I wrote This Isn’t Hollywood in 1981, recorded it in 2008, and just made a new video. In the video, which includes animated faces of Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, and James Stewart, the final “celebrity” image is of a young Billy Joel, who wrote Say Goodbye to Hollywood five years earlier, in 1976. For the record, all the moving lips are my own (remixed Dec. 2, 2018).
Here’s a new video for an old song (Just Another), actually the first song I recorded using garageBand software more than two years ago. The song itself was written in 1980 (remixed Dec. 2, 2018).
I wrote Long Distance Love Affair in 1978 and it is, as far as I remember, the first real song I wrote. This version is recorded using acoustic guitar. My Flip camcorder was set up on its tripod, so here’s the live video with guitar, vocals, and a single mic (and some imaginary musicians joining me for the final verse; remixed Aug. 25, 2019).
I wrote this song (Maybe) last year. This is a new video for the tune, shot in one take with my Flip camcorder, and edited with Final Cut Express (remixed Aug. 24, 2019).
This new song, like Shrinkwrap, is a commentary on art. By coincidence, I was able to incorporate images of the architecture Pritzker Prize Laureates, on display in Sibley Hall at Cornell, in the YouTube video for the song, but the lyrics are not directed toward them in particular (having been written before the exhibition was mounted). Lyrics, production notes, and an embedded video can be found on the Prisoner music web page (remixed Aug. 24, 2019).
I wrote Suburban Kid sometime in 1979 and proceeded to forget some of the lyrics, so the current version includes some anachronistic ideas (given the premise that this is a 1980s song) that I added in 2002.
Rollo, the rock’n’roll group from the early 1980s that consisted of myself, brother Kurt, and songwriter Dan Smullyan, is now on iTunes. Search directly for your favorite songs from the “Don’t Look” album, or search under “Rollo Don’t Look” to preview or purchase any of the 15 tunes. Of course, you can still buy the actual CD at a discounted price from CDBABY.com.
Here’s a new song called maybe. The lyrics include the following rhyme scheme spread out over three chorus sections: confusing-turning-keep her / losing-yearning-cheaper / refusing-squirming-sleeper / defusing-churning-sweeper / bruising-burning-deeper / choosing-learning-steeper. This song features my first and only harmonica solo.
Jaywalking is a song that I wrote in the early 1980s — the exact date of the copyright is buried somewhere in a box up in the attic, part of a “compilation” of songs sent to the copyright office in one bunch to save money, and therefore not searchable on the official copyright web site 1979 — but never before recorded. I tried shooting a video of me actually jaywalking, but the Ithaca backdrop just didn’t look right. Plus, the act of jaywalking is meant to be taken metaphorically anyway, so I ended up just sitting down at the keyboards in front of my computer, using its built-in iSight camera. Check out the YouTube video, or, alternatively, go directly to my Jaywalking music webpage.
Looking through old cassette tapes one day a few years back, I found some preliminary versions of songs that I had written, and then forgotten about. One of them interested me, so I re-learned it, and recently recorded it (officially) for the first time. I’m guessing it was composed circa 1983. I shot a bare-bones YouTube video with my flip recorder (remixed Dec. 1, 2018).