Chicago (1996-1999)
After I began graduate studies in Chicago, I set up the home studio I had used for my first two solo albums in my apartment there. Sometimes when I wanted to procrastinate, I would sit down and make up a 4- or 8- or 16-bar riff and then begin layering more and more things on top of it. Then I would replicate the layered bars and string them together, adding and subtracting things as I went, or modifying them or adding still more instruments and/or riffs. This resulted in 27 ditties of varying length and compositionality. In 2000, I recorded these onto a DAT tape and made CD copies, but I never really distributed them to friends or family. So, for the curious, I’ve included them here.
“27 Study Breaks,” 2000
- dich an sich (academic celebrity for its own sake)
- sunday morning religion through Saturday night drugs
- caribbean circus clown
- mellow memories of deep-thrusting
- back in da game
- the politics and poetics of ales and lagers: practicing inclusion at the liquor store
- contras listening to reagan-era hair bands
- tongue in cheek: learning all the sounds of the world’s 5000-some languages
- feeling like chris isak on paxil™
- that one girl fiona from college, what she’s doing these days, i wonder?
- routine: the silent killer
- waiting for spring, and waiting for spring, and also, waiting for spring
- jerry springer saves a 900-pound man
- unreconstructed marxist reads deconstructionist theory
- Bert Parks welcomes you to the digital age!
- the joys of self-induced institutionalization; learning the rules of my profession
- pining for past mercenary adventures in angola (think starsky, act hutch)
- time to cram again once more
- getting up to stretch . . . oo-whee, what a head rush!
- pretending to be batman on safari
- next train out of town on a raining day;
- bouncing off the walls, in search of misplaced pens
- hearing gunshots while walking the perimeter of hyde park
- beyond postmodern cynicism & irony: the re-election of William Jefferson Clinton
- all revved up with no place to go . . . new heavy hair metal wave band
- home stretch—just have to write a conclusion before the five o’clock deadline
- news of my brother’s divorce