Gravitas

“Toad” refers to Ginger Baker’s drum solo in the song of that name, from 1968’s Wheels of Fire, sampled in the first half of this song. “No Toad” refers to the second half, which contains no toad.

The title somewhat refers to the TV show “Lost”, and the underground bunker used by the mysterious Dharma Initiative, but mostly it refers to Jethro Tull drummer Clive Bunker, and his masterful drum solo from the song “Dharma For One” from the band’s 1968 debut album. All the drum and percussion sounds in my song are sampled (and heavily mutated) from the Tull song.

New song for September. It’s a triptych, about one minute per trip.

You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do

Recently in our backyard… Video of the pond is by Lynda, including the very vocal bullfrogs heard throughout.

Once again I tasked Udio (www.udio.com) to create some “music”. The prompt I gave was simple: “a jaggy prog tour-de-force”. It gave me a couple of variations, I took one and then selected to extend it once, and then add an intro and an outro. Total time was around two minutes. I could have kept going, as two minutes is fairly concise for a “tour-de-force”, but the mind wanders. I’ve heard enough to be very, very afraid. Or maybe I’ve stopped caring at all, it’s hard to say…

Lyrics
(also by Udio, I had nothing to do with any of this, I’m just Udio’s meat puppet)

Sharp and intense
Through tangled streams
A fractured beat
That bends and screams
Is all that I feel
(breaking the seal)

“Move to the groove under Middle Earth Skies”

I asked the AI at Udio (www.udio.com) to create “a disco tribute to Lord of the Rings”.

It just went ahead and did it. No questions asked. No thought about whether bringing such a travesty into the world would drag us all down that tiniest bit more.

We’re all doomed…