Brain Games for sure

Working on “Brain Games” today.

Due to computer program issues - I did not get much of a chance to work on the lyrics.

The first time I ever played music with Dave was using the strange “jam-out” mode of this game. I was living in a basement, waiting to move into my real apartment while it was being remodeled.

You could play twelve “notes” with each keypad. They were not even close to being in tune.

I’m trying to go for a more old school guitar tone on this song so I am using my bigger Delta Blues amp and the 414 close miking with little preamp gain and a whole lotta volume … a tone like Gábor Szabó has on his 60’s LPs.

Not quite there yet. It might be because the guitar I’m using has the pickup directly wired to the output - no electronics. It sounds a little to twangy and bright. I want it to sound rolled-off on the high end.

It’s also the first song I’ve written in standard tuning since 1997.

I might have to tune up one of my real guitars instead of using this home made jobby I hacked together so many years ago.

The Long Winter (1998)

My first film.

Shot on Super8 B&W film in sequence (no editing). The camera was a Yashica:

I wanted to make a horror movie with a beginning, middle and an end. We had a costume … and a giant turkey leg.

The soundtrack came from a cassette we found in the barn in which the first shot takes place. When I would screen the film for my friends back then, I would have to drag out the projector and press play on a tape deck when the movie started. My how the times have changed.

It was in this barn, two years later in the year 2000, that my band Eureka Farm called it a day.

Later that year, my friend Dave and I composed a thirty minute collection of music entitled “Picturebook” in the barn. It was performed only once - in Moscow Idaho - in conjunction with a slide show of original work/found slides.

(I am credited in the film as “Richard Levi”)

~20mb

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