On this page are some of Original Songs I've written and recorded over the years. The Discography tells the bigger picture. Except as noted, I played and sang all the parts, engineered, mixed, mastered, did the Artwork, etc.

 

 

"Metal Men", "Some Summers", and "After the Crush" - 1983 - 1985

I had a LOT of fun during this period! A total of six albums! Here are some highlights:

"Hawaii 6-0", the first song I ever recorded on a 4-track deck. (fom "Metal Men & Crystal Roses", 1983)

"Nowhere to Hide" - the second song I ever did on 4-track tape! (same as above, 1983)

"Beat Don't Stop!" - (from "Some Summers", recorded October 28, 1984 - one of the best days I've ever been alive.)

"Summerstorm" - (from "Some Summers, 1984. The thunderstorm and Metrobusses were right outside - no Foley.)

"Skeleton in Her Closet"- (from "Some Summers", recorded October 25-26, 1984)

"After the Crush" - (from "After the Crush", 1985)

"Moon in Aquuarius" - (from :"After the Crush", 1985. Here's a pop song I NEED to re-do!)

"Autonomy" - (from "After the Crush", 1985 - a jazz song I NEED to redo, too!)

"Life is a Beach" - (from After the Crush", 1985. Note that this pre-dates Sheryl Crowe's "All I Wanna Do"...)

"Allison's Eyes" (from "After the Crush", 1985. Thinking about re-doing this song, too.)

"Opus Incertum” - 1996

“Uncertain Work”. In retrospect, I was fighting depression, and just didn’t know it… that would come later. I could speak for hours about the history of this project, but why bother? I’ll sum it up: from the late ‘80’s through 1993, I was a student of Cosmological and Particle Physics. (Juli was with me at Fermilab, in fact, on October 13, 1985, when the first detection occurred in the Tevatron CDF… but that’s another story.) All this science got me “thinking too much”, about God and religion and Science and how whe whole damn Universe works. And one night in November 1993, walking home on a rainy night, my entire Belief System suddenly crumbled under me.

Opus Incertum was a by-product of the following year, as I struggled to build some frame of spiritual reference to get me going again. It is a very dark, very angray, very unstructured project – fun to record because I had no hope of ever releasing / selling it: it’s full of samples and soundbytes that are not mine. But here are a few songs from it, including the Title Track.Not all of 'em: I was in a very Bad Place, and am no longer proud of all of this. But it DID get me through my episode.

Some side notes:

To this day, I consider "Oderint" to be the best guitar solo I've ever done. I'm not sucg a great lead player anyway, so don't set your hopes too high.

"Stand Up, Tallie", evolved from an afternoon at a buddy's house. His dog, Tallie, kept falling asleep underfoot, everywhere, and he kept saying "Stand Up, Tallie!" So at work the next week, I asked all my coworkers to repeat the phrase... and here's the result!

"Vespasians Monkey" roved prescient to the workd today, where everyone (with or without talent) can record music, and so many do, that nobody has tome left to listen. Peter O'Toole, in his role in Masada, proved that 'everything old is new again"!

 

Opus Incertum
Vespasian’s Monkey
Oderint Dum Metuant - “Let Them Hate, So Long as They Fear”
“Stand Up, Tallie!

Theory & Escape – 1997 –After the rocky road I described below (Opus Incertum), I had gotten back to “the person I thought I was”. Life was pretty cool. So, I thought I’d try to make “an album of stuff I thought people would want to hear.” Theory & Escape ALMOST got there, except for one flaw: my Brain gets in the way. I can no more write a song about “dance until you sweat” and “move your body” and “the world is Ours tonight” than I can lay a dinosaur egg. The simple fact is, I think too much. As an artist, that really gets in my way.

So judge this as you will.

Ride the Ball – This was the song that kicked-off the entire Project. I was at Rehoboth Beach, floating in the surf with a huge Gin & Tonic in my sippy-cup, thinking about the disparity between folks kicked-back on a beach, tanning, listening to the waves… and folks who were at the same time trying to find God, and the human condition. The rest is here.
Maria Theresa – At the nightclub, managing the door, and again: looking at the dichotomy between how I was raised, and what I saw, and how the “closing time” went. Look, nobody is right: we all live in our own worlds, own adolescences. Mine had fewer bullets.
Intellect – Oh! Those swaggering, self-inflated Rapsta’s! “Me, me, me, me!” ad nauseum. So in my own naiveté in 1995, I thought “what if an egghead such as I were to Rap?”. I was young and stupid. The song I’d do today would be FAR more-erudite. Hmm… maybe I will!
The Process of Falling – This was actually written and tracked in 1988, with my dear friend Sedge Cantori on drums, in my bedroom at Casa Goofy. I took the source track, warts and all, and finished it. Love? The Process of Falling is far, far more entertaining than the maintenance thereof - as Shakespeare said. “Oh, to be young and feel Love’s keen sting” Dumbledore agrees, too.
Looking for Fred – Pre-9/11, remember. I was thinking of a sibling, and how he was once intent on slashing my throat with a carpenter’s square (this is no prevarication or fish-story) and how I ran-away from home to escape being murdered. And I thought “how has he evolved since then?!” Here’s my imaginary follow-up.
That Other Place – Escape. This is the “Escape” in the title of the Album.
Da Boink! - This started as a play on words, syllogisms, culture, and mixing technology with sex. It was just too fun NOT to record.
The Halflife of Love - I had actually recorded this song on my “After the Crush” (1985) album, but I met Tim, who could shred like a Monster, and decided to re-do it. That’s Tim on lead guitar.
Amy, Missing at Fermilab – My love of science continued. Although by this time I had shunned the world of Academia, and found I could make a much more-lucrative career in Communications. But after my Fermilab experiences, I had a dream one night about a “Twilight Zone”-ish story, and followed my Muse.
On Mechanization – This is a song I wrote in 1979, and first recorded in 1981. That version sucked (technology, and lack to afford it!). But I dusted it off, and my best friend (until the day I die) Mike Masquith played lead, and helped me produce it.
This is Where I Work – I worked at this place, a family owned business, and the owner “Arnie” (name changed) had some anger-management issues. “Arnie” was, in fact, a guy I really looked up to, and was as sweet a guy as you’d ever meet. But , like me, he was frustrated at the fact that the dreams and plans he had were thwarted by “real life”, and – at times – his own family. And “Arnie” Raged, oh, yes, he did – but never at me. He tried once, and I had a talk with him, and he never, ever again Went There. He could have fired me, but he didn’t: the Man had Honor. But I did record him, just to make a documentary, so that someday (now) I could look back and calibrate myself. Tim, my shredding amigo, played Lead Guitar on this. “Arnie” was a Good Man, and was a friend to me, and is gone from us. I was too young at the time to have any feedback he would have valued… but I comported myself as a Gentleman to him, and I hope that helped. Godspeed, boss. To this day, I miss you.

"The Box" - 2006

In 2005, I was contacted by a friend – he and his brother were creating films to submit to SunDance and other entities, and were in the process of finishing a film, and wanted to use some of my music. I gave them free access to whatever they needed. Shortly after that, they contacted me again, and asked if I would join their working group (about 18 people, all-told). I went to a few of their meetings – they were planning their next effort for 2006. At one meeting, they said “everyone come back next week with a concept or plot".

Intrigued by the discipline (I had never worked in Film), I went home and wrote an entire screenplay, and brought it to the next meeting. My working title was “Quality Control”. Another month of meetings later, my screenplay was voted as the next “release”. They also wanted me to act in the lead part! And they changed the name to “The Box”.

Well, from this experience, I learned a couple of things. First, I don’t ever want to Act again. I’ll leave that to the professionals. Second, screenwriting is FUN! I’ll do more of that when time permits. And finally – you know all that stuff you hear about film scoring being a frantic, stressful job, because there’s never enough time between when the first cut is done (for scene length) and the Release date? It’s all True.

I hated the end result of the film – mostly because I cringe at my acting disability – but it DID place Top 5 or 6 in four separate competitions. And for that – I am very proud of my effort and accomplishment… and can strike those things off my Bucket List! Sadly, I lost my copy of the film in our June 2015 basement flood, and have only a few of the (pre-mastered tracks). There were over a dozen... maybe I'll re-record them someday.

Beyond
Electromechanical Nightmare
Inner Spaces
Nowhere but Out
Roadway

"The World Around Me" - 2007

As we all know, the events of 9/11 knocked us all for a loop. For awhile, I did no music at all. But I finally did begin writing again, in 2000 , and those songs were "dropped into the hopper" for what would eventually be released as “The World Around Me”. It was another of those dark times – the Depression I had staved off in 1996 returned with a vengeance, Bush was in power and our freedoms (and the Median Intelligence of the nation) were dropping rapidly. I was also trying to teach myself some specific recording techniques, versus writing new songs… so I didn’t press myself about content or construction – these were mostly experimental technical works.

In the end, I never did “release” this album. I shared some of it online, and “floated it softly” among certain circles, but no “buzz”. And as you’ll be able to discern, I was Angry… and some of the tunes were just too angry for me to be comfortable posting here. So here’s a redacted song list.

Coileen's Song – Let’s start the party with some Alien Dub! Coileen, on planet Atani, was having some heartbreak issues, so I penned a tune for her, and sent it via sub-space.
Hieropuppiae – In 2004, working at home, my puppy Maximus would sleep outside on the patio in warm weather, his little paws twitching… I wondered what he was dreaming about… so I wrote this to capture it. I also made a VIDEO HERE. And I am happy to say that fantastic dog is still with us!
Interlude (Radio Mix) – Just goofing around, wanted a short non-obtrusive tune for a video a friend made.
Malfeasance – Heck, look at the cascade of Buffoonery in the Bush Years. The song tells only a small part of the story.
Playing With My Puppy – No, this is not sexual innuendo. This was a tune I recorded while playing with Max, who also growls the solo for me.
Statistics and Limits – Thinking back on when I managed the nightclub, and the sad dramas I saw being played-out there.
Black Coffee – The backing tracks on this tune were recorded back in 1994, and my best friend Mike Masquith did the solo. In 1994 I did a rough mix onto cassette, and over the years my recording platform changed several times. But I found that cassette and wondered if I could recover those nostalgic memories… so I bumped the tune into Sonar (explaining the “watery” sound) and proceeded from that point. There was a website back in 2004 called “garageband” (nothing to do with the Apple app) where you’d upload songs, and other listeners would review and vote on them. I entered “Black Coffee” into a comedy category, and the song placed 4th! “As close to my Big Break” as I ever got!!”
They Tend to Follow You – I got to thinking about what it must be like to be “43”, and have to sleep with oneself at night. This is the result.
Thinking Too Much – My buddy Mike Masquith and I were sitting around one night drinking beer and jamming, and I started this little mandolin riff. He grabbed his guitar, and we fired-up Sonar. We had this song done in about an hour.
Touching Cloth – Just experimenting with MIDI commands, and I got this groove going. It’s a bit sketchy, but thought I’d include it here just for fun.
Yvette Carries a Torch – Never been to the catacombs in Paris, even though I’ve been to Paris. The next trip, maybe. Meanwhile, I had this tune – with my big brother Matt Riedl on bass – and used the image of the catacombs to set the stage for loneliness, blood-sucking, and a love that Will Not Die.

Meanwhile - My Classic Stuff is down beow!

Video is Here!