yymmdd:

2008 December 11 : No... started messing with coding tables and decided not worth the time to re-code it all. Messed with EQ on those last 4 tunes on -10th-Avenue- and re-uploaded them anyway.. a little easier on the ears... Coded the November .quotations. page. Funny how many of you read them, and am glad more of you are reading the .lyrics. though. Am on a mission to "finish" these last 6 canvases by the end of the year. And 2 tunes at least... Since 5 guitars got fresh string change the other day better record while they're snappy.

2008 December 08 : Have not finished November site update yet... just some additions to the .artworks. pages and the Top20 files. Will get to the monthly quotations collections and maybe a few tunes I can find to mess with and upload soon... Experiment coding tables tables in the Top20 files... lots of re-coding the pages so they will still look silly for now... Oh yeh, did pick up this new Ibanez medium scale bass a couple of weeks ago...

2008 November 28 : Ok... sorry... No Christmas Vol.2 (started, and got bed tracks to half of it but...) here's the real deal: another cancer getting ready to take someone else for one thing. And the last 5 months of dealing with city hall and prosecutors for a case against a neighbor. Will probably be dragging this out even further. More meetings and courthouse and crap. All this stuff has taken too much time away from being able to work on music. And my friend's cancer is spreading faster than we were told last month just learned. Sorry. Happy Thanksgiving anyway yeah right... Had to add something... did .paint. a little and uploaded 4 crummy-sounding (will adjust EQ and re-upload next week... ack) 15-year-old 4-track tunes to -10th-Avenue- album (1993) .1972.Re.Visited. and .Ah.Ooh.Ah.Yeah. (silly) and .Kinda.Cool. which was kinda cool at the the time... and .Wonderful.Day. that has/had some lyrics to it.

2008 November 03 : 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.

2008 October 22 : 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.

2008 October 10 : 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.

2008 September 25 : 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...

2008 September 01 : 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.

2008 August 01 : 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...

2008 July 20 : 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...)

2008 July01 : (!?!?!) 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...

2008 June 17 : 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; "Chicken In The Grass" (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.

2008 June 03 : 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...)

2008 May 16 : 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.

2008 May 01 : 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...

2008 April 22 : 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.

2008 April 12 : 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...

2008 April 05 : 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

2008 April 02 : 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...

2008 March 26 : 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.

2008 March 23 : 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...)

2008 March 17 : 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.

2008 March 08 : 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...)

2008 March 04 :  Happy   4th   Birthday   bgmatthews.com  

2008 March 02 : 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...

2008 February 17 : 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...

2008 February 09 : 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...

2008 January 08 : 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.

2008 January 02 : (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!

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