MUSIC  

This page is the primary outlet for RAR tunes. Here you will find original compositions, mostly recorded in my PC-based home studio on Cakewalk's Sonar Producer software. In addition to RAR originals, you will find information on special projects, such as the CD presented below, as well as biographical information.

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PROJECT FILES

From time to time I will use this space to post "project files" for sharing with various musical collaborators. Current files include:

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RAR Originals                                                              

The songs listed below are complete demo recordings of original material.

This site is updated frequently as new material or new recordings of older material are added. Most are recorded using Sonar Producer 5 digital software, more recent ones Producer 6. Some may be digitized 4-track audio tape recordings, and you will recognize the difference in sound quality. I may post mixes of old 16- and 24-track recordings at some point. All are in a state of constant development and redevelopment. 

You are welcome to download these songs for your own entertainment, though of course all copyright protections apply regarding reproduction or distribution for sale.

Click on the graphics or links provided to listen to the following originals from the RAR catalog.
	"Brideshead Suite" This is one of those songs that started as a guitar exercise a little along the lines of "Little Wing" and then just kept morphing into something bigger, more operatic in structure, if not vocal arrangement. I have no idea where the song came from or why this particular one made it this far. I write 10, record a couple, and this one moved quickly from idea to finished demo. It is derivative, to be sure, referencing everyone from Pink Floyd to The Beatles to Tears for Fears and Tom Petty. In that, it breaks a cardinal rule against imitation. On the other hand, I feel this tune personally so it can't be all bad. Blues-Rock
	"Gates" How many ways interesting was the Gates/Crowley incident of President Obama's first year in office? And does anyone ever do anything right where "race" is concerned? Folk-Rock
	"Laughing (Nuke'em From Orbit)" The line "nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" resonated both comically and viscerally. It came from the film Aliens, and carries such broad metaphorical potential for social commentary and self hatred that I sang this song for years before finally getting around to this draft. Folk-Rock
	"Early Beatles" Other than for a few musical devices common to earlier Beatles recordings, this song doesn't really have anything to do with that band. It has more to do with a desire to capture a certain feeling of youth and of the redemptive power of love that really typified later Beatles recordings. Mostly, it is about the energy of dreams yet to be explored, a gift exclusive to the young. Pop-Rock
	"Hoping That You're Lonely" I can't seem to get my country roots out of my system - I hear Marty Robbins in my sleep - and yet can't do a country tune without turning it into a joke. I love those sappy background vocals of 1950s-era classic country and I tried to replicate some of that with this tune, which, by the way, I love. I hope you do too. Classic Country
	"The Clues" Sometimes songs just arrive unannounced and this is one that did so with great impact for me. It is not more than 24 hours old as of this posting. The whole feeling of the piece is helped along by the great photo above, the photographer of which I am trying to find. Click on the picture above to hear the RAR original, "The Clues," a new personal favorite. Alternative Folk
	"Ooh Baby (The Jolly Cuckold)" Accepting resignation on the playing field of...well, you know... an appreciative tip of the hat to the New Orleans sound of Dr. John... New Orleans Pop
	"Para Conquistarle" More silliness with sound clips from "Sexy Spanish" and some other source I need to re-find and properly credit. I'll get back to you with this info. Alternative Pop
	"Porn International" "Porn International" is a tune of mine from the ’80s previously known as "If We Get Buzz." I recently revisioned it around some of the great sound samples available at freesound.com. I grabbed a variety of sounds and mixed them, hopefully to humorous effect, to create the appropriate ambience for my tale of temptation, pornography and free market capitalism. I felt compelled to rename the song because the voices in the freesound samples seemed obviously Asian, so my bump on the American porn industry morphed into a riff on porn international. I don’t really know anything about the porn industry, but I like this tale of this older guy who gets into the company of impressionable nubiles, "understands" and ultimately exploits them. Pop Rock
	"Down These Stairs" For when being under wrought just isn't enough Pop/Adult Contemporary
	"Just Eleven Minutes" "Just Eleven Minutes" is a rockabilly story about a guy driving at breakneck speed to murder his cheating wife and her lover. This is a pretty lame version but I like the thing overall so much I’m sharing despite. A better version would serve as a great vehicle for an Albert Lee, which ain’t me. Rockabilly
	"Reason I Wrote" Lay it light on Uncle Bob: This one was written for the 2006 election cycle and I may bring it back every two years just to remind myself why we vote...or don't. (That's my Aunt Lillian on the left, my Uncle Chas in the center, my Dad Phil on the right.) Alternative Country
	"Ralph Nader" Remember back to having a soul? (My Bechtel song): This one is resurrected from five years back, a good election cycle offering, an opus of the common man. Pop Rock
	"Bobby's Sister" A neighborhood tragedy -- in Spanish Alt-Folk Oh help me my father, for I have dissembled From beauty and grace and from passion and fear The love of a maiden so pure and so precious Lord what have I done to a heart that’s so dear
	"Not Perfect" Evidence of understatement... Rock
	"The Essential Me" "Essential Me" is just Eros rising. It portrays inner character that is universal, though not revealed in the same way with everybody. This guy’s a little much for my own comfort level. (You sense split self?) Interesting to me is that this song, which I did as a knock off, is one I get the most positive comments on. Weird, huh Rock
	"Vicodin" Woh! Look what I found in the medicine cabinet! Folk-Rock
	"On the Brink of Happiness" Sometimes all that's left is to throw one's self into the flames Pop
	"Wake of Your Whiskey Blues" Saying goodbye to the alcoholic in your life. "Wake of Your Whiskey Blues" is a folk anthem for the fed up. Pop
Dime Bag Darryl	"Dime Bag Darryl" A film directed in my mind, infer nothing, apologies to the great guitarist "Dime Bag Darryl" could be considered a racist slapper-doodle (thanks Ricky) if it weren’t so silly. It is a soundtrack for a video I have been trying to get produced and it would be helpful to scroll through story boards to get the actual nature of the piece. It is a joint on the weird schizophrenic yet symbiotic relationship that many white people have with a certain segment of the black community. The visuals are all about poking fun at white insecurity and need, and an Alice In Wonderland cast of ghetto community representatives climaxing in the image of Dime Bag Darryl himself, who I have always seen as Samuel Jackson. Pop Rock
	"Riding On A Zephyr" Autobiography -- what has happened to America? Rock
Overloaded	"Overloaded" Marriage dissolution (not autobiographical) Rock
RATZ	"RATZ" Pain at the pump.  "RATZ" is a personal favorite about a vulnerable older man who does things he shouldn’t and whithers in the blast of youth. Rock
So What #4	"So What #4" Port in a storm, situation dire Pop Rock
Glow of Your Dark Eyes	"Glow of Your Dark Eyes" The dark side of loving a dark soul Country 2-Step
6:30 Ferry	"6:30 Ferry" Unrequited love on the Vallejo to San Francisco ferry Pop
Death Trip Taxi	"Death Trip Taxi" Tibetan way of death played out in a taxi Pop Rock
	"Dancing With Angels" Disappointment on a spiritual plain Pop Country
Your High	"Your High" What will you make of your life? Alt-Rock
She Is the Queen	"She Is the Queen" From 20 years ago. I've known some awful women Blues-Rock
When We First Met	"When We First Met" From 20 years ago, noisy garage jam Blues-Rock
Republican	"Republican" A corrupted soul Rock
	"Frankenstein" Riot Grrrl of my twisted dreams Alternative
Cold Moths	"Cold Moths" Unrequited love among the homeless Alt-Pop
Warrior for Love	"Warrior for Love" Daddy Rock
The Cove	"The Cove" Instrumental theme Pop

COVER COMPILATION CD: 

I am sure that everyone who reads this site - primarily musicians - can relate when I talk about the influence that commercial radio had on me as a kid. Memories of songs from about 1957 to 1965 imprinted on my brain in a way that influenced the rest of my life. Today when I hear songs of the period it is as if I am flashed back to a certain moment in time, riding in a car with my parents, or listening to the radio that sat on the counter in our kitchen in Englewood, Colorado.

From time to time, in recent years, I have done home recordings of some of my favorites from the era, mostly for my own amusement and memory archive. Singing these songs is emotionally satisfying to me, a connection to an earlier, less complicated version of myself, more about the future than the past. Now that's irony given the era these tunes come from, and yet they are timeless, capturing a certain feeling or narrative that for some reason resonates still (at least in me).

My feelings for and performance of some of these tunes will doubtless leave some shaking their heads, but not caring is a blessing. They are un-disputably "Karaoke Rick" in nature and not intended to be more than that, recorded primarily for family. I am committed to leaving behind for my kids some record of who their dad was and what sort of cultural DNA they've been issued.

Somewhere On A Horse In Colorado is the caption of the photograph on the CD jacket. The photograph of my brother and I on horseback was taken around 1960. I was about eight years old. That caption implies to me an indeterminate existence in a remote realm, which sounds like what I remember of those first musical stirrings and life at that age: romantic, mysterious, awe inspiring. I had no context to place the music within. I could not have known at the time that pop music was morphing from surface innocence to a sadness that would be the unintended outfall from a social revolution that in other ways was quite uplifting. But change is hard. Much is lost as much is gained. "Wouldn't It Be Nice" sentiments were morphing into "I Am A Rock" solemnity.

Here are sample tracks from the CD, which is available for handling and production charges only. This is a personal, not a for-profit venture.

• "Can't Get Used to Losing You" - A 1963 hit for Andy Williams (Words & Music by Jerome "Doc" Pomus & Mort Shuman), it was a kitchen counter favorite. Pieced together from midi in my own arrangement, not intended to be an exact cover.

• "Crying" - Roy Orbison classic, a singer's minefield but a tune I have enjoyed performing when the opportunity has presented. Midi cover from infi.com.

• "Come A Little Bit Closer" - The Jay and the Americans classic (Words & Music by Johnny Duncan), midi sequenced by Chuck Duklis. I love the not-too-serious story of seduction, danger and cowardly escape.

From the 1969 Broadway hit Hair. First posted along with a feature on composer Galt MacDermot, this current version has a little better vocal than did the previously posted  version.

I will rotate these tunes and offer different ones for a listen from time-to-time.

This covers project referenced above is part of a larger "Influences" collection I am putting together that includes CDs of my originals presented in each of the genres I write in, as well as additional cover compilations, including "Jazz Vocal Standards" and "Classic Rock." - RAR

Photographs © Gillian Rice 2006-2007

RAR Background 

Like many people my age, I started playing music in 1964 - about a week after first seeing The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show.

I was eleven years old. My dad rented an electric guitar from a downtown Denver music store as part of a package deal that included lessons. So, I spent one summer in a little practice room with a couple amplifiers and a country western lounge lizard learning the basics of pick and strum, before trading in the rental (and the lessons) for a guitar of my own. (For the record, the guitar my dad bought for me was a Les Paul Junior, 1959-60 vintage, the finest playing guitar I have ever been stupid enough to eventually part with.) 

I started playing around the neighborhood with similarly inspired guys, a practice that would continue through high school and college and on into my adult life, and I started writing songs.

My parents were in their early 20s when I was born and the radio was on a lot in our house as I was growing up. I recall hearing Jimmy Rogers, The Everly Brothers, Ricky Nelson, Roger Miller and Skeeter Davis. There was a sparse but eclectic collection of LPs around the house, ranging from Sinatra, Johnny Mathis and The Platters to Marty Robbins and Burl Ives. The first LP I ever owned was "Meet the Beatles," the stateside analog to their "With the Beatles" U.K. debut album. (My grandparents gifted me with a 45 RPM of Jim Reeves' 1958 recording of "Billy Billy Bayou," which was probably my first adult record.) Denver radio went through the folk era playing The Kingston Trio, then Leslie Gore, Gene Pitney, Roy Orbison, and The Beach Boys crowded them out and The Beatles made them disappear altogether.

My backdoor neighbor Mike Miller started playing the drums around the time I started on the guitar and we very quickly established ourselves as "rock'n roll stars" in the neighborhood. The two of us would do shows in his back yard, and most especially in the back yard of a neighborhood girl named Jeannie Gregg. Her family happened to have a back yard that had the shape of a natural outdoor theatre, with seating on the grass hillside overlooking the stage area below. We would charge neighborhood kids a quarter, dime, nickel -- anything they had. And we would play Beatles songs or any simple thing we could manage. Then we would sign autographs. We were in the sixth grade at the time, still able to make believe and sweep our younger neighbors right along with us in our fantasy stardom.

My musical aspirations took a hit when my parents moved our family away from Denver and to a small Kansas farming community. I did my best to export it as best I could, though I hadn't exactly moved into a hot bed of rock culture. I did find some guys with guitars and drums, most notably my high school classmate David Domsch. We would get together on weekends, usually at his house, and practice. I remember playing Gloria by Van Morrison's band Them, and The Animals' version of House of the Rising Sun, Paint It Black by the Stones, You Really Got Me by the Kinks, and I'm a Man by The Yardbirds. Sometimes somebody's parents would be out of town overnight and we would play at their spur of the moment house parties, sometimes with an older guy named Skip McCain who played the drums. We weren't magic. In fact, a common rejoinder from my local detractors, when I would opine on which popular bands were good and which weren't. was -- "Well they're better than the Rice-Domsch band!" You can imagine our prospects.

The first rock concert I ever attended was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, at the coliseum in Denver in 1970. They were awful, but they had an effect on me. During my college years I was overtaken by an unfortunate fixation with acoustic folk-rock. I had been quite a Dylan and Simon & Garfunkle fan already -- in fact had lived in that Bookends album after being parted from my first crush, the burgeoning artist Elizabeth Kay (at left, see the links page.).

     By the time I went off to college in the fall of 1970, The Beatles had broken up, Hendrix and Joplin died in September and October of that year, and Jim Morrison was within months of joining them and The Doors had waned anyway. As far as I was concerned rock music was dead. I was no fan of Led Zeppelin and the heavy metal that was starting to surface, and wasn't even aware of the avant garde Velvet Underground and other such acts on the east coast (who might have saved me). I had drifted into a neo-hippie bliss, which was easy because Lawrence, Kansas in the early 1970s was a very hippie-trippie place, even if the last vestiges of the "movement" were a little suffused with wistfulness. There was still a lot of "love" and "brotherhood" in the air. I fell in with a large group of hippie musicians, and we would get high, listen to Joni Mitchell's Blue album and think in sweetly poetic ways. Those were wonderful days. Cat Stevens became a personal favorite, as did James Taylor. I was drifting dangerously close to the mellow shoals. I was also drifting dangerously close to people who had more talent than I did. There was one guy, in particular, who had mastered a note-by-note cover of Jimi Hendrix' classic Star Spangled Banner solo, complete with descending bombs and explosions, and he had this big Marshall amp, which I wasn't likely to get, and I got scared and went acoustic.

At Richard's Music, in Lawrence, I traded a 1959 or 1960 Gibson Les Paul Junior, plus cash, for a 1969 Martin D12-20, to the gentleman pictured on the right -- Richard Petrovits, known primarily as  "The Stomper." "Stomp," as we called him for short, owned this local guitar shop where all the local players would get equipment. He was a teddy bear of a guy who lavished attention on me whenever I would go in there, usually with my girlfriend at the time, Valerie Hale (pictured on the left), who was a knockout along the lines of Tuesday Weld. Oh did Stomp love to see me.

 Anyway, we "partnered" on what  was surely one of the most short-sighted (on my part) transactions ever known to man. You cannot now get even a hammered 1959 or 1960 Gibson Les Paul Junior for less than $3,700, but you can get a stinking D12-20 for...oh never mind. Let me just say that I didn't even get the girl.

I didn't have a guitar other than that stupid 12-string for the remainder of the 1970s, which seriously hampered my development as a guitarist. It was rekindled in the 1980s when I purchased a Gibson ES-335, with a neck that recalled (but was not as good as) that of my beloved LP Junior. During the 1970s I played in public rarely and almost always as a solo or in acoustic duos. Music, like everything else about the '70s, was holding little appeal for me. I was veering more toward being a writer and was working on publications anyway. I recognized that there was a crossover between my musical and literary ambitions -- I had always been more of a songwriter than a musician -- but the life style of a solitary writer suited my introverted nature more than being a musician. Musicians are often extroverted, and I tended to go unnoticed in that company. While there is a part of me who enjoys showing off in front of people, I am not a natural performer. I'm not even a big fan of live music, more of a "record man."

Being a record man has kept me a part of the music community, and my enthusiasm for songwriting and for playing instruments, especially the guitar, have kept me in to music. It is a huge part of my life. Some guys fish, some golf, some garden, and I write and record music. I am, by temperament, a producer.

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In my music I strive to build songs around melody, though some of my most effective are "dumber" than that. I strive to avoid cliché musically and lyrically, even knowing that cliché is really at the heart of making things "radio friendly."  I endeavor to paint a sonic landscape, to the extent that my technical skills allow. I attempt to create a mood, to tell a story, usually with humor, and I can't help but be ironic.

A NOTE ON THE BEATLES

To me The Beatles remain in a class of their own. Everything about them was just cool, from their wide musical range to the graphic design of their logo to their dark early look.

They seemed so comfortable within themselves that it elevated their music. Critically, I believe they have suffered a bit with the Fred Astaire syndrome, which is to say that they made it look too easy. By the time we in the states saw them they had been playing together professionally for years, and doing it in hard places. I always thought it ironic that between The Beatles, who sort of played the clean cut rockers, and the Rolling Stones, who portrayed the bad boy image, it was The Beatles who were the true working class heroes. (I don't think, for instance, that either Mick Jagger or Keith Richards would have fared well in a street fight with John Lennon.)

For those who doubted the individual Beatles' musical virtuosity, Paul McCartney probably didn't do the band any favors by mounting the Let It Be movie, which has scenes of them struggling through the process of birthing new material. As a musician, I found it inspirational, but detractors could get stuck on the parts where they struggle. It is in McCartney's amazing hubris to expose the innards of his music machine. 

As songwriters, I think both Lennon and McCartney paid tribute to legacy and tradition, which I think was key to their charm. Lennon was musically responsive to R&B and rock'n roll, but equally powerful were his connections to Lewis Carroll and Salvadore Dali. So, you got songs like Lucy In the Sky, To the Benefit of Mr. Kite and I Am the Walrus along with Revolution and Happiness Is A Warm Gun. McCartney always seemed in homage to musical theatre and to the tradition of the variety show. So, you got songs like Good Day Sunshine and When I'm Sixty-Four along with I'm Down and Oh Darling. George Harrison, on the other hand, wrote like a guitar student, driven by romantic progressions and, in every song, some signature voicing of a principle chord. Pick any Harrison song. The resulting Beatles' songbook is so rich it is staggering. There are other great oeuvres, but to me none match The Beatles' in range and general likeability.

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