Got Balls? The Basement Tapes

This is a virtual basement album. This means that it does not exist in physical space. It is not available at your favorite record store, only on the web for free. If you try to pay for this record you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

It's called a basement album, not so much because it was recorded in a basement, because it wasn't, but because it sounds like it was recorded in a basement. The studio set-up consisted of 1 twenty-nine dollar Radio Shack microphone, a plastic Yamaha keyboard ($125), a free recording application (Audacity), 1 flute, 1 clarinet and Lightning Rod's mouth and imagination. The entire album was recorded in ten days with no more than two hours devoted to each tune.

All songs are by Lightning Rod. He wrote them in the space of 18 minutes while in the front seat of a speeding car leaving the scene of a crime by means of humming them into a hidden recorder. He forgot where the recorder was hidden, so it took him another ten years to remember them.

The sound is crappy, but we make do with the materials at hand. There was no mixing board and no fancy effects, No samples, no sequencers. Every note is hand made. One take.

The Songs

OM Ya'll
Saturday Night
Sue Me
Three Grams
My Lips
Too Far
WACO
House on the Hill (Overture)
Basic Physics
My Chapeau

lyrics

click the song title to hear MP3

photo by Kari Gundersen
NYC-2004

Bonus Cut
String Man

by The Freefall Lyric Ensemble
starring Rene Lawrence

The Personnel

Piano--Felonious Punk
Bass-- Connie Lingus
Drums-- Thumper Dali
Flute and clarinet-- Lightning Rod
Vocals-- Les S. Amore (lounge singer)

The members of the band all look suspiciously like Lightning Rod. This may be a shallow ploy to get you to buy him five drinks instead of one.

Ok, I confess. The last tune was written by me but recorded in a real studio by Barry Gremillion. Thanks, Barry. A tip of my chapeau.