I recorded a new cover — The Rascals’ Good Lovin’ from 1966 (written by Rudy Clark and Arthur Resnick). All my musical recordings are linked from my music page; here is the YouTube video:

New song; new video:

I wrote this song in the spring and summer of 2013. Apologies to all who have been quoted saying something along the lines of “If I knew I’d live this long, I would have taken better care of myself” (Mickey Mantle, Eubie Blake, George Burns, Mark Twain, and others). I also made use of an explanation given by Edvard Munch concerning his most famous painting: “I was walking along the road with two friends — the sun was setting — suddenly the sky turned blood red — I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence — there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city — my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety — and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”

See production notes, lyrics, and embedded video. Remixed Sept. 2, 2019.

All vocals sung and all instruments played by J. Ochshorn
Arranged and recorded at home by J. Ochshorn using Logic Pro
Video shot with my old low-resolution Flip camcorder and created with Final Cut Express
Lyrics and music © 2013 Jonathan Ochshorn:

VERSE 1: what have i swallowed
what have i confessed
an act that can’t be followed
a fact i can’t digest
i ate it all, drank it down, kept it up with the best

VERSE 1 (second part): the morning after
got some coffee and some cream
mixed it with some laughter
like a madman in a mindless dream
the sky turns red, nature wakes with a scream

CHORUS 1: if i knew i’d live this long
i wouldn’t have wasted all those years
i might have found some younger friends
with more interesting careers
now everyone around me’s dying
everyone i knew before
what’s the point of even trying anymore

VERSE 2: i’ve been alone now
i’ve settled in this groove
i can’t stay in my home now
but i can’t say where i’d move
there’s nothing left, nothing right, and nothing to prove

CHORUS 2: if i knew i’d live this long
i would have taken better care
i would have got more exercise
put some color in my hair
if my life’s not satisfying
if i’m lying at death’s door
what’s the point of even trying anymore

BRIDGE: if i were to think this through
there’s still no way to write an ending
and if i act as if i knew
exactly what i was intending to do

VERSE 3: i’d be misleading
if i claimed there’s a design
based upon my reading
i’m not doing all that fine
just getting up, getting by, waiting here for a sign

CHORUS 3: if i knew i’d live this long
there would be so much more to show
i would have done the things i dreamed
of doing long ago
my regrets are multiplying
i’m becoming such a bore
what’s the point of even trying anymore
what’s the point of even trying anymore

Here’s my latest song cover in a series that starts in 1963. This one, by the Beatles, was recorded in 1965:

You can also see the video on its YouTube page.

“I Keep Writing the Same Song” is my first “Logic Pro” recording — this is the Apple software of which GarageBand is the baby version. My YouTube video is here and is also embedded below.  Lyrics and production notes can be found at the linked site. Remixed in 2018.

I guess I’ve started a kind of long-term project — recording covers of songs that were influential in my musical development. The first was 1963’s Surfer Girl. This one is Mixed-up, Shook-up, Girl from 1964 (recorded by Patty & the Emblems, possibly the earliest hit co-written by Leon Huff, who later achieved legendary status as half of the song-writing-producing team of Gamble and Huff).

I made a “studio” version of my song (Own Biggest Fan), after having recorded live version last month. The lyrics, production notes and embedded video for the new version are here. The YouTube video, shot with my still-working low-resolution Flip camcorder, and edited with Final Cut Express, is embedded below.

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