The Cheap Imitation

Woozle: audio: The Cheap Imitation

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

2003

Not Your Chameleon

• Type: song with words
• Version: 1.0
• Download: OGG MP3
• Comments: The words need a little work, I think... if I can think of anything better, I'll go back and re-record them. The vocals, Fender Rhodes, and drums are from a demo I recorded for MoG circa 1994, but the band broke up shortly thereafter (gee, was it that bad?) and to the best of my recollection we never even practiced the song. The artist confesses to trying to sound like Donny Hathaway on the Fender Rhodes.

All The Beautiful Girls

• Type: song with words
• Version: 1.0
• Download: MP3
• Comments: Ok, it's flawed in many ways, but then again the song is about being flawed so that's kind of appropriate. Plus this is only version 1.0; I'll re-record large chunks of it when circumstances permit (better mics, better recording space, a real piano, real drums, etc.). Here it is, flaws and all.

This is more a "real song" than the other stuff. I wrote it in the late fall of 2001, driving from Athens to Durham on I-85 at night. (I remember wondering, in the days after 9/11, how anyone could write music or create any kind of art after having witnessed all that deliberate mass destruction. I guess this was my answer.)

It's about inadequacy, falling short of one's goals and even shorter of one's dreams; falling short of (or out of) grace. It's about gender dysphoria. It's about depression. It's about my dead friends (one of whom was merely ill at the time).

~~ For Jenny and Tigger ~~ (...and with apologies to Tears for Fears, "Listen", Songs from the Big Chair)

Don't Call the Doctor

• Type: song with words
• Version: demo
• Download: MP3
• Posted: 2003.12.22
• Comments: This one and the next one were both written for female vocals. Didn't have any on hand, so had to use mine :-(. Will re-record when I have some available.

Going Through the Motions

• Type: song with words
• Version: demo
• Download: MP3
• Posted: 2003.12.22
• Comments: In case it's not obvious, this is supposed to be a sort of disco send-up...

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.