EQUAL FORCE IN OPPOSING DIRECTIONS

Samarkand "Equal Force rehearsal" MP3

Backtrack to fall 1992, to the practice rooms at Berklee in Boston. I somehow roped a few very talented peeps to play my songs with me. I'm still not sure how that happened. Jeremy Van Buskirk played bass, Stephanie Ralston sang, I played guitar & behaved badly, Chad Popple played drums. I hate to say that I took all of their presences in the band for granted, but I did. It was Jeremy's idea to call the band Samarkand & I guess I never bothered to think of a new one?

"Equal Force" dates back to early 1992, it was a rare excursion into an XTC-style swing. Chad was able to duplicate & enhance the drum machine programming I had done. I still like most of the song.

This recording is a bonus track on the remastered & expanded edition of the October 1992 green Samarkand demo we made. That's right, it's disc one of the aborted Samarkand box set.

the higher I climb the farther I fall
the farther I go the harder I fall
a hollowed-out version of all I loved
a bile-filled version of all I need

equal force in opposing directions
gets nothing done

Samarkand live Freakin' Pizza June 1993

fake Samarkand flier I made 1993

Samarkand band photos spring 1993 Hoover Dam in Westerville. We found each of our names in the graffiti on a railing and posed by them. Brian, Jeff and...... Stub.

Comments

THESE CHORDS ARE LIKE FAMILY TO ME

Ian C Stewart "These Chords are like Family to Me" MP3 From the 2003 made-to-be-made-not-made-to-be-heard album I Don't Know Why You Think I Won't Kill You .... this is the last song. This was the beginning of my dabbling with intentional randomness in songwriting. The lyrics for the whole album were compiled from albums by other artists that I enjoyed a lot, such as Adrian Belew's Twang Bar King , The Cure's Pornography , Voivod Nothingface , Mercyful Fate Melissa etc. I wrote out entire lines of their phrases and chopped them together. I think at the time I described it as 'sad psychedelic love songs about satan' overall, which is really being too generous. The music was also randomly chosen from tablature found on t'interwebs for favorite songs of mine. In general I played the chords in reverse order to the original songs but I can still kind of tell in a couple of places what the songs were. The titles were my own, obviously. Although I did cho

TWO MINUTES WITH A BORROWED CASIO

Ian C Stewart "Two Minutes with a Borrowed Casio" MP3 Whose keyboard was this? Certainly not mine. Here's two minutes of what can only be described as half an hour of Casio exploration.

CANCER COFFINS

XYCHQ "Cancer Coffins" MP3 February 1989. Michael and I were in two bands together simultaneously. XYCHQ and (in Parentheses). Both of which played at this particular party. XYCHQ was normally Ray singing, Jeff playing bass, Michael on guitar, me on drums. But there were one or two songs that I played guitar and sang on. "Things I Hate" was one, "Cancer Coffins" was another. Both were "searing" (cough) indictments of the shallow world around my 17-year-old self. Y'know, the social injustice of um people using tanning beds. So yeah, this song "Cancer Coffins" was sort of a funky metal thing at the beginning. Then a thrashy riff for the chorus. And then the breakdown, which will be familiar to anyone who ever heard Devilcake's song "Fribble." or the (in Parentheses) track "Enthalpy." Hey, never let a good riff go to waste. Michael slays the drums on this one. Jeff still on bass. I'm not sure why I was yelli

Ian C Stewart Archive of Sound

Search This Blog