So I went back to my old computer, old version of GarageBand, not so much for this but in anticipation of LP100 which I am planning on finishing by year's end and it will be 1,000 songs long WOW! STAY TUNED!!! I did a joke thing at the beginning of track one with crunching the compression (I don't know the lingo, never did) but that turned out to be prescient insomuch as most of the record (first 4-6 tracks anyhow) are all leveled funkily because of said old computer and not having the ability to listen to playback on my good speakers (sure, let's blame it on that!). But in the end, hope against hope as is per my M.O. etc. etc., I think this came out OK! Pretty good even!! Also — the rumours are NOT true — I did not do my first hidden track in a long time to pad out the run-time. I was firmly over 29 minutes before that nonsense. FUN FACT: The lyric in "Hindsight" that goes "Turns out I'm a mover not a shaker" was supposed to be "I'm a shaker not a mover" but I just sang it wrong and didn't feel like fixing it...I dedicate this record to Mr Whoppit. RIP, sweet bear.
♫ TRACKLIST – 13 TRACKS (37:18)
1. Mice Might Be Eating My Dead Skin at Night (False Utop) 03:18
2. Chekhov Slept In 02:13
3. Putting Myself Out There 02:53
4. Manatee Alive! 02:23
5. Hovel, Part II: American Wi-Fi 03:30
6. 1,000 MPH (With the Wind Widow) 01:46
7. Your BLEEP Taste in Movies 04:02
8. Like a Lobster, I Lost Control 02:23
9. Campbell's Bluebird 02:52
10. Hindsight (Nepalese Ice Hound) 01:30
11. The Hat Chet Man (General Mayhem) 01:50
12. Tortilla Toss 01:39
13. Dawn of a Whisper Bankrolled by the Sky 09:51
Music & Words by Vernon Howl ©
01 Mice Might Be Eating My Dead Skin at Night (False Utop)
The dark heart's
Carte blanche
On a lark, on a branch
Stuck onto the gun of a tank
Put there by the arm
Of a child in harm
Come find me
By the smokestacks of the burning barn
Babies with rabies in Babylon
Make it so you can't cope in a utop
Ions ago we had the dawn of the slowpokes
Sifting through barrels of No Doze™
No more words
For the sake of them
Were running
Out of space
The predatory lenders
Are carving forehead tattoos
To save face
02 Chekhov Slept In
A false sense of self, a cry for equal rights
Corporate t-shirts make it worth the fight
Your piss-down economics, wow, they really work
Instead of having jobs, we all just twerk
There are liminal spaces and caves on the moon
There are flooded rabbit holes and black-painted rooms
There are words of advice, namely: this is how I win
And there are bloodstained beds, allegedly, that Chekhov slept in
All the lobster and top hats that you could afford
Have been dropped at your feet from the back of a Ford
But you're too weak to eat them, too strange to endure
Like a starved ape with an eating disorder
03 Putting Myself Out There
There are cresting edge lords in my vestibule
And they say they've invested in the very thought of me
And I constantly tell them that their presence is not cool
But I can't help but wonder what the hell could be those service fees
Been thinking about putting myself out there
Into this world of death and despair
Try and see the light I receive back on to me
Off the stupid faces of the stupid people who chose to live serendipitously
Maybe all this darkness however you know it seems
Is emanating from inside of me and tis I who set it free
So then it'd be some solemn duty to collect it, reign it in
And so putting myself out there is simply a duty so you see
04 Manatee Alive!
It's a dry heat
it's not the heat
It's the humidity
What do we have in the kitchen
To quiet these unruly children
A shot of brandy, a nip of herb
You can't get arrested in Florida
Savor each flavor at the cineplex
Don't take a bath in regret
Subversive smiles in a cellophane sea
Drowning, drowning, just like me
05 Hovel, Part II: American Wi-Fi
Getting big-timed by a champagne boy
In an otherwise dimly-lit room
Sometimes there's a barrel of Mai Tai's
So hit 'em in the middle with American wi-fi
I'm in Ithaca with Carrie B.
Contemplating the power of positive thinking
We were painting landscapes
On sixty gallons of cough syrup and extrovert aversion turn-bulls
Slurping life through a straw
There isn't a hovel on God's good green earth
That isn't mean with the moisture
Of all the living things, dreaming and breathing and dreaming as one
A monster made of all this America including upstate New York
And the downtrodden middle class, naturally
06 1,000 MPH (With the Wind Widow)
Every car can kill you
Every moon is full
Noble, unknowable, lousy and loud
The wind widow pulls
Bi-racial Sasquatch
Are drowning in the flood
Covered in yellow
Mouths full of mud
Who released the mustard?
Who pray tell would dare?
They never stood a chance
You can’t swim with that much hair
07 Your BLEEP Taste in Movies
Your (BLEEP) taste in movies is coming to a head
You'd rather be at home (BLEEPING) something else instead
You haven't had a bath in 50 (BLEEPING) years
Ohh (BLEEP) what are we to do with you, my dear?
Hard up on starfish larva
In a South Dakotan maze
Reed Blankenship is mentioned
When a 90-yard touchdown he did make
Middle Tennessee
Is so very far far away
But television brings us there
The silver screen don’t work that way
08 Like a Lobster, I Lost Control
We can't trust spiders can we?
Life would be different if we could
I say to the nuclear holocaust: shut up!
Italian dream dogs: it’s time to reanimate
Like a lobster, I lost control
Went outside, it was cold
A real minute of silence has an almost unknowable weight
Wish I could be a little more bold
They roast the coastal elites on ivory spokes
Sourced locally from the pachyderm population
I collect commercials, I love throwing trash in my bed
I love living in a 6x6 enclosure in the den of some thing's dead head
09 Campbell's Bluebird
Campbell's bluebird
Fueled by Mr Whoppit’s grace
Takes flight in the new year
Out on a tranquil lake
Ascending to heaven
In 300-mph wake
A spray like no other
The biggest piece of cake
It takes a very long time
34 years and change
Later on, on a Wednesday
They finally find the remains
And nobody cares
Cuz Bush did 9/11
The funeral isn't televised
The K7 duck theory's forgotten
10 Hindsight (Nepalese Ice Hound)
The Overton window’s closed
So cut ‘em some slack boy, I suppose
No Nepalese ice hound knows
What crops on this rock would even stand the chance to grow
They say that hindsight’s 20/20
But the real heads know that it isn't worth a penny
How helpless is the Heimlich Maneuver
When you’re stuck choking out a cougar?
You can’t seem to move those goalposts lower
Turns out I'm a mover not a shaker
11 The Hat Chet Man (General Mayhem)
The Hat Chet Man
Stole Chet’s hat again
Is that a lady?
Or a man?
Is that a murder?
Or just some general
Ancillary
Mayhem?
12 Tortilla Toss
Got a call from Tucson about my car broke down on a New Jersey overpass that was built in 1973
I swear to God that the vulture on the powerlines turned into a seagull and I'm still stuck looking for a hawk
I long to survive without an automobile, a job and half of my mind, the half that gets distracted
Man said something 'bout a tortilla toss and it wasn't a gameshow, I'll be deaf and blind before I am broke
13 Dawn of a Whisper Bankrolled by the Sky
Both mind and body equally sharp
But I keep coming up flat
For any earthly remark
To summarize the state of grace I'm feeling
Dawn of a whisper bankrolled by the sky
Told me a secret, oh what a surprise
I know the truth and now all of me
Is feeling a feeling I would say that I am reeling
SEQUENTIAL
