Heartfelt on a shoestring. Musical fun.
Sounds - Songs - Improvisations - Spoken Word
Sounds
Contains a collection of original Songs, Instrumental Improvisations, and Spoken Word Audio files.
They are all complete tracks in stereo MP3 Format (192k).
Songs- These are the exception in my musical output - deliberate (non improvised) music. They are all written played recorded (and copyrighted) by me.

Hear the TuneSticky Planet
- Inspired in part by a blue funk, and in part by a great book by Linda McQuaig (to whom I apologize for my gross simplifications).
The arrangement may be the result of too much listening to "Remain in Light." Oh, and the stickiness is gravity, you perverts!

Get the Song - Words and Music


Hear the TuneStanding on the Platform
- Back when I was a subway courier, I used to write songs in my notebooks as I rode around the city.
This is my most trumpety thing yet, and the pizzicato is Baritone Ukelele - an incredibly reccomended instrument.

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Listen to the SongPeople Don't Know
Real or imagined, pampered or starving, all of your problems always feel like all of the problems in the world. It's too easy to forget that everyone else has their own viewpoint.
Especially funny are all of the things we, who have been raised without material want, think are problems (ask any psychiatrist for details).

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Hear the Tune - See the WerdzDon't Touch Much
Most of us are working really hard just so we can afford fancy distractions from the stress of working so hard and feeling so hopeless. Damn it's hard to step off this treadmill!
But when do you finally win so you can relax?

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I kid you not - this kid saw it coming 1973 (Ice Cream and a Kiss)
I was thinking about sad state of the earth the other day, and I realized that I could actually pinpoint the exact moment when I first knew that we humans were behaving with a suicidal level of stupidly.
I was just an eight year old kid, but I saw it just as clear as day. I wish something had changed my mind since.

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Try this one with headphones (tee hee)Sizzling Rads
One call - two answers. What the world all means depends on whether you are rich or poor.
This song came from hearing a cozy radiator noise while listening to news from Chernobyl (distinctly less-cozy radiator).

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Hear the TuneSol III Will
- Is an anthem I wrote several years ago. Finally managed a big chorus version. I think it suits. Instrumentation includes one of my only attempts at electric guitar (apologies to the cogniscenti).
I like the fact that several of the lyrics now mean the opposite of what they meant when I first wrote it. (temporal irony induction is one of the less studied universal properties).

Get the Song - Words and Music

Silly Twentieth Century Lovesongs
A couple of lighter things that I wrote for my favourite girl.

A bit of nostalgic sentiment from 1984 Hearts for days
This is a little pop-tune that I wrote for my sweet-heart when we were first dating - a frighteningly long time ago. ;o)
Silly eighties sounds and immature lyrics, to be sure - but they were all meant completely honestly.
It ain't retro if you logged it then.
Have a listen to a long-ago time.


Soppiness for the same sweet gal, in the ninetiesYour smile
- is a song I wrote for my wife in the nineties, when we were both set back on our heels.
"What do I want to be when I grow up?" is a very different question at age thirty-five, isn't it?
It's easy to feel nervous. But I didn't want her doubting the important stuff.
Take your time honey, I'm not going anyplace

Instrumental Improvisations- Is a sampling of nice times had with friends.
I like Improvising - when things click, you can have a real nice dialogue with someone.
None of this is certified safe for fans of commercial music, sheet music, or 'hooks'.
This is raw communication, not meant for a 'market'. If you don't like it, try the latest vocoder dance-pop (ughh).
If you do like it, Thanks, Drop me a line. I will pass on kudos to all involved.

Hear the TuneQuartet
- I used to be a repairman. For many years the bench next to me was manned by Joe Varga. I have never had, nor been, a better audience for puns and jokes. We share a bizzarre background - we were both raised on classical, and rebelled into jazz. In this number, Joe Varga plays Flute and Violin, I play Clarinet and Bass. Two fretless strings as beds for two winds, thoughtful.

Listen to the Music


Weird and wonderful - an overture of experimental mayhemPhantasm
is a piece that I recorded with Maury Coles mid eighties, very early in our many years of jamming and recording together.
I had two cheap cassette-decks and a primitive 4-channel mixer, so we could do 'sound on sound', in the crudest (play-back and add, no editing) way.
This was the first time Maury ever got to play along with his own saxophone lines - and I love the way he reacted and wove them together. Stay for the very end - sweet!
Monosynths and alto sax on saturated tape - analog all the way!

To listen while you keep browsing - Just open a new browser-TabWay Back
This is as close as me and Joe ever got to playing old style blues. The two man horn section is in full force - Joe plays Trumpet Flute and Violin, I play bass(es) and Clarinet, and some hand percussion. This tune collapses from complex to simple about as well as we ever managed.

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Hear the TuneAcoustic Analog Ambience
- Joe and I are joined By Chris Harrison and Ian Calvert, on acoustic and electric guitar respectively.
Chris and Ian used to cut class to come and talk politics with me - sorry for the nightmares, guys.

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Hear the TuneCMOS Music
- Rick Whitehead is one of the finest guitarists I have worked with, and Maury Coles definitely the best saxophone player. Maury was an avant garde jazz improvisor I met at a party. Rick was a classmate at George Brown college, who had toured for years with a rock band. This was a really nice meeting of musical minds for us all.
Rock Meets Jazz meets Electronica - fun!

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Hear the TuneTurks and Caicos
Many years ago there was a plan to make the Turks and Caicos islands an official part of Canada. Maury, Rick and I all loved the idea. Sadly, it required too great a leap of imagination for the federal government - too bad. I just know we would have had some good jam-sessions down there.

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Hear the TuneLate Walk Home
- Maury travelled around the world and started music wherever he went. Here is Joe Varga's reaction to Maury, when he returned to Toronto. This one happened almost twenty years after the afternoons with Rick. Joe is on trumpet, Maury on Saxophone, I am Bass.

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Part Two of the same session - Nice Trumpet Joe!


The Friday Night Crew was an irregular group of musicians who met weekly for almost ten years. Sometimes there were two of us, sometimes twenty.
The format was open and experimental, the comradeship was warm, the conversations wild - the music exciting.

The Last Shaw Thing
- is a compilation tape I made up when that magical chapter closed. The players included: Wendell, Myself, Watson, Ron, Scott, Errol Slue, CC Keys, Maury Coles, Maceij, Tack, and Paul. Most of the tape is here - madness from the eighties - preserved in amber - enjoy!
01 Unresolved
02 Marching Out
03 Dancing Home
04 Carried Away
05 Hooked on Cacaphonix
06 Welcome Home Fanfare
07 Interrogative
08 Delay Groove
09 Hard Angles
10 Sweet Descent
11 Night Howling
12 Where?
13 Memento Maury
14 Last Words



Philosophical note. How can I spend so much time railing against post-modernism, and yet offer up stuff like this? Simple - the difference is attitude. We do not pretend our improvisations to be 'serious' (ponderous) art. This is modern urban folk music. An attempt to use our instruments to have a conversation, and just see where it leads us. The point is not to promote a particular 'corporate' entity, but to reccomend the fun of making up your own culture, as you live your life. Try it, even if you have never played an instrument, or liftted a brush. If nothing else, it will increase your awareness of, and enjoyment of all of the culture others create for you.
Spoken Word

Hear the TuneAirman's Meditation- A guided meditation based on flying in a vintage aircraft.
A Headphone holliday for all the pod-people. Takes about 25 minutes. Find a comfy seat first.
The airplane heard is Tango Charlie Charlie - My favourite plane in the world.

Close your eyes, and I'll tell you a story

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