls this month. Had to work real fast in the screaming heat so am not very proud of the way they turned out and don't care. At least the tagging is gone (for now...) Removed the [ Donations ] link even though it typically gets 200+ hits/month and thanks to those of you who donated the $150 over the last 5 years. Anyway, y'all can still have it all for free up to about 30,000 downloads per month until you get a |Bandwidth Exceeded| message. Also hoping to have new tune "Boycott Citibank" done soon.
090604:
Used the RP500 for guitar first time recording with it on .Dog Poo. (2:39) - actually wrote the .Lyrics. when the pets were still alive. Added 3 more old reel jams stuck em in (Miscellaneous 1984-1990) in the [ Discography ] for now :.r86b18. (3:49) BG and Jon multi-track jaz-rok (1986) .r87a06. (3:28) 2 guitar tracks, 2 percussions folk-rock (1987) .r86b11. (6:46) BG:guitar-Jon:drums-Roy Ward:bass (1986) actually chopped a minute off this, was 7m40s... Better quit these for now or will become a mess... With the top 5 or 10 tunes being so predictable/recurring most months decided to make it the [ Top 25 Monthly Tunes ] instead just curious. "Tell Me Why" (Beatles Basics Vol.1) first time in Top20.
090522:
090519:
Really late site update... took extra time to record latest new tune (with minimal effects) .Hey Hey Ooh. (2:48) because the first version of lyrics was rather profane and probably quite offensive to just about every type of person out there except those who might have tolerated the artistic license. Did not want to take chance. G-rated version, had to re-record all 5 vocal tracks over again. Not spending a whole lot of time on these old reels. Titles were indexed only to the master cassette copies and not much time to cross-reference tapes yet - so not sure what the titles to 2 of these old things are except .Folodica. (2:23) (hope you can stand melodica-sounds-like-funeral-bagpipe-dirge) these next 2 just temporarily named them what they kinda/sorta are like .FastSeq2Teles. (2:12) (a fast poly sequence program, 2 guitars and 1 live synth) then .Cute3Tele1625Jam. (1:15) (short jam in 1625 chord struture except different bridge) and eventually will find the real titles.
090422:
Decided against the Boss unit (sure am glad they have a 30-day-no-questions-asked return policy...) and have been looking at Digitech products but can not decide what to get. Have been pretty busy with other things so not much music for April so far. Also stained/sealed 3 big gates, shoveled lots of dirt, relocated about 50 square feet of aloe, fixed the old sundial and big wood-working bench. Trimmed bushes. Dug up a 3 foot deep old plastic pond used to have pump and cat-tails in it (what a chore! took a whole week!)
090412:
090331:
Decided the Pod was not what I wanted and sent it back... continued working on the latest tune with only a couple of stomp boxes, the wah and the ART FX II (as well as some VSTs...) So just uploaded to -A Real Twang Up Job- these 4 short little old jams from 20-year old reels : .I Want To Be. (1:46)
and .You Will See. (2:44) and .Candy Bar Beat. (2:19) and .Bee In The Bouquet. (2:23) also painted over the very last canvas laying around titled "Uncomfortable". Going to use up last bit of gel and quit painting again...
090327:
090314:
090306:
...stats freakins... 2,075 viewed the art pages, 790 of you read the quotations (guess better keep up with that...) 2 Beatles tunes in the top 20 for the first time ever; .Any Time At All. and .And I Love Her. from -Beatles Basics Vol.1- and lol that .Big Beat. made it too... and really lol that all 3 versions of "Bye Bye" up there too... ya's must be comparing them... (in fact both versions of "You Can Talk" from "Ok. Well Are We Ready?" and "No, We Were Not Ready" in top 25...) "The Coconut III Radio Interview" in top 25 as well... Found more really old stuff to try to edit and upload for archives in a few days; (a 6-minute long Monsterpice jam that needs every snare drum hit edited... going to take a long time...) Uploaded one old thing from "Machines" (1985) .Badahoon. featuring pre-programmed Poly800 bassline, Bruce on guitars and synths, Jon Stutz on drums, timbales and percussion.
090304:
5th Anniversary bgmatthews.com
090211:
Finally finished updating the site for January - even collected new quotes... Finally finished coding the 2008 page in Artworks as far as they got by the end of the year... Fishing around with old tapes found some things done with Jon Stutz on same tape as some of the -Ok Well Are We Ready?- stuff... Totally re-coded the top20tunes page, old one was kinda confusing, easier to update now too... Also uploaded 3 old things from master cassette copies that had been played 1,000 times --- tried to do best re-mix, compression, eq, noise reduction : (all short instrumentals) .Who Do You Do?. (1:40) and .Running Away. (1:31) from -A Real Twang Up Job- album. Also some untitled synth drone, guitars, percussion and the melodica only named .x20a335c. (2:42) on the tape list. Also got out the old pedal-steel case keeping left-over percussion items, judging by the newspaper wrapped in hadn't been used since 2003... Added some photos of em to Instruments page.
090207:
Well hell... he went into hospice on Thursday but wasn't even there 2 days... He went this morning... His suffering was shorter than others perhaps, but probably longer than some others... Enough cancer already! So... anyway... yeh... let's see... did an alternate ending to .If You Open Your Eyes. shaved 7 seconds off it... found a one-month-earlier version of .Data Drive. in a folder with probably what was working title of "cM7roca" and posted that mix in -Singles-This-Year- as version 5c. Got to just keep on writing and recording as possible... hard to make happy words not sound like fluff or cereal filler at the moment... Finding more 25-year-old stuff on some tapes that can have relatively effective noise reduction applied - will post some soon... Oh and no more painting for a while... Oh and another cover album being re-started... will try to post that all at once sometime...
090126:
Managed to record one thing this month. Uploaded a test version of .If You Open Your Eyes. (3:30) trying to decide if to re-do some tracks and edits. Probably not. Ok...going to type in first person here for once: I have not been able to get much done last few months because of the dealings of yet the 3rd person in 4 years to be ravaged by cancers (yes another one after Ray Lee last April). Plus, in July two neighbors and I started legal proceedings with the city prosecutors against another neighbor for blatant violation of Phoenix City Ordinance 8-2 Howling/Barking Dogs (6 chihuahuas and 2 pit bulls). Don't get me wrong, I love dogs and have had them all my life, well-behaved however. I could legally post all the details here of the jerk on MySpace or anywhere since it's all been public record since mid-November and I'm so irritated. The guy is getting as much mileage out of his court-appointed attorney as he can. 2 hearings in December rescheduled, 2 in January rescheduled and I sure hope that the one on Feb. 11 is the last one and he accepts the city's plea bargain or otherwise whatever happens. It has simply been way to difficult to record with all the constant and habitual out-of-control barking and howling that we are quite tired of. There.
090108:
Well... here's to hoping 2009 will be better for us all... that's that about that... tried to paint as much as possible, get it out of the way, as much as possible... No writing or recording, only managed to take these short little two ideas actually started in Jan.2007 and almost discarded... .Data Drive. (2 versions) and .Big Beat. (2:01) both just one-take tracks jamming to a whatever... So here it is a week in to the new month ... Just got the 3 nylon guitars back from Ziggies Music (since 1927) - just got to stretch a bit more then will start recording on new white strings wheee...mp3/bg8p-ByeBye.mp3">Bye Bye (3:45) >no still working on it / yes but still have to tweak it one more time done and on "My 5th Dementia" Blowin' Away (2:36) oh and BTW am not doing any more Christmas music, sorry.
Went to the store today and this is what was decided upon; DigiTech RP500 Guitar Multi Effects Pedal and only checked it out a bit at the store and last night but read about all 12 or 16 they have and so far think this is going to be the keeper. (Tired of all the comparing/shopping crap anyway...) Also thinking about finishing the 3 tunes that never made it to -My-5th-Dementia- "Up Up And Away" (1967), "Working On A Groovy Thing" (1969) and "Sweet Blindness" (1968) - probably not - now that am going to be using the new effects unit. Sorry, no time to collect new quotes. Recycled the "Best of May 2005" (about half of em)
Now seeing if this Boss ME70 unit is the one am going to give a try... has the old analog feel to it as opposed to all the presets and flipping through buttons on the Line-6 with knobs and stuff... as well as a ton of great sounding effects... Finally finished .Nothing. (2:36) for -Angst Unleased- and shoveling dirt in the garden and building a deck/walk/thing out on the patio... outdoor stuff while tolerable... inside at the computer too much not a good thing while so nice outside... Top20Tunes boring and predictable... (probably from the links all being there...) maybe will do a Bottom20 for fun... Also edited the colors on all the Quotations pages (all 54 of them) for easier on the eyes...
Decided on ordering the Line-6 Floor Pod XT Plus so will see how this works out or not... the Korg had analog-type functionality which is convenient... version of new tune will be unusual because the processor is out of the loop... might be an updated version of it with the new effects, probably not... Downloaded more old reel tapes stuff to disk and am editing even more to install to the site... have been working on the "BruTube" but didn't really want to mention it yet... so far it is mostly playing different basses along with the bg originals (and trying to tweak parameters for best audio for YouTube...) which is a chore now that FLV files no longer are supported.
ehhh... the trusty, old Korg A4 guitar effects processor decided to take a dive (it was 14 years old...) first thought it was the power supply but tried another the same 9v/500ma output but the back of it smells like burning rubber... Not suppported anymore, no info on the nets at all except old users groups... Looking at Line6 stuff; Pod Floor Plus, XT, X3 don't know yet... going up to Guitar Center to max out the card limit (again)... So... was not able to finish the 2 originals was working for February but finding old stuff on the reels (finally found a 2-track deck yay!) and trying to make decent-sounding mp3s out of them... a rehearsal version of a Nick Lowe cover by our old 3-piece band "The Domestics" .Switchbox Susan. and .White Sky. another Poly800 sequencer jam from "Even More Machines". On the bright side, the neighbor lost his case with the city, accepted a plea deal they would dismiss one case if he plead guilty to the 2nd one. Even better, they all moved out 6 hours before his probation would have been violated then fined, possible jail time and not able to own any dogs for a year. Which means can finally record in peace again after a year of torture.
