A collection of songs that were composed sometime between 1968 and 1970 (high school, basically, for us) by a small group of musicians and poets (Fenn Eubanks, Corodon Fuller, and me, joined later at times by Scott Wells, Amy Bridges, and Charles Engstrom) who loved nothing better than to gather in someone’s basement to compose songs and record them on a one-track monaural Wollensack tape recorder. I’ve recreated some of them here, in what I like to think would have been the way we would have arranged them if we had had the equipment or knowledge. But I’m taking full responsibility here–don’t blame the other songwriters if I didn’t get it right.
The title comes from a little incident that occurred when we were working out a song that Fenn had written. We needed some sort of chime sound and none of us had any idea where to get one. Corodon starting pulling out various tools and experimenting and it turned out that dragging a saw blade across a metal towel track produced a perfect sustained, chimey C–the key in which the song had been written. We expressed our awe, and Corodon’s reply was “that’s what you get for browsing around the basement.”
The stories we could tell…
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Several more of my music collections and singles, including collaborations with Carter Minor and Don Sparrow, may be found here.
songs
all songs arranged and performed by skip via
- the fire still burns (Eubanks, Fuller, Via)
Corodon arrived one evening with an opening lyric and some structural ideas, Fenn came back the next evening with the rest of the lyrics, and we worked out the rest. This song also appears on 2AM. - daedalus and icarus (Via)
This song sprung to life like Topsy–it just appeared in my head one moment and in about 20 minutes it was finished. We originally recorded it as a rock song, but I rearranged it here as a reggae tune. - baroque thing (Fuller, Via)
I had the opening guitar figure. Corodon added the melody lines and had the idea to change the time signature for the middle part. We snuck the Wollensack into the music building at UNC to record the original with a harpsichord. - watchmaker’s blues (Engstrom, Via)
This was mostly Charles’ idea, but it was never finished past the first verse, at least on the surviving tape. I added some parts and arrangements to finish it. I hope Charlie doesn’t mind… - listless way (Eubanks)
Fenn was an exceptionally prolific songwriter and poet, and this is one of my favorites of his. I wish he were still with us to hear it. The middle verse was added on the way over that night, when he encountered an old man on the street who saw his guitar and asked him to play a song. Fenn never missed anything. - to sarah (Fuller)
I loved this song the first time Corodon played it. Corodon played the arpeggiated intro on piano but insisted that I transpose it to the classical guitar, where it remains to this day. I have probably gone overboard with this arrangement, but it was fun. - composition (Eubanks, Via)
Fenn came in one night with a beautiful little guitar figure and wanted to “do something with it.” I wrote a second guitar counterpoint to play over it. Amy hummed the wordless melody. We happened to be sitting in front of a fire when we recorded it, and the crackling sounds were heard on the surviving tape. I turned them into rain sounds for this recording.