 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
||||||||
|
|||||||||
| Sign up for BellerBytes, the official (and private) Bryan Beller e-newsletter. Just click here to sign up. Do it, OK? | |||||||||
|
As you might have guessed, this section is devoted to items I've recorded that, in most cases, have been unobtainable. That is, until now. The audio quality of these selections is all quite good, and unless otherwise noted, the files are full-length songs of at least three minutes. Dial-up downloaders beware.
Here's
something very rare - an hour-long interview special that originally
aired on Dutch Radio's 4FM, on the topic of my Top 5 "Desert Island
Discs" (for those who don't know what that means, it's the 5 songs
I'd bring with me should I find myself stranded on a desert island with
no food or water but somehow enough electricity to power a stereo system).
The total file was over 50 MB, so we've broken it into five more easily
digestible parts for your enjoyment - one part for each song I'd bring
to the island. And don't "Time Table" UPDATE:
This track was released in 2006 on "After The Storm," a
compilation CD created by the staff of NEARfest to benefit the victims
of Hurricane
Katrina. Please click
here to check out the
CD. I'm not a big Genesis freak, so I hadn't even heard this song before the power trio of Keneally, myself and Toss Panos were commissioned to cover it for a Genesis tribute album. Turns out the track never made the final sequence, but I managed to get a cassette copy of the final mix, and it's grown on me over time. I'm not sure what year it was recorded (best guess: 1997), but I am fairly certain that this was the last work Keneally and I ever did with Toss. The engineer was really into the "big" rock sound, so both Keneally and I use tones we probably wouldn't have had they not been requested. Anyway, that's what I recall; it's been so long that some clarification may be in order.
"I
Ain't The One" A prime example of the blues-rock band I was in before I moved to Los Angeles for the Dweezil Zappa/Z gig. This was one of four songs on the cassette demo tape that was going to make us famous. The lineup: Dylan Altman (lead vocals, guitar, second solo), Jon Skibic (guitar, first solo), myself, Ben Sesar (drums). It was really Dylan's band; he was the main songwriter and onstage frontman. The whole sordid tale is told over in the "rap sheet" section of bryanbellerdotcom, under the heading "the Berklee years: 100 Proof"
"The
Aliens
Have Landed" As part of my duties as SWR's Product Development Manager, I recorded some "audio examples" of different sounds capable of being produced by the hot new amplifier of that model year, the SWR Mo' Bass. (For the record, I use one in my current rig.) The company's sales guru at the time, Richard Ruse, was also an accomplished L.A. session bassist and sometime keyboardist as well. He essentially produced the cut, which consists of a pre-programmed groove (from an Alesis QS8.1), my single track, and nothing else. I wrote the "line" on the spur of the moment, and the whole thing happened very quickly. It's not exactly a true rarity, as it's posted over at the SWR website as well, but I'm not sure anyone knows about that. They do now.
"Voodoo
Princess" Another SWR Mo' Bass audio sample, but this one took a little more time to get right. Richard wrote the soul-inflected chord structure, and it was my job to solo over it. Well, you know how much I enjoy doing that. It wasn't until I tried a David Gilmour impersonation that the concept clicked in my mind. Again, produced by Richard Ruse, and recorded straight to ADAT in the SWR soundroom.
"My
Dilemma (Basic Tracks Only)" That's right, Forheads. From my cassette copy of the basic tracks of the Boil That Dust Speck sessions, it's just the rhythm guitar, bass and drums (plus the bass solo mixed in very low) of one of the signature tunes of the early days. It's even got the stick-click count-off and everything. The only thing strange about it is that, apparently, the studio's cassette machine was running a little fast during the dubbing, so the pitch is a little sharp. Obviously Keneally has signed off on this, and I'll just go ahead and thank him for you. Official lineup: Keneally, myself, and Joe Travers on drums.
"Land
Of Broken Dreams (Basic Tracks Only)" From the same tape of the same day's session with the same lineup, this was done literally on the spot as Keneally taught us the two-part progression and used our jam of it to run out the end of a tape reel. I had no idea it would eventually become a real song, let alone one with scads of vocals layered on top of it. Listen closely to the beginning and you'll hear engineer Jeff Forrest utter the original name of this bizarre track.
"Pigs
(Three Different Ones)" I played in and organized plenty of shows during my time at Berklee, but for some reason, this performance strikes me as the best of all of them. It was just the right band for the tune, and that band was: Scott Branston (lead vocals), Ian McGlynn (backing vocals), Jon Sherman (keyboards, backing vocals), Jon Finn (guitar), Jon Skibic (guitar, lead on outro solo), Porter McLister (guitar, talk box solo), myself on bass and Joe Travers on drums. The recording quality gets a little shrill near the end, but it's worth it to hear Jon Skibic take Gilmour's fade-out solo and reconstruct it in a manner well beyond his years (the average age of this band was probably 21). The name of this particular Berklee show was "The Righteous and The Wicked," and more info can be gleaned on my time at Berklee in general by checking out the relevant "rap sheet." NOTE: This track is eleven minutes long-just like the original Floyd version-so get ready for a serious download if you're interested. |
|
