yymmdd:

081103: Decided to use the 5th mix version and upload .You.Can.Talk. remix on -No-We-Were-Not-Ready- album (the .original.version. actually exists on here in -Ok-Well-Are-We-Ready?- from 1987 for your comparision. Still trying to work on the few Christmas tunes and also 2 new originals that may never even get finished; "Fighting City Hall" (very-Zappa-like, might continue with it) and "Cancer" (the shit has struck close to home again dammit...) and like Pink Flamingo Patio Lights" is so downer will probably not get recorded...) 12,733 downloads... a new record... Christmas tunes were already creeping into the top 25/30 last month and now they are getting in the Top20 maybe like last year for November and December it will be a "Top25" instead. Started painting over 3 old canvases so far (sneak peek next month maybe...) Modified the guitars on the Instruments page with more info.

081022: Started some bed tracks on 7 of 12 new Christmas carols and tunes... now know will not be able to finish whole thing by Thanksgiving (absolute latest date that would release any...) Going to finish working on the Ray Lee tribute stuff. And instead of simply writing about past few months experiences and disturbances decided to try to just write songs about them instead. Stuff usually comes out better when it's from real happenings as opposed to contrived (and sub-standard) crappy poetry... So... might at least get a "Christmas Instrumentals Vol. 1-½" Also getting nice enough outside to finish painting over 4 old canvases.

081010: Won't bore you with all the details why haven't been able to get much recording done and August update was 3 weeks late also, with no new music, sorry. But went ahead and "finished" .Our.Love.Is.Gone. as much as was going to and slop together .Red.Chair. which might re-do the guitars, might not. Was supposed to already have had the entire -No-We-Were-Not-Ready- album done and started on your new "Christmas Vol.2" that you want a month and a half ago, now have to rush that. Done it before. Will give it best shot.

080925: Due to extreme technical difficulties and time issues ("no-time" issues...) haven't yet finished the 2 tunes was working up that will (hopefully) be finished within the next week. One more Ray Lee tune and another to "Singles This Year" almost done. Have only managed to get almost most of the Artworks. page over half-way done (big job...) Hoping to have almost all of it done by month's end. Won't have the instruments pages done this month though... maybe next month... There are still hundreds of tunes y'all havent heard yet btw... Top20 files done but haven't got the Quotes.. for August done yet, sorry...

080901: Sorry... old music computer blew for real up mid-August (see 070117 at bottom of this page...) according to the sequence of green and amber leds on the back of the tower indicated problems with memory module(s) and since the machine was past 5 years old and not very upgradeable had to rush out and purchase another. (built an AMD LE-1300 Dual @2.31ghz 4mb DDR2 160gb@7200rpm 2TB extra storage) but took over a week to re-config the thing and get the restores as correct as possible as old PC. No time to finish the 2 Ray Lee tunes and another so far and one was working on for -Singles-This-Year- but should have them ready by the end of September.

080801: 11,602 downloads last month; July, new record... thought before about coding (extra work and never used to do ties...) the number of each tune, maybe just this one time... [**] and this time it's mostly from TheBG8Project go figure... kinda glad it's the originals and not the mostly covers... come and get em... y'all can download about 30,000/month before bandwidth exceeded and have to beg for donations to upgrade host server plan... Finished 2 more Ray Lee tunes : .Sha. and .Special.Moments. was going to try to cram a couple more but didn't want to rush and make more mistakes than usual... Noticed that more folks are reading the lyrics along with the tunes... (too many complaints that vocals still aren't loud enough...)
[**] edit: yeh... just got done re-coding the top20 page and is too much extra work, not gonna do it...

080720: Remixed .Saw.You.Today. as thought it was too "bassy" also finished (hoping last mix version...) .Dont.You.Care. and started on 4 more already... will be 8 total Ray Lee tribute tunes. Maybe a couple more. If so will/should probably make separate album... (btw folks... that occassional buzz from the Ibanez AE is the result of testing out light-guage electric/acoustic strings... will go back to heavier flat-wound set soon, sorry...)

080701: (!?!?!) Didn't specifically blurb anything about "Greatest-Fits" yet all those downloads each in the June .Top20Tunes (the original instrumental versions, and not many hits on the old vocal versions...) Was not able to get the 2 tunes "Sha" and "Saw You Today"(*) (remakes from 1987 "Ok.-Well-Are-We-Ready?" done by the end of the month. Maybe before first monthly blurb... Here is the work-in-progress for Sha2008a3c.mp3.Sha.(remake.test.clip.1:14).   still need to re-take some tracks, more edits, a dozen test mixes... (*) Finished .Saw.You.Today. and uploaded this week...

080617: While searching through these old discs for tracks came across a surprise... an earlier (original) version of "Dingo" on "Dead-Pet-Names" slower, bare intro, less drums, no synths, same song, different passing tones/chords, titled .Dingo2. not even mixed first time around (!?!) Tried best to remix .The.Lost.$29.95.Waltz. on "The-$29.95-Guitar" but one track was one mono mix of 3 tracks (!?!) And since someone wanted a canvas last week; (the last one finished...) decided to go ahead and put some of them back up if someone just has to have one. Updated the .Canvas/Tile page to reflect some changes.

080603: Started to write and record new song about a day spent with Ray back in January in Indianapolis. Kinda/sorta did the lyrics : titled .Pink.Flamingo.Patio.Lights. and probably won't finish attempted music. Too dark. Spent 5 evenings re-editing and re-mixing the 1985 "Ok.-Well-Are-We-Ready?" intended-parody .The.Coconut.III.Radio.Interview. (super-edited and shortened) Ray plays the parts of Barnelva, Lucy and Sharon. Finished the last tune to "Oddities-And-Endings" yay .(I'm.Not.Your).Stepping.Stone. and putting that project away. Added the .Wanted link to left frame. Still painting a bit, will have a photo soon maybe. (And omg another record number of tune downloads. Where's everybody coming from? Hardly any blurbing last month...)

080516: Ooops opened small can of small worms digging into stats on host back office... bad links (mainly from old sources) made adjustments... No recording all month... been painting... just some mixing of old stuff (and still editing the last of "Oddities-And-Endings" /bang-head-on-wall... Uploaded 3 more to "Monsterpieces" : (live 4-channel room versions of "What", "Bye Bye" and "The Jean Genie") as well as 2 old tunes from "Ok.-Well-Are-We-Ready?" 1987 with Ray Lee; .You.Can.Talk. and .All.The.Children. (cracking up doing that one...) and been finding some retrievable stuff here and there.

080501: Did a little more painting the past week. No recording this last part of the month really... horoscope read not to rush the last tune (very last thing have to finish on "Oddities-And-Endings" so now have 2 versions dont know which to work arggg...) Haven't had a chance to plug the latest original .(Life.Is.Like).Hard.Candy. yet so not many hits so far. Still trying to make some serviceable mixes out of the old tracks. Started part-way working brand new versions of the Ray Lee tunes from "Ok.-Well-Are-We-Ready?"-(1987) try to get em close as possible to the originals. Should have worked on art photo pages but instead finished organizing the -Lyrics- pages instead (easier...) Can't believe went all those years without writing. Watch out, becoming stats freak, had no idea so many of y'all were reading the .Quotations pages...

080422: Actually did get an old canvas out and start glopping black paint on it. Need to go buy more paint. Did another original just now : .(Life.Is.Like).Hard.Candy. put it in -Singles-This-Year- for 2008 tunes. Found more "The-$29.95-Guitar" mixes and started weeding through anything that can be saved off of "Monsterpieces" (2000) album. Uploaded .Buck.Wheat. and a half-live version of the band doing .Chicken.Scratch. a western pop-rock version of .Insomniac.Shopping. and got one more hope to get added to "Oddities-And-Endings" before month is over.

080412: Taking week or so off music, except playing with the guys last night; plugged-in un-plugged opening set (the Ibanez AE through Acoustic Simulator... everyone liked it except one guitarist called it too artificial...) and went through the motions anyway... so modifying photos and re-coding artwork pages. Installed most of 2007 through 2004 already. Might get some paint and glob over some old canvases... or something... weather is conducive for painting... wont take long to set it all back up... probably wont though... got more music to finish... who knows... please check back...

080405: Best Friend Forever of 37 years and co-writer Ray Lee (1958-2008) went peacefully tonight after 18-month battle with cancer. Damm cancers anyway.... Miss him lots... A great talent... A true friend... Not sure what recordings going to work next. Am going to go through all the old stuff recorded with him 20 years ago... see if can tweak and mix and stuff... and/or just re-do in his memory if cant get old recordings going... Already re-did .Moon.Queen. in 2006 ("The BG8 Project") and most of his lyrics are on the ("Ok-Well-Are-We-Ready?") 1987 album... He also appears as co-author many months in the .Top.20.Lyrics. /sigh

080402: Went ahead and uploaded this new original .It's.So.Hard. version anyway and be done with it... might as well do it for now... Might re-mix... Became curious stats freak this month: 184 unique visitors clicked -this-Blog-, 122 clicked the -Instruments-, 328 looked at .Canvas/Tile-, 320 read some -Quotations-, (with .March.2005. getting 3 times as many as the next most popular (!?!) 71 folks read -About-, 49 looked at the -Dead-Pets-photos-, 44 read the -Disclaimer-, and then 33 clicked the -Donations-page. Now, about .Hey.Bulldog. and .Savoy.Truffle. not in 1st and 2nd place anymore leads to suspect that the site that uses some of my tunes swapped those 2 for .Rain. and .Because. dunno (!?!) Worked on the .Canvas/Tile- pages a little. But had to re-align the -Top20Tunes- (using non-breaking spaces instead of tables...) also added hi-fi song links in it too...

080326: Ok... spent last few days going through (salvageable?) old tracks to "Greatest-Fits" and found a few things could tweak a bit and put back online... Also re-installed the few vocal-without-drums versions and four other instrumentals that were originally online the first few months but off the last few years because didnt like them. (Is what spawned people to request vocals which begat "My-5th-Dementia" so put them back per your request.) And finally finished the individual album info pages.

080323: New disc reader/writer able to retreive *some* of the old files from bad DVD backups... Original version of "Santana" "Dead-Pet-Names" (track 5) had this little .20.sec.intro. to it so re-added it to the .new/original.santana.version. of the mp3... Able to copy 10-year-old data tracks from very first digital recording tests to "The-$29.95-Guitar" is eight one-minute things (took 3 months after bank wire transfer to software company in South Korea AND letter to South Korean Consulate in L.A. to get the registration key to unlock the program... pfffft...)

080317: Used up more old bed tracks from "Oddities-And-Endings" (not too many left...) to record .Black.Pearl. but original tune was around 100bpm and too long so sped up to 116bpm still too long, so sped up to 128bpm and chopped-off the last scat-over-chorus... This is the clean version... Messed around several nights last week with many VST plug-ins (post-production effects and such). Had historically restisted using them; like texting, didnt want to get involved... Was going to post the over-effected version for your comparison but just too muddy... Installed a test version idea of the new .Canvas/Tile page, setting it up like new instruments page will look like.

080308: Ok so the users forum mostly for our multi-tracking software, they have this monthly "challenge" where some of the folks upload tunes and people vote... no prize... just the winner gets to set the rules for the next month's "theme" see... A great bunch of guys and some really nice tunes... This month it's the word "charity" has to be in the title or lyrics and must start in Bb, descend from there then descend to and end on a Bb... Since only joining recently and never having made a submission, whipped-up this tongue-in-cheek tune in a couple days: .Charity.Does.Not.Begin.At.Home. with the .lyrics.and.chord.chart.here. (The word "charity" is not only in title but appears 19 times in lyrics lol...)

080304:  Happy   4th   Birthday   bgmatthews.com  

080302: Can not do these tunes as a "3-piece-band" so back-burner again... Unable to do much recording in February anyway... did manage to squeeze another thing in to "Oddities-And-Endings" at the last moment... a goofy song on a goofy record with timely lyrics by a great band :.Where.Does.The.World.Go.To.Hide. (original tunes mocking early Beatles styles... a hoot...) and 6,120 mp3 hits is a record... and amused most of the Top20Lyrics are from "Hogging-The-Covers" yet the mp3s never (rarely) ever make the Top20Tunes...

080217: Adding the lyrics files to both "Beatles-Basics" volumes... halfway through the coding the cell phone users page... working on 3 new originals at once... trying this batch as a "3-piece-band" (not quites sure is going to stay that simple though... Playing trick on lyric readers and listed them backwards - see what happens... hehh...

080209: Was out-of-state 3 weeks in January, 1st week of February... not much done but stats and quotes... did upload earlier (cleaner) version of .Stood.Up. though... will work on *something* just not sure what just yet... art photo files begging to be re-coded... more tunes waiting for drums and vocal tracks...

080108: Rushed through "finishing" more of these old cover tracks and uploaded .Susie.Q.. at 160bpm and a 144bpm version of Neil Young's .Don't.Cry.No.Tears. to the "Oddities-And-Endings" collection. Might try another mix with the former a bit, might not. Doubtful any other music will be posted this month. Going to see Todd Rundgren in concert (or two!) back east... And in answer to "Why speed up all these songs?" --- (1) trying to get as much stuff as close to 2min30sec as possible, (2) merely enjoy messing it all up, (3) makes for quicker (often easier) recording sessions, (4) to provide a more "uppy" feel just because. (Some of y'all who have never heard some of these songs might be rather surprised at how slow the originals are... check one out sometime...) edit: (5) average listener has shorter listening span.

080102: (Blurbed "My-5th-Dementia" in a 70s group = increase in some hits...) (Blurbed the last 2 tunes a little too...) People still reading the lyrics arbitraily alphabetic... monthly updates all done... Rocked out a couple times over the holidays... nothing like guitar around one's neck with a bunch of effects and loud amps... and celebrations... Happy New Year!

071231: Re-leveled, re-tagged, re-named most of the mp3s. Experimenting with some new photo-page formats (/me does not like being webmaster...) Found old vocal mix versions of some "Greatest-Fits"tunes without drums tracks... will try to clean em up a bit and maybe upload em... found a few old 4-tracks might be able to re-mix, salvage and post too... Couldn't start on anything new... tried... (holidays...) Still working on cell phone coding and extra album/song info pages...

071219: Blew up vocal cords doing the last 2 tunes for "Oddities-And-Endings" on .The.Jean.Genie. and .The.Leaves.That.Are.Green. and drove self crazy but finally decided on some ok mixes to upload so there they are... two totally different tunes... one for yas rockers and one for y'all folksters... Got to get out of this 5-6 part vocal part business...

071209: In regards to; "Do another Christmas album?" --> not very soon. "Another Beatles album?" --> very doubtful. "More Dylan?" --> just a couple. "More singing?" --> yes, ack, am doing it now: Bowie, Simon and Garfunkle. "Next original record?" --> late spring probably. ...and lol about not many clicking the syllabic lyric files... modfied the discography page, individual album links not active yet. All most of the mp3s will be re-named (removing the CD-order-number) re-leveled, re-tagged, hopefully smooth change-over Jan.1, 2008. Some clips (cuts) will be re-sampled too.

071201: Surprised: stats for lyrics doubled and that was even having half of them offline for 10 days (!?!) Will be adding the album info files chunk by chunk... Top20Tunes will be Top25 for couple months since most will be all Christmas...

071130: Curious decided to try this .Top20Lyrics. thing (host back office only keeps most stats on servers going 3 months back...) as-well-as modified code on 98% of all other lyric pages. Not surprising: clicks at top of alphabet, those off "Hogging-The-Covers", any Christmas. Amused reading especially the high-school-trying-to-be-a-poet stuff lol... And to try to get different clicks from yas, was going to do a list in reverse chronological order. Realized most songs were written in 1985. Scroll down... dont just click the A's and B's

071127: hrmmm... while random checking of some stuff in the .Discography kept accidentally clicking the lyrics links intending to click an mp3 (since lyric link was right next to song title...) so... moved all the lyric links to the end of each song title.

071123: Ack... sorry... in response to "How do these words go in these old songs?" -- well a couple of the xmas lyrics out of whack with the recordings (one missing a verse, one an extra not-actual verse from who-knows-where...) All fixed... plus, created syllabic (where needed) pages if you don't exactly know how some of the melodies go with which to sing along better.

071120: Finally finished rest of the "Seasons-Beatings" tunes. Modified all the lyrics to the christmas stuff to be easier to read. Quit painting. Will take some art photos with new camera soon. Still working on other pages and files. Might be broken link here or there or something else weird... Added some technical info for the folks who use quiktime...

071115: Installed the previous mix versions of everything on "The-BG8-Project" (sounds cleaner...) also re-leveled volume of everything on "Beatles-Basics"-Vol.1" some still might be too bright. Finished .Rockin.Around.The.Christmas.Tree. finally.

071110: Am working on 3 many things at once : last of the SB tunes, and started modifying all the page files for the newer look, (fewer frames), and almost done with this last painting.

071104: Finally something knocked "Hey Bulldog" out of No. 1 spot in the [Top20Tunes] for 7 months...and for kicks did a [Bottom20] came up mostly "Hogging-The-Covers" . Almost out of paint, no more painting for a while yay... Almost done with "Seasons-Beatings" yay... Discovered have to edit all lyric files for firefox boo... Just now finished .Santa.Claus.Is.Coming.To.Town.

071028: Been rehearsing few times this month to work up a set for a tonight at "26th St Blues Bar" (formerly Warsaw Wallys) with some other bands... applause is great... Our tunes were tight and we sounded great. (have not committed to staying in this band though...)

071023: Finished remixing old 2001 versions of .Feliz.Navidad. and .Jingle.Bell.Rock. from "Seasons-Beatings" others in-process. Only a couple more to go then...

071014: Took a break from starting on this one last (good/nice) canvas... went back outside and gust of wind must have blew easel over onto pointy-edge patio chair ripping the crap out it.

071006: Used up that old jar of gel medium before it dried up, globbed it onto this thing... kinda the same idea with the outline shadow whatever... could go sloppy and faster with the pallette knives (had to...) and titled this one anyway

071002: Added a dry front mix of .Like.A.Rolling.Stone. Dylan cover with the new mic a couple weeks ago forgot to mention. 104bpm instead of 76. Updated the [Discography] links to be consistant with times instead of file size. Started going through bunch of old tracks. Started painting goofing-off again wasting some paints to get back into practice/whatever.

070920: Got 2 good suggestions for re-naming the Beatles stuff. and the winner is to be either "Basic Beatles" or "Beatles-Basics". (and don't/won't have to rename any of the files now either...)

070913: Since hardly anyone clicks lofi clips most folks might not get to sample all 110+ songs on here. So... re-did the TopTwenty page - easier to read - has links to the clips. Started painting a little. Taking more photos of some other canvases to edit into artwork pages (someday). Nobody has come up with a cool alternate name for the Beatles albums.

070902: Only updated the stats (Top20) and the quotes files. Thanks to MySpace and the blurbs posted in a couple of the Beatles groups for the extra 3,000 mp3 hits the last couple of months impelling more folks to listen to some other tunes too. Almost confused by not very much from "Hogging-The-Covers" getting more play (and seeing some others in the Top20 for first time) eg. "Chicken Scratch" and No.3 at that... strange...

070824: Nope... actually used 3 weeks of vacation for vacation and did not do anything new or to the site. Did have a rather interesting conversation with a big Beatles fan about how much she didn't like the titles "Butchering Beatles" but tried to explain was just being cute not unlike Utopia's album "Deface The Music" so... trying to re-name (begin with B). Whoever's suggestion is the one to be used will get free CDs. Just [ contact ]

070801: Will use this opportunity the next few weeks to finally get around to updating and/or re-doing some of the other pages and maybe work on the Mobile Device Site and perhaps the new Bare-Bones site option as well.

070729: Rushed to get .Wedding.Bell.Blues. kinda/sorta finished by end of the month. Discovered why "Hey Bulldog" and "Savoy Truffle" were getting so many hits each is because someone posted them on a non-commercial free share site and that's ok. Won't be any new recordings this month except maybe re-doing the vocals to 'wedding bell blues' if feel so inclined, might not.

070722: In response to "when finishing "My-5th-Dementia"? am working on it. Finished .Save.The.Country. and uploaded it. Have only used the new mic on recording the parlor guitar until now and it picks up bad vocals very well... Will hopefully have another one done soon.

070707: Noticed many visitors viewing the .Instruments page so am doing some work on it. Got the guitars up so far and am working on more, also getting rid of "frames" since they are to be phased out of future browser reading who knows when.

070705: Spent way too much time researching cross-browser compatibility issues. Entire site soon totally redone according to .Mobile.Web.Initiative. might as well get a head start. Almost ready for monthly site update. Two more tunes done and uploaded to "Hogging-The-Covers" and am kinda anxious to get this project out of the way and work on the other stuff.

070620: Uploaded two more tunes to "Hogging-The-Covers" : .If.It.Makes.You.Happy. (Sheryl Crow 1996) and .The.Angels.Wanna.Wear.My.Red.Shoes. (Elvis Costello 1977) Using the BBE 362 on the rest of the album (can anybody tell the difference?) The next tune sets a record: 12 13 guitar channels. The guitar not only forcing correct fingering, makes fingers sore.

070610: Uploaded two more tunes to "Hogging-The-Covers" : .Look.Through.Any.WIndow. (The Hollies 1966) and .Ladder. (Joan Osborne 1995). Learned might be out of state for a few weeks or so. Getting tracks done while possible. Oh yeh, finally got a BBE 362 Sonic Maximizer (always wanted one) and does seem to make a kind-of-a difference.

070602: Updated stats and TopTwenty. Re-vamped some of the pages. Will have quotations done soon. Almost ready to upload 2 more tunes to "Hogging-The-Covers" just awaiting final mixings. Put all the paint stuff away for a while. No more painting.

070523: Finished another tune for "Hogging-The-Covers" but had to put drums on it too. The shuffle was kinda needed to keep the integrity of the song (in someone else's opinion too...) Am almost done painting for the summer. Will re-do the art archive page one of these days.

070516: Added another tune to "Hogging-The-Covers" (but also put some drum sounds on this one). .Nature's.Way. (Spirit 1970). And the vocal cross-melody/harmony does do that on the original recording btw...

070512: Ow... just reviewed the top 20 and had no idea the levels were so so different for different albums (and was not aware "Across The Universe" had those distortions in it, will fix that asap...

070505: Fingers are sore. Not painting anymore. Just recording. Drummer and I still rehearse. Waiting for a bassist who reads. Had a show at First Friday Artwalk last night and is the last time am going to do it. Just not the same. A shame. 22-story condos. Posted 4 demos mixes to something called "Hogging-The-Covers"

070415: Been recording stuff with it. Gonna keep it. Love it. Drummer got a big house with a rehearsal building out back so that will/should help things along (hope). Went to the Phoenix Pride Parade yesterday and took a lot of photos. Posted about half of them [ here ] (and half of those the convertibles...) Did you know the [F11] key maximizes window with few toolbars?

070403: Got a new guitar last week: Line6 Variax 300 Nylon has on-board bodies and contours (even a reverb and tuner...) and have started recording with it. Will post an mp3 soon of what the new acoustic sounds is supposed to be like.

070329: Re-mixed and uploaded 3-verse version (the one on "Greatest-Fits" has only 2 verses and too loud of guitars...) so redid all the tracks (backwards vocals too hahah...) but this is another tune the band was supposed to work up. Got a new guitar today - hopefully will stop all this remixing old stuff and record some new damm tunes. (Put it in "The-BG8-Project")

070311: Totally forgot to mention that have been painting a lot this past month outside while the weather is nice. Haven't done any painting for about a year and a half. Set up my easel, got brushes and paints and all set-up. Mostly old, old canvases started years ago. Will put photos in the .Canvas/Tile. page sometime. Have not done much music.

070301: Just regular monthly updates: stats, quotes, news, and did get 2 tunes to "Seasons-Beatings" done so far. "Happy Xmas" and "My Favorite Things" mp3s uploaded to the discography file. Was going to try to have site re-vamped by 3-year anniversary but oh well... Drummer and I still auditioning singers and bassists.

070223: Found some old raw data tracks on backup CDs. Now editing and re-mixing them and not adding extra synths to them. Going to finish "Seasons-Beatings" first then keep on going until getting them out of the dang way...

070211: Changed the TopTen mp3s into the TopTwenty for a different idea of the stats. Am so very disappointed that many individual data tracks are gone/lost/un-retrievable from bad DVD backups (before got external drives and realized it all) DAMM!

070202: All I've done to the site so far are the quotations... Will get around to the Top Ten and some new (old) mp3s from years ago for kicks this week...

070117: Computer manufacturer tech support was wrong. Almost wasted money on new motherboard. Am just now tweaking settings all over again. Getting ready to record some acoustic with new microphone.

.2006.

.2005.

.2004.