Never been one to let the carrier drop

So, a long time ago, when I first wandered into Epoch and said, as I recall, “Um, I think I work here now?”, I met this guy – Jeff Lane. He was the first friend that I made at Epoch (back when it was HLC internet), and we used to come in on weekends even though it wasn’t our shift and have bagels and barqs rootbeer and talk about stuff. I taught him some things about how the internet works, and he taught me some things about how life works. He was a really bighearted, great guy. I can’t really say enough about how friendly, likable, and enjoyable to be around he was.

We played a lot of warcraft2 and answered a lot of customer phone calls, and we remained friends throughout the years. The last time I saw him was way too long ago, seven or eight years I think, but we still chatted on facebook regularly.

Recently, he left earth – logged out, as I like to say – his body failed him. I will write more about that and how I think the health care system contributed to it later. But.. I wrote some music for him, and I thought I’d share it with you all.

Jeff Lane.

Godspeed and au revoir, Jeff. Until we meet again… you will be missed.

I did want to mention, because I don’t always get around to putting a comment on each individual post to the effect, that the vast majority of tracks I publish here are co-engineered by Arthur St James, the other set of ears at Sheer Sound Studios. Pretty much all of them are all me, but occasionally they will include drum loops from public libraries or from Superior Drummer. When other musicians play on them I try to make sure I mention it in the “liner notes” that go on the blog with the published track.

Here we have my favorite Springsteen song – The River, covered by me. 😉

The River

Heavy Christmas

For those of you in a holiday mood..

Greensleeves

I’ve been playing a lot with the blues in my repeated attempts to get my left hand a little more into the game. As a side effect, I ended up writing this piece, hope you all enjoy it:

Major Mellow G

So, I’ve got several things in the pipeline, but here’s a cover that should take at least a few of my friends *waaay* back:

Sheer Covers Emmet Swimming – Broken Oar

So, from time to time we like to post things that feature musicians who are friends of mine or work with me or both. This track is by Bunnerabb, who more often appears credited in the recording and mixdown portion of things. I quite like it, though.

Lips Like Sugar

So, I’ve been messing around with this song a little bit lately and actually came up with a version that I thought y’all might or might not enjoy. In any case, it entertained me to no end to cover Johnny Cash. So, without further ado, here is

Ghost Riders In The Sky

So, I was going to drop this in the circular file, but Bunne convinced me that the world might appreciate this particular type of screwed-up-ness. So here you go:

Hotel California

Bunne described this as “This evokes not so much the cynicism of the original as it watches a soon to be bygone era fade from the cultural radar screen, as it does a melancholy for an era that may have never been, It’s a parsing of a paint by numbers approach to nostalgia we have come to view as fact and it sort of dismantles it’s premise with a sense of grasping for something that may have not ever actually been. It’s an dour anthem for the people who tend to fall through the cracks of the “cool scene” and I like the arrangement a lot.“.

For me, the funniest part is how you keep expecting the solo to end, but it doesn’t, instead jumping to even more absurd levels of Sheerishness – by the end it might even be bordering on Mozart’s “Too Many Notes”.