It’s the Citizen Nowhere: Recessed cross-promo release!
I have many blogs and 13 tracks. What to do? I don’t want people to get bored while they are downloading my album!
Across my Tumblr Blog, Citizen Nowhere.com, my MP3 Blog, my Twitter account, my Facebook account and my Project Blog are 6 opportunities to download “Recessed” paired with 6 different promo tracks you can stream RIGHT NOW!

DOWNLOAD THE ALBUM HERE [ZIP - 98.3MB - MP3]

dontdownloadme “Loose Lips” by Citizen Nowhere off Recessed
The Recessed track you can listen to here on Listen Or Don’t is “Loose Lips.” It’s an electronica track, I guess, with a rip-off Timbaland beat. That’s what I hear, at least. The song is about feeling angry when I lost my job and getting angrier watching other people join me in a large pool of the unemployed all competing to pay rent. I basically had to leave my blogging job because of budget cuts, hence “It wasn’t our Loose Lips that sank these ships, but we shoulder all the shame.”

We’re winding down in the Citizen Nowhere project and I’m unsure that anyone besides me knows what a big deal this is…

…okay, that was a TAD of an overstatement, but it’s closing off a particular sound for me, a sound I’ve been embracing since 2003, when I grew out of acoustic instruments and.. BAHHH! None of this needs to go here.

Each of the back 4 albums of Citizen Nowhere has had something like a pre-launch single. “Recessed” will be no different.

May I present: Debris.

As I’m writing this, it’s the Saturday before Easter. Depending on how this weekend goes, this video might get cross-posted across my sites on Monday. Or I’ll let it languish here until CitzenNowhere.com is done, then release the whole album. Who knows?

I’m taking it day by day since there is little else to do with it besides mixing and promoting it while I’m mixing. But how much should I really promote something I do mostly for myself in my free time?

Jeez, life is complex.

On 6/25/2009 I made a “non canonical” cover that was so cool-looking to me that it basically justified the existence of a non canonical album.

In case you don’t know about the Citizen Nowhere project, it is going to end up being 8 albums. It started in 2003 and you can get six of the albums by CLICKING OVER TO THIS POST and the seventh at THIS POST.

That means there is one more to go and the post directly below this one (at least if you are reading this on the Listen Or Don’t section of my blog), you can hear “Loose Lips,” which will be on Citizen Nowhere 8.

But “Loose Lips” got me thinking about how I wanted 8 to sound, and I realized that the nearly-complete album I thought was #8 really wasn’t. It was a bunch of tracks that didn’t fit. Most of them were about the Recession, some were left over from previous albums, but it wasn’t fitting together and it wasn’t providing a listening experience.

So: there will be two additional “albums” of material before I close out Citizen Nowhere with the 8th album. This track, “Escape Sometime” will be on the disc called: non canonical, b-sides. There will also be a non canonical, instrumentals that will have - you guessed it - instrumentals only.

Despite the preview/”leak” track here, the B-Sides album will probably come out second.

non canonical, instrumentals will be the first release, and you will get that within the next two weeks. It’s really neat. I almost thought about making a cover that looked like it was an original motion picture soundtrack to a movie I’ll never make…

Hmmmm.

Maybe I’ll still do that.

If I find a way to escape sometime…

dontdownloadme “Escape Sometime” by Citizen Nowhere off Citizen Nowhere, non canonical, b-sides

Serious Bob’s third, and thusfar final, album is one that I’m really proud of. I will take the mantle of being the only one proud of it, because Tai has - several times - described “I’m Going Off Into The Dark Woods To Investigate Alone” as the only properly mixed album. Yes, I could be pithy and point out that he’s the one who mixed that album and I mixed the other two, but he’s sort of right. Sort of.

Here’s what the History Of The Bob has to say:

Unable to stop themselves from recording material, summer and winter 2005 saw all five members of Serious Bob re-uniting to work on a new album, one that would prove to be their best sounding to date. Still using the USB mic, that had served them well, in conjunction with a direct-plug adaptor like ones used during the Demo Sessions, the Bob updated their recording process, banging out multiple tracks a day.

Setting up in Da7e’s basement, Da7e would work with once musician at a time as the others wrote songs in Da7e’s bedroom down the hall. Keeping a constant rotation between new songs and open session files, the recording process went smoothly. Although mainly mixed and produced by Da7e in New York, there was a long period in between the initial sessions and the final release of One State, Two State, Red State, Blue State (named after the horrible elections of 2004 that continue to haunt Serious Bob) in 2006. This time was spent honing the mix and adding parts as much as possible to refine the Serious Bob hybrid sound: part acoustic joke rock and part electric loop/sample based music. A few tracks were cut from the album and have yet to be released, and many alternate versions exist to the tracks on OSTSRSSBS.

The album that was released in 2006 lived up to several Serious Bob album stereotypes. All our albums have 15 tracks. Each one has a “_____ Place, Where I Belong” track. Each one has a song about food.

When Serious Bob died it’s final death, I started taking account of the tracks we had to compile into a project that was never finished, though never abandoned, The Unlistenables, a digital dump of all Serious Bob’s demos and unfinished tracks.

Because OSTSRSBS spent so much time solidifying, and because the theory that a single person can only take, like, 40 minutes of Serious Bob in a row, many tracks were abandoned, pushed into other releases or simply not finished in some sort of way. The first tracks to go while trimming the fat were skits, like “Last Time…” The full (and partially racist) introduction to the album:

Last Time “Last Time…” By Serious Bob

Which, of course, leads into “County Road Five (Freedom),” our chain-gang song Nate and I wrote by slamming a small shovel into a bucket full of rocks. This track was just called “Freedom” on the original release, but I’ve restored it to it’s original length, for better or worse.

“Indie Anna Jones” got added to the tracklist because that demo was always good enough to be on a Serious Bob album.

“You Think You’re Right” was never on the original release because the drum-mixing had some tempo problems and the file mysteriously disappeared, probably locked away on the damn broken hard drive I haven’t fixed since 2007. It’s about the cops and the pope and authority, and it deserves to be heard, because it’s damn catchy and one of Tai’s better song writing efforts.

“Funky Rockafeller Pimpjuice” Is something Nate, Tai and Jason did as sort of a musical skit to follow “Who Makes The Rules,” which was actually a skit. That one just got cut because there was too much “fat” at that point in the album. That track has been restored.

“Famous Women I Can’t Have Sex With” is a song that pisses everyone off. It pisses Tai off for some reason, it pisses me off because I could never get on tune. It pissed Nate off because it was the same riff, looping over and over again. So, one night, Nate and I added a bridge that changed the mood of the song. Tai hated that even more, so it was scrapped. However, now it’s back as “Famous Women I Can’t Have Sex With (Bi-Polar Version).”

“Douchebag Full Of Love (w/skit and drums)” Yeah, that skit was funny. At least I thought it was. But when OSTSRSBS was first released, “Douchebag” didn’t make the cut. Which is sad, because it’s a sweet song. And a song we re-recorded in a version I can’t distribute yet. But, it’s important that this demo see the light of day, as it’s the first song Jess and Jason Frantz are both on.

“Obligatory Cannibalism Song (Gangsta’s Paradise Breakdown)” Has the original breakdown for the song that Jess and I recorded, which Tai said was derivative. He was right and I agreed. However, I think pop parody is okay, and I think we don’t use the tune long enough to get sued. Also, those two melodies work together and in acknowledging it, we take that criticism away from the haters. All the haters.

“What Did You Learn? (Drums)” Ah Elliott’s War Song. No one ever liked my drums that I put at the climactic part of this song. There is GREAT instrument work on this track, it just never made the cut because we couldn’t get it to sound like it’s potential.

“The Cockfighting Adventures Of Sancho” The Sancho sequel about Cockfighting. We always thought it needed drums. It turns out that we just wanted it to have drums, it doesn’t need it at all.

So, yeah, here’s the album with these restored pieces. It makes the album a little too long, and some jokes drag on, but this gives a hint of how much work we did for OSTSRSBS.

Enjoy it. I do bi-monthly. Click the REDESIGNED cover to download the 101MB ZIP file.

I held a little Tweet Off because I felt like releasing something today for a download. Something musical.

Mostly because I’ve been thinking of a certain release a lot…hmmmm…

Anyway. Perpetual Motion Machine Gun was one of my favorite Serious Bob album names that never got used. I think Elliott came up with it. So I made this song, and I wanted to call it Perpetual Motion Machine Gun.

Pretty much the end of the story, except that this song was originally slated to appear on The Bright Side of Death, before it ended up on Out Of Insight, Out Of Mind.

To people who have no idea what I’m talking about: you don’t know it, but you’re lucky.

link “Perpetual Motion Machine Gun” by Citizen Nowhere

I started my sonic side project, Citizen Nowhere, in 2003 when I moved from high school in Louisville, CO to New York University in…well, New York.

In Colorado, the time I had spent as Da7e for Serious Bob had gotten me interested in what I could do with ACID Pro 3.0 and multi-track recording both with direct-plugged instruments and my cheap USB mic. I devised a grand plan to release an album each semester under the name Citizen Nowhere.

Moving from Colorado to New York really through me for a loop and not only informed my solo pseudonym but the repeating themes of displacement, loss and introspective confusion.

The first semester of college saw my debut in the form of Book One: Alone In Americaland, which was an obvious title. Most of the songs had been refined in my freshman year dorm room and a series of collaborators found their way onto the release, from Ari Friedman, who would form Quintus that same year to Scarlett Corso [?] who played flute for my tiny USB mic.

Second semester saw me get more comfortable with my surroundings and friends, and lead to Book Two: Pretentious, which - with a couple exceptions - sucked. The exceptions included when I actually decided to make full songs, sometimes with the help of Nate Patterson, of Serious Bob fame.

Book III: Sin Seer followed in the fall of 2004. I did not intend to make another Citizen Nowhere album, but a soul-crushing breakup motivated me to make - gulp - a concept album. This album also saw the introduction of a naked, reclining woman on the cover of albums written mostly about…women.

Book Four: IV was a depressing album mostly motivated by my drug use in late 2004, early 2005. It plays more like a DJ set, with samples and copy written material running rampant. I’m mostly absent in a vocal sense, and while I imagine this is the least fun album to listen to, I actually very much enjoy it. I can still hear the ideas I had that motivated the experiment.

That ended the “Book” series of Citizen Nowhere. Four additional semesters of college passed and no albums came out. Things were certainly worked on, but nothing formed a unified piece.

The fifth Citizen Nowhere album, Valhalla, saw a tiny, blue, naked, reclining woman on the cover. Needless to say, my heart was ripped from my chest once more and music re-surged as the way to deal with it. That wasn’t the only reason. I had also gotten some new toys and continued work on other musical fronts. But, the masturbatory nature of Citizen Nowhere saw me cobble together old instrumental tracks from pre-2003 and entirely new tracks into a fifth effort.

Before the release of Valhalla, I took the iTunes playlist I had made of my favorite tracks off the “Books series” and released it on my blog as Mirrors & Masks, a Citizen Nowhere compilation and the last Citizen Nowhere cover to feature the name Citizen Nowhere prominently displayed. CN was created to document the transition into college and that was pretty much over.

Out Of Insight, Out Of Mind was the title of the sixth Citizen Nowhere album. It was named such because I don’t really know where that album came from. There were just leftovers from Valhalla and other projects that didn’t fit into anything else really, and they did sort of mirror my mind set at the time.

That’s six albums and one compilation since the fall of 2003.

“Probably a bad time to release the seventh album,” I thought. Both because it would be 3 albums in a year and because…how to put this delicately?….

…Out Of Insight, Out Of Mind was very approachable. A lot of the songs had pop sensibility at their base. Valhalla was about a woman and the past and resurrection, so that didn’t need to be accessible. The Solitary Vice (CN7), just isn’t accessible. I made it so I could listen to it (mostly).

Anyway, in the HUUUUUUUUGE ZIP file I’ve uploaded, I’ve included The Solitary Vice (BETA), just in case someone out there has time to download 531.8 MB and really wants a sneak peek at what this new introspective album sounds like. It will be changed.

Otherwise, if anyone but me has ever wanted all the Citizen Nowhere from the past 5 years, now is the time to get it.

I don’t think there is a place for Citizen Nowhere in the second half of 2009, or maybe ever again.

At least until the next life transition.

Click the image to beign your lengthy 531.8MB download of all 8 Citizen Nowhere albums. Should you so dare…

“I’m sure there is going to be more than one unpleasant surprise before we’re done…”

I don’t know where that sample came from, because if I did, and if I could get it cleared, I would want to start every Serious Bob album with it. Because the process of making anything Serious Bob is a series of serious surprises, some pleasant, some un.

Jesus Was A Jew will probably be the thing that Serious Bob is remembered for, should we be remembered at all.

I don’t remember so much how the song came about, but I know we took a break after recording the “yeah, you know it’s true/Jesus was a Jew” callback. I think we went to go eat something, since we were teenagers and in need of constant sustenance. I was sitting with Tai and Elliott and someone said: “Does everyone else have Jesus Was A Jew stuck in their head?”

We all did.

I’m not sure if this is a formula for “hit making” and in the other albums I’ve produced or been involved with, the song that the band likes the best isn’t always the one that would best serve as a “single.”

The good thing about choosing Jesus Was A Jew to play over and over again, is that it was catchy as all get-out, ridiculously simple to play and incorporated everyone on a specialized instrument (Tai on mandolin, Elliott holding down the 3 chords, me on harmonica accidentally executing my only successful note bend for the next 5 years).

Something about pointing out the simple fact that Jesus was, actually, a Jew seemed to resonate with our sophomoric audience, who mostly took our demos because they were free.

Jesus Was A Jew will always be easy to fall back into, and I’m pretty sure I could still sing it and do the hand motions in my sleep.

download link “Jesus Was A Jew” by Serious Bob off Serious Bob (Demo)

I’m trying to put a ballpark around when the first version of “The Love Is Gone (Toast)” was first recorded. I know that Serious Bob formed during the first quarter of 2002, that we played the Monarch Senior BBQ that year and decided to record a demo somewhere in there.

The idea for The Self-Titled Demo most likely came from Tai. During the final semester of High School, Tai was working on an Independent Project for Mr. DuFresne, the music teacher at Monarch High School. It was a loops-based dance album that preceded his work with Serious Bob. Eventually, Tai brought in cellist/DJ Keith Dickerhoffe (who would go on to play the cello on “This Place”) to help with a few tracks. I also helped a little, and some of those tracks ended up resurfacing on Valhalla.

Arg! Headache! Focus!

Ok. So, “The Love Is Gone” is the song that convinced me Elliott was a good guitar player. Serious Bob wasn’t initially about being good at your instruments, it was more about Elliott, Tai and I having fun. But, “The Love Is Gone” was a beautiful and I marred it with my vocals and Fisher Price Bongos. It would take Serious Bob multiple versions of the song to make it sound like I always heard it.

Download link“The Love Is Gone (Demo)” by Serious Bob off Serious Bob (Demo)

This particular version was recorded during one long recording session in Tai’s bedroom on Columbine CT in Louisville, Colorado. Tai’s parents kept telling us to keep it down because it was late, so we eventually stripped Tai’s mattress and propped it up against the door so we could record at the volumes needed to get a good signal off the vocal mic we had jerry-rigged with a 1/4″-1/8″ adaptor plugged into Tai’s computer.

When I finished the harmonica solo and Tai did his mandolin part, Tai decided that this song was “too serious” to be on the Serious Bob demo unless I apologized for it being “not funny.” I didn’t necessarily agree (we use Toast as a love metaphor, and that’s pretty silly), but he sat me on his mattress-less bed and told me to record an apology.

Luckily, Elliott was bored and learning guitar, so he was playing “Sweet Home Alabama” in the background and I burst out laughing. That lead to a delirious “cover” of “Sweet Home Alabama” that we eventually covered live in Montrose, Colorado over a year later.

download link “The Love Is Gone” Live In Montrose off No Morals, No Problem: A Web Album.

download link “Sweet Home Alabama (Encore)” Live In Montrose off No Morals, No Problem: A Web Album.

The most commonly referenced version of “The Love Is Gone” is “The Love Is Gone (Toast)” off Serious Bob’s real debut: I’m Going Off Into The Dark Woods To Investigate Alone. It was recorded at Time Capsule Studios in Denver. They deleted most of our tracks before we could fully mix them, but “The Love Is Gone” is pretty hard to fuck up from a mixing standpoint. Everything gets louder and more complex on its own, Nate’s bass adds another layer of beauty and Jason managed to transition between bongos and a full kit very effortlessly. A few things were added in Tai’s basement, like the slightly-distorted echos “I love my toast,” and “I miss you toast.”

From left to right: Da7e (me), Elliott, Tai, Nate, and Jason. The microphone isn't plugged in.

download link “The Love Is Gone (Toast)” by Serious Bob off I’m Going Off Into The Dark Woods To Investigate Alone.

That’s what everyone will always consider Toast to be; that version right there. But it still didn’t sound as grand as I originally heard in my head when Elliott played his little ditty for the first time in early 2002. That would take four years to realize, until - in 2006 - the Bob did some New York sessions for an album that still hangs in the balance. Produced by Josh Silberberg, the mystery Serious Bob album featured remakes of some of our more lo-fi and “popular” songs. The one song to come out of that session mastered was the new version of Toast, in all it’s pop glory, which lead me to alter the parentheses once again and name it “The Love Is Gone (Pop Anthem).”

download link “The Love Is Gone (Pop Anthem)” by Serious Bob

The irony being that Sally Jessie Raphael was cancelled long before this version was recorded.

Elliott got to add some organ to this, and I got to make up nonsense “da-da-da-da-duh-da”s. I’ve always thought of Toast as so poppy that it was, in the end a “pop parody.” Everyone can have a big, sweeping song about losing your love, but ours ends up being more about toast.

It was also the first of many food-obsessed tracks, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.

Christopher Sweeney, the Theater Director and friend of the band, encouraged Elliott, Tai and myself to play at the Monarch Senior BBQ in May 2002. We eventually decided on the name Serious Bob, and registered to play a four song setlist as one of the opening acts. The first song was “Skin” which has remained basically the same since it’s inception in the hallways of Monarch, where the band was born. It was followed up by a politically-themed cover of “Stay Together for the Kids” by Blink 182, but instead of the normal verses, I ad-libbed about the Bush Administration and the horrors it would inflict upon our generation. The third song was a Beatles cover: “In My Life,” performed solo by Elliott. The set-closer was “Where is My Mind” a Pixies cover, where Tai and Elliott played the same guitar at the same time as Elliott sung, and I screamed the keyboard part from the back of the stage.

At the end of the set, the mood was mostly congratulatory for the two Seniors. The closing act of the night was Turoke, the band that still features drummer Jason Frantz, who would join Serious Bob the next year as part of the full-lineup.

Weeks before the show, Elliott, Tai and I spent a few hours playing instruments and making up song lyrics in Tai’s basement. One of the songs started to take a definite form, andwe recorded it using a simple mini-tape recorder, placed on a table in the middle of the room. The song was called “HAMAS/FBI.” Although the original recording was lost, this was the birth of the Self-Titled Demo.

The resulting track, announcing Serious Bob’s existence to the world, opened up the Self-Titled Demo.

During the original improv that eventually became The FBI Song, the Bush Administration was restricting civil liberties in the wake of 9/11. The smarter and future versions of us would later look back on this as the root cause for the song. Realistically, we were just making music because two of us knew guitar, and I could make up simple rhymes, given the tempo wasn’t too robust.

Download link “The FBI Song” by Serious Bob off Serious Bob (Demo)