college gets good
April 1st, 2009My friend Sandy had given me an acoustic guitar that he found in the trash somewhere and I was trying to learn how to play. Then this strange thing happened where my Aunt Helen ended up with an electric guitar and amp at her house because someone owed her money and they gave her the guitar as collateral. I found out about it somehow and asked if I could borrow it and she said sure but that I would have to give it back if this person ever paid her. I took the guitar and worked harder I had this idea to write a song for every chord I learned — not an original idea (see: every punk band ever), but fun.
"Winter of 1849" is a 2 chord song and Jack and I recorded it on 4-track (surprise) in his freshman dorm room late one night. We added all these other misc sounds to it (trying for Tom Waits and failing), and other random voice sounds and mixed it into this short weird stew. Jack does the "Oh Yeah"’s. We drank a lot of beer that night and ate a lot of chocolate chip cookies (not recommended). Once I got back to my own dorm room I threw up and then this girl I knew came over and stayed the night. This was the point where college started to get good.
[audio:winter_of_1849.mp3]
Its good to have you back. Needed my fix. “Once I got back to my own dorm room I threw up and then this girl I knew came over and stayed the night. This was the point where college started to get good” I feel like that line should be in a famous movie or book somewhere. On another more musical note, i have had this weird thing happen as I have started frequenting blogs more and more that have music. Occasionaly I will be listening to my music collection and will play a track from someone’s blog, well because I hit play on the blog I somehow think that the itunes will stop, but it doesn’t. Often times it creates crap, but sometimes, it creates something wonderful. And what great timing with coming back to your blog and all the new entries to have that happen. It was early in the morning and I was listening to the black hawk down soundtrack, and l played “Losing You and Finding Myself” which is powerful and eerie in a good way and I was totally into it then the soundtrack moved onto “Still” which is unbelievable as well, with this arabic voice that is beautiful…..well they combined to create something that was, well you may have to try it yourself, exact way they were combined I dont know, I think the piano track started first, “still” came on, then your track died off and it was just this voice……..I was like oh my god, Josh Granger has created divine music….
good to have you back
Winter of 1849 is totally a keeper–experimental garage band at its very best! And how weird is it that someone gave Aunt Helen a guitar as collateral? Did you have to give it back?
@odin’s daddy – I love that, I’ve def done that where I’m playing one thing and there’s something else going on in the background…funny because your story is very similar to 3 or so of my piano tracks that I mixed down one time when I was on LSD and didn’t realize I was mixing in a track of Led Zeppelin played backwards with a ton of reverb on it…I then played it for some friends who were also on LSD and they were like “Holy crap! You wrote this?!” and I was like “Whoa, yeah, did I write THIS?” Maybe I’ll post one later, those tracks are weird.
@KT – yeah, I actually had to give it back like 2 montsh later, it was so frustrating. I think she needed it back immediately so I had to borrow someone’s car at college to drive it back. Weird that she had it, weird that she needed it back so soon after. Also I had actually broken the amp during dorm room “loud hours” trying to blare music as loudly as possible. It ripped the speaker so thereafter the amp always sounded distorted. Ah well, no complaints were ever filed. Glad you like the track.
Completely forgot about this! So cool to hear this stuff again. Have you got “Tiltawhirl” on here somewhere?