Without getting into a rant about recent events, which I am sure I will do elsewhere, here’s a song that keeps getting more topical every day..
(I didn’t write this.. it’s a traditional spiritual. The arrangement is mine and I played all parts in this recording. Mix assistance / exec audio engineer provided by Arthur St James as usual)
So, this track marks my first collaboration with the incredibly talented wordsmith Lee Hart (who some of you may know as the mastermind behind things like the 1802 Altoids tin computer and the Sunrise EV). A friend of mine described this as “The wreck of the edmund fitzgerald – in space!.” (Note – the lyrics have evolved slightly in different directions – Lee’s official version is found at this address)
Lyrics (by Lee Hart):
Now Murphy was a working man ; a miner, nothing more.
A bit of human jetsam lost in night’s Plutonian shore.
Until he found that asteroid, and entered into lore;
Him and 40 kilotons of high grade ore.
He’d manned his tiny ship alone, a year or maybe more.
A flea among the asteroids; homeless, starving, poor.
Each rock had only traces of what he searched ’em for.
Hunting for his holy grail of high grade ore.
The radar caught his vector, heading for L4.
With delta-V a little high, but fusion drive full bore.
“Cap’n Murphy callin’ in this day of August 4.
‘A claimin’ 40 kilotons of high grade ore.”
The base assayer radioed, “You’ve heard the rules before.
Your claim’s no good until you land that worthless hunk of ore.
And then I’ll have to analyze its purity before
You own that 40 kilotons of high grade ore.”
“Jesus, what you burning there?”, the port controller swore.
“There’s colors there in your exhaust flume I’ve never seen before”.
“Just gum’ment forms”, said Murphy, “and rulebooks by the score”.
“To help me trim this delta-V, that’s all I kept ’em for”.
“Murphy, there’s a lawyer here, from Cheatham, Ripp, and Gore.
He says your bills are way behind, a year or maybe more.”
“Jes’ stand him on me landin’ pad, I’ll pay him off for sure.
And drop him 40 kilotons of high grade ore.”
The radar station checked the course, then checked it even more.
It seemed that Murphy’d land a thousand yards below the floor.
The operator called it in, then headed out the door.
“I’ll take my last vacation day, that’s what I saved it for!”.
“Veer off, ya goddam lunatic!”, the base commander swore.
“That rock’ll smash a hole in us a mile wide or more!”
“Now don’t you worry”, Murphy said, “I’ve done this thing before.
It’s only 40 kilotons of high grade ore.”
And then the fusion drive waxed bright, full thrust or maybe more.
The tiny ship, it floated down; the rock, it towered o’er
Straining every rivet with a load like Atlas bore.
To stop that 40 kilotons of high grade ore.
The falling mountain slowed, then crawled, then gently kissed the floor.
The fusion drive ran out of fuel in just a second more.
And as the engines died away, the scale of Smelter 4
Was reading 40 kilotons of high grade ore.
A mob raced to the landing pit, there must have been a score
To cheer the god, or curse the fool who’d shown them all death’s door.
They found no man, they found no ship; an engine, little more
Beneath that 40 kilotons of high grade ore.
The cold equations do not lie, nor cheat like some old whore.
He knew them better than his wife (who’d left the year before).
Murphy didn’t have the fuel to make the dock secure
While pushing 40 kilotons of high grade ore.
A fusion drive burns anything; that’s what we use ’em for.
So piece by piece, his ship he fed the grim reactor core.
And when it all was not enough, he entered through that door
To stop his 40 kilotons of high grade ore.
The assay team reported something odd about this ore.
They saw where Murphy’d tried to cut; that hadn’t worked for sure.
They tried to chisel, burn, and blast, and finally they tore
A bit off 40 kilotons of high grade ore.
The chief assayer checked it out, and tallied up the score.
The density was very high; few elements are more.
Its hue, its malleability; its carats — 24!
My God, it’s 40 kilotons of pure gold ore!
No one has yet discovered just where he found that ore.
But Murphy’s gold put us in space; a million men and more.
The future destiny of man, now it is secure.
Thanks to a lonely miner and his load of high grade ore.
Note this later appeared on Believing Is Seeing.
You all may remember a track from 2016, Pride & Conviction. Me and Tory got together and gave it a new coat of paint and I like the result a lot better – Bunne as usual was consulting audio engineer and probably consulted more than average in ways that helped this be a better track – anyway, here it is:
The old track is here if anyone wants to compare – we can debate later the question about whether both sides of our polarized electorate have kernels of truth or not.
For those of you who have been missing my orchestral-movie-soundtrack stuff, here is a little bit I did today just to make sure I haven’t forgotten how: Maypole
And slowly we accumulate the 10,000 😉
The videos for the two twitch broadcasts I did are now available for any who want to see them.
Show #1 – 2/15/21 – Setlist:
Sheer-Solo-TwitchBroadcast-021521.mp4
John’s Song (Original / M.Mesford/Sheer)
City Of New Orleans (Cover, Arlo Guthrie)
This City (Cover, Steve Earle)
America (Cover, Simon & Garfunkel)
Black Velvet (Cover, Alannah Miles)
Me and Bobby McGee (Cover, Kris Kristofferson)
Comfortably Numb (Cover, Pink Floyd)
Blackbird (Cover, J. Lennon)
House of the rising sun (Cover, traditional)
Closer To Fine (Cover, Indigo Girls)
A few of my favorite things (From “The Sound Of Music”)
One Tree Hill (Cover, U2)
Show #2: 2/20/21 – Setlist:
Sheer-Solo-TwitchBroadcast-022021.mp4
1% (Original, Sheer/M.Mesford)
Don’t Dream It’s Over (Cover, Crowded House)
The original broadcast included Dry County (Cover, Bon Jovi) which has been omitted due to technical issues
Us And Them (Cover, Pink Floyd)
Still Alive (Cover, Jonathan Coulton)
Tis Of Thee (Cover, Ani Difranco)
One (Cover, U2)
Lost Angeles (Original, Sheer/T.True/Alex)
Puff the Magic Dragon (Cover, Peter,Paul&Mary)
The Way It Is (Cover, Bruce Hornsby)
Will The Circle Be Unbroken (Cover, Traditional)
Imagine (Cover, J.Lennon)
Don’t You Forget About Me (Cover, Simple Minds)
Encores: Angel From Montgomery (Cover, J. Prine) / The Promise (When In Rome)
I’ve been having tons of fun with OBS and setting up scenes, filters, and the like. Most of the bugs are out. My twitch channel is https://twitch.tv/sheerpanic_. (note the underscore)
Planning a “official” transmission for Feb 15 at 6 PM. In the meantime, I’m doing test transmissions – I will delete the truly horrid ones and leave the rest up until they time out.
So, I have gotten a twitch account at SheerPanic_ (note the underscore at the end). I will be setting up over the next few weeks to do a show in late Feb – I did my first test transmission today, and while there were a few minor warts it went better overall than I had any right to expect. I apparently need to get over yet another type of stage fright.. (it’s so bizarre. I’m over the “stage fright when multitrack deck is running” and I’ve put a pretty good dent in the “stage fright while performing IRL” but apparently video broadcasting is yet another thing.
It’s also never going to be beautiful – I don’t anticipate millions of viewers or anything like that, so I’m not going to build a set or set up special lighting for it. I will arrange to have multiple camera angles, and I will hard-mount them so they don’t get in the way when I’m doing other things in the studio. I’m going to see if I can set up rules in OBS to switch randomly between cameras as well.
Sheer covers Leonard Cohen’s “Democracy”
As per usual, Arthur St James was the associate audio engineer, and I was everything else.