If you’re keeping score at home, the instrument is tuned to C, but I’ve flattened the 7th to a Bb. This is the only song I’m capable of playing on this instrument so far (and as you’ll see, my rhythm is pretty wobbly), though I’m also working on a rendition of “Our Lips Are Sealed.” Should be ready by Christmas 2013.

“Christmas Time is Here” — all fancy

download the mp3 | download the wav file

“Christmas Time is Here” — nice and plain

The song proved controversial because it raised two questions: 1) whether or not in performing it we were really just doing someone else’s joke and 2) who the joke is on. We comport, you decide.

Ron Henn, Summer 2009 (not at Mike ‘N’ Molly’s), mulls over the
question of whether he can fully commit to singing “Benny Lava”

“I’ve heard of Big 10 schools with representation…”

The exigent occasion for such poetry was — if I’m remembering this right — an attempt by the university’s administration to abolish part of the tuition & fee waiver for graduate assistants not working in their home departments (this would have had a big effect on English, for example, who drew teachers for their professional writing and other classes from places like the Law school) but to soften the blow with the announcement of a new, but kind of rinky-dink, dental benefit.

DETAILS: It sounds like I’m playing a guitar — my singing cowboy one? — rather than ukulele. Carrie Rentschler was a GEO member in the audience. GSAC was the company shop.

Victor Cortez rocks the 88's... er... 9's

It took me a year to getting around to doing it, but I’ve finally managed to archive and post the recordings that Nick Hennies made last August of the The Viper & His Famous Orchestra playing at Mike N’ Molly’s in Champaign, Illinois. The individual tracks are now available for free streaming and/or download on the archives page of the Viper’s page/blog at http://theviper.org/dig-the-archive/: 2 sets, 1 encore, 24 songs in total. Over the next few weeks, I hope to get other shows up and online as well.

This particular show show is fun and relaxed – at times very relaxed – and gives a fairly good representation of the Orchestra in its current incarnation and a pretty decent preview of the sound we’ll be bringing to Mike N’ Molly’s when we play there along with Edward Burch this upcoming weekend (Saturday, July 10 at 11:00 p.m.) and when we host the kids show and instrument-building-session at the Orpheum Children’s Science Museum also in Champaign (Sunday, July 11 at 1:30 p.m.). I’ve put these up pretty much as is, leaving out only the between-song banter.

But I also am planning to do some basic editing and mastering of some of the better tracks – adjusting the volume, cutting to the chase, etc. And so in that light I present below a good performance of Liz Phair’s “Flower.”

Flower (Liz Phair)

You’ll hear the Viper on the baritone ukulele, Riley Broach on the bass, Edward Burch on the suitcase, Rob Henn on assorted percussion (is that him doing the flamenco handclaps?), and Victor Cortez on metal music stand and Thor knows what else. That great sounding electric mandolin you’ll hear belongs to Kip Rainey.

I’ve cut out some out-of-tune a cappella caterwauling I’d done at the beginning of the performance, and cut out some of the middle parts where Riley & I go out on the floor to dance (the visual effect is lost here). But I’ve left in Edward’s confessional ruminations on how things are going in his life. And I’ve left in every single one of the filthy filthy lyrics. Don’t play this for anyone under 38.

Silence

Noise

Both were recorded in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin with the Viper playing a Harmony soprano ukulele tuned in D. Both basically follow the directions of John Cage’s composition 4’33″: in each recording I prepare to play the ukulele at 0’0″, then lower it and lift it to prepare to play it again at the 1’31″ and 3’02″ marks.

Both recordings were made using a Rode M3 microphone channeled through Line6 Gearbox software and recording to the Audacity sound editing program. “Silence” uses the “Classic Vocal Front” Gearbox setting and “Noise” uses “Detroit R&B Vocal.”

I recorded these to put some content on the Facebook band fan pages I created for “silence” and “noise” as part of my efforts to be able to “like” music, movies, books, and TV in a way other than to simply self-market myself as a list of discrete, pre-commodified brands.

And you can too! Go here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

Of course, in a fitting final piece of typical Facebook half-assedness, the Facebook music player application is apparently M.I.A. So you’ll have to listen to it right here on the Viper blog.

This is a bit of a piece of a scratch recording of the last verse and chorus of a number titled “Big Headed Small Minded Man,” a song, as far as I’ve been able to determine, about dry cleaning, .

“Big Headed Small Minded Man” (scratch track)

You’re also welcome to view the video version of roughly this same part of the song as filmed by my daughter, Irene, with some help from Ventriloquitty.

on YouTube

on YouTube

For just the music:

“Jingle Bells”

For the story of The Reds and the Blues, and our recording of Irene’s original “Christmasy Blues,” see our previous post.

‘The Christmasy Blues”

The song is from a forthcoming CD to be titled Christmasy, as recorded by the two-person band (me and her) that she calls The Reds and the Blues. The entire run of the CD will be 1 copy, which she plans to give to our upstairs neighbors for Christmas.