Category Archives: embalmed ones

embalmed ones

Viper ringtones – just in time for Hanukkah!

Leave a comment

If you’re looking for a holiday-specific ringtone — or just enough audio gelt to cover the gifts you’ll need for the first three nights of Hanukkah — then The Viper has got your back. I’m no Orrin Hatch (see below for the video), but I try.

Below are some 15-20 second-long clips from The Viper and His Famous Orchestra playing “Heyse Latke Kalte Latke (Hot Latke Cold Latke)” during our Champaign-Urbana show of August 9, 2009. They feature Rob Henn on trombone, Edward Burch and Victor Cortez on dueling suitcases, Kenneth P.W. Rainey on the electric 5-string mandolin, Riley Broach on the double bass, and The Viper on the cümbüş banjo mandolin. Three different bits have been selected for your pleasure and served up hot. Sour cream and applesauce are not included.

Instrumental verse
Featuring the mandolin and cümbüş . This is the ringtone the Viper is currently using.
mp3 | midi | wav

Vocal chorus
Sing along!
mp3 | midi | wav

Slow trombone chorus
It’s the plumber — he’s come to shvitz the sink.
mp3 | midi | wav

These are being provided in different formats (mp3, midi, and wav) since different phones have different needs. (Mine requires me to e-mail a midi file to my phone as a “picture” attachment and then save it as a ringtone.)

Here’s an mp3 of the whole recording, unedited and unequalized. (I’ll get around to archiving the whole show one of these days.)

The Viper and His Famous Orchestra, “Heyse Latke Kalte Latke”
Live at Mike N’ Molly’s, Champaign, Illinois, August 9, 2009
mp3

And for more than you ever wanted to know about “Heyse Latke Kalte Latke,” here’s the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 part series I wrote last year at about this time when I was in the middle of moving to Milwaukee and leaving behind Maryland and the Paint Branch Ramblers, the group with whom the song had its first livelihood.

And now, as promised…

Eight Days of Hanukkah from Tablet Magazine on Vimeo.

embalmed ones, those that have just broken a flower vase

Alone again, naturally

Leave a comment

Last month, I relocated to Milwaukee from the Washington, D.C. area. Surprisingly, given the rare gift of unemployment I’ve been enjoying, this is my first post-move post.

Or not so surprising, since I’m not yet making music with anyone here. That’s not untypical for me. It took me two years in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois to first play out as the Viper act. And four years in Maryland to luck into the Paint Branch Ramblers. I never really got anything together during my two years in Turkey, apart from one two-song set at the Faculty Club Christmas talent show (I played “The Lawson Family Murder,” and “Daddy’s Drinking Up Our Christmas”), and one faculty party at which I played/sang “Too Much Heaven On Their Minds” from Jesus Christ Superstar on a borrowed saz.

In any case, it’s always a good opportunity to let the barrel fill itself back up. So to celebrate my refound love of self, here’s a solo recording of the Viper playing “Pennies from Heaven,” taken from the Everything for Everyone CD.

download “Pennies from Heaven” as an mp3

As far as I can remember, this was recorded in a single take using just the room mic we’d set up to get “coverage” sound of the whole band. Jay Bennett is doing the engineering/producing.

That stuff you don’t recognize at the beginning is the verse of this 1936 Johnny Burke and Arthur Johnston standard. You don’t hear the verse much. But Vernel Bagneris lip synchs to the 1937 Arthur Tracy recording of it in the great 1981 film of Pennies from Heaven. And Steve Martin actually sings it at the end of the movie, just before he’s hung. I learned it — since I’d never heard it anyhere else — by rewinding these two scenes over and over.

It’s a nice little piece, and here’s the lyrics if you want to sing along:

A long time ago, a million years B.C.
The best things in life were absolutely free
But no one appreciated a sky that was always blue
And no one congratulated a moon that was always new
So it was planned that they would vanish now and then
And you must pay before you get them back again
That’s what storms were made for
And you shouldn’t be afraid, for…

Every time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven
Don’t you know each cloud contains pennies from heaven
You’ll find your fortune falling all over town
Be sure that your umbrella is upside down
Trade them for a package of sunshine and flowers
If you want the things you love, you must have showers
So when you hear it raining, don’t run under a tree
There’ll be pennies from heaven for you…
Pennies from heaven for me…
Pennies from heaven for you and me

embalmed ones

From the archives…

1 Comment

I just discovered the following unpublished post among my draft list for this blog. It’s possible that this was published in some other form last Spring on this site, but I’m too lazy to look. It features some rare audio footage from a late 1990s Champaign-Urbana supergroup, so it’s worth reposting in any case. Afiyet olsun!

ORIGINAL POST FROM FEB. 2008

For Viper, Tangleweed, Kennett Brothers, or Edward Burch completionists, I’ll call your attention to a video I just posted to YouTube designed to show the students in our first-year writing program what a poster session is. The footage was shot by my colleague Phil Troutman during the 2006 University Writing and Research Symposium at The George Washington University, which is an event in which I’ve played a lead role for the past four years (you’ll see me briefly in the hand-gesture-montage portion of the video near the end).

More to the point, the soundtrack is taken from one of the tracks that Kenneth Rainey, Edward Burch, and I (along with bassist Dave Wesley) recorded a number of years ago during a day of studio-composing material for a never-to-materialize fishing show aimed at the Norwegian television market. My peeps!

You can read more about these sessions (and download an MP3 of the song) over at the Tangleweed blog. In my files, I’d always just called this tune “Fishin’,” but I am reminded by Kip’s account that it was/is, in fact, called “Hank’s Fishin’ Song” — “Hankie” Kennett being Kip’s moniker with the Kennett Brothers. For the video, I stretched out the tune’s 48 seconds by cutting and pasting so that bars 9-24 repeat.

embalmed ones

Better things for me?

1 Comment

Here’s an attempt to use the Line6 TonePort UX2 for its real purpose, which is as a simulator of various classic amp sounds.

for download

This is “Better Things for You” recorded with my Konablaster electric ukulele strung in mandolin tuning (and the whole thing tuned down a minor third, i.e., E-B-F#-C#, so as not to make the neck snap!) and then run through the GearBox software’s crunch guitar “American Punk” setting. Hey! I’m punky. Then the vocal, such as it is, is also recorded through two crunch guitar settings: the first is “Blues Slide” and the second is “Street Fighting Man.”

I was trying for a Billy Bragg / Social Distortion kind of thing, but I think it ends up sounding like Bruce Springsteen on a bad day. The song itself is a traditional one, recorded by the Memphis Sanctified Singers and included on the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music. But I basically sing the lyrics as heard by Peter Stampfel on the Holy Modal Rounders recording of it.

I have no idea what the actual name is of the guy who “was humble / he prayed to God each day.” Let me know if you do.

embalmed ones, fabulous ones, suckling pigs

Fillmore and Buchanan part deux

Leave a comment

A while ago, after I’d written my Presidents day salute to two of our least remembered, least loved presidents, “The Fillmore & Buchanan March,” Riley Broach took the lead sheet I’d uploaded and scored the piece in Sibelius. (For the background on the piece and the primary documents in question, see my February 20, 2008 entry)

When I asked him if he meant in the style of the Finnish composer, he laughed uncomfortably and wrote:

While an arrangement in the style of our favorite Finn, Sibelius would be hilarious, I was only referring to the program which is entitled, in fact, Sibelius. But you probably know that and are being hilarious as always, though one never can be so sure with you.

Well, he can be sure, because here I sit right now, whistling Sibelius’s Fifth like I’m Morton Feldman or something.

Anyway, here is the arrangement of The Fillmore & Buchanan March in some style arranged using Sibelius.

It sounded great, and really funny. But I was stuck. Because the file exists in a format that this blog doesn’t seem to recognize, it wasn’t until I was living in this backyard cottage I call Ainola (though if I knew the difference, I’d probably call it Shainola) and figured out that I could record streaming sound using Audacity that I also realized I’d finally be able to share Riley’s gift to the world.

So here it is, in all its scored glory, “The  Fillmore and Buchanan March.”

For download: