New Free Xeno Song - Everything Works Out Fine

Update: Song removed for repairs. Still some things about the mix I'm not liking. Stay tuned for mix #12.

 

New mix of my song "Everything Works Out Fine" on the left in the Box.Net Widget. Free MP3 to download if you like it. I'm starting to get closer to the sound and mix I want. Not quite there yet... but soon... and when I have this all dialed in and figured out, for about 15 songs, I'll bundle them and call them my 2nd CD.

 

New Free Xeno Song - Everything Works Out Fine

Update: Song removed for repairs. Still some things about the mix I'm not liking. Stay tuned for mix #12.

 

New mix of my song "Everything Works Out Fine" on the left in the Box.Net Widget. Free MP3 to download if you like it. I'm starting to get closer to the sound and mix I want. Not quite there yet... but soon... and when I have this all dialed in and figured out, for about 15 songs, I'll bundle them and call them my 2nd CD.

 

How to clone yourself.

Here's my uncle George from Steppenwolf playing the bass in this video:



Sometimes I just kick back and think about how cool my life has been. You know, favorite moments.

I feel lucky about getting John McCrea of CAKE on (a few seconds of) my first (and only) CD. I really love his songwriting.

Budding bands take note: naming famous people and/or getting them on your CD does not help sales.

Xenophilia, $8 Cafe of love zero (0) sales, $0 dollars made on CD Baby, despite getting an excellent review from Jason Mraz.

Okay, in truth, exactly one CAKE fan found and bought a Xenophilia CD years ago just for the obscure CAKE collector's angle.  That CD is many years ago. I made a huge investment in it, went to one of the best studios ... and when there was no pay off, spent the next 10 years trying to figure out why.  Time has passed me by, but I don't really care. I've had fun. I'm still working on improving. (Hear my latest efforts on the left.) No illusions of fame any longer, now I'm only trying to make my own ears happy.

Back to reminiscing, another great moment was when Gabe Nelson told me George was a total bad-ass on the bass. I was lucky to get Gabe to sing on one of my tunes.

I've also been excited to record with Anton Barbeau (who also works with Gabe), to share a stage with Jackie Green ( who nearly joined Xenophilia at one point ... good thing for all he didn't! ), and being friends with other musicians I admire such as Amy Anne and Ricky Berger, who got me into Chet Baker and inspired me to buy a trumpet.

Another one of my all time favorite moments:  I'm watching a Star Trek movie, and at a key moment, the thing that makes the entire Star Trek series possible (warp drive!) is almost aborted because its inventor, Zefram Cochrane, can't find  Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride" to play when he lifts off:



Then there was the time recently where I got to talk to Sir Patrick Stewart at a film festival. I loved the way he said, "Well, helloooo, Xenoooo." in that amazing voice.

Talking to Zahi Hawass about carbon dating the Great Pyramid, becoming friends with an amazing woman who was 3 blocks away from the towers when they fell on 9/11, having a character named Xenophilius in the last Harry Potter book, and of course playing a few shows with Jason Mraz and having him sing one of my songs back to me with his perfect absolute pitch.

My mind flashes on so many other "thrill" moments: discovering the giant skull face on Mt. Shasta while hunting for the entrance to the underground base there, the romantic submarine ride on Maui, my UFO sighting, attending the wedding of a real Italian ex-mob family, hunting El Chupacabra, hunting Bigfoot, spelunking, water skiing, hang gliding, my accidental discovery of finger butts, being contacted by about the evidence I found while in Roswell, NM investigating the crash, being stopped by men with guns after nosing around Dulce, NM with a reporter from the Sacramento News and Review, being in that jacuzzi in the Luxor on that night with lightning, and years later on the 4th of July.

Just when I think, "How can my life get any better?", it does.  I find out, for example, that I'm related to King Henry I and to William the Conqueror and to Lady Godiva, for example. Yes, there are downers, but they are temporary. The good stuff lasts longer in my memory.

So, yes, I've convinced me. I should definitely clone myself ... as long as I also adopt one or more ordinary kids as well.  Life, would you do it all again? 9 out of 10 dentists surveyed would.

Free Xeno Song: Kiss you on the Moon

This song resulted years ago when I tried to capture all of the best Apollo Moon Conspiracy tidbits in one epic space rock adventure. (First wrote the article, then boiled it down to the song.)

I had the day off from work today, so I created a new orchestrated version:

MP3: Download:  Kiss you on the Moon

Steal this song! Give it to a friend.

Recording notes:  Starting to think that the best vocal sound is clean so this latest song has no reverb, no pitch correction.  Recorded in Cubase 64 bit under with Windows Vista.  Vocal lessons are starting to help too.

License: Free for non-commercial use. You may use this or any other of my songs from the Box.net widget in your non-commercial videos, slide shows, etc. as long as you include this web site in the credits. Example: "Kiss you on the Moon" by Xeno, xenophilius.wordpress.com)

I can't see who is downloading, but I can see which songs get downloaded (not played on the web) because I get an email each time ... and I'm always glad to see that someone liked something enough to grab it.

Did we go to the moon? I think so... but I can't personally prove we did.

Xenophilia (the band) on CD Baby

Now available: Xenophilia (the band) on CD Baby.

This merry band of name droppers existed for over 10 years and released only one album, thus making it a rare collector's item sought after by relatives of the band members.

Hear song samples of all 11 tracks.

It only took me eight years to get this CD on line. I still like to listen to it from time to time.

If CD Baby does their job, you should be able to download individual songs for 99 cents soon from iTunes.

I'm actually really curious to see if someone I've never met likes one of my songs enough to pay a dollar for it.  It could happen...

 

Free Xeno Song: Get Off My Head

Free songs on this site are works in progress. I may delete them at any time, so download it if you like it.  The number of downloads helps me discover which of my songs people like best. Downloading = voting.


Free song download: Get Off My Head (mix #2) mp3.

Get Off My Head

I could easily forget you if you'd just get off my head
In the apartament above me there's a girl just made to love me, but love fled.

Now she's stompling around with some new boy she found it paints my ceiling red, and I could easily forget her, if she'd just get off my head.

I could easily forget you if you'd let me sleep at night.
I don't want to know your business but it's hard to hear you fight.

And the power of the memory of the week or two we spent, and the urge to leave increases every time I pay the rent, and I could easily forget you, if you'd just get off my head.

Get off my head. There's an angel feet above my bed. Get off my... Have a better level of decency would you wait a little while, a week for me? You know I can't forget.

I could move into the country, I could grow myself some wine. I could store it in the cellar, I could sell it and grow rich in time.

But I never will forget the girl upstairs and my delight when I held her at the ocean on a cold romantic night, and I could easily forget her, but I won't, it's just not right.

Recording notes: The flutes are very "Strawberry Fields".

Song Notes: Written years ago about a true strange experience I had living in apartments.  The experience could be one of the reasons I decided I should buy a house and get away from apartment living.

The Mexican sounding background vocals right after the line "let me sleep at night" were inspired by my recent trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico where, at the wedding of Faith and Franz, I heard a local all female Mariachi band and later played music late into the night at a beautiful villa with some fantastic people.

A few people heard this song live with my now defunct band Xenophilia. This is the first recording of it.

Some bald ego, to boldly go.

I figure most of you 3,000 to 9,000 people per day visiting this blog to check out the strange news have never heard my band Xenophilia (some of our oldest songs on myspace.)

Although I've played a few other places solo since then, this photo was from my last gig with Xenophilia.

I figure once you play the Arco Arena, what's left? So I retired the band.

Truth be told, lately I'm not very excited about playing live. When fronting a band have to set up rehearsals, get everyone up to speed, deal with people's schedules, find paying gigs, find people to come to your shows, then slog your gear around, set up, break down, hope for a decent sound man at each place ... it's a hassle.

Amy is still playing live with a cover band called "Love Train".

I'm having so much fun playing around with original songs in the studio that I really don't miss the live shows. Musicians, relate?

New free Xeno song: Night with an Empty Bucket

New free Xeno song: Night with an Empty Bucket

This song is what happened as I was testing various instruments in Cubase 5 which I just purchased.

It is odd for me to write a song with no guitar.

Inspired by hearing about people who travel to foreign countries to help people less fortunate, and by this picture which accompanied this story:

Gunshots ricocheted around Nairobi's streets and houses and shops burned today as Kenya's post-election violence escalated. The Foreign Office has now warned 'against all but essential travel to Kenya' and British tour operators have cancelled tours to the country for the rest of the week. The Federation of Tourist Operators is also considering travel arrangements for the 7,000 Britons already on trips in Kenya - metro

See the box on the left for the song. Click to play or download "Night with an Empty Bucket".

I sometimes change the song that is uploaded on the box to improve the mix  so if you download you may get an older version, but please steal this for your iPod or whatever if you like listening to it.

Free CD, limited time offer

Free CD Offer

I'm giving away one of my last boxes of Xenophilia CDs this week.

To get your free CD: email me your mailing address.

Features two guys from the band CAKE on one song, plus a strange song about Crop Circles.

There are a few songs on this CD that I really like, but there are several that I don't.  That's why I'm getting rid of them.

Correcting my wrong learned vocal notes. Xeno sings some Beatles, etc. for ya.

I've been singing for many years, and I enjoy it, but I  usually don't like to hear my voice. Too nasally and my pitches are off at times.

The "nase" is genetic, but I'm just now working on hitting my pitches correctly in terms of absolute pitch.

This weekend I recorded me singing a bunch of songs so I can use the free Windows AP Guitar tuner software to find out if I'm consistently flat or sharp on certain notes.

Just working on "Hey Jude" by the Beatles, for example, I notice that when singing a capella, when I get to the word "bad"  (in "Hey Jude, don't make it bad", which is a "G" note) what sounds "right" to me, is actually 15 cents flat. Hmm!

If I correct the pitch using the tuner as a bio-feedback device, it does sound more "positive" to my ear, less sad. Interesting.

Recall that in between any two adjacent notes there are 100 cents and humans can detect differences of about 7 cents. Therefore, if I'm 15 cents flat, people could definitely tell on some level.

Just for fun I've uploaded 16 cover songs-- just me and a guitar (box on the left)--as the "BEFORE photo" and then post the corrected ones after my accuracy has improved. (Free Windows WMA to MP3 converter here, but virus software complained about it.)

My tone wavers as I sing, more than I'd like, not from natural vibrato, but from what seems to be knots and bumps in the path of my outgoing breath. One factor is my heartbeat but there is something else too, some warble I experience when trying to blow a smooth steady stream of air. Have any of you singers fixed this kind of problem?

Listening to my Christmas song examples, I definitely want less Glissando than I have now. Pitches these days can be corrected to be perfect in the studio. This gives that robotic sound that is very popular on the radio these days. The more robotic it sounds, in fact, the worse the actual singer's pitch was in the studio and the more they had to correct the notes with software.

The songs I've posted are raw, just me and a guitar, uncorrected, sung into a little hand held Olympus DS-30 Digital Voice Recorder, converted to MP3, and uploaded.

Jason Mraz in concert

It was interesting to see a show with a full band but with no bass player. It still sounded great. Jason's jokes about what happened to his bass player rocked.  Jason at one point told the audience that he usually puts up a picture of his friend Barack Obama and said that audience reactions were always positive to that, no matter where in the country he was playing. There was much cheering at this and also about his request that people vote NO on Prop 8.

After the show we met some singers in an a Capella group and Amy Anne and I sang some Mraz songs together with them. Fun.

Thinking about perfect pitch... going to see Jason Mraz, Monday Nov 3rd.

Jason Mraz is playing a sold out show at Freeborn Hall in Davis, CA tomorrow and I'll be there.

Here is an old picture I took of Jason Mraz playing my 12 string Takamine guitar. Xenophilia opened for Jason one Thursday in 2001 @ The Parkside in San Francisco and a few other times. At this show he broke a string so I let him use my guitar while I fixed his.



Jason Mraz has a rare thing called absolute pitch. I have good relative pitch, but not absolute pitch.

He can hear a note and tell you every time what it is, I can't. Give me an A, and I call tell you instantly what a D note is, however, no problem. But, if you try to trick me and give me a G# and tell me it is an A, I'll give you a C# and tell you it is a D. I'm trickable that way. Jason Mraz and others with absolute pitch are not.

I wouldn't know the difference until I picked up a tuned guitar. Then I'd realize my mistake. I can't just sing any note out of the blue on request. I think Jason can.

I have met five people in my life who have this ability. To me it is magical, amazing, almost unbelievable. I can recognize when someone has it right away. Just tonight I've learned how rare it is: Only 1 in 10,000 people has it.

Besides having a gifted ear, he also has the vocal ability to hit his pitches with extraordinary accuracy, (or not) as he wishes. This is one secret of his success. It is a subtle thing. For most people, he just sounds good.

I haven't talked to Jason for years, but if I get to hang out with him for a minute or two backstage tomorrow I'll ask him to sing me an F#, just by guessing.

Here is me holding Jason's guitar. Funny, I  took this picture seven years ago thinking I'd want proof. It was a cool moment. It was kind of like hanging out with Elvis. Well, I hope he gets that big someday... no, not physically big ... you know what I mean.



I never bothered to check, but I just found confirmation of my theory. Jason Mraz is on the wikipedia list of people with absolute pitch.

They don't have Bobby McFarrin, but they should. I saw him as a kid at a Jazz festival in Reno, and he has it. Bobby can jump around hitting high and low pitches perfectly in different tones in a way that it sounds like he is playing a walking bass line, supporting chords in the middle and a high lead part. With just him alone, he can trick your ear into thinking he is playing three different instruments together at the same time.

Here is an interesting study on the topic of perfect pitch:

... Musicians and singers work for years to develop their sense of pitch but few can name a musical note without a reference tone. U.S. researchers on Monday said one gene may be the key to that coveted ability. Only 1 in 10,000 people have perfect or absolute pitch, the uncanny ability to name the note of just about any sound without the help of a reference tone. ... Dr. Jane Gitschier of the University of California, San Francisco, whose study appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

She and colleagues analyzed the results of a three-year, Web-based survey and musical test that required participants to identify notes without the help of a reference tone. More than 2,200 people completed the 20-minute test.

"We noticed that pitch-naming ability was roughly an all-or-nothing phenomenon," she said. That lead researchers to conclude that one gene, or perhaps a few, may be behind this talent.

Gitschier said those with perfect pitch were able to correctly identify both piano tones and pure computer-generated tones that were devoid of the distinctive sounds of any musical instrument.

She said people with perfect pitch were able to pick out the pure tones with ease. And they also tended to have had early musical training -- before the age of 7. “We think it probably takes the two things," she said. - vtw

My quest, which I get diverted from but keep coming back to, is to see if perfect pitch is learnable. Some think it is. I'm not sure yet, but I've had some success on and off. Tuning in to very subtle things takes a careful relaxed kind of attention that is at once both effortless and elusive. When you get it, it is so obvious, like it was always there, right in front of your nose. I had the same experience with lucid dreaming. Realizing while you are dreaming that you are dreaming is a similar trick in my mind. I'm not sure why.

A Message and Contest from Jason Mraz - Pledge to Vote

My band Xenophilia played several shows with Jason in Sacramento and San Francisco right before he hit the big time so it is always fun for me to check in on what he is up to. I get to see Jason play at UC Davis on Nov 3rd (sold out show), the day before we all VOTE. And speaking of voting, here is Jason, speaking of voting:

This is for our college students out there! ... This election is very close to Jason's heart and he is very excited to be apart of the movement. Exercise your voice and get out to the polls this November!

http://apps.facebook.com/ilike/vote

PS. If you can see Jason Mraz live, do. I've been around hundreds of singer songwriters as a performer myself and as an Open Mic Night host in Sacramento, but I've only met a few cats who had perfect pitch like Jason as well as the creativity and positivity to cause people to just freak out and buy CDs like crazy.  Bobby McFarrin and Sonia and sister Cindy from "Disappear Fear" are two others.  Sonia signed my guitar and Disappear Fear came to see Xenophilia play once. Ah, seems so long ago.  I've had a lucky life. Beautiful people. Beautiful places. Great food. Freedom. Sunshine. Music. And actually, as much love as I would let in. Isn't that the truth?

Show work

Xenophilia means love of the strange, it is the opposite of Xenophobia. Xenophilia is the name of my band and it describes my life long interest in UFOs, ancient civilizations, biological oddities, cryptozoology, human potentials and fringe science. I run a strange news blog and instead of watching TV at night, I surf the weird, and bring you the best strange news from around the world, with some real science and psychology thrown in due to my UCD educational background. So, I've always been some kind of reporter. I was the guy in my High School who read the bulletin in the morning, the voice everyone knew. Nowdays, my weird little blog has been at the top of the top Sacramento web sites for a long time. I love songwriting. I wish I had perfect pitch like Jason Mraz. I played several shows with him right before he hit the big time and some of our conversations made it into his songs.  John McCrea and Gabe Nelson of Cake are on our CD (only $10). Jackie Green almost joined my band before he went on to win a California music award. I once had a character on South Park, and my uncle was the bass player for the band Steppenwolf. I guess the other interesting thing is that Harry Potter billionaire author Joanne K. Rowling liked my strange little web site enough to make me a character in her last book. Xenophilius Lovegood (aka Xeno) in the last Harry Potter book is a researcher of strange stuff. He runs newsletter that includes conspiracy theories and strange creatures few people believe in. The book also includes her version of a tinfoil hat, and the symbol that was on my web site, an eye with a triangle around it. I had that on my site because I'd learned after he died that my grandfather was a high ranking member of a secret society that will remain unnamed. The evidence says to me that 9/11 was either an inside job, or the nexus of the most unbelievable constellation of conicinces in human history. I've talked to the FBI and the CIA and I believe there are mostly good people running our government. Some conspiracies are real. We have laws against conspiracy and people go to jail for it. An example of paranoia is the belief that you are being stalked by invisible leapords. Believing that a group of humans could commit a mass murder to obtain a huge treasure--such as the $3 trillion dollars in proven oil reserves under Iraq--that's not paranoia, it is historical extrapolation. We humans have a long history of doing things like this. Look at Ghengis Kahn. So, health takes a back seat to profit. Some people know this.

Growing up in my strange town
We had this man who used to walk around
In a suit of aluminum foil
he was shielded from, from the side, from the soil.

Tinfoil Hats  (bio effects of EM radiation, industry corrupts science, be a free thinker)
- Apollo Moon Landings (curious but skeptical, best of the hoax evidence)
- Cryptids: The Moth Man, Chupacabras, Sky Fish, (uncertainty is a power source, men in black, psyops)
- Crop Circles (Occam’s razor cutting crops)
- The Hollow Earth (odd ideas from the past)
- Biologically Interesting People: Hensel Twins, Jill Price, Angelo Faticoni, Wim Hof (e pluribus unum)
- Nitenol (UFOs, aliens, Roswell, and reality)
- Zero Point Energy (Pandora’s box)
- Lucid Dreams (my true weirdest experiences on earth, psychic phenomena, interpretation after the fact.)
- Rife’s 1930’s “cancer cure” & Aubrey De Grey’s SENS (Modern medicine = complete failure. The death rate is 100%. Not one person has ever been saved. Then again, there are too many of us anyway.)
- Cavity Cure (Hope attracts. How I got a dental rejection letter then healed 5 cavities. )

Growing up in my strange town
We had this man who used to walk around
in a suit of aluminum foil
He was shielded from the top and from the sides and from the soil

Tin foil hat, tin foil hat
Never go and use the good foil like that, son
Tin foil head, tin foil hat
You never want to go and use the foil like that
Now mind control is a maze you're a rat
But you can't change that with a tin foil hat

Aluminum Aluminum, Alumminium
You've got a radiation oven in your kitchen

Illuminati very naughty, microwaves into the body
Haarp and the Satelite, GWEN is gonna, GWEN is gonna

Lock on to your cell phone find you on a map
But they can't do the Zap through the tin foil hat
PPparanoia make you twitchy like a cat
But they'll never read your dirty mind
Never know youre always lien
Never gonna know you're freaky in your tin foil hat.

------------

Had I had a twin, everywhere I'd been
Separation would be cruel
I'd wonder how those lonely fools got to sleep
Some people are, different

Scoop: Local bands to play at Sacramento Kings games

This pic is from the dinner / info meeting we attended last night

Local bands at sacramento kings games, originally uploaded by xeno735.

Left: Amy Anne of Xenophilia. Quiz: Can you name the local artist with Amy Anne?

Inside scoop: The Arco Arena, to attract new people to sporting events, and to generate new opportunities for local musicians, is enlisting local Sacramento area bands to help sell tickets. The bands will play for one hour outside of the sporting events before certain games, weather permitting. Perks for the band include having a song broadcast inside the Arena, reaching potentially 17,000 people.

Xenophilia played a Monarchs Women's Basketball game at Arco and last night attended an info meeting about playing outside for one hour at Sacramento Kings Games (and selling b-ball tickets to music fans).

Bands in attendance included The Grumpy and The Generals. We also spotted Dig Music representing Walking Spanish (fronted by Jackie Greene's brother) among others.

If you are a Sacramento area band interested in playing the Arco Arena, contact me, and I'll pass your information to the organizer. - Xeno

Xenophilia Plays Arco Arena, TONIGHT 5:30 PM Tuesday, 9/9/2008.

Ten years ago, I met Amy Anne at an open mic night at the Fox and Goose. I played funny a Dan Bern song "I am the Messiah." We hit it off after some chatting she auditioned in the parking lot, singing a Fiona Apple song for me. I loved her voice and I asked her to join my band.

We became friends and we found out we had a lot in common. Within a month we started playing open mic nights around town. Then we started hosting our own open mic night at the Capitol Garage and Coffee shop. We made a lot of new friends and has some great times.

At one point, I don't remember exactly when, but it was about 10 years ago, Amy Anne said, "We are going to play the Arco Arena". She was serious. I said, "I don't know if I want to play the Arco Arena. Too stressful." I was serious. Amy and I were talking about this last night after rehearsal and she remembers it too.

Flash forward 10 years. Tonight, we play the Arco Arena .... for an hour ... outside ... 5:30 PM ... before a basketball game ( Monarchs vs Seattle Storm ).   Hope to see some of our old friends there!

We are playing on the grass so you may want to bring a blanket or a lawn chair.

Photo: From gig on the river

You have new Picture Mail!, originally uploaded by xeno735.

Xenophilia, Live at Swabbies

Swabbie's At Metro Marina
5871 Garden Hwy
Sacramento, CA 95837
(916) 920-8088

We played about 5 PM to 6 PM, followed by the Alanis Crow Project. This was our first gig with Kendall on bass. Great place, right on the river.

Four unreleased Xenophilia songs discovered

Albert, Amy, and I were working on some a new CD before he went off to find work in another part of the world. Thanks to the magic of MySpace, I found that he has posted some of our work under the name Satellite Dish Gazebo. The ones I wrote are: Mister Nobody, Salvador Dali, Kiss you on the Moon, and Get Off My Head.

Xenophilia at Arco Arena?

Wow. We played a show last Saturday night at Marylin's in Sacramento with a band called the Alanis Crow Project (I forgot to post it here) and we had some scouts out to see us. One supposedly made an offer to sign us to a record label.

Xenophilia is very good luck for bands we play with. Yet another band we played with just got signed, joining the ranks of Jackie Greene and Jason Mraz. The Grumpy was just signed to Columbia.

Through a contact there, we were asked tonight to play an hour set at Arco Arena. The idea is quite a rush. Here is a picture of some band playing Arco showing what the audience looks like from the band's perspective. click to enlarge.



What a mass of humanity...

Playing Arco has been a life long dream of Amy Anne's.

I'm wondering how much time we have to prepare because at this point I don't even have a bass player trained. I could use another guitar player who sings too. Perhaps one of the guys I've worked with in the past will be available. Or we might find some amazing undiscovered guitar genius, the next Eddie Van Halen, to join us and make it all come together. Perhaps a keyboard player too...

I'm waiting to get more details, date, time, and so on.

I've already played the same stage as Eddie Van Halen --not the same night--but if I play Arco Arena, I will also have played the same stage as Paul McCartney. Sir Paul played Arco November 16th, 2005.

---

UPDATE: The date is locked in: September 9th, 2008. We will be playing original tunes for an hour Tuesday night from 5:45 to 6:45 welcoming people to the final Monarchs (Sacramento Women's Basketball) game of the season. The above image is misleading. We will actually be playing in front of Arco Arena, not inside. That's great, much more relaxing. The crowd is expected to be more like 7,000 people, not the full 17,317 capacity of Arco Arena. King's games can bring in 15,000, I'm told.

SPECIAL DEAL: To come to the show and then watch the game with us: email me. I have a limited number of $10 lower level tickets. The game starts at 7 PM.