Doctor Joan
Dr. Joan Feynman died in July 2020. Her brother, Richard, was of course much, much more famous, with a Nobel Prize and a wealth of stories to his credit. But his little sister, a world acclaimed expert on auroras and the magnetosphere, wasn't exactly a slouch. This is to Heather Dale and Ben Deschamps' Joan of Arc song "Joan."
Twisty Passage
This is sort of my own version of Frank Hayes' "When I Was a Boy" — a nostalgic look at some of the earliest command-line computer games like Adventure/Colossal Caves and Zork, set to Stan Rogers' "Northwest Passage" by way of Wm. Mark Simmons' "Goddard Passage."
Take Force
May 4 is celebrated as Star Wars Day ("May the Fourth Be With You") and as Dave Brubeck Day (5/4, as in the time signature of his quartet's legendary "Take Five," composed by saxophonist Paul Desmond). I thought: Why not both?
Psycho Kitten
Another Talking Heads parody, examining feline behavior to the tune of "Psycho Killer."
Mousieborn
Another short piece mashing up the "Pinky and the Brain" theme by Tom Ruegger and Richard Stone with Jeremy Soule's music for Skyrim...
Lemons
One-chorus-and-verse quickie that I sometimes use as a sound check, TTTO the Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House" and inspired by Cave Johnson's final speech in Portal 2...
One of Us
This is based on a campaign sign for a local election that I saw painted on the side of a building as I drove through a small town late one night. The slogan, "He's one of us," takes on a bit of a different connotation when you've read too many of a certain kind of book or watched too many of a certain kind of movie or TV show...
Matching Tie and Facemask
One of the first songs I wrote after the pandemic started, as may be inferred from the subject matter...