Preview of the second Right Arm of Wyoming CD. 16-minute MP3 with five songs, no vocals yet, but everything else is close to where it needs to be.

I played every single note on this, mostly while up very late at night. It sounds like I was playing loud, but it was recorded very quietly, with headphones on, through a tiny amp, while my wife slept.

If I get inspired I may finish these five songs and release as a free download-only five-song EP.

I pressed 1000 of the first ten-song CD, sold about 100, which made me break even, but sales have gone down since I put it online. But I don’t want to NOT put it online, everything always gets more downloads than sales.

And it’s a lot of work to mail CDs around, and most people burn ‘em to MP3s these days anyway. And I like the immediacy of just doing it and getting it out there. And I’m not doing this for money. It’s a hobby and a mission.

I like the idea of doing EP-size releases from now on too….why wait nine or 12 months between releases…..just bang out a new EP every four or five months. Might work better from a promotional stance too, more chances to have people blog it….I’d rather release a five-song EP every five months than a ten-song LP-length batch every ten months.

About the”Pink Floyd meets Ministry meets Dead Kennedys meets Minor Threat meets Brian Eno meets Nick Cave.”:

I’m not saying it’s as good as all of those, only that those are influences. I wear my influences on my sleeve, I don’t hide them. I try to come up with something that’s original overall, but I can give exact points I hear those influences:

Minor Threat - the verse in the first song. The part from zero to 29 seconds in the file, which also repeats later in that piece. Drums, bass and guitar sound a lot like most of the “Out of Step” record.

Ministry - The second chorus in that same first song. From 54 seconds to 1 minute five seconds. By the way, there are about 16 guitar tracks there, playing exactly the same rhythm, then I looped four and eight bars of it.

Dead Kennedys - drums, bass and especially guitar in the song with gunfire in it…from 8:09 to 10:09

Pink Floyd - the rhythm guitar in the dubby song is very much like the guitar on Pigs (3 Different Ones) from Animals. Compare my guitar at 11:10 into the file to the guitar under the line “Big man, pig man, ha ha charade you are” in that Pink Floyd song.

Some of the slide guitar in that same song is Floydian too.

Brian Eno - the chorus in the last song sounds to me like “Blank Frank” era eno…i.e the “Here Come the Warm Jets” record. From 14:52 in the file to 15:24. The overall joyous feel of that chorus reminds me of Eno, but also the melodic guitar reminds me of Fripp when he plays pop.

I forgot another influence:

The Birthday Party - (or some Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) - the drums, and especially bass and guitar on that same song, the song that starts at 13:49. Some of the guitar in that is also influenced by the guitar playing from Big Brother and the Holding Company (Janis Joplin’s band), especially the discordant dual lead guitars in her version of “Summertime.” There’s also a little Greg Ginn Black Flag guitar in there, circa “My War.”

Oi! - I didn’t mention it here as an influence, but I did elsewhere. The whole singing and chorus in the one that has some singing, “Fight the Way” (from 6:51 to 8:00 in the file)

OVERALL NOTES

Lyrics on this EP will be less like a libertarian lecture (like the first CD) and more simple rallying cries….more “Unite and Fight!” rather than “the current administration is ignoring the 10th Amendment and it’s exceedingly unconscionable, because it violates the Non-Aggression Principal and furthermore the proliferation of Keynesian Economics is entirely not acceptable.”

Also, overall, compared to the first record, these songs are shorter and faster.

And I’ve figured out a little more about mixing and EQ, so even on these rough mixes, the bass guitar and drums sound better than the first record.

–Michael W. Dean