The Cheap Imitation

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Introductape

The Cheap Imitation was the name I used for my original musical recordings from approximately 1983 up to 1994 or so. I'm trying to decide whether or not to keep using it. (The idea is that the recordings are mostly just me, overdubbed, and not a real band at all -- just a cheap imitation of one.)

Recordings

These tracks are freely redistributable under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. Permission may be given for small-scale paid reproduction (as in listening clubs), but do ask first.

Track Title	Type	Downloads
2007
Your Brilliant Career	song w/words; demo	MP3
2003
Not Your Chameleon	song with words	OGG MP3
All The Beautiful Girls	song with words	MP3
Don't Call the Doctor	song w/words; demo	MP3
Going Through the Motions	song w/words; demo	MP3
Time For You	song w/words; short	MP3
2003 remixes of old stuff
Analog mixes circa 1991
You or a Reasonable Facsimile	song w/words; demo	MP3

Time For You

• Type: song with words (short)
• Version: demo
• Download: MP3
• Posted: 2003.12.22
• Comments: Anna wrote this spontaneously when she was seven; the tracks were recorded in late October of 2001. We did one take of about one and a half verses, I think, and then she decided that her voice sounded too horrible and she wouldn't record anymore. So I had to patch together what I had.
• Credits:
  • Words, Music, Vocals: A. Staddon
  • Arrangement: N. Staddon

2003 remixes of old stuff

These were all originally done on a quarter-inch 4-track reel deck from roughly 1983-1991 and then remixed digitally in 2003. (Currently only one track; others are in progress.)

Dana Auditorium 3AM

• Type: Instrumental (piano)
• Download: MP3
• Comments: There was this enormous Steinway concert grand sitting in Dana Auditorium at Guilford College for a few days, and I just had to do something with it. So I sat down and improvised this bit. Turned out rather better than expected.

Analog mixes circa 1991

These were also done on the quarter-inch 4-track reel deck, but mixed using a hand-wired patch-bay thingy made from a cigar box.

Daydream of the Psychoanalyst

• Type: Instrumental with weird speaking parts
• Download: MP3
• Comments: This was originally part of a sequence of tracks; I've decided I don't like the first two, at least not as they are currently recorded. The second track blends into this one; you can hear the fade-out at the beginning. The music starts after about a minute and a half if you want to skip the weird stuff. My-sister-the-mathematician does the psychiatrist bit at the end. (She's quoting "Eliza", an early attempt to fake verbal interaction with a computer. The machine pretended to be a shrink by asking leading questions without really understanding what you were saying to it. It ran on an Osborne portable.)

The song happened mainly because of the really short sequencer on my Ensoniq Mirage; the darn thing only had about 128k and its sequencer had an upper limit of about 15 seconds. The Mirage died in 1995 and I got an EPS-M (rackmount version of the EPS), which is still very cool even if it is now also out of date. I expect I will be using the EPS for future recordings (it was used on one track of the Xmas CD Project, 2001).

You or a Reasonable Facsimile

• Type: Song with words
• Download: MP3
• Comments: The words came first. The last bit (about the rodents) always makes me think about my friend Hilary, so I always say I wrote it about her before I met her. Dave Fawcett played the real drums (the crash cymbal comes through the most clearly); I played and sang (I use the terms lightly) everything else.

Interlude #1

• Type: Instrumental (short)
• Download: MP3

Monorail to Nowhere

• Type: Instrumental with weird noises and effects
• Download: MP3
• Comments: Another track that emerged from the very short Mirage sequencer (as did "Daydream" and "Interlude #1"). I like all the weird sounds in this one, but after listening to it about 500 times over the last few years I can't tell if it succeeds artistically. Digital remix is in progress.

Hell's Hotel

• Type: Song (well, sort of) with words
• Download: MP3
• Comments: The guitar is acoustic, distorted by a very advanced technical process called "turning up the gain too high". (Can you tell this was recorded in the 1980s?)
• Credits:
  • Words & vocal: S. Talton -- but give her a break; she was only 15 at the time.)

The Penguin Song

• Type: Novelty song with words
• Download: MP3

Distortion

• Type: Instrumental (piano, solo guitar)
• Download: MP3
• Comments: Mixed circa 1983

Pineapple

• Type: Original audio weirdness
• Download: MP3
• Comments: This should probably also be in the Top 10 Weirdest Things I've Ever Recorded (along with "Summer Nights in White Satin" -- see Woozle's Audio Weirdness). It started innocently enough when I was trying to get an interesting rhythmic Moog noise against which to play something, and then someone who didn't know I was recording started noodling around on the other Moog (an Opus 3), and there was already some odd stuff on some of the other tracks, and it seemed like a good excuse to assemble a bunch of odd sounds and try to make them go somewhere. ("Said fed head" is my paternal parental unit, from a recording presumably made for a psychology experiment sometime in the 1960s.)

License

All the audio on this page is released under the Creative Commons license (same as the wiki, even though the files are off-site). For the purposes of the license, the author is Woozle Staddon; attribution should include a link back to http://hypertwins.org (or directly to this page if you prefer). If anyone does want to produce any derivative work, I'd be interested in hearing about it -- and I'd probably be willing to share source files so you have a higher-quality original to work from.

New Name

I'm considering using "Woozalia" as a name to replace "The Cheap Imitation", partly because it's eminently searchable (it currently pulls up a total of 4 references on Google, all of which are me) and partly because mumble-mumble which I'll get back to later.