Big Score of the Week

Finally found a copy of the CD album Prick by Pig Pen, from 1992. Not only was the price agreeable, but it was sealed; never-played. I can't, however, find words to "review" or sum-up the album, except to say that the band's playing was really tight and the lyrics to the songs are straight-from-life perversity. Take, for example, the song "Sundress," in which the narrator explains that it was so hot that day that he ended-up walking around the city in his girlfriend's sundress. Other songs are delightfully explicit in unquotably "adult" subject-matter, but the band also covers the old playground favorite, "Diarrhea," complete with childish oralingual "poot" sound-effects. I do find unfortunate that the drums are distractively prominent in the mixes, and not enough of the badass punk-blues guitar comes through, but overall, this CD is now among the select which I retain after ripping. Since the reader has probably never heard (of) this band, a little cred can be imparted by the fact that Pig Pen's singer/guitarist, Unk, was interviewed prominently in the excellent documentary Hated, about G.G. Allin.

"When she's not drunk . . ."

Unfortunately, one must employ such a qualifying phrase, now and then. My perennial favorite is, "If she weren't a deceitful, manipulative sociopath . . ." – but to each his own.

I like this movie; hate this song.

Google Streetview of Memory Lane

1972, or 2012?

Killing time while waiting for my computer to do something "for" me, I poked-around on Google Streetview, suddenly overtaken by the urge to look-up childhood residences as they appear in recent times. Sure saves on airfare, hotel and taxis. The grainy, low-res images reveal scenes shockingly similar to how they had appeared so long ago – at least, similar to how I had been prone to remembering them, and even filling-in details which seem not to have changed, either, save for new siding on a house next door, recent-model vehicles in the driveways or a taller trees in the front yards. In fact, the Streetview images are of approximately similar resolution of whatever small-gauge Instamatic still-film cameras might have recorded at the time, which adds a little more spookiness to the scenario. Precious "Twilight Zone" moments!

Recent weeks have found me in the midst of undertaking a commercial enterprise to promote and profit from my music by me, particularly in licensing it for use in film and TV. In aligning my forces for this effort, I had to sit myself down and lecture myself on how to face it: "Fella, what you do is what you do, and whereas operative conventions of the Biz dictate adherence to or emulation of what's currently popular, you are someone who is often asked how you'd gotten that sound or come up with that idea, so just be yourself. Not that you can't be anything but that. As with women, you want someone who wants you." In other words, I'm incapable of selling-out, but available for selling-in.

This leads me to reflect on how I'd seen so many of my peers sell-out, heard their music start to suck, and so on – the whole schmear that's so much a cliché yet which still mystifies people as to wherefore it happens. Although I could delineate the process of selling-out-and-sucking, to some of my acquaintance it would feel like a personal indictment, and anyway, it's best for one to observe it close-up, like a cadaver or a nervous breakdown, to fully appreciate the spectacle.

What setting myself up for licensing my music by me concurrently causes me to consider is how I wish that I could return to a state of innocence about music, whereby with a jamming-buddy collaborator or two, I would again, anew, share in the joy and wonder of discovering music, the thrill of making "our" music – with the same elation as proud new parents or a child who has achieved his or her first-ever potty-trained turd. This ". . . by me" thing is sometimes too staunchly autocratic, too restrictive in that there is only one brain goin' at it. I ain'talkin'bout no internetric file-sharing collaboration, I'm talkin'bout sweating it out in the same room, even through the same amp, making it happen on-site and in-the-moment.

It would be great to do something like that, even on a regular basis, and not even consider marketing it, releasing it for profit, exploiting it, whatever. An artist needs such spiritual ballast if one is going to go 'mersh. Commerciality, being an aspect of Capitalism, does leech the soul from one's art, if not the soul from the artist, to some inevitable extent. The trick is to guard the avoidable extent to which one lets one's soul be systematically disenfranchised. Like how corruption is a by-product of growing-up. Those who try to remain or believe themselves to be naïve are most prone to their souls' being crushed under the weight of their own corruption.

It's also important to remain close to or familiar with the roots of one's creative genesis (although it cannot be found via Google Streetview). A primary reason why sell-outs' music sucks is because $uckcess alienates them from the situation of their prime artistic motivation, the place or conditions which had fomented their "vision" or "voice." Although I'm not so far-gone that I cannot summon this somehow, when I need to, or as a matter of course, I sense the need to get back to where it was, conceptually speaking, I had been when this "music thing" began for me, to forget what it is that I, since, have to show for myself, and act as though I am starting from scratch. Here is a short shopping-list:

• Metal detector
• Monopbonic reel-to-reel tape deck with tube amplification circuit and built-in speaker; 30-foot loop of tape
• Analog-delay stomp box
• Mandolin with unplayably-high action but with a pickup suitably hot for wicked-ass feedback
• 3/4-scale electric bass with sticks jammed beneath the strings
• Pignose amp

Now to find someone who's half-crazy, but the other half.

Why Get Paid for What You Do?

Thanks, Ken.

Thanks, also, to the person who, a few days ago, bought my three most recent CDs at once.

Well, this made my week!

E-mail I received this evening:

I was babysitting Dad for months. Horrendous tongue C-word. Hard to understand his words. Passed peacefully as he could at home with me and cat. He was so angry, I tried to make him laugh all the time like I did my whole life and how he made me laugh all my life. He never had fun but wait: one day towards the end I played your Beatles [cover] song "I Wanna Suck Your Dick." I hadn't seen the lips go up in months and months. The chest moving forward. LAUGHING. Made our week. And his. He adored it. I don't wanna just focus on schticky (yet to me soulful) covers and other like that only when I type about your stuff, as I adore gobs of your music. But I just wanted to tell you that story.

Two Compilations and One Song by Me on iTunes

Painlessly, I announce that Compilation No. 2, my new compilation of my music by me, joins 20 Songs from 13 Albums and "Sweet Little Self-Shooter" on iTunes - HERE.

These all are also on Spotify, and Compilation No. 2 has sought adventure on Zune, as well. 

My entire catalog, otherwise, is available as MP3 download and/or CD, in the mE-Commerce section.

2011: Year-End Warp-Up

There are now music players embedded in the page for Kleinabermein (above). Machen sie Spass. Also: there is no more MySpace page for Kleinabermein, as it had been another thing for which I don't have sufficient time. I have, however, been able to make time to add the artwork for the latter Kleinabermein CD to the Flickr gallery – here

I can sense that my creative condition has turned a corner, warranting a revised modus operandi. It occurs to me to forestall release of my music by me until the end of the year during which I shall (presumably) have created it. This should give you another year to catch-up on your listening, anyhow.

If you have arrived here from any of my other online outposts, please note that this site is my "ultimate destination," presenting what had not been represented elsewhere

As for the End-of-the-World prognostic memes, I'm just not feelin' it. 2012 might be a good year, after all.

Listen to and purchase the new Kleinabermein CD.

I am pleased to announce the new CD-only release by Kleinabermein, my fake-German-art-band project. The title of this CD is Entschärften Intellektuelle, and you can buy it here

These new recordings are not as "extreme" as the previous, but are just as intense and engaging (or alienating), overall. The pieces are entitled "Eins (Schlafen)" and "Zwei (Tanzen)," either 30 minutes in duration. There is, additionally a 10-minute "bonus" track.
The title of this album translates as "Emasculated Intellectual" although the words' status as nouns or adjectives is deliberately ambiguous. Note: I have yet to add a listing of this CD in the mE-Commerce<

See the page above for the first album attributed to Kleinabermein and to listen to all tracks from both albums.

Click here to view the artwork for this CD (and for all others by me).

Three Decades of Lyrics Book by Me - NOW AVAILABLE

In compiling Three Decades of Lyrics, I started with the earliest dated lyric-poem that I considered to belong to the epoch of "my music (by me)." I had written song-poems prior to that point, but there was a moment in my life when something "clicked" in my mind, whereby I became aware that I was embarking upon a journey of forming something, at first out of primordial slime, with the aspiration to evolving it into some beautiful beast or secret-sharing chimera for myself. That particular lyric-poem was dated November, 1981.


Buy Three Decades of Lyrics – here.


[30 Nov.: "here" link fixed.]

NOw, 5-Song CD E.P., Available NOw

My new CD E.P., entitled NOw, is available NOw. Five songs @ 15 minutes, in accordance with the Chimpunk Rules of Execution:

01: Instrumentation limited to exactly four elements, (i.e.,drums/bass/guitar/vocals).
02: Drum part forms basis of composition and form of each song.
03: Instrumental performances extemporaneous and in real-time; first complete takes; no combining takes.
04: Instrumental performances proceed from emotional impulse, not from thinking of what to play next.
05: Audio effects are limited to those absolutely necessary.
06: Feedback permitted; preferably not mitigated.
07: Recordings presented at full duration, with no fade at beginning nor at end.
08: Recordings presented in order in which they had been created originally.
09: No per-track panning nor volume-level adjustment applied in final mixes; EQ only when absolutely necessary.
10: CD artwork created while listening to the recordings.

The results might be said to be in the "No-Wave" vein, but are not with the genre in mind. These are, instead, the first/original "Chimpunk" recordings. Buy it NOw, HERE, and in the mE-Commerce section.

In the meanwhile, listen to "Idiots," everyone's favorite from NOw:

 Steve Fitch - Idiots by Even More Music by Me

NOTE: The artwork for NOw can be viewed in the Flickr gallery of CD artwork.

An Hour off Your Life CD/MP3 Now Available

My new album, appropriately entitled An Hour off Your Life, is now available on CD. Buy it here or in the mE-Commerce section. I've had the privilege of being the first person to buy a copy (the proof copy). This one really kicks ass, and I hope that you will let it kick yours. The MP3 download version of this album is available here.

Although it's usual for my albums to be stylistically and generically diverse, this one touches on grunge-pop, techno-pop, hardcore punk, electro-creep, avant-garde, blues, and sentimental soft-rock. There is also my tribute to Neu! and Glenn Branca, entitled "Neubranca." My re-acquaintance with the guitar really affected the composition and production; I appreciated the opportunity to loosen-up and get sloppy at times.

An Hour off Your Life also contains "Shutupand," my most lyrically-offensive song, ever. I'm sorry, but it's not the biggest thing that I'll go to Hell for. However, one guy for whom I played it remarked, "Our society isn't ready for this song!" That may be one of the finest compliments that any of my songs has received. This also means that I am now accepting death threats in advance.

View the artwork for this and all my other CDs here.

Masturpieces CD Available; Rest of Album Deleted Indefinitely

Masturpieces, a collection of "bonus" tracks from four of my previous albums, is now available on CD ("only"), here. It will be listed in the mE-Commerce section when I feel like monkeying with code.

The tracks, totaling 66 minutes in duration, have been previously released as "bonus" tracks on previous CDs, and are:

"Breakfast of Creepazoids" (from Breakfast of Creepazoids)
"Funfzig" (from Existential Bukkake)
"Masturpiece" (from Coffee for Regret)
"Basement" (from I Can't Love You)

Most of these pieces consist of elements from the songs on the respective albums; all are abstract, pointless, disturbing . . .

My favorite of these might be "Basement," a half-hour soundscape. You can listen to it here:

Steve Fitch - Basement by Even More Music by Me

The artwork for the CD package of Masturpieces can be viewed here.

One of my first CD/MP3 releases, The Rest of Steve Fitch, has been deleted from online availability, with intention of eventually re-instating it after I have raised the funds for the equipment necessary to refer to the original master tapes for clean, uncorrupted renderings of those songs and instrumentals. My old analog master recordings need transfer to the digital realm, anyway, but the question of a spare several hundred dollars intervenes between intention and realization. However, I maintain my promise to offer a FLAC download of the re-mastered album to whomever had purchased the original version.

If anyone knows one of those wily, nerdy/sexy college-educated women who know how to write grant proposals and get free money for careerist art projects, I'll be her boyfriend just to reap the benefits.

My New Used Guitar by Me

A couple weekends ago, the idea to buy an electric guitar got up me. Not having played guitar – owned a guitar – since 1996, and not recorded any music with one since 1994, and having sworn-off playing "the" guitar since then, this inclination to acquire one seemed to come out of the blue, as though planted in my brain by some message via satellite (They do have that technology; it's amazing), possessed by the spirit of one dead musician friend or another, or simply being slammed by a midlife-crisis tsunami. I was determined to pay no more than $100 for the guitar, which I would "use" for a while, then sell-off, at little or no loss, at my discretion.

So, I hit Craiglsist, and found a black Fender Squier Strat for $75. Amazing. Apparently, they've been making these things in such abundance, and in better and better quality, since the time I'd quit playing guitar, such that one can purchase the guitar with a practice amp, and maybe some goodies thrown-in, for circa $150. Frankly, the reason why I'd never been such a great guitar player is that I'd almost always had substandard inexpensive guitars, with less-than-amenable fretboard "action." This guitar I bought via Craigslist is the guitar I should have had back-in-the-day: its quality and its price make me sigh, "Wish they'd had this when I was a kid." On my way home, I stopped by some friends' yard sale, where they were selling a 10-watt Squier practice amp, which so coincidentally accessorized the guitar that they gave it to me. So, as a hippie would say, "It was meant-to-be."

From "La Notte" by Michelangelo Antonioni

While watching Antonioni's La Notte, I was idly strumming the unplugged guitar, and found myself playing this chord progression – just major barre chords with a minor thrown-in for flavor – and eventually, I found that it went with a lyric I had written about the same time. Yesterday, there were little accompanying phrases to the chords swimming around in my head, so my Inner Hippie decided it was "meant-to-be," and I realized it in Logic Pro. 

Just a Thought

Wouldn't it have been so much better if we'd just loved each other?

Censorship: iTunes vs. Amazon

"20 Songs from 13 Album" on iTunes

The nature and purpose of censorship is to arrogate the role of arbiter of morality or taste, presuming oneself as having the definitive proscription for social bounds of comportment. The manners and methods of censorship are, however, amusing to compare between one realm's and another's.

I find interesting the manner in which iTunes tends to censor titles of songs. For example, click on the image in order to view how the titles for my compilation 20 Songs from 13 Albums  (click here to view the page itself). Had it been necessary to asterisk-out the "-head" portion of "Shithead?"

iTunes designates as "explicit" only pertinent songs (and censors "explicit" titles), whereas Amazon's MP3 store designates each of an entire album's songs as "explicit" even if only one song among them has lyrics to be considered as unsuitable for minors. Ironically, Amazon does not censor the titles of songs, which ensures a loophole for musicians determined to corrupt young, impressionable minds. (This irony perturbed – I mean, inspired – me enough to make the Shit on My Penis album, to be sold through Amazon.)

For info on and audio previews of the music on this compilation see the previous post.

My Catalog Numbers by Me

Summer doldrums . . . heat index circa 150°F . . . fatigue; exhaustion . . . another rodent invasion . . . first anniversary of the death of my next-door neighbor and friend, whose ghost pranks me by awakening me an hour before I'd intended to rise in the morning . . . revising the artwork and cataloguing of my discography . . .

I have finished revising the artwork of each of my CDs to bear a catalog number for my record label (as it were; to refer to an increasingly-archaic idea), My Music by Me Music. Silly me – all this time, I'd totally spaced on that little legitimating detail, for all its increasingly-archaic significance. All CDs are once again available for sale. If you can do without excellence of sound quality and all that landfill so that you might pay less, most are also available in MP3 format.

My Discography sub-site has been updated to cite each CD's new catalog number.

Coffee for Regret Now Available: CD & MP3

My album Coffee for Regret is finally available on CD and as MP3 download. Coffee for Regret features eight songs in a variety of styles – avant-garde Lieder, musique concrète, chimprock, electro-symphonica, motorock, and jazz – but all free of conventional tonality. I find trying to "describe" my music by me a bit like tying to explain a life-changing mystical experience to a drunk college girl dancing in place to keep from peeing in her jeans while waiting to use the rest room.

"Masturpiece" by Me in Logic Pro 9

To reward you for caring enough about the CD's fine artwork and superior sound quality, I include at the end of the CD a 23-minute audio collage, entitled "Masturpiece," consisting of the atmospherics and sounds, sequentially-ordered, used in the album's eight songs. The MP3 download edition should also be available soon.

Coffee for Regret is up in the player on the Listen: Albums page. Buy it via the mE-Commerce page.

The material on Coffee for Regret appears in primordial, precursory instrumental form on Telecommunist Anthems (making the latter a "premix" album).
The CD and its MP3 counterpart can be purchased through the mE-Commerce page.
You can listen to it in the player on the Listen: Albums page.

                                        •    •    •

The artwork for these and all my other CD packages can be viewed on Flickr.

My App by Me (Jumping the Bandappwagon)

Not usually an "early-adopter," I just had to hit this while it was still young: Bandapp looks promising. Read an article about its inception and methods here. What "sold" me on the service is that it's a rare medium of promotion and dissemination that offers revenue to the artist, and I am partial to musicians of "hardcore" or "fringe" pedigree (as is this service's developer). Fits well with my "Telecommunist" principles.

Get the bandapp for My Music by Me by Steve Fitch here.

You can preview my app in a browser (Safari only) here.

There is a page for me on the Bandapp site here.

There are currently six songs available on the app; I shall add more as traffic warrants.

Another Internetric "WTF?!" Moment

Hello, out there.

[click to enlarge]

Checking the Stats > Audience page of my site, I am pleased to find that this site has viewers located in Germany, France, the U.K., India, Romania, Russia, Estonia, the Philippines, and Sweden, in addition to the USA. Hello, out there! Would be nice to hear from more of you. I have Google Translate at-the-ready.

Also checking the traffic sources, I find again today that the aforementioned nefarious referring URL remains prominent among the statistics. Keepin' it weird, y'know.

My world just got a little weirder.

[click to enlarge]

I swear on a stack o' Bibles that I have no idea wherefore this site's second-greatest referring site/URL would be what it is, according to the accompanying graph chart (screen shot taken of this sites Stats > Traffic page), below. I had not known of the site's existence until I saw the stats a few minutes ago. All I can say is that this world gets weirder by the minute, and I've stopped trying to explain or understand it.

My Near-Demonic Level of Productivity by Me

My musical "output" over the past year's time had been rather prodigious, roughly an-album-per-month. Each CD has its own theme or "vibe" and its distinct package artwork to complement it. A bit astonished, I scratch my head and wonder, "Where did this all come from?" This would seem to pose a quota to maintain or a rep to protect, but I'd feel accomplished to be a lot more modestly prolific. Since July of last year, the CD titles that I've generated (speaking in cold analytical terms) have been:

• July, 2010: The Politics of Experience
• July, 2010: Autistic License
• Aug-Sept, 2010: My Son, the Loser
• Aug-Sept, 2010: Je veux être mort
• Sept, 2010: Cerebration
• Nov-Dec, 2010: Breakfast of Creepazoids
• January, 2011: Kleinabermein: >Zsborgqbew<
• Jan-Feb, 2011: Ministry of Love
• March, 2011: Existential Bukkake
• April, 2011: By Disappointment Only
• May, 2011: I Can't Love You
• June, 2011: Telecommunist Anthems / Coffee for Regret

Each is my baby (even the step-kids), and I am proud of each (even the underachievers).

If any artistic sort might consider this near-demonic level of productivity no better than something to "envy," please bother to include other, less savory, aspects of my life among what you feel you deserve more than I. I'm sure that I'd agree with you on most; you are quite welcome to them. They are what fuel my creative vehicle; you wouldn't get very far without them.

I Can't Love You Now Out As CD and As MP3

The CD edition of I Can't Love You is now commercially available. That means you can buy it now – here or in the mE-Commerce section. The artwork for this CD (and all my others) can be viewed here.
The "audio content" of this CD is:
1 • Almost Your Daughter (4:00)
2 • Where Am I? (5:00)
3 • I Can't Love You (31:00)
– plus two "bonus" tracks (as they stand distinct from the originally-intended "album" program but are contemporaneous and fill the rest of the CD:
4 • Basement (29:30)
5 • Daughter Figure (3:30)

The MP3 edition of this album is available for download here. For the sake of downloadability, the piece "I Can't Love You" was divided into seven parts/files.* The MP3 Edition does not include the dark-ambient drone piece "Basement." The song "Daughter Figure" is included.

I Can't Love You (minus "Basement") can be heard in the player on the Listen: Albums page.
Also: the five selections at the bottom of the player on the Listen: Songs page are from I Can't Love You.

(*) It is with a measure of regret that I cut this piece into sections, as it is intended as an integral piece warranting continuous listening. Dividing it into sections implies that it is divisible into free-standing compositions, and while sonically this may be so, artistically, the whole is much greater, and more meaningful, than the sum of its parts. I had almost released the piece "I Can't Love You" as the sole track on a CD, but didn't want to seem greedy.

By Disappointment Only: Two Formats, Two Versions

With pleasure and surprise, I laud the proactive go-getterness of the Createspace/Amazon staff in making the MP3 edition of By Disappointment Only available so swiftly – here.

One (meaning you, the Reader) can listen to this album in entirety here (thereby rendering you the Listener). The elevator-speech sampler is here, for those of you with no time for anything.

MP3 download version is $5.99 for nine selections.

The CD version of By Disappointment Only is available here. This has a different "front cover," and the introductory track's text reflects that the CD contains the entire program reiterated, afterward, in instrumental mixes. The texts to the "songs," as is usually the case, chez moi, are printed inside the booklet.

Arrogate the entitlement to view the artwork for this CD here.

CD version is $11.69, including instrumental mixes and landfill.

Music for Student Films Now on CD & as MP3

With elation and glee – okay, merely with self-satisfaction and smugness – I announce the availability of my album Music for Student Films, on CD here.
The MP3 download version is here.

As the pertinent blurbiage goes:

Music created, and originally released as most of the album Wish They'd Had This When I Was a Kid, in 2009. 15 mainly-instrumental selections. No license, permission, nor royalties necessary when used as part of student films, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, and you 'remember' me when you do something with a budget.

Judiciously shaved-down to an exact hour's duration, this is really cool to listen to straight-through. The CD package artwork is nice, too, with a picture of some girl's butt in it somewhere.

You can listen to this album (in two parts) here.

Existential Bukkake Now Available

With pleasure and pride, I announce the commercial availability of my new album, Existential Bukkake.

It can be purchased on CD or as MP3 download here.

Listen to this album (and my others) in entirety on the Listen page.

See the complete set of artwork for this CD and my others HERE.

The tracklisting is found on my Discogrqaphy site HERE.

Attention: Film Makers

• The use of pre-existing music by me, by anyone else, for any purpose, in any project, is subject to negotiation of terms of abridgement, augmentation, and usage.
• Such a collaborative relationship is professional, and therefore outside the realm and terms of a personal relationship I might have with anyone.
• I cannot begin to consider permitting my pre-existing music to be used in anyone's cinematic work without having seen the film in a near-final edit.
• I never do anything of this sort, anymore, for "credit" nor for "exposure," just as I refrain from doing so as a personal favor.
• To me, music and sound are integral elements of cinematic art, not icing on a cake, and I prefer to collaborate from the inception of a project.
• It is always pleasing to me to know that people enjoy my music, but my primary concerns are my own satisfaction with it and with how it is presented.
• I do "have" an attorney, but I prefer to keep my relationship with him of a personal nature.

For further reference, watch this film about this man.

I feel like shit/sorry for myself.

I just wanted to disrupt that unprecedented moment of bliss or meaningful special occasion of yours to beat you over the head with my self-pity. That's all. If you can't deal with this, you are either being too sensitive or are diminishing my feelings. That's all. Really. Until next time.

Ministry of Love Album Now On CD and As MP3

Finally – my album Ministry of Love is available on CD here, and as MP3 here.

You can listen to this album, and all my others, on the Listen page.

I like this one a lot, myself.

I even listen to it now and then.

I even own a copy of the CD.

Stuff She Told Me Now in Print/For Sale

It is with both pride and trepidation that I announce the publication of my book by me, Stuff She Told Me.

For this project, I had to establish an ISBN ID for the book, and in doing so, also had to reify some publication "imprint," which I designated as My Book by Me Books.

For more information on the book, go HERE.

Purchase the book HERE.

Read it 'n' weep. Or something.

Come Breakfast!

Finally: Breakfast of Creepazoids is commercially available.

CD is HERE; MP3 version is HERE.

Listen to this album on the Listen page.

Bon appétit, creepazpoids.

Kleinabermein Album Now Available

The album Zsborgqbew by Kleinabermein is now available, in CD format, HERE.

The MP3 album download is available HERE.

Personally, I recommend the CD's audio quality over that of the MP3 version, due to the appreciably greater "presence" of the sound, overall. While reviewing the proof copy of the CD today, I noticed this when it came to track no. 3, during which I sensed strange things living down in the lower frequencies, and the part in the middle, where the girl says, "Je veux un crême glacé au chocolat," she seemed more present than when I listened to this album – as I have many times – in MP3 format. Uncompressed audio does make for a better listening experience, especially in cases such as this album, whose most significant qualities are compromised otherwise.

Meanwhile, milk the cow through the fence here.

There is now a Flickr site for my CD artwork by me . . .

HERE.

So, Someone listened to My Son, the Loser.

(. . .)  This is really a great piece of work from start to finish. This cd left me searching for nothing. It's amazing all the different styles you have going on here but make them work together so flawlessly. I really love the distorted, feedback thing you have going on at the beginning and end, the quality of sounds that's going on, just within that, is amazing. I also really dig the vocals on "Nazi Doktor" what ever the effects are in combination with your voice is haunting. There are some parts on this disc that seem like their from such a deep place in you I'm almost surprised you did it. While I was listening to this, the words that came to my mind were' "there's true beauty in madness".

(. . .) Your writing is really great Steve. I felt like I was watching a play while listening to this, and had the thought that, it's a damn shame people will never get to experience this in a live setting. I had the vision of you on stage behind a computer doing your spoken word parts while the strings and other parts were being played live, and you would do the other stuff with the mac. I also seen a projection screen rolling with video you'd pieced together to reflect the songs. I could totally see people wanting to perform your work live, hell, I'd do it in a heart beat.

(. . .) Honestly, I think a lot of people would be floored by this cd. I guess for lack of a better term there is more "Industrial" in this cd than in most industrial music. Then on top of it, you blend all this other stuff into to make it totally unique entity. I don't think any fan of a particular style of music would be let down by what they hear in this. I guess when I use the word "industrial", to me it means, experimental, with a combination of a lot of different sounds you wouldn't think would go together. So, I don't mean to be stereotypical or put you in a category with the word or anything.

Another thing that I should mention that really stands out to me, especially in this day in age that we're in is, you have achieved something totally new and unique with your music. Being a lover of music I listen to a lot of shit, past, present and even my own (trying to find my sound) stuff. Your work is the only music out of all of it, that really gives me what it is I've looked so long for in recent years, satisfaction in what I'm hearing, but it goes beyond that into the world of the pleasantly unexpected.

Great work man.

Yes, I was that guy . . .

Last week, I got yet another e-mail inquiring if I were the Steve Fitch who had a song on the compilation entitled A Texas Trip, produced and released by the Butthole Surfers on Caroline Records in 1987. The gentleman also inquired as to which of my albums might contain that song, or which might have "a similar vibe/feel." I replied to him that he could assess this by listening to the sampler medleys and the 50-song player widget on my site (through which he had contacted me, presumably), but also that a lot has happened and changed in 23 years, and that I am not inclined to make the same sort of music I had back then. I then sent him an MP3 of the song in question ("In the Neighborhood"), "for your nostalgic pleasure."

Another thing I said to the man was that I do not tend to associate myself with that album, although I hardly regret having had a song on it. It's just that my sensibilities have changed as much as the times. I should hope that anyone who has memories going back that far might be at least prepared to revise their frame of historical reference. Unfortunately, this is not usually the case. People tend to content themselves with what they remember, rather than to go through the pain of revising their memories. The more of an history one has, the more demanding it is to update it, especially to modify its contextual containment. I liken this to how a person who lives in a house full of stacks of old newspapers would rather walk across the room and grab an old paper and re-read it, comforted by the familiarity with how the stories go, rather than to put on his or her shoes, go out to the corner store, pay for today's issue, and read and assimilate all the new information. Newspapers from 23 years ago describe a strikingly different world from that in which we live now.

This sort of subject (the past vs. the present) I have addressed elsewhere in this blog, but I shan't cite those posts, as this instance wants to speak for itself. To be blunt: I am surprised that people remember that compilation album, I was honored to be invited to appear on it, and I am somewhat astonished that I had made some minor contribution to pop-cultural history – especially since at the time of the album's release, I was culturally disconnected from whatever ripples it might have been registering. However, I really do not have time for nostalgia, nor for being "remembered," and if people are disinterested in what I have to offer in the present, I should wish them contentment among their stacks of old fanzines and indie vinyl of yore.

Well - this made my week.

From an e-mail I received today:

"I listened to Autistic License again last night. I can't even begin to tell you how impressive that CD is from a creative POV. Your sound engineering is just amazing and I love the things you can do with a human voice. I also really love the seemingly endless ascending and descending sounds you make. How do you do this stuff???????? Truly awesome work!!"

Two New CDs by Me (Both CD/MP3)

My most recent offering is entitled Cerebration. This one is a series of pieces composed of sounds I had made entirely on the computer, generating the sounds from scratch, from designation of pitch and waveform to shaping the sounds both intentionally and randomly; at times not knowing which were which. Tracks 08 and 09 comprise sounds made for my Autistic License album.

The CD of this album is available, for $9.99, HERE.
Its MP3 counterpart, at $5.99,is  HERE.

My EP Je veux être mort is available in CD format, for $9.99, HERE.

The MP3 version is now available, for $5.99, HERE.

The EP consists of five versions or mixes of a French-language pop song, an English-language Goth goof, and a sound-collage "punch-line" track. Humor to dance to and love to die for. 

Just in time for Hallowe'en.

My Son, the Loser (New Album by Me)

This is my best album yet. I say that about each one when it's new. But I mean it this time.

My Son, the Loser* is a song cycle of "40 years and 40 nights." The selections range in style from experimental controlled chaos to quasi-classically-composed songs, with an 18th-Century French tune (as I must have been in 18th-Century France when I'd written it) with a German title (mistaking myself to be in Germany) at the end.

You can hear a stream of this album in its entirety via the link accompanying the title in the mE-Commerce section. A sampler medley, for those with addled attention-spans, will be added shortly. You can buy it, too: the CD is presently available; the MP3 download version will appear, a few days from today, on Amazon.

If you prefer "digested" listening, hear this album's sampler medley HERE.

(*) The title of this album is partly in "homage" to titles of albums by the great late Allan Sherman: My Son, the Celebrity; My Son, the Folk Singer; My Son, the Nut. Mr. Sherman's song parodies made an indelible formative impression on me as a child, with the genius wit by which he would re-write popular songs of his day and turn them into great songs (often with scathing social commentary or satirical views of everyday ridiculousness) of his own.

Mr. Sherman wasn't merely a smart-ass, he was a poet and social commentator of a caliber which people wanted to believe Bob Dylan to be. Mr. Sherman's re-construction of songs demonstrated to me, as a child, how songs were constructed, and in particular, they showed how, in the structure of verses and of the relations between lines and rhymes, drama and humor were exposed as though by unfolding. The internal rhymes of his lyrics were rhythmically astute, galvanizing them to the melodies. The act of parodying songs gave him a platform on which to satirize things in such a way that one didn't have to be Jewish to "get." The very art of his re-writing songs, and how masterfully he delivered them and their humor, is still awe-inspiring, particularly to this so-called Gentile.

Two New Albums by Me - Now Available as CD and MP3

These two albums by me are now available in both CD and MP3 formats. Sampler medleys of their tracks, and of my other albums, are posted in the Album Samplers section.

Autistic License 

Songs with spoken lyrics, with sounds sculpted to complement or coexist with them.

CD HERE • MP3 HERE. 

The Politics of Experience 

Songs with spoken lyrics, recitations, creepadelic soundscapes, sharp bursts of cyber-punk, and much darker territory than on its successor (above).

CD • MP3

The Politics of Experience is a merging of tracks of the previous collections Phrenology and The Upskirts of Town. 

The title is borrowed from a book by R.D. Laing.