I’ve been working on a new song, “Own Biggest Fan,” since November 2011. I made a live version — just me and my guitar recorded with a single mic — on June 1, 2012. The YouTube video can be found here.

Surfer Girl was written by Brian Wilson in 1961 and released by the Beach Boys in 1963. I decided to record it “live” on GarageBand, playing keyboards and singing the lead vocal simultaneously. This was all documented with the iSight camera on my iMac (I also recorded a live version of a new original song with guitar and vocal recorded simultaneously, but that one is not yet finished). I then recorded three tracks of background vocals, superimposed some lip-synching Flip video clips, and posted it to YouTube. YouTube has an interesting attitude towards such intellectual property violations (although the lyrics of Surfer Girl are only marginally intellectual by any rational standard) — on a case by case basis, they permit someone like me to post such copyrighted material online, as long as I acknowledge that the copyright belongs to others and allow the copyright owners to place an advertisement for an MP3 of the original song adjacent to the video. No problem — you could do far worse than to purchase the Beach Boy’s original version of this song.

About 30 years after we recorded this song, ROLLO’s Heyday of the Automobile is now a YouTube video. For lyrics and other song minutiae, go to the YouTube site; otherwise, just check it out here:

The idea for this new song was triggered by my recent experience signing up with Facebook. Once signed up, I was informed by my younger brother that having only 9 or 10 friends is pretty pathetic. I would periodically check out my Facebook homepage and see that Dan and Eric were now friends, or that Kris and Miki were now friends, which only heightened my sense of insecurity (these thoughts were transcribed into the song’s lyrics in a more-or-less literal way). For the record, Stradlater’s roommate is Holden Caulfield. Lyrics, production notes, and a YouTube video are here.

Also for the record, the video was shot with my low-resolution Flip camcorder and my iMac built-in iSight camera recording simultaneously; the iSight clip is then superimposed onto the desaturated (B&W) Flip clip in Final Cut Express. Various iMac images, some taken by me and others taken from a Google image search, are also interwoven into the video, with the iSight clip always superimposed. Several images taken from the web, appropriately distorted via PhotoShop to match the perspectival conditions they appear in, can be seen every now and then superimposed onto the moving images — the original 45 of Eleanor Rigby rests on the shelf between my speakers; and a copy of Alice in Wonderland or Catcher in the Rye sits on my desk.

Stradlater’s roommate © 2011 Jonathan Ochshorn (remixed Sept. 2, 2019)

VERSE 1:
looking for a friend is tough
do you know of any
nine or ten is not enough
when others have so many
dan and eric are now friends
so are kris and miki
i can’t tell what this portends
maybe i’m too picky

CHORUS 1:
never thought i’d end up like eleanor rigby
wondering what went wrong
waiting at the window screen for someone to pick me
singing where do i belong

VERSE 2:
like alice in the rabbit-hole
in the deep well she falls
mr carroll couldn’t know
that what were wells are now walls
what size do you want to be
the caterpillar asked her
doesn’t matter much to me (she said)
but changing’s a disaster

CHORUS 2:
never thought i’d end up like poor little alice
looking for some fun
everyone she meets is crazy or dripping with malice
and there’s nothing to be done

BRIDGE
i’m not the kind to complain
i’ll take the good with the bad the sun with the rain
but will this rain never end
here it comes again

VERSE 3:
holden’s in a jam again
life sucks what a pity
school’s done so he takes the train
back to new york city
all the women he meets there
leave him sad and lonely
he tells himself he doesn’t care
cause everyone’s a phony

CHORUS 3:
never thought i’d end up like stradlater’s roommate
feeling so alone
finally gets the nerve to call up jane for a new date
but her mom picks up the phone

CHORUS 3 (repeated):
never thought i’d end up like stradlater’s roommate
feeling so alone
hanging it up after calling jane for a new date
when her mom picks up the phone

I got the idea for this song after being called upon to read the names of graduating students at Cornell’s architecture department commencement ceremony out on the Arts Quad May 29, 2011. The YouTube video is here. Remixed Sept. 1, 2019. By coincidence, an article about J.D. Salinger’s distaste for graduation ceremonies appeared in the NY Times on the same day that I uploaded the video. Salinger is quoted as saying: “I’ve been going to graduations, and there isn’t much that I find more pretentious or irksome than the sight of ‘faculty’ and graduates in their academic get-ups.” The Times reporter added that Salinger apparently needed all his self-control “not to gag.”

The video borrows short pieces of Bill Clinton’s honorary degree speech at the NYU commencement that was held at Yankee Stadium in 2011. However, the lyrics that I wrote about “spouting every known cliché” apply to all commencement speeches ever spoken, and are not directed specifically at Clinton’s abundant catalog of clichés, although — as they say — the shoe fits.

[updated 7/5/11] I just received this photo of the Cornell Architecture event which inspired the song:

Photo supplied by Jung Wook Lee, Cornell Architecture ceremony, May 2011

You Baby is a new song, recorded May 2011. Watch the YouTube video. Actually, I wrote the music for this song many years ago, probably in the early or mid 1980s. It was only recently that I decided to add words, a task that was rather complicated because the original music was never intended as a “song.” The lyrics themselves are rather strange, as they at first appear to be of the conventional “I love you” type, but upon closer scrutiny reveal, if not exactly an opposite sensibility, then at least a kind of resignation about the more-or-less arbitrariness of the whole concept.

This is the first video that features my entire band: Jonathan on electric guitar, Jonathan on drums, Jonathan on electric piano, and some other guy on bass (I’m actually playing bass as well, but don’t own an instrument that can be photographed). So the bass player was borrowed from some other video where he was introducing guitarist Laurindo Almeida playing with the Modern Jazz Quartet. Through the magic of Photoshop and Final Cut Express, I convinced him that he was not just a host, but a musician in his own right.

For those of you curious about the video itself, this is basically how it was produced: all the individual clips of Jonathan playing the various instruments are shot with a low-resolution Flip Camcorder, placed either on a tripod or hand-held (e.g., where I’m holding the camera with my left hand while playing the keyboard with my right hand). These individual clips are then inserted behind an image of a suitable band, in this case taken from some Steely Dan concert.

Original image of Steely Dan concert (left); modified image with band members removed leaving transparent background, shown here in red (right).

I shoot most of the clips in front of a piece of black fabric, so that they blend into the (default) black background behind the transparent spaces. It takes a bit of color correction to match them up, but it’s a lot easier than using the Chroma Key feature. The only other tricks are putting the bass player’s arm and his instrument on separate tracks so that they can be moved a bit using Final Cut’s motion keyframe features. I temporarily imported a GarageBand version of just the “slapped” bass line into the Final Cut “timeline,” so I could easily match the arm movements with the actual music being played (the original GarageBand score has a conventional bass track in addition to the “slapped” bass track).

I wrote and recorded a new song, sort of country (not being a connoisseur of such music, I have to say “sort of country,” leaving it to others more into the genre to verify whether it is or isn’t). As usual, there’s a YouTube video and other production notes. I’m singing all the vocals, and playing all instruments (some of which, especially drums and bass, are played on a midi keyboard using GarageBand digital sounds). The video is shot with my low-resolution Flip camcorder and edited with Final Cut Express. Remixed Sept. 2, 2019.

I collaborated with Dan Smullyan to write a new Rollo song. As of now, it has turned into something which could be called I Stare Into the Mirror’s Eyes. I’m still hoping it can be recorded by Rollo; for now, here is my live demo version.

I recorded this song a couple of years ago, but never made a video. Jennie wrote the lyrics, and I wrote the music. Never quite happy with my GarageBand “trumpet” solo, I finally got brother Kurt to add some lead guitar (he also helped out on the new GarageBand mix). Here is the Youtube video along with lyrics and production notes. Remixed Sept. 1, 2019.

I’ve just made a new video for a song I wrote in 2003 and recorded in 2008. Included is some Flip video footage from the 2009 World Series in which C.C. Sabathia waves off the curve ball and instead throws an unfortunate two-strike fast ball to Chase Utley — cheerleader “Rudy” Giuliani is watching from the stands and Tim McCarver is telling the world how difficult it is to get a two-strike fastball past Mr. Utley. I was lucky enough to film this perfect scene for my verse #3 lyric (“Catcher wants a breaking ball; pitcher’s waving off the call…”). The YouTube video for One Life (Is All You Get) is here. Remixed Dec. 1, 2018.