The Blue Era: 1992-1993

The summer of 1992 saw several significant changes in my life. My base school introduced a new curriculum starting from April of that year that all but wiped out my work there. Meanwhile, the international program I was helping create at another school was really starting to take off. That led the district to decide to base me at that other school instead. It made sense, and I welcomed it for the most part, but it wasn't an easy transfer.

The fact was that, though my original base school had never seemed to take my work all that seriously, the teachers there had always been very kind and supportive. On the other hand, the faculty at the new base school gave me much more professional respect, but the atmosphere there was troubled to say the least. It was far less cordial, and many if not most of the teachers had a "can't be bothered" attitude toward everything. There were also some serious issues with excessive corporal punishment and sexual harassment of both students and female members of the staff. I saw and heard a lot of shocking things, and I wasn't always willing just to shut up and ignore it all. I took some action, and while some were grateful, it didn't earn me many friends.

The biggest shock, however, was what was happening with the students. The new Freshmen who had entered my schools in April of that year ('92) were turning out to be colder, more spoiled, and far less interested in English (or me as a foreigner) than their predecessors had been. The ones that came in April of the following year ('93) were even worse, being hostile to the point that I was asked to stop participating in school events from May of '93 because many of the Freshmen would refuse to enter the area if I was there (and would stand outside the door moaning, "I hate foreigners!"). Meanwhile, the first group of students in my international program finally graduated in March of '93, ending an era. Their progress in English had far exceeded expectations. However, they had also become such insufferable snobs that the last Australian exchange student to join their class was completely ostracized...and suffered from depression as a result. The overwhelming majority of them took their impressive English skill, threw it in the trash along with their dreams, and became very ordinary, orange-haired, trash-talking, conformist members of working-class society. In other words, the program had turned out to be a smashing success on paper...but from a practical standpoint it had been worse than useless.

Needless to say, my attitude toward the whole JET Program(me) thing became very bitter, and it was probably a very good thing that my contract hit its limit in the summer of '93. About the only really good thing was my relationship with my girlfriend (now my wife). I admit I hadn't expected it to last very long, but as it entered its second year it was stronger than ever.

Where Did We Go Wrong? (1993)

1. Society in Motion
2. If You Learned Your Lessons Well
3. Sensei
4. Cell
5. Left Alone
6. Losing Battle
7. The Split
8. Reevaluation
9. April Showers
10. Meeting of the Board
11. Spirit of Yesterday
12. The Trouble Is...
13. Beneath It All

The title and cover pretty much sum it up. This album started out as a rock opera based on what I saw happening to my students in the international program as they grew up, graduated, entered society...and got sucked into the swamp. My original idea was actually a sort of gothic sci-fi (i.e. it turned out that the government...or somebody, at least...was hypnotizing the public into submission), but it was never finished. I got to the point where the "hero" of the story learns to stop thinking and just forget everything he has learned so he can become a model corporate citizen, and then it just stopped. In fact, wonder of wonders, some good things had suddenly happened with the second international class, and that had cured my bitterness enough to abandon the opera. I just kept what I had already finished and then recorded some other songs. The underlying theme remains the same, but the second half is far less black than the first.

Sensei - This song is based on true events. Teachers at my second base school did not always practice what they preached. Nothing more need be said.

Losing Battle - This song is the dramatic climax of what would have been Part One of the original opera. Our "hero" (based on one of the more promising members of the first international class) enters the corporate world and tries to put his education and smarts to good use...only to become the proverbial protruding nail that gets hammered down.

Meeting of the Board - In 1993 a certain, famous Japanese megacorporation (which shall remain nameless) had an emergency board meeting to discuss problems they were having with their new recruits. It seemed that young people were becoming much too lacking in initiative and resolve, and the executive management was concerned about what that meant for the company's future. What was the result of the meeting? They decided that it was all the fault of the Japanese education system, which systematically stifled any hint of initiative or resolve. No, actually I'm kidding. They blamed "an incursion of Western values". Yep. It's all America's fault that Japanese kids are spineless, spoiled, and dependent.

Beneath It All - I didn't think so much about this song when I made it, but it seems to be popular (despite the vocal flub at the end). The bottom line: if the islands that make up Japan could talk, what would they say?

Beleaguered from Within (1993)

1. Your Own Worst Judge
2. Followed By Decadence
3. Cursed with a Conscience
4. Be One
5. But At The Wrong Time
6. How Does Your Mother Feel Now?
7. Beleaguered from Within
8. Still At It
9. No Regrets
10. Until The End
11. Right or Wrong
12. End of an Era

This album started as a sort of tongue-in-cheek look at the different facets of the human character and the various forces that influence it. As I went along, however, the darkening situation at work led to its becoming more sarcastic and cynical, but not yet really bitter. Personally, I think some of my best songwriting happened during this period, and I'm tempted to remake much if not most of this album.

Your Own Worst Judge - The album kicks off with a soliloquoy from your superego.

How Does Your Mother Feel Now? - In Japan of the early '90s James Dean was considered hip, and all the "macho" boys (more often than not pencil-neck geek wanna-be's) wore waxy, duck-butt hairstyles and swaggered around with "I'm so bad" looks on their faces. A lot of them also became either bikers or hot rodders (unlicensed, of course) whether they stayed in school or not. Quite often they were into snorting glue or paint thinner, which probably explained a few things. It was so laughably cliche, but it was far from amusing. It was bad enough that they made a game out of annoying everybody. The fact was that the girls in my international class went ape over those morons...and the competition for their "affection" and the "prestige" that went with it had a lot to do with the souring of the girls' attitude. Incidentally, during the '92-'93 school year fully three such boys, all students at my schools, managed to crash their cars or bikes and kill both themselves and their female companions. I admit I found it hard to feel sorry for them. To me it seemed more like poetic justice...both to them and to the doting idiot parents that had bought their vehicles for them in the first place. This song was a very entertaining experiment with layered guitar sounds.

Beleaguered from Within - The title track of the album explores the premise that it's virtually impossible to be truly "good". No matter what you do, when you think about it, you're causing harm to someone or something else. It can make it very hard to live with your conscience...if you even have one. I recorded this track before I had either MIDI programming ability or a good sequencer, so all those moving synth parts were played by hand on keyboards or wind synth...something I admit I find a bit intimidating now.

Cursed with a Conscience - Speaking of which... This is a light-hearted look at what it means to have a conscience...and the burdens it can place on you.

Hirokawa Gakuen (1992)

1. Who Am I?
2. Hirokawa Gakuen
3. Nothing to Fear At All
4. Spring Rut
5. Rough Edge
6. Condemned
7. Degradation
8. Turnabout
9. Ego Trip
10. Another Day, Another Ichiman-En
11. Song of Fall
12. Thoughts of Oregon
13. What Do the People Know?
14. Onset of Autumn

The school at which I was helping create an international course had two sister schools in Adelaide, Australia. They in turn had a second sister school in Japan. It was a prestigious, private academy (NO, NOT THE ONE WHERE I WORK!!!! THIS ONE WAS IN TOKYO!!!!!) with a reputation for being very harsh. That was something of an understatement. I met a teacher from our sister school in Adelaide, and he told me all about the scary things he'd seen during his visit to that other school. One of the stories in particular struck me. It was about a promising boy student who'd had his head shaven by his teachers and had been subjected to cruel humiliation, the normal form of punishment at that nazi boot camp school. His offense? His friend, a biker, had been seen drinking alcohol. The boy himself had done nothing wrong; he was punished only for his choice of friends. I was inspired by that story, so I wrote the rock opera "Hirokawa Gakuen" (a fictitious name...I hope...) loosely based on it. The rest of the album was just a few songs inspired by things going on around me at that the time. It was a nice mix of sentiment and (at that time) playful sarcasm.

Hirokawa Gakuen - The title track is about the "hero's" first entering his new school...and finding out that it isn't the rosy place he'd thought it would be.

Rough Edge - And heeeeeere's the "hero's" crazy biker friend! He is a rebel, a square peg, a green sheep, and he's determined to be himself at any cost. Unfortunately, our "hero's" teachers don't like that. This seems to be everyone's favorite song on this album.

Condemned - Our "hero" faces the (warped) judgment of the school faculty.

Another Day, Another Ichiman-En - "Ichi-Man En" (一万円), or 10,000 yen (about $80 at the exchange rate back then) was what I calculated to be my approximate daily salary at the time. This instrumental is not part of the "Hirokawa Gakuen" rock opera. Instead, it depicts a typical day at my new base school starting with the bicycle ride to work, the morning meeting, Freshmen girls coming to flirt with the teachers, hanging out in the staff room, two classes, having lunch in the staff room, the International Club after school, the daily biker gang drive-by, going home at the end of the day, and getting plastered.

The Green Era: 1990 - 1992

I had my first experience with studio recording back in 1984 when my friend Dave used me as a guinea pig for his studio recording class. Together with a couple of other musicians I knew, we recorded a song of mine called "Song of the Sea Kings". It was a mixed success (i.e. I did the vocals with a blown voice, so my singing was pretty bad) but it was an important first step. Later, in 1989, Dave came to visit with a Tascam 4-track cassette deck, and we spent a full day recording a few of my tunes. The result was a tape that I foisted on a number of people I knew. That work sounds pretty embarrassing now, but it got me interested in putting together a home studio of my own.

In late July 1990 I arrived in Kashima, Japan to start what was intended to be a two-year stint as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT). It was not intended to be just an adventure, but also a means to a number of ends, one of the most important of which was advancing my musical "career". When I got my first paycheck in August I bought a cheap Casio keyboard and a Victor karaoke mike at an electronics store near my flat. In September, with the coming of my second paycheck (and a bit more security with my living situation), I went up to Mito and bought a Yamaha 4-track cassette recorder. Two weeks and a few experimental recordings later I bought my bass, which was followed a short time later by my "Yamacaster" electric guitar and a couple of Boss effectors. The studio setup I had then, if you could call it that, seems like a pathetic joke compared with what I have now, but it still allowed me to get started putting my musical ideas on tape. It wasn't long before I started putting those works together into albums, only available on cassette in those days, and sending them around to people. The positive responses I got encouraged me to keep going, adding and improving as I went along.

Out of the Cold (1992)

1. Center of Your Own World
2. Pantheon pt. I
3. Pantheon pt. II
4. Impasse Adventure Series
5. It's Snowing in Kamisu
6. Now
7. And Then
8. So Profound
9. Never Getting Better
10. Entropy
11. Wind My Soul Up Again
12. Oregon Weather
13. Mo Ikkai Anata Da

There is a bit of overlap between this album and Hirokawa Gakuen, above, but all of the songs were recorded while I was living in the little house in Kashima. This was a time when both the fact of my "gaijin-ness" and my isolation started getting to me. There were two significant events related to that that had a profound effect on the music. One was a student at one of my schools who had a strong crush on me. My Japanese coworkers there encouraged me to go out with her. I admit that I was sorely tempted to do so, but in the end my conscience wouldn't allow it. My Japanese coworkers accused me of being gay, the girl turned against me, and I felt rather depressed about the whole thing. About the same time all that was happening, however, the principal of one of my visit schools asked me to give free English lessons to his "child". I assumed it was either a grade school or junior high student. It turned out to be a woman in her twenties. It wasn't long before we became friends. It wasn't much longer until we were romantically involved. (We were married two years later...and still are.)

Center of Your Own World - This monstrosity of a song was actually one of the first tunes I wrote and recorded here in Japan. However, I (and others) liked the song so much, and the recording was so pathetic, that I remade it. This is the second version. I kept it mostly true to the original. It's one of the last tunes in which I used the Casio keyboard, which was replaced by a Yamaha synth soon afterward, but I used a Roland drum machine instead of the corny-sounding Casio drums (thank goodness).

Incidentally, there have been some misunderstandings as to the song's intent. It is NOT meant to be an attack on religion...though it is very much an attack on hypocrisy. During the last week or so before I came to Japan I stayed in a flat in Corvallis (my college town). During that time I saw a lot of a Japanese woman named Kyoko, who was a good friend of mine. We had both suffered a recent crisis. In my case I had just come off of yet another romantic episode that had started well but ended in a sudden, mind-boggling heartbreak. In her case she had been suddenly dumped by her (Catholic) fiance, kicked out of her (unofficially Baptist) co-op house, and ditched by her hitherto close circle of (born-again Christian) friends because of her refusal to convert to Christianity. (I had experienced something VERY similar in my high school days, so I could sympathize, though her case was much worse.) We gave each other a lot of very meaningful words of comfort during that last week before I left. This song summarizes and sometimes quotes directly what we said to each other. The phrase, "You're the center of your own world, no one else can be," was actually Kyoko's.

Pantheon pt. II - It isn't hard to tell that this song was inspired by the women that were keeping my limbic system in turmoil. It is interesting to note that the musical style is very obviously influenced by late 80s/early 90s Britpop, which had been introduced to me during that time by the "student" who soon became my girlfriend (and later my wife).

And Then - And then...another Britpop-influenced tune! The title comes from the fact that it was a follow-up to a totally different tune called "Now". After all those weeks of argument between my ego, id, superego, memories, denial, and reality, I had finally settled into something very good.

Never Getting Better - Here's an acoustic number that has been named as a favorite by some despite its rather negative outlook on life. (People were listening to this tune at a party once, and one of my friends said, "Ah, this is a good song. Most of [Moody's] are. But never, ever listen to the lyrics or it'll make you depressed!) I actually got the inspiration for it when I was watching the movie "Dances With Wolves" and a news report came on telling of an ethnic massacre somewhere in the "civilized" world.

Civilized my arse...

Oregon Weather - Okay, I'll include this short instrumental just because I've always liked it. It was one of the first tunes that I did featuring the Yamaha synth, though it also features my 12-string guitar.

Zirdo Now (1991)

1. Gunst
2. Inner Duality
3. Pyrex Jungle
4. Clackamette
5. Goon's Circus
6. Balkan Jig
7. A Matter of Time
8. Backroad Adventure
9. Alien
10. O Mama Luna
11. Together We Shall Go
12. Attitude Inversion
13. Various Geometric Figures Dance
14. Kyrie & Postlude

When I first started transferring my old tape albums to CD this was the earliest collection I was willing to make public. By the time of these recordings I had accumulated enough gear and know-how to produce works I could really feel good about. They still sound kind of silly compared to what I do nowadays, but some of these tunes are classics. I could hardly imagine remaking them simply because they have become part of the world just as they are.

Incidentally, the album title "Zirdo Now!" is an old joke dating from my early college days. There was a religious graffiti war in progress on a poster in the music building. I was really annoyed with the whole thing, so I injected the totally random and utterly meaningless phrase, "Zirdo now!" into it. The graffiti war came to a dead stop for a while, but then it started up again with people arguing for or against "zirdo"! I did something similar with the same word later at Oregon State, and the same thing happened. No one had any idea what "zirdo" was (because it wasn't anything!) but they were still willing to take sides and fight for or against it! What does THAT tell you about human nature?

I found out later that "zirdo" means "I am" in Enochian, the language supposedly spoken by the angels (which is why there's an angel on the album cover). Interesting coincidence...or is it?

Pyrex Jungle - [Inside joke alert!] Back in my high school days I started writing theme songs for each of my friends (and even a couple of people I didn't like) at the time. Most of them weren't serious efforts, and nothing much came of them. A few, however, were completed and actually performed live, including one I penned in 1988 to play at a memorial in honor of a friend who had just died of leukemia. Those three tunes became the so-called "Epic Trilogy". In 1991, when I was satisfied that my capabilities were good enough, I recorded the "Epic Trilogy". (It was included on the tape version of Zirdo Now and on a tribute compilation Don Snabulus made soon afterward in honor of our lost friend, but I left it off the CD because I intend to remake it in 2008.) That got me started thinking about other friends of mine who didn't have themes yet. I made and recorded several but wasn't satisfied with most of them. "Pyrex Jungle" is one of very few that made it to the CD.

This song is dedicated to none other than my friend Dewkid. Naturally, as a theme song for a friend, it is full of inside jokes that will leave the uninitiated scratching their heads. Still, I think this song is one of the most memorable I've ever made, and though I've oft been tempted to remake it, I think this version is too much of a classic to improve, poor sound quality and sloppy playing notwithstanding!

(Did I just say "notwithstanding"?)

Clackamette - This instrumental was thrown together and recorded to break in the Fender Stratocaster I had just bought. The title comes from a park in Oregon City, where the Clackamas River joins the Willamette, which was our favorite hangout in our late high school and early college days. I still like this tune and wonder if I should remake it. (Yes, I was feeling rather homesick at the time...)

A Matter of Time - I tossed this one in because it's a personal favorite of mine and also makes good use of all the gear I had at my disposal at the time including both the Casio keyboard and the Yamaha wind synth.

Alien - Culture shock is something that usually comes and goes in semi-regular intervals during at least the first few years one lives in a foreign country. It's also different each time it hits. The first wave is simply the burnout that comes after the honeymoon has completely worn off. The second is more of a feeling of total isolation even when surrounded by lots of people, i.e. the knowledge that you'll never fit in no matter what you do. To me the latter was far, far worse. I was feeling both intensely homesick and intensely lonely, and the circus-freak sort of hero worship a gaijin can tend to get here only made things worse.

The idea of this song came while I was (surprise, surprise) riding the train to Mito surrounded by gawking and giggling students. There are two Japanese-spoken interludes that were real-life incidents: a taxi driver who just could not understand my very clear and simple Japanese because he couldn't handle the idea of a gaijin speaking his language, and students debating how to talk to me in English only to panic and run away when I said hello. This is followed by station announcements one always heard when riding that particular train line. I actually used this song for listening comprehension practice in one of my classes, and it made a couple of students cry.

Together We Shall Go - Just to end on a happier note, here's something I don't do very often, a romantic song.

The (de)Formative Years (1991)

1. Kacho-San
2. Wakannai (v. 1)
3. Party Crowd
4. Daily Routine
5. Heckart Lodge
6. Rad World
The Call of Cthulhu:
7. Prelude/In The Box
8. Dance in the Bog
9. Castro's Confession
10. R'lyeh
11. Escape from R'lyah
12. The Colorman
13. Goodbye Chant

This is a collection of some of the representative works from my earliest home recording period. Needless to say, the quality is about as low as it can get, since I was feeling my way around in the dark with little in the way of equipment. Still, some of the songs are memorable classics. Many people still say they like these, and they do have plenty of sentimental value, so listen and accept them for what they are.

Kacho-San - This is a fairly early recording, dating from around Christmas in 1990. The fact that it's a 12-string acoustic and bass tune with Casio keyboard drums makes it a good example of my earlier style, but the appearance of my (brand new at the time) wind synth marks it as one from the 90-91 transition period. "Kacho-san" means "(department) chief" in Japanese, and the song was inspired by a true-life situation involving a friend's girlfriend and the (arrogant, belching, farting, drunk) department chief(s) that kept trying to hit on her. Par for the course in this country, at least in those days.

Rad World - In those days I was living in a government-subsidized apartment for prefectural workers. I think you can imagine how nice it wasn't. It was a crumbling, rust-and-mold-filled concrete box in the middle of the rice fields. I had lots of space...but I also had lots of unwanted company. I learned just how pesky...and how large...Japanese cockroaches can be. They're also very survivable. In fact, I've heard that cockroaches have a very high tolerance to radiation, meaning they're likely to survive a nuclear catastrophe. That was the inspiration for this song. So was the dual-speed setting of my multitrack recorder. :-)

Prelude/In The Box - This is the first two parts of the short rock opera I made inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's sci-fi horror story, "The Call of Cthulhu" as well as the Chaosium role-playing game of the same title. I actually wrote it while still in college. This tune is significant as it's one of the very first I made using a Roland drum machine instead of Casio keyboard drums. The drum part is programmed, but the keyboard parts were all played by hand since I didn't yet have a sequencer or MIDI capability. (Unfortunately, now that I rely on sequencers and MIDI, I no longer have the ability to play that tune by hand! It's a trade-off...)

I'm planning on remaking the entire 5-movement CoC rock opera, hopefully sometime soon.

The Colorman - [Inside joke alert!] I sincerely apologize for this, but I knew my friends would never forgive me if I didn't include it. Yes, this is the same Colorman who appears in the "Radio ZRDO" show on the Acerola Cola????!? album. There's a long story behind both this song and the Colorman character, and I won't bother explaining it here.

Goodbye Chant - [Inside joke alert!] There is NO WAY I'm ending this with "The Colorman", so I'll finish up with the last tune on the album, a nice (if a bit ill-timed) bit of eight-part harmony lovingly recorded on a 4-track cassette deck. Now that I've gone back to the beginning of my recording, the time has come at last to say goodbye. Goodbye!