I wrote this song in 2003 after seeing the movie, Adaptation (directed by Spike Jonze, screenplay by Charlie Kaufman, with Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, and others) and seeing some potential in doing a live musical performance of a song that is being written during the performance itself (an idea inspired by the movie). So the video of my song, Adaptation, is a re-creation of my actual performance of the song for the first time at the ABC Cafe open mic in Ithaca, NY on August 19, 2003. The ABC Cafe recently closed; I made the video by screen-capturing an image from a YouTube video of Evan D Williams performing at the ABC Cafe in 2007, carefully extracting Evan and his band from the image (no one was hurt in the process), and then adding in my performance — shot at home with my low-resolution Flip Camcorder based on a recording I made using GarageBand (both the recording and video made in March 2010). I also filmed myself as the “audience” for the song, again inspired by Nicolas Cage playing both Charlie and brother Donald Kaufman in the movie.

Remixed Aug. 18, 2019.

After All was one of the first songs I wrote, in 1978, consisting of 2 verses with an instrumental break. In 2003, I added a bridge and a third verse. The song was recorded on GarageBand software; a YouTube video was shot using the built-in camera on my iMac (remixed Aug. 18, 2019).

I finally got around to making a YouTube video for Squints on a Triple, a song I wrote and recorded in 2008 based on a true story concerning a game of Scrabble played with daughter Jennie (remixed Dec. 1, 2018).

At the same time, I just discovered that my recording of Squints was the winner of the 2008 BoardGameGeek.com contest for real songs that reference actual boardgames in their titles or lyrics.

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.