1) what it is - 5:24 - 2) who gives a funk? - 4:48 - 3) what time is it? - 0:46 - 4) where is jim? - 28:53 - 5) the new vast ineptitude (southern northeast western BBQ dinner dance @ the hyper dimensional space-time boundary north of heaven - magnetic signature of a higher level state space) - 15:34 - 6) what is it? - 2:15 - 7) space-time continuum (continued) - 5:33 - 8) in and of itself - 3:05 - 9) going to santa cruz - 3:41 - 10) alma street - 4:42 - 11) amy 1 (remix) - 1:10 / LIK ROPER – percussion and vocals - JAMES PATRICK FINLEY - guitar - MICHAEL WAITE FINLEY - bass guitar - all songs written, performed and produced by lik roper - *except for what it is - written by lik roper, james patrick finley and michael waite finley - and who gives a funk? - written by lik roper and michael waite finley / and where is jim? written and performed by james patrick finley / all tracks engineered by lik roper - *except for what it is & who gives a funk? - engineered by tom giatron, mark yamamoto and lik roper / all tracks copyright 2004 lik roper *except for what it is copyright 2004 lik roper, james patrick finley and michael waite finley / and who gives a funk? copyright 2004 lik roper and michael waite finley / where is jim? copyright 2004 james patrick finley / amy 1 copyright 2003 lik roper / all songs published 2004 lik roper/bmi *except for what it is published 2004 lik roper, james patrick finley and michael waite finley/bmi - who gives a funk? published 2004 lik roper and michael waite finley/bmi - where is jim? published 2005 james patrick finley/bmi & amy 1 published 2003 lik roper/bmi - the terms 'hyperdimensional space-time boundary' and 'magnetic signature of a higher level state space' originated from scientist and ex-NASA consultant richard c. hoagland @ http://www.enterprisemission.com - made in USA / all rights reserved / roper records LRCD 6.2828 / unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws / LRE - p.o. box 3617 santa clara, california 95055-3617 / http://likroper.com.previewyoursite.com/ >>> GREATEST BAND NEVER! -- it's not a band, it's an argument!

best of noise cd artwork

no jumping from bridge!

THE MAKING OF LIK ROPER BEST OF NOISE

the first photo at the top of this web page is a water tank at the highway 17 summit...while driving on the way over the mountain to santa cruz last september 23rd, i got a piece of plastic wrap caught on my hood, so i pulled over at the summit and removed it...i noticed the water tank, pulled over for a second and got my camera out to take a bunch of pictures...there were two CHP officers sitting on motorcycles watching me take the photo (please remember to always drive safely on highway 17 - AND DO NOT DRINK AND DRIVE!)...

the second picture is a photo of a foot/railroad bridge in santa cruz, california...i went over to santa cruz to take this bridge shot, and sent an email out to the santa cruz city council (and the world) the very same morning assuring them that i was not going to blow up the bridge after i took a photo of it...i know, how absurd is that!?!...it's funny but it's not funny, you know?...on a whim, i posterized the pic to make orange-colored sky as a way to protest nuclear weapons proliferation (see below) anyway, i took about 50 shots and used this one...

i took a bunch from the other side of the bridge, and one of them is now on the inside of the cd sleeve - as an afterthought that talented artist stewart at MIDWEST DISC (now crystal clear disc and tape @ http://www.crystalclearcds.com) suggested we negatize the NO JUMPING sign and put it on the inside as a change-up from the back cover -- it gave the cd a really dark look to it -- this is the first cd i have made where i am am totally happy with the artwork and the music...usually it is one or the other; this time it is both...

since i have a recording of a train at the end of the BEST OF NOISE cd (because my brother who passed away a few years ago loved trains) i had a revelation one day that the railroad bridge photo on the back cover of the cd would fit the train theme, and also complement the next NO JUMPING FROM BRIDGE sign...the NO JUMPING sign ended up on the inside of the jewel box cover lid instead of on the front cover of the cd...the photo was taken during the day in fremont, california way back in the early to mid 1990s...

about a year ago i came up with a default plan to release a noise compilation just to pass the time because it looked like i was not going to complete 'keepers of the funk' on time (the next lik roper cd, which is 70% done) and i initially figured that 'best of noise' would be just a bunch of noise that might make people want to jump from a bridge or something, thus 'no jumping from bridge', but it actually turned out in my opinion to be a quite soothing and mellow recording...

the NO JUMPING photo was supposed to be on the cd cover originally, but i backed off on the idea when i saw the water tank photo - besides, i figured that the NO JUMPING sign on the cover would have too many negative suicide connotations attached to it, even though the people who actually jumped from the bridge in fremont did it just for fun, and only dropped down about 10-15 feet into the water...

the next time i drove by the NO JUMPING sign, it was gone...i always knew that the photo would come in handy someday, but i didn't know when (i recently modified it w/inversion and grayscale)...i couldn't really use the photo during the clinton era, as it was all up and up, but i always suspected there might come a day when things go politically awry...and while i did have a tough year 2005 - i have never considered suicide, but i do know some who have, and let's just say the sign saying NO JUMPING FROM BRIDGE can also be seen as a way of telling them or anyone else to stay strong and keep yourself alive; we need you here, whoever you are...

what it is & who gives a funk? – ‘what it is’ first started out sometime in the mid 1980s as a wild experimental demo recorded by myself on an old friend’s 4-track tape recorder…it initially had generally the same drum beat, with one track containing a droning single note bass line, and another with a glass bottleneck slide played on a bass making sounds like charlie brown’s teacher, and crazy percussive background noises over that...i really liked the original demo and plan on incorporating some of the bottleneck slide bass ideas into what i do later on down the road, but those ideas unfortunately did not make it into this track...i wasn’t quite sure what it was, so i called it ‘what it is’, instead of calling it ‘what is it?’, which is what i was wondering at the time (‘what is it’ eventually and sort of haphazardly became the title of track #6 as a change-up from track #1)…

> the term ‘what it is’ is also sometimes used as a slang question for ‘how’s it going?’ or ‘what’s happening?’ the whole ‘best of noise’ cd track order later became a conversation of sorts starting out as ‘what it is?’ – answered by ‘who gives a funk?’ – then ‘what time is it?’ etc >

somewhere around this time a old friend from high school called me up and asked me to roadie for his band jetboy…he initially asked me to join the original incarnation of the band, but i declined the offer because i was in a band already with mike and jim, and i quite honestly could not believe that he was a singer, as he had sort of half-assed played the drums for years, then just took a turn one day and said he wanted to be a singer…

(here are some jetboy links: http://www.jetboyrocks.com/ - http://www.myspace.com/jetboyrocks - http://www.philandersononline.com/photography/music/jetboy/ - and here is jet guitarist billy's other band american heartbreak @ http://www.churchofrockandroll.net/index.html)

one day he told me that jetboy had just played with a band called poison down in hollywood and there was a swimming pool full of naked women at the hotel after the last show!?!…he wanted to know if i could roadie for the band!?!...next thing i know we are all heading down to LA with a 16 year old dreadlocked san franciscan rastafarian roadie/bus driver with no driver’s license, in an old school bus with no seats, no registration and no toilet - our other roadie was named harley - his parents were bikers and named him accordingly...

DRUNK SEX-CRAZED DRUM ROADIE - the singer of jetboy (mikki) made t-shirts and this shirt was one of his creations - at this point in time metal and punk rock were merging and i suppose this was my way of expressing it - mikki once explained the glam rock phenomenon something like this; glam rock exploded during the 1980s, and having longer and prettier hair than the chicks (or even wearing makeup - which i never did) and/or having chicks pay for your dinner tab (etc) was not only a way of turning the tables on convention and saying FUCK YOU to all the money-sucking gold digger chicks (new gold diggers file sexual harassment lawsuits and/or receive out-of-court settlements), but also to all the violent short-haired macho military assholes and/or skinhead freaks who were around at the time (the 1980s was an era dominated by the military industrial complex) this photo was taken backstage at a gig with faster pussycat in san diego during a three day jaunt - the next day jetboy played at the LA street scenes block party right before the band great white, and the night before was a gig opening for guns n roses at the whiskey a go-go in hollywood (photo: JJ)...

all the band’s equipment was stored unsecured in the back of the bus, and if by chance we ever got into a wreck, the equipment would have slid forward and crushed us all to death…i learned how to pee into an empty quart bottle of beer around this time, because it is not a good idea to stop an entire busload of sleeping people just because you want to piss…

anyway, i went on to roadie many jetboy shows; we played with at least a few bands that went on to make it very big like guns n roses (or GNR), poison and jane’s addiction among others...i lived in hollywood for a few months and even had a girlfriend who lived with GNR’s photographer robert john and his girlfriend…photo slides of GNR were laying all over his apartment, and when I was bored I would sit around and look at them…you know; drunk slash with five naked heffer chicks etc - jetboy’s bass player todd crew was slash’s best friend, and while i don’t want to sound like greg kihn, i am always proud to announce that i used to get todd his blue hawaiians and lit cigarettes onstage while he played…

todd got kicked out of jetboy and replaced by hanoi rocks’ bass player sammy yaffa just months before he died from a heroin overdose in a new york hotel room, and i have always felt that being ejected from jetboy was what led to his depression and early demise from excessive drug use...right after todd got kicked out, he was calling jetboy’s apartment in LA threatening over the phone that guns n roses were gonna ‘kick our asses’ or something…the same night that he said this, drummer ron and i saw duff and drummer steven at a club and they were not mad at us in the least…duff stumbled in the club drunk as usual with a chick under each arm, and steven was as friendly as ever, no wrath – just the usual smile and hello…

axl spewed angry rants about jetboy and todd every night while out opening for motley crue their first time out touring, but that anger only came from axl after todd died, not before, just to clear things up - axl was less than friendly to me almost every time i encountered him, so i tend to think this was his own personal way of reacting to what happened, as that is likely just the way he is...

todd spent most of his time hanging around in LA partying with slash (oftentimes at a place he called 'the big house' up in the hills above hollywood) when his band had just signed a major record deal...that strategy worked for GNR, but unfortunately not for todd...and! attempts to contact sam yaffa happened AFTER todd was asked to leave the band, not before as todd and some others thought, and probaby still think for all i know…i can attest to you that i was there and MCA in europe was contacted 1-2 days after todd was fired, not before…

anyway, one saturday night in LA the drummer of jetboy and i saw todd out partying after he got kicked out, and based on how he was acting and how he looked i predicted that he was going to kill himself with drugs, and i was right; he died a few months later…me and almost everyone else in jetboy had recently read danny sugerman’s book about jim morrison, and i suppose todd was trying a little too hard to live out the fantasy…

todd went from being a very bright young man in college - to heroin addict - to dead in a matter of a few short years - regardless; he inspired me to grow my hair really long and let loose and party, and every now and then when i get drunk, i think about todd, because todd crew went to LA with a beer cooler, sleeping bag, and a dream – and that’s kind of cool if you ask me...

one day while the band and i were hanging out at scarpati’s place in downtown LA (scarpati was a photographer with an industrial loft and a freight elevator as a front door) we were all sitting around bored, so i gave todd a tiny airline bottle of hard liquor that i got on a recent flight to roadie for them at the whisky a go go, and he immediately sucked it down and sprung to life - he now wanted to get some tacos and beers just down the street near a local construction site…let’s go...we then took the tacos and beers up to the roof of the industrial loft and walked across a catwalk to the top of the adjacent building…as we sat and ate our tacos and drank our beers, he told me about his stint as a roadie for GNR in england…

GNR went over great in england, and as he pointed his finger straight up in the air, he said “they’re (GNR) going straight to the top” (and they did)…he also said “you’ll get your chance” (and i did)...i eventually got to play drums on tour with jetboy and sammy yaffa, and sam really liked my drumming…hanoi rocks’ drummer razzle had recently died in a car crash with vince neil of motley crue, and sam said that i was the first drummer since razzle he felt comfortable with, and this meant the world to me…sammy is way cool…

todd was a drunk prophet of sorts who could somehow see the future that he himself would not live to see (?)…he taught me how to party but he also taught me restraint as a survival mechanism…he didn’t practice his musical instrument as much as i did, but he was cool and had a rock n roll swagger that the chicks loved…

(note: some musicians spend their lives practicing, others just go out and do it, and todd was one of those who wasn’t all that technically proficient on bass - he just went out and did it…so let this be an uncle roper lesson to all you young musicians out there; quit wasting your time in the garage - start rehearsing in front of crowds, it will kick you up a notch and get things on the road, so to speak…practice is good - but performance is better…just jump in the pool - it may feel a little cold at first, but you’ll get used to it - learn to practice in front of crowds)

one day before one particular keystone palo alto gig, todd told me about how he got drunk that morning, took a nap, woke up, got drunk again and fucked some groupie chicks right before sound check!?! - yes; i have seen and heard it all people, and i hope to write about at least some of the juicy details someday, but for now - to make a long story short; jetboy eventually got signed and then later dumped by elektra records shortly after singer mikki finn threw a fit over how his hair looked on the album cover…

one morning just before christmas, he got the new jetboy album cover art delivered to him by UPS from elektra (at the hollywood apartment we shared at the time) and he immediately called his manager to bitch about how terrible his hair looked (elektra was the main record label for metallica and motley crue at the time)...he ordered his manager to call the record company and demand that his hair look better on the cover art!…after all; fernie rod had black hair and it looked good against a yellow background, but billy and mikki’s hair wasn’t visible enough!…

mikki thought that his mohawk was the band’s trademark, and it needed to be very apparent on the album cover…after all; he did spend hours getting the damn thing to stand straight up, so it probably should have been clearly visible...but! if you are a new band on a major label, and the whole art department is away for christmas vacation, you should probably just shut your fucking mouth and go with the flow, and maybe make changes to the next pressing or something - jetboy was dumped from elektra the very next month on january 14th, and after bidding wars and tons of red tape, they were picked up again by MCA records about year or so later...but by this time, the glam rock juggernaut was starting to tank, and after finally making back MCA’s initial million dollar investment in the band, the jetboys were dropped from the label…

(i say ‘the jetboys’ because one time after playing to a crowd of 9,000 people in puerto rico, some of us went out to a disco and there was a roped-off section for the band to sit in with a foil sign that said ‘the jetboys’ – instead of jetboy)…

here's a photo of mister roper holding a heineken beer and getting his hair smooshed by a friendly puerto rican lady ~ below is a photo of billy rowe of jetboy and mister roper with the same frisky lady seen above, along with her hot friend - these generous girls gave mister roper a ride back to his hotel room...

a souvenir from graceland

they initially started out on a club tour with the band kix, then took a week off and started their first major arena tour with the band stryper...the week before this, jetboy’s drummer had taken one too many of the wrong pills and drank too much of this and that (or something - i don't know all the details), and consequently pulled an eddie money by falling asleep on his arm…he had no idea there was nerve damage in his arm until sound check of the first night of their arena tour a week later - needless to say, the first night of the tour was a nightmare for the jetboys, with stryper roadies sitting in and jamming on some terribly played unrehearsed songs…

(note: jetboy sometimes seemed to have the curse of todd crew on them or something, because the night before playing their first day on the green in oakland opening for motley crue in front of thousands of people months before the stryper tour, singer mikki, rhythm guitarist billy and bass player sammy got in a head on collision while driving on highway 5 coming up from LA for the show the night before…billy broke his arm and had to get a metal plate inserted so he couldn’t play guitar for awhile, and lead guitarist fernie never bothered learning billy’s rhythm parts, so the motley crue day on the green gig was an absolute disaster)…

the next day i met a 28 year old girl while out working, and she invited me over that night…while chatting, she said that she had an out of body experience and came face to face with the devil!?!...as i started leaving, she started putting on lipstick, saying that she “wanted an element of innocence in her life” (in other words; me!?!) i went to guitar center and hung out for an hour or so, then headed home...when i arrived home, my dad said that members of jetboy had just called and they had to know in 15 minutes if i could jump on a plane and fly out to florida and play in front of 15,000 people the very next day, with no rehearsal!?! (just like led zeppelin did in the movie the song remains the same!?! no way!)…

i originally viewed this as some sort of heavy religious experience, and it probably was for all i know depending on how you look at it (rock n roll is a form of religion, you know) - but later after thoroughly researching the topic of organized religion, i realized that much of the formation of ancient religious beliefs could very well have been connected to extraterrestrial involement with the human race, so...

adding to this; it seems those who embrace christianity seem to be abducted less by aliens in UFOS, so at this point i figure at very least maybe the crosses that i carry around and think about will perhaps save me from alien abduction or something; who knows -- i now see jesus as essentially a political revolutionary who overturned the roman empire, more than anything - and 'the christ condition' as being a spiritual condition that anyone can take on...

moving right along, my dad then gave me a ride to san francisco airport and i flew out that night, first to st. louis, then on to tampa...i had just purchased a sony walkman and the new jetboy tape down at wherehouse records, so this was all i needed to rehearse with drumsticks on my knees while flying out…we went on to play all over the southern united states - and even puerto rico (said by some to be a major UFO portal to underground bases), over the next two weeks...i was told on the last night that if they got a new drummer, i was the man, but since drummer ron was in the record contract and wanted to keep on keeping on, he could keep his job…

TOUR ITINERARY - the first gig i played was at the civic center arena in lakeland florida - 7,000 (attendance) / then on to the lee civic center in north fort myers florida - 4,000 / hiram bithorn stadium in san juan puerto rico - 9,000 / UNO lakefront arena in new orleans louisiana - 2,700 / mississippi coliseum in jackson mississippi - 4,000 / villa real convention center in mcallen texas - 2,850 / laurie auditorium in san antonio texas - 2,000 / austin opera house in austin texas - 2,000 (good gig - i played great and watched the 49ers win the super bowl while screaming my head off in the catering room) / auditorium north hall in memphis tennessee - 2,000 / fox theatre in st. louis missouri - 3,000 / houston music hall in houston texas - 2,500 / hard rock cafe in dallas texas / fair park coliseum in dallas texas - 4,000...

TOUR HIGHLIGHTS - 1) drunk drummer ron bought a pellet pistol at a kmart somewhere in middle america and waived it in front of my face on the tour bus for playing so good and almost taking his job - 2) the morning of my second gig in fort myers florida, some irate fuckers sitting near us in a denny's first said 'what are you all faggots or something?' as a way to start the conversation, then threatened to kick our asses (they were eventually given free passes to the show that night) - 3) we pulled into a small truck stop late one night (actually some kind of trailer/restaurant conversion) and i took one look and said 'i aint going in there', then about 30 seconds later the entire band came running out after being threatened by some nightmarish backwards middle american folks (likely bush administration supporters) - 4) my consistently drunk (and often annoying) running-around-the-hotel-naked ex-marine drum roadie would sing a line from the book of rock n roll for almost every situation we encountered on the road - 5) the only thing jetboy (billy) listened to on this tour was AC/DC and john cougar mellencamp, and to this day whenever i hear a song by either of those groups it reminds me of the tour - 6) SEX SCANDAL! the nicest and prettiest debutantes were in texas; lots of long-legged beauties! - 7) DOPING SCANDAL! the best weed was in texas as well; cheap but potent mohawken weed (likely from across the border) walked into our tour bus wherever we went (along with the ladies) - 8) FUN FACT: our tour bus was used by singer/songwriter richard marx right before we got it, and the jetboy crew allegedly found tons of women's panties and empty coke seals underneath the seats!? - 9) in austin, texas our second tour bus driver ran into the front overhang of a big hotel with a glass elevator, and we rode up and down the glass elevator that night, smoking weed and giggling like 3 year olds as horrified people in suits and ties got on and off the elevator - 10) our first tour bus driver was fired in miami for falling asleep in the wrong hotel parking lot with our tour bus after doing coke all night with stryper roadies, and the new driver was named mario andretti because of the crazy way he drove - 11) THE JUAREZ INCIDENT: i still don't know what really happened in juarez, mexico - but it was referred to me as 'the juarez incident' and everybody seemed to have a good laugh over it; i think it had something to do with taxi cabs, crooked cops and prostitutes or something like that - 12) i met an experienced groupie in san antonio texas who said i was the nicest guy she ever met on a tour bus, and other than mickey D i was the best drummer she had ever seen in her life (she later admitted to me that she fell in love with me at first sight)...

i eventually got dumped off by the tour bus in hollywood after the tour ended and stayed at my buddy pete’s place for a few days, then went over to the tour manager’s house and got my plane ticket to fly home (while it was without a doubt one of the greatest experiences of my life, i hope that i never have anyone sleeping outside a hotel room of mine EVER again…you know; people either end up unhappy due to fame, or unhappy due to the lack thereof - so i say it’s best to just don’t worry and be happy)...

anyway, a year or so later, my best buddy on the tour (soundman tommy) called and asked if i wanted to fly out to phoenix and record some drum tracks…i went out and bought a new oversized sonor phonic plus drum set with my credit card (the bass drum is 24” x 24”) then flew out to phoenix shortly after…

i practiced the drum tracks that i planned to record for a good month before flying out, and nailed them fairly quickly when recording...while recording my drum tracks on tommy’s mom’s back porch (tommy called it T&A studios – for tits and ass…a reference to his ex-stripper girlfriend i suppose), the next door neighbors were having a little gathering in the adjacent backyard with a phoenix senator who was helping them fight the idea of putting a highway through just down the street…they wanted us to quiet down until the senator left…oops! (i’ll bet you the highway went through because phoenix was like the santa clara/silicon valley at the time, developing like crazy all over the place)…

i recorded the drums for ‘what it is’ and 'who gives a funk?' right at the end of our phoenix recording session and had no idea that i would get to it first before all the other tracks (the next few cds will largely come from those drum tracks) but that’s how it goes sometimes in guess…my timing was not as good as it could have been, but i determined that it was a usable section of drum track to loop...the main drum lick of ‘what it is’ is essentially a slowed-down section in the song ‘the bicycle thief’ where michael played a walking jazz bassline for a few measures…i just took that part and made an entire song out of it…

after flying back home, my friend mark thought we had a 12-track digital recorder available for our usage at a studio in santa cruz, so i wanted to get the drum tracks out of the original analog format (which had been recorded on a tascam 8-track reel to reel recorder sped-up to 30 ips for a cleaner recording) and onto 12-track akai ADAM digital format…

i was having a heck of a time getting tommy to send out the drum tracks to me, so i literally had to send out $500 dollars to a complete stranger who had a studio with an akai ADAM 12 track digital recorder in phoenix …the ADAM unit was the only multi-track digital recorder in existence at the time (the pricetag was $25,000!) and the only one in the bay area had just been leased out to lucas films for film soundtrack production by leo’s in oakland!?!…

after going through all that to get the master tapes dumped onto akai ADAM 12 track format, we drove all the way out to the studio in santa cruz, but it turned out to have a roland 12 track analog recorder instead!?!...on one hand; it was good that we got the phoenix reel to reel tapes transferred over to digital format because you can transfer digital to digital endlessly with no noise or frequency loss – but bad because the process of completing the phoenix tapes stopped right there - in a rush, i put together ‘music from outer space’ (or MFOS) and it sort of haphazardly became the very first lik roper cd, which was just a compilation of the ‘best of’ what i had on my old tascam 246 multi-track cassette tape recorder, mixed down to a DAT tape at this same santa cruz studio a few weeks later...MFOS was essentially a bunch of noise purposefully done like neil young's 'warp', and the antithesis of what I had involved myself with in the years before this; overblown arena-glam rock, and self-indulgent guitar music - which ‘best of noise’ sort of leans towards once again…

i heard that bruce springsteen recorded an entire album with a tascam 246, so I set out to do the same...MFOS had no distorted guitars or big drums to take up lots of frequecies, so what I wanted to do was doable on a tascam 246…oddly enough; MFOS got more airplay on college radio than any cd I have done since then…

in the meantime; the phoenix akai ADAM 12-track tapes sat for about four years in my sister’s old closet at my dad’s house, sealed in foil, zip-loc baggies and tupperware containers…it wasn’t until 1996 that I almost accidentally found a guy in san jose who happened to have a friend with an akai ADAM, so i paid the guy big money to rent his machine for a day or two and dump the phoenix akai format through compressors into two of mark’s linked alesis ADAT recorders..around this same time, mark came over with his alesis ADAT machines and miced up my drum kit, and I proceeded to record about 15-20 more drum tracks (which I will be mixing in with the phoenix tracks on future lik roper cds)…

i eventually bought a roland VS1680 16 track digital recorder, and a JL cooper datasynch2 with a midiman SAM to negotiate between the alesis ADAT and the roland VS1680...it was so difficult getting all of the alesis ADAT tapes transferred over to the VS1680, i didn’t even turn on the VS1680 for about a year after this…when i did finally crack open the case and try to figure out how to use the VS1680, the first drum tracks i worked on were what eventually became shaikhyerfunkiass/don’t gimme no lip/keep the EPA (the same music with three separate lyrical interpretations) and ‘what it is’, but I had NO INTENTION of putting any of these onto lik roper cds when recording them…i thought i was just messing around as usual, then I ended up using it…

the drums for ‘what it is’ were recorded right at the end of the phoenix sessions, and when the transfer in phoenix occurred between the original 8-track reel to reel tapes and the akai ADAM, the track cut off prematurely at about 50 seconds, so i looped it 3 times...the seam in the drum track where the loop starts over seemed too obvious even though it flowed, so i recorded noises over the loop seam to cover it up...i was doing karaoke alot down at the acapulco restaurant at the time, so at the drum loop seam i made the same noises that the crowd made when mexican karaoke music came on, and i also ran my hands down piano keys at the loop seam on another track (i eventually mixed out the piano altogether)…

i then recorded a droning single-note piano part over the drums with a strummed piano ringing out at the beginning, a bongo part and a cabasa-like shaker part as well, and it sat like this for about a year until jim finally played something over it (of all this, i ended up keeping only the shaker track and a piano track) it was our first recording session at the new finley manor, and i showed up a bit late so jim just sort of rushed through a third of a guitar take, put the guitar down and said something like; “that’s it, take me to the liquor store”...i figured we would record more the next week, so i looped the guitar three times over my looped drums, and listened back to it…it seemed to work for whatever reason, so i just kept the take and ended up using it on the cd…you know, my drums were looped so why not loop jim’s guitar as well?…

it wasn’t until about a year later that michael finally recorded bass over the track, but unlike jim and i, he played straight through the entire track (there will hopefully be no more looped drums on future lik roper music, as i consider it cheating in a sense)…

originally i told michael to just play randomly but within rhythm, and i did not allow him to listen to jim’s guitar track, to experiment like old pink floyd music and see what would happen…turns out it was a bad idea, but there was one section where he played bass harmonics for a few seconds, so i came back and asked him to pick bass harmonics over the entire song while wearing monitor headphones and listening to jim’s guitar part…jim pretty much invented picking harmonics on guitar way back when he wrote ‘south of heaven’ (more than a decade before puddle of mudd’s song ‘blurry’, mind you) and this was reminiscent of it (van halen taps harmonics, jimmy picks them – big difference)…

i then had michael listen to his harmonic bass part on headphones and simultaneously play over it with slap-funk bass as i yipped and yelled in the background while clapping my hands to the beat - when i finally got to work on the music in mid november 2004, jim called me in a panic one night saying something about playing gigs tomorrow with the band we didn’t have yet, (?) but i was then slipping into my semi-hibernational winter mode and had no intentions of doing much else than producing and pressing up the ‘best of noise’ cd by the beginning of spring, which i did...i was kind of mad at jim at the time for being so annoying, so in retaliation i removed the heavy and tougher sounding distorted guitar tone from ‘what it is' and instead applied a relatively wimpier clean tone delay riff effect, which actually turned out rather nicely…

i eventually bounced michael’s bass signal through a guitar amp with distortion to another v-track or virtual track and panned him to the middle (all 16 tracks have 13 virtual tracks connected to them so you don’t have to erase any tracks, and digital editing enables you to use different parts of different tracks to make one best-of track out of all of them)…distorted guitar and bass would have gotten too messy and taken up too many frequecies, so the delay riff guitar treatment was perfect…

i originally thought all of jim and michael’s guitar and bass tracks would mix together, but it didn’t work frequency-wise (a lot of frequency washover) so i made two separate tracks; one with michael’s harmonic bass over jim’s guitar and my drums and percussion – which became ‘what it is’; and another with drums and michael’s slap bass which eventually became ‘who gives a funk’, because michael did not seem interested beyond recording these tracks - but lucky for us; michael gave a funk for a minute or two...

what time is it? - if you listen to tracks 1 and 2, there is a sort of droning piano tone at the beginning of the song that slowly fades…that sound is essentially the last remains of my original piano noodlings on ‘what it is’, with the track isolated and allowed to ring out alone, much like the ringing piano note at the end of the beatles song ‘a day in the life’...strangely; this 48 seconds of sound took me the longest of all the tracks to mix down to the proper volume level in context with the tracks coming before and after it…i swear i must have burned at least 50 tracks onto CDR before i got it right…very frustrating, but worth the struggle when i finally stepped back with perspective and listened to the finished product…

where is jim? - the first 7 minutes and 40 seconds of this track is an actual guitar solo that jim played straight through, and the rest i cut and pasted on the end from excess v-tracks (much like how one would do on a computer)...some of it is the actual isolated raw guitar parts from ‘what it is’, brought back as a subliminal return of a theme…for years, jim’s friends have enjoyed sitting around listening to him go on and on playing endless guitar, and this 28+ minute track was my way of re-creating this so now we can all sit around and listen to jim endlessly noodle on his guitar…

the new vast ineptitude (southern northeast western BBQ dinner dance @ the hyper dimensional space-time boundary north of heaven - magnetic signature of a higher level state space) – the term ‘vast ineptitude’ was one which senator dick gephardt used to describe something a few years ago, i can’t remember quite what - probably a reference to the bush administration…it is also a reference to jim when he is drunk, and an answer to “where is jim?...i also metaphorically used it as a reference to the state of california schools; funding cuts and the ensuing new vast ineptitude…

southern northeast western (SNEW) bbq dinner dance was originally the anithesis of northern southwest eastern (NSEW) post-rebellion ritual…this was just wordplay describing the nature of the tracks (and probably the tour i had been on, but i didn't think about it at the time) which each had two forward and two backwards tracks; 4-tracks altogether, originally done on a tascam 246 as an experiment...

i saw some asian lady on the discovery channel one night making music by bouncing what looked like ball bearings on the top of a piano, so i figured i would try a similar experiment with golf balls on my dad’s old baby grand piano...after running 5 or 6 separate previously unconnected drum tracks out of my tascam 246, through a compressor and onto a DAT machine, i then ran the strung-together drum tracks back into the tascam 246…

i miced up the piano with the 246 unit, and then proceeded to bounce golf balls on the piano strings forwards and backwards over the taped drums…i would simply record over one side of the tape, then flip it over and record over the other side etc…

i thought this was the biggest mess of noise anyone had ever made, like i was playing a joke on everyone - but like i said before; once i sent it out to college radio, some stations were playing it for up to a year after i sent it out!?!…some deadhead who worked at a record store in palo alto said it sounded like a grateful dead freakout section - it would 'melt some walls' he said...it is also very purposefully yoko ono-ish because i enjoy her artistic audacity - since ‘best of noise’ is a ‘best of’ cd of sorts, i picked ‘southern northeast western’ for 'best of noise' because i always preferred that track over ‘northern southwest eastern’…

the term ‘hyper dimensional space-time boundary north of heaven - magnetic signature of a higher level state space’ is something that richard c hoagland said in the 1980s documentary “THE MONUMENTS OF MARS” in reference to the nature of electromagnetism and/or magnets (go to: http://www.enterprisemission.com/) and this ‘song’ was supposed to be a follow-up to music from outer space’s SNEW bbq dinner dance & NSWE post-rebellion ritual…

it started out as a 40 minute click track which i laid down over one track, then i played over that click track with pro-mark ‘thunder rod’ drumsticks with a sort of jazzy paradiddle approach…then i went to the piano and strummed the strings lightly like a harp as opposed to the golf balls i used last time...since the VS1680 does not have the capability of recording backwards or inverting tracks to get the same effects that i got on the old tascam 246, the piano track was done forwards only this time…

at the time i recorded this track i had just been massively headgamed by some evil valley chick, so i decided to just record wammy bar guitar noise all over the track, and then a meandering piano note to make it an even bigger mess...in the end, i mixed out the click track and just kept the drums, guitar and piano parts…when it got to college radio, it was all but ignored...

so, i did music from outer space as a noisy joke of sorts and it got lots of radio airplay, but when i tried to re-create this same effect later on down the road, it was all but ignored…this leads me to believe that it is best not to plan anything…

i then got a big idea to mix both of these tracks together by recording them into my VS1680 and pan them to separate sides as a new ‘best of’ track...it was originally about 45 minutes long, but that would have probably belavered the point a bit and not left enough room for other new and ‘best of’ tracks, so i cut it at around 15 minutes and then got the idea to condense the section by recording me fast forwarding over the complete 45 minute CDR on a cd player (see next section)…

what is it? - i ran an analog RCA cord from the back of a cd player - straight into the VS1680, and recorded at high speed in just over 2 minutes the entire 45 minutes of the ‘new vast ineptitude (southern northeast western BBQ dinner dance @ the hyper dimensional space-time boundary north of heaven - magnetic signature of a higher level state space)’...what was originally about 45 minutes long was compacted into 2 minutes and 15 seconds…fast forwarding is something people often do when they are frustrated with a cd or tape, so I did it for you...the question “what is it?” is not only referring to the strangeness of the track (or whole cd for that matter), but it is also the opposite of ‘what it is’…

space-time continuum (continued) - this track started out when i called my dad’s panasonic phone with my verizon cell phone…when the panasonic phone was picked up, it started feeding back through both phone speakers, creating a strange effect...i then purposefully recorded 3-4 phone feedback ‘messages’ onto the panasonic answering machine, moving the verizon phone to and from the panasonic to create an electronic breathing-like effect…i then bounced this one phone feedback track through various effects (about 9-10 effects bounced onto the same amount of tracks) then later burned all of these tracks onto CDR...this track’s title is the answer to the previous track’s question; ‘what is it?’ – answer; it is the ‘space-time continuum (continued)’, what else?…

in and of itself - a few summer’s back after coming home really drunk at 2 in the morning from karaoke, i recorded night birds singing outside onto my VS1680...i planned on doing this for a long time and finally got to it…i simply placed a mic just outside the back door and recorded about 45 minutes worth…after reviewing the entire section of sound, i ended up only using a small part of it because my cat kept on going up to the mic stand and bumping it, making lots of extraneous noises...i got a wild idea one day to run it through some effects to mask some of the imperfections; as the recording was not as clean as i would have liked, and it had a lot of background noise...i got really high and ran it through about 9-10 different effects, and had a wonderful semi-psychedelic experience...
 
as usual, i burned about a million tracks onto CDR to give me lots to choose from, and ended up using only a small section of it...i somehow opened up the effects while burning a CDR, and was able to manipulate the pitch control, which created a strange pink floyd-like effect…this whole CD is essentially a grand experiment, and this track is probably the best example of this...also ‘in and of itself’ is the next ‘logical’, yet semi-unconnected run on thought/title stemming from the last answer of ‘space-time continuum (continued)…

going to santa cruz - it should be apparent to most of you by now that this entire CD is in a sense dedicated to santa cruz…there is a photo of a water tank at the highway 17 summit on the way to santa cruz on the front cover of the CD, and a bridge in santa cruz on the back of the CD case, and on the artwork inside…one day i saw a waitress friend of mine named jen jumping into her truck and going off to the beach, and this is what first got me seriously thinking about going to santa cruz once again…

i have often thought about going back to santa cruz since the 1989 earthquake kind of scared me away, but the hoards of traffic being generated by the 1990s internet boom made me shy away from visiting...and while i have been a relatively fearless distribution driver for over 25 years now, after my brother died in a head on collision a few years back, i decided to stay away from dangerous mountain roads for awhile at least…

that is; until one night last summer when my friend egg called me up from the santa cruz beachboardwalk and said something like “eddie money is playing now – the whole beach is packed full of chicks!”…that did it; i was not only going to santa cruz the next weekend to see rare earth play, but i was also going to see every free concert from then until the end of summer!…

i then got an idea to bring my panasonic digital VOR over to santa cruz to record various organic sounds…i recorded a train going by at murray and seabright streets; some waves breaking out by the lighthouse at aldo’s; a bird who was incessantly chirping on aldo’s mini-pier; and sea lions out on the wharf...after burning many tracks onto CDR, the smoothest one of all was a track in which i ran the entire bunch of sounds through a country guitar effect during mixdown, and this is the CDR track i used on ‘going to santa cruz’…

in and of itself; it’s all about going to santa cruz, then over to alma street to record some bass tracks at michael’s place, or something like that…it really is whatever you want to make of it, that’s just what it means to me sometimes…

alma street - because the theme of this cd is noise, i had a big idea for quite awhile to just simply place a mic outside of michaels’ apartment and record the train going by outside, in honor of my deceased brother who so loved trains...i got lucky on this one because as i was recording, two trains went by in sequence a few seconds apart, and in separate directions!…

amy 1 (remix) - this is my neighbors' dog barking at a jet aircraft flying overhead to nearby moffett field, along with the singing of local sparrows...the spirit man of seabright beach said something to me last summer about how sea lions bark just like big old dogs, so I figured it would be interesting to mix the sea dogs on the ‘going to santa cruz’ track, with the land dog on the amy 1 (remix) track…