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.

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THESE CHORDS ARE LIKE FAMILY TO ME

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SAMARKAND FRENZY WEEK, DAY THREE Samarkand "Exgirlfriend" MP3 This song is from the limited release cassette Sensitive , which was issued in a handpainted edition of 10 in January 1993. Naturally. Sensitive was 60 minutes of almost entirely brand new material, only one or two songs were recycled. It was recorded during what I thought would be my winter break from Berklee in 1992. Of course that turned out to be my permanent break from Berklee in 1992 since the cash had completely run out for my tuition. All the songs were recorded on a borrowed 4-track, possibly Ray's Porta 05. I also had my uncle's massive Carvin PA, Sennheiser mics & Ludwig drums in my basement. All of which feature prominently on this here release, along with the brand new Zoom 9002 effects. Which was an amazing combination at the time, I really felt like the boundaries were down on the equipment end of things for the first time. "Exgirlfriend" is a riff recycled from Domestik Quarrel...

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Oracle "Jam" MP3 Skipping ahead to March 1987, probably my next experience jamming with other guys. This time with several chaps who I didn't normally hang out with. We all seemed to like aspects of the same music but our playing styles were pretty far off from each other. Let's see, we played in this guy Dave M.'s basement. Even though we weren't bestest buds or anything, Dave M. was the guy I knew the best out of this session. I don't remember if we even had any classes together, we just both loved talking about playing the guitar. Which was certainly not uncommon at the time. He seemed to be a George Lynch acolyte whereas I still had yet to declare a style of my own. So, to confuse things further, there was a third guy, named Matt, I don't remember his last name. But he was there with his drums. He played drums fairly well though none of us were virtuosos. Matt also played guitar decently. Dave, who primarily played guitar, could hold his own on the...

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