We drove down to Merion, PA during Spring Break, to visit the Barnes Foundation before its extensive collection of artworks is dismantled and shipped to Philadelphia. I made a short movie with my Flip video camcorder of the trip; of course this meant I needed to write a soundtrack for the movie. One thing led to another, so here is the music video derived from the movie. I experimented with the “protest” song genre, so hopefully, it sounds a bit familiar, without being explicitly stolen from anything in particular. There are two links here: one for the SoundCloud link and the other for the YouTube video (remixed Aug. 24, 2019).

Ran Thru My Mind represents another experiment with live recording and videography. This is another “old” song (written circa 1980), but recorded for the first time in March 2008. Unlike the “live” recording of Almost Doesn’t Count, this one has some basic tracks (drums, bass, piano) pre-recorded on GarageBand before the “live” guitar and vocals are recorded. Hence the headphones in the video. Like the last one, the one-take videography is by Susan Schwartz; I did the editing on Final Cut Express. See video.

I wrote Almost Doesn’t Count in 1978, so this recording marks a 30th anniversary of sorts. After trying a few arrangements with drums, bass, and so on, I decided to just play the song live, using a single mic and acoustic guitar, pretty much as it was originally written. I asked Susan to film the project while I recorded to a single track on GarageBand (you can see my salvaged eMac in the background). She used my new pocket-size Flip video recorder, also in a single take; the result can be seen courtesy of YouTube. Videography: Susan Schwartz.