The Linear Canvas

I could write a book or make a movie about my childhood friend Billy Thompson. But I doubt anyone would believe some of it. His parents and mine were very close as all had come from eastern Kentucky to Ohio in the 1950’s and I believe we were distantly related to one, or both of Billy’s parents, Estill and Ann Thompson. I always called Ann “mom” as she always treated me like one of her own. Estill played with a bluegrass band at my father’s funeral. I was close to the whole family and spent many evenings having supper with them and hanging around the cemetery next door smoking cigarettes with Billy.

“Billy”

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Billy and I had been friends since elementary school and he had made it very clear to me about his bi-sexuality in fifth grade. It caused a little problem at first for me, but after awhile our other common interests, hillbilly parents, partying and music, would draw us together again. I’m not completely sure that he was gay, at least at first. He had a couple of girlfriends during that time. I also remember talking to him about girls while we sat in a tree at the cemetery. I would suggest girls for him but he always said no girl would ever like anyone like him. I think he was just bashful. Billy wasn’t an unattractive person, but he was also not very tall. I was just as scared of girls rejecting me as he was. Billy’s insecurity and height did not help him, no doubt.

By the the time we graduated, Billy and I had gone our separate ways mostly. We had attended the same vocational school and that allowed us to interact on a daily basis until then. After high school though, Billy and I didn’t see each other too much. I had a steady girlfriend and I wasn’t too interested in his new circle of friends. Some time later, Billy and his associates all moved to the west coast. After he lived there for awhile, I found out that he had been killed. I am not sure I know the whole story, but I was told it was no accident.

Billy always lived on the edge and I am surprised this hadn’t happened sooner. A few times I had to come between him and a certain beating by someone who wasn’t very happy with something he had done. Other times I just shook my head and told people, “You know Billy, You should have known better than to trust him.” I thought when I had heard of his death, that being so far from home, there was no one there to protect him. No one knew him like we did. Not a single person would just roll their their eyes and say, “…well you know Billy”.

—

The analog tracks were originally recorded on a Yamaha MT-100 II 4 track cassette recorder using high speed (3.75 IPS) and dbx noise reduction.

The acoustic guitar I played was a Takamine (maybe a Yamaha). I played electric guitar on a Fender Stratocaster (maybe an Ibanez Les Paul). The bass was a Rickenbacker 4001 (for sure). I recorded the drums more recently using my Ludwig’s. I also added some drum parts using a Yamaha MIDI drum pad and Session Drummer 3.

As on other analog to digital re-mixes I’ve done lately, I had to piece this together from audio tracks that were not in sync. This project was made more difficult because during the original recording, I did not use any rhythm device or metronome, just my own sense of timing. I think I did pretty good, but that made no real consistent timing reference to work with.

I played the original analog tracks into my Fostex VF-16 digital multi-track, then transferred the tracks to my computer. I processed and added audio with Cakewalk Sonar v8.5 Producer and Sony Sound Forge v9.

I was watching a National Geographic Channel special called “Surviving the Super Twisters” about the Super Tornado Outbreak of April 3-4, 1974. I remember the day well. Although nothing of mine or my family’s was hurt or destroyed. I was definitely in the middle of the action that afternoon when it hit my town.

I had just recently gotten a job after-school at the local Otis Elevator foundry in London, Ohio as a janitor. My friend Dennis Brickey had gotten a job and then got me hired as well. Previously, I would hang around at the Gift’s Galore variety store and play pinball until about five PM and then go home, by parental order. The owner had just cleared a back storage room and installed five new machines. He had two of them out by the sales counter previously, but I bet the sight of several teenagers playing pinball didn’t do a lot for his other business. This had the advantage of adding more machines (more money) and getting us out of sight at the same time (more money) for him. I loved pinball and all of the regulars were above average players. As I would walk home at around five o’clock, I would walk right past the courthouse on my way from Gift’s Galore.

That day, Dennis and I went straight to his house after school to watch the cartoon Speed Racer and the game show Match Game ‘74. As usual we arrived at the foundry gates around four o’clock. The skies were becoming cloudy, but no storms were within sight. We were on the second floor cleaning the locker rooms and offices, when at about five o’clock, the power in the foundry began to go on and off. All of us headed for the foundry floor downstairs after the lights finally went out. There was enough light to see down there because of the open doors and windows. After a few minutes one of the foremen in the foundry came and told us there were tornado’s in the area and the safest place for us was back upstairs in the cafeteria in the front of the building. I wasn’t so sure that was the safest place, but if something happened in the foundry and molten iron was being blown around by a tornado, the cafeteria was fine for me.

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Recently I have said several times that a certain album is one of my favorite of all time. I thought that maybe I should make a list so that I (and others) didn’t think I was just making it all up as I went along.

I thought my first attempt at a favorite album of all time list would be a top ten list. Then I went for top twenty, etc. I soon discovered that unless I went to a top fifty, I wasn’t happy with the contents. The only criteria I used was that the album couldn’t be a compilation of greatest hits. Live albums were OK.

I have said many times that Shawn Colvin’s “A Few Small Repairs” is my favorite album of all time. I still agree with that.

My Top Fifty Favorite Albums

(in alphabetical order)

It always has really bothered me when someone would say they hated history in school. The nicest thing I can say is, that’s dumb. The other is that because so many people feel that way, we are doomed to repeat the lessons America has already learned, but also lessons that other nations have learned and sometimes had to re-learn.

Yesterday my wife called me with a question about which U.S. president signed the Declaration of Independence first. Her company was having a contest featuring Independence Day trivia. The choices were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or John Adams. Only two future presidents signed the document, Jefferson and Adams. So that would eliminate George Washington from consideration entirely.

There were two procedures in place for the signing of the Declaration of Independence:

1. The colonies’ (states) delegates signed first in the order of north to south.
2. The signers signed the document from right to left.

The only exception was John Hancock, the president of the Continental Congress, who signed first.

The only reason I can think of for this procedure was a possible compromise to allow the northern states the honor of actually signing the document first, but it would appear to the British or any other interested party at the time, that the southern states had that honor. It probably was to keep everybody happy at the meeting. If you didn’t like history in the 21st century, It certainly would appear that the answer to the question, reading left to right, was Thomas Jefferson.

Knowing the procedure in place, at the time, would not allow you to come to that conclusion though. As John Adams was from Massachusetts and Thomas Jefferson from Virginia, looking at a map would show Massachusetts north of Virginia and looking at the document will show John Adams’ signature on the upper right at the bottom of the page.

Therefore the answer is John Adams.

When my wife returned home, she told me that the “official” answer she was given was Thomas Jefferson. I suppose someone just looked at the document and figured that it was signed left to right and John Adams must have arrived late to the meeting.

The world will not end because of that error. But it saddens me that July 4th in America is more about contests and mattress sales than remembering our country’s independence from the distant rule of kings, queens, and the Church of England. Many love the fireworks just to see something get blown up more than the symbol of our Independence they are.

I only expect the situation to get worse in the future.

I have just released my first album on SAIGATI Records called The Galloway Sessions. It is currently available from Amazon.com as a CD or as individual MP3 tracks. 

The songs on The Galloway Sessions are:

1. Pray For The Sun
2. Why Do I Have To Leave This Place?
3. Wipe Away The Tears
4. Sorry It Came To This
5. This Place Is Not Your Home
6. The Old Prisoner
7. Hangin’ On To Yesterday
8. Days Go By

The album is $14.95 for a physical CD (plus any S&H). It can be purchased at the link below:

Alexander Fisher’s "The Galloway Sessions" order page

Each song is available as  MP3 downloads and are available for 99 cents each at the link below. The entire albums is also available as an MP3 download for $7.92.

Alexander Fisher MP3 download page

I hope you enjoy my music as much as I did creating it.

The Changeling is pretty much autobiographical. As a teenager I used to spend a lot of time in my room with my headphones on and some sort of thing in my hands, as my guitar, playing in front of packed imaginary auditoriums. I grew my hair down to the middle of my back and read Rolling Stone, Creem and Circus magazines dreaming about being a rock and roller when I grew up. I thought I was ready and destined for fame. I had the hair, I just needed a real guitar.

It is also about not having much support in my circle of friends for that dream. Once a “friend” told me I’d never learn to play guitar. I guess he thought that only he had the gift and that I should just give it up. It is also a reference to a song by the 1970’s progressive-rock band, Be-Bop Deluxe and their song Sister Seagull. A changeling normally refers to a child that has been switched at birth with another baby, on purpose or by mistake, sometimes by a fairy or a troll. I always felt my early performances of that song were of a changeling of sorts. Confident that I had what it took before hand, but too scared to perform without being so wasted, pitch went right out the window. I realize now that stage fright is not curable by any chemical courage, it only degrades your performance. It also would have helped to sing Sister Seagull and other songs in my key, not Bill Nelson’s. Not being a student of music at the time, I didn’t know any better.

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The acoustic guitar I played was a Takamine. I played the electric guitars on a Fender Stratocaster. The bass was a Rickenbacker 4001. The drums were Ludwig’s. I also played tambourine as well. I recorded this performance right after performing it live at my 25th high school reunion in about 2002. There’s a video tape of that out there somewhere. It originally had a creepy Hammond organ part in it that I left out. I recorded all tracks on my Fostex VF-16 digital multi-track, then transferred them to my computer. I processed the audio with Cakewalk Sonar v8.5 Producer and Sony Sound Forge v9.

You can look at the cover songs I have recorded over the years and see what kind of music I grew up listening to. For one you would see that I was a big  Mott The Hoople fan in the mid-seventies. I liked the Ian Hunter ballads, but I loved the Mick Ralphs rockers. When Mick left the band and formed Bad Company, “Mott” lost a little of its appeal to me.

I also remember this song being a turning point in the way I recorded my music too. I believe I had just gotten Sonar 7 Producer digital audio workstation software, and music production got so much easier for me. My copy of Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 had served me well, but it is was really dated. I had really relied mostly on my Fostex multi-track for most of the recording and mixing anyway. Now the Fostex is a bit of a relic, sitting beside my Yamaha 4-track on a a table. I still can use it occasionally, but it only fits into my recording methodology in minor ways now. It’s been a good dog…

One Of The Boys

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The guitar is a Fender Stratocaster electric. The bass is a Rickenbacker 4001. The drums are Ludwig’s. I originally recorded the song on my Fostex VF-16 digital multi-track and processed it with Cakewalk Sonar 7 Producer and Sony Sound Forge. I thought I posted this before. Guess not.

I had a magazine that had the sheet music to Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit around the time it came out in the early 1990’s. I had been playing it and decided to record it. My original mix of this song sounded a little “small” and I was embarrassed to play it. It was mostly due to the recording process I used then. The other day I decided to re-mix the tracks of the version I had recorded. I think this mix is much better.

I had done a re-mix of these tracks about a year ago, but I really wasn’t satisfied with the outcome. I am much better at lining up out of sync tracks now than I was then. I used several methods to sync these tracks, but the one that gave me the most satisfaction was stretching the audio, quantizing it the nearest sixteenth note and then manually editing the stray beat transients, I didn’t use that method on all of these tracks, but I wish I had.

Smells Like Teen Spirit

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I recorded this song in about 1992. I played the guitar from the sheet music, but just played the bass and drums parts pretty straight forward. I didn’t put a lot of effort into duplicating the original recording. I also didn’t add any new parts to it either. The guitar is a Fender Stratocaster electric. The bass is a Rickenbacker 4001. The drums sounds are from a Boss Dr. Rhythm drum machine and were played on Yamaha MIDI drum pads. I originally recorded the song on my analog Yamaha MT-1000 4 track recorder using dbx noise reduction. I transferred it to my Fostex VF-16 digital multi-track and processed it with Cakewalk Sonar 8.5 Producer and Sony Sound Forge 9.

Wipe Away The Tears was a song I wrote after my mother-in-law (Martha Fuller) passed away in 1994. I can remember being on the patio of her house in West Jefferson, Ohio when I wrote most of the song in my head. I just felt as she was still with us. It was a sad song to write, but it came out with little effort.

I did actually have some of the main lyrics bouncing around in my head for a few years but had never been able to apply it to a song. After I recorded it, I immediately copyrighted it and posted it on MP3.com. I was actually getting a lot of plays on that site until they were shut down for purposely posting copyrighted material, without permission. During that time I got one memorable e-mail from a man in Germany who told me he thought Wipe Away The Tears was the greatest song ever written. Heavy, man, heavy.

Regardless of whether it is or not, many have told me it is the best song that I’ve written. It is a very emotional song for me, but I did find comfort in writing it.

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The acoustic guitar I played was a Takamine. I played the electric guitars on a Fender Stratocaster. The bass was a Rickenbacker 4001. The drums were Ludwig’s. I also played tambourine as well. This re-recording was made in the early 21st century sometime (2002?). I was hoping to resurrect the original recording from 1994, but most of it is missing. If I ever find it I’ll re-mix it and post it. It was more “unplugged” than this version. I did some editing and changed the arrangement in places, but I have played this song just about the same since I wrote it.

I recorded all tracks on my Fostex VF-16 digital multi-track, then transferred the them to my computer via my Iomega Jaz drives. I processed the audio with Cakewalk Sonar v8.5 Producer and Sony Sound Forge v9.

I Can’t Explain is one of those songs  that when I pick up an electric guitar, I end up playing it. It’s a pretty easy song to play and it’s just a lot of fun.

I recorded it a few years ago. It came out pretty well, I think. I was doing my best to imitate Keith Moon’s drumming style. As a non-drummer who plays drums (?), I don’t think I did too badly.

Here it is…

I Can’t Explain

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I played electric guitar on a Fender Stratocaster The bass was a Rickenbacker 4001. The drums were played on my Ludwig’s. I recorded the song on my Fostex VF-16 and  processed the audio with Cakewalk Pro Audio v9 and Sonic Foundry Sound Forge v5. (I think)