Music is not my calling. The visual arts are. But man have I always wanted to be able to rock out! I really love music and I love playing it, no matter how much I suck. I have always idolized my friends who could play instruments and sing. Mikey G. would have to be my biggest influence as far as friends go. I love his guitar playing and have since he started. He had this killer Takemine 12-string that he used to play on. By some random coincidence, my parents bought me a 6-string Takemine Jasmine for Christmas one year, after I had taken a liking to their old classic acoustic guitar. God, do they even have those anymore? Like nylon strings? I guess they must. But it was with that guitar, the Jasmine, that I learned all that I know now. Granted, that isn't much, but with that one guitar I have written and recorded about 2 dozen songs, and have learned to play about the same amount of cover songs. As many people could probably guess... I tend to try and learn covers of Indigo Girls songs, and I am proud to say that I have the finger-picking down for "Ghost", and know probably another 8 songs by them. In fact, I even wrote two songs in the hopes that they would someday sing one of them.. and even handed one of them off to their roadie, the night after Kate, Chelsea and I "met" Amy Ray and got her autograph. I did manage to at least get my business card to Amy, which I consider to be totally cool. Some day...

Anyways... aside from my outside influences, I tend to write songs that are indicative of what's going on in my life. As such, I have written a lot of songs about the girls in my life. Some are laments for love that was never realized, some for explanations of my love for them - knowing that I couldn't put it another way, and some are just out-and-out dissertations on how much people mean to me. And sometimes, they are in regards to someone else's relationships and how I have seen them from an outsider's viewpoint. "Better Friends" is one of those songs, and one that I hope the Indigo Girls will sing one day as that I wrote it from the girl-in-question's point-of-view. And then some of my songs - and admittedly, considerably fewer - are about the world around me. Some are done in a techno-style approach, using mostly sampled beats and synth, some are spoken word over an audio track and some are actual guitar and vocals. I have recently gotten much more into my music and finally purchased an electric bass guitar as well as traded in my sister's old Fender Squire for a nice new (and not warped) Epiphone SG. I am pretty geeked, actually. And using the bass, I wrote my first bassline and put it to my new song, "Icarus" - which is a song about/for Pearl. I am looking forward to writing more basslines for my other songs as well as for any new songs I write. And now with a working electric guitar and a distortion pedal - well.. the sky's the limit.

As for the next step - well... I will continue to write music, play and sing the songs... and I will try to learn and maybe even record some of the covers... but in truth, I am starting a band. A band - whom I have been referring to as "The Unliklies" - which will be comprised mostly of people (my friends) who you would never really think of to be in a band - MNatti on didg and banjo, Dan on drums, didg, random bike-related instruments, Kate on guitar, keys, flute, and vocals, Scotts on drums and any rap vocals we might have, and maybe Mikayla on keys... It should be terrible at worst and almost tolerable at best :)

But for the time being, I wanted to have my entire album up here for your listening... umm... pleasure? This is the album I have been working on for MANY years and spans almost the entirety of my guitar-learnings. So some may be very rudimentary, while some have considerably more going on. My most favorites, currently, are "I'll Find You" and "Icarus" - both of which are about Pearl. But I also still love "The Grind, Part 1" as that it features my old Subaru and some of my better synth-techno. I dunno... I guess that I actually love it all. I am proud of my collection of music that I have written - I think, because, like everything else in my life, I have poured my heart and soul into them - even if my means of expressing them are not quite perfect. Yet.

From the Inward Inertia album (still in progress):

01 :: Intro Passage (608k) - This is the introduction to my "album". Its a short narrative poem that I wrote which explains a little behind the motivation of the writing of these songs. It's nothing special, but it at least introduces the album, the music and why it came to be.

02 :: UNSPOKENword (4.57MB) - This was originally written as a poem for this girl, Christine, who I had met through a friend (Jess) at the Amherst Brewing Company. She was actually Jess' roommate. I was so blown away by this girl... I can still remember it. But we were peripheral friends at best, and apparently, she had a boyfriend elsewhere and she was moving soon. It was more or less destined to never be, yet I longed for it more than usual. By some random coincidence, I ended up driving Jess home one night - so she didn't have to drive drunk - and ended up having to crash at her place. The coincidence wasn't that - and in fact, Christine was gone for the weekend. The coincidence was that Jess deemed the best place for me to sleep was in Christine's bed, which happened to be made up almost exactly how my own was... same pillows, and the exact same blue fleece blanket... It was like I was at home. Which made it all that much more surreal and awesome. She disappeared soon thereafter and I have not seen her since. Too bad. for me.

03 :: I Was Wrong (10.28MB) - After experiening the same kind of loss after break-ups with girls, I decided to write a song about how it was obviously a mistake on my part for having trusted them and how, despite the hurt it brought with their betrayal, that I still wanted to be friends with them. This is a going theme in my life, yet nearly none of the girls in question have had enough gaul to attempt friendship. Only the strong have survived, girls like Justine and Melissa - and therefore, this song is TOTALLY NOT about them. Its about everyone else that, well... I was apparently wrong about.

04 :: I'll Find You (3.79MB) - Dreams. Sweet dreams are made of these... but really, who am I to disagree? Wish I wrote that line... no, this is about, well, Pearl. Its really about the dreams I would have of her - nothing perverted or anything - but of how I would find her at night, even though we lived so far apart. It is also kind of a re-telling of how she came to be in my life. She has always had this almost etherial position in my mind, not quite real, but real enough that she lives in my most vivid and happy dreams. This was also my first official foray into using an electric guitar for backup.

05 :: Icarus (5MB) - Icarus is the most recent song that I have written. I REALLY like it. It employs many more allusions and references than my other songs, but I think its mostly because I wrote my first ever bass-line for this song and really dig it. This song is also about Pearl, but was written at a moment when I had lost sight of the goal, and when I had felt betrayed by her and her love. I was down on my luck and feeling like I had been tossed to the wind, after everything I had done. It felt like I had gotten too close, and as a result of my haste, I suffered the consequences of it and was now wrapped up in emotional turmoil, that had really brought on myself. It basically says it how I feel it - that I would give her anything and everything, but even I have my break points and will fall to my death if I am totally disregarded.

06 :: The Grind - Part 1 (3.14MB) - I never got a around to finishing this series, though two other parts were planned out. The Grind is about exactly that... the daily grind. MY daily grind. I wanted to express a day in my life through music... mostly techno-style music as that my days are mostly chaotic and well-orchestrated. I also give a little hats-off to the Matrix in this song, and a reference to one of our favorite lines from that movie. And it also features my old Subaru and it's infamous valve-lifter problem. But it was what was happening at that point in my life, at least for the morning. I do still plan on doing an "afternoon" and a "night"... so many ideas, so little time.

07 :: Better Friends (5.85MB)- Better Friends is about a relationship that wasn't my own. And I wrote it from the girl's point of view. Granted, I embellished the details a bit for the sake of the story, but the overall point was there and I think it describes the situation well. I can't remember if I played that for either of the people involved - seeing as I am still friends with both of them - but I think I would like to at some point. The message of the song though, is that - as I believe - to make any relationship successful, you need to be friends as well as lovers. And generally speaking, if you dont establish that early on, it only becomes harder and harder to do so as teh relationship progresses, and sadly, is usually the demise of the relationship. This is one of the songs that I wrote for the Indigo Girls to play, if only because I would love to hear it sung by a woman - and could easily be adapted to be about a woman as well... :)

08 :: The Fortune Teller (3.9MB)- I'm not entirely sure where I was in life when I wrote this. I think I was probably trying to find myself and having people try to tell me who I was, like, as in, tell me who they wanted me to be. I have never subscribed to a mentality where anyone but me tells me who I should be, and so it is a relatively foreign concept to me that people can be lead like that. But, at the same time, I know that only focusing on youself makes for a shallow and distant person. This song is really just a story about how I have defined myself, though "I" don't appear as the focus of the song. It's kind of just a song with a moral to it.

09 :: Responsibull (4.36MB) - We all have responsibilities in our lives. Things we need to take care of, places we need to go, jobs, school, and generally living. I wrote this song admist a small period when I had virtually none of these. I was kind of living in a bubble, out in Sunderland. It was a weird mix between no responsibility and the most responsibility ever - meaning that while I lacked the everyday responsibilities, I had others that were more obscure, like the need to find some normal ones. I dunno... it's hard to explain. But this is my first "Rap" song ever, and it was my way of breaking away from the norm and trying something else. It addresses my life as it was, as others tried to help me define it, outcomes that would never happen and the final conclusions that I drew once I had thought it all through. It's interesting. I won't say that it's a good song... I wrote and recorded it in one afternoon... but it's at least different.

10 :: Day at a Time (3.99MB) - I wrote this song amidst some problems I was having with Chelsea. It's REALLY gay. I admit it. Only slightly more gay than "Follow Me" - the other song I wrote for her. But all throughout our relationship, she always expected me to know the answers to everything. And try as I might, I am certainly not perfect, nor do I (or can I) know all teh answers to all things... It was a real problem for us because she wouldn't even attempt to come up with an answer herself and it eventually destroyed us. But I wrote this song after one particularly revealing argument which she basically spelled it all out for me - that she was unable to face things because she was scared of being hurt. I understand that sentiment, though I don't subscribe to it myself. I think everyone understands that though, we all just have our different ways of dealing with it. And that's what this song is about. How to deal with the prospect of making the wrong choice and being hurt by it, one day at a time...

11 :: Social Blasphemy (4.22MB) - I used to live in this house that used to be part of a nightclub called the Vertex (and Katina's). We had old payphones and urinals in the basement. It was a huge, but pretty much totally disgusting house. It was situated right on route 9, the main throughway for the Pioneer Valley, and right across the street from the former "Dead Mall", a tombstone engraver, a liquor store, and a Burger King. My bedroom window boasted a nearly perfect view of these establishments and my computer (where I do my recording) was set up facing that window. All day and night long, I would sit there watching countless hoards of people drive by and started to realize the monotony and herd-mentality of people on the whole. I had been listening to Leonard Cohen for quite some time at that point, so my musical tastes followed suit, and so this song is a very dark stab into an ideal where people have forgotten themselves and instead pay hommage to "their neon gods". It's short, but - I think - to the point.

12 :: Old Dog, New Tricks (Instrumental) (9.52MB) - When I wrote this riff, it became my most favorite of all time... most likely because I haven't written really any others. It is the basis for my song, "I Was Wrong", but has been just a jam tune for me to try new things and practice others. It's nothing special, and in all reality, I could probably destroy it now, again, with all that I have learned since I recorded THIS version. But anyways, here it is, in all it's splory and glendor.

13 :: Follow Me (8.87MB) - Yeah, this is that other gay song that I wrote for Chelsea. I wrote it after hanging out with her for the first time - alone - and it makes references to that day and things we talked about. I really liked her and despite the problems we had, it was a fun relationship that I do definitely miss from time to time. This was my promise to her that I would take care of her should she choose to stay with me. But, like I say, it's gay and is WAY too long.