A few words about tonight’s Singles Club release. And those words are ‘Practice Tapes’.

My life can be cataloged through Practice Tapes: boom box recordings (on cassettes!), jamming around someone’s big recording deck or in the current Zoom style tech. And frankly, I would not have it any other way. It is not simply the material that I created, the songs. Much of it is about the errant noises that pop up within. The voices (in harmony) of friends long lost, either to my world or the World in general. The pure adrenaline of folks with a central purpose: bring the song to its fullest and best arrangement, which is experimentation. Even the sound of my own voice (which I think anyone who knows me recognizes I love dearly). My youth, my growly screaming youth into my smooth Rock Croon I wear these later days.

Pictures exist but beauty (and memory) fade. Records exist but considering I have put out about 6 records and have written hundreds of songs, some songs get forgotten. And then remembered due to these infancy tracks of a melodies first steps. I have never kept a diary but can track my emotional growth…then backslide into stoned bellowing…then a bit more emotional growth…. then a deep slide into shallow Rock and Roll (the best kind) followed by….now.

If you are a songwriter, you know exactly what I mean.

I recognize that the aural quality is rarely releasable. I just don’t care. Life is short.

Which brings us to tonight’s track ‘Gods In The Garden’. A Practice Tape featuring me, Julie Kay on cello and Jack Adanti on shaky & beaty things.

A song I wrote and did not think much about. Maybe because it was a love song and I was being dark this past few years. Maybe cause I could not identify where it came from within me and it felt like an interloper. JikiJikiJa probably has not played this song since this recording.

Till I found this recording…and whatever damage I had related to this song faded. Perhaps cause I am not as dark as I used to be. Maybe cause I can truly relate with it now on a far deeper level.

Give it a listen. Let me know what you think. I would apologize about the bass frequencies but…. Life is short.

Gods In The Garden

It Blooms in November
Its a challenge to the senses
It opens in the rain, all spice and incense
And I fall too, I fall into you
I press every petal
Drop to my knees, let the day begin

And the days have collected bled of meaning
Except a taste I never lose that haunts my evenings
I carry ghosts hid in deep embraces
The Rabbit runs, The Wolf chases

And in the Garden lay Eden. And in the carpet we play
Between cloud and field
We are revealed
By the will of The Gods Of The Garden

And it beams bright in the grey, it sneers at the season
I feel it ever day Its beyond reason
Its beyond treason
I cant pretend it dint matter
That mirror that saw us true…it never shattered

And in the Garden lay Eden. And in the carpet we play
Between cloud and field
We are revealed
By the will of The Gods Of The Garden