Archive for the ‘Bruce Springsteen Nebraska’ Category

Once upon a time, in a rainy city, where I cut my adulthood teeth, things were a little rockier. Music-wise. Hard was good, emo hadn’t made its mark, and Ben Gibbert, in his Death Cab, had not delivered his first quiet, emotional line. Well he may have but no-one was yet listening.
I have been thinking about a laundry list of collaborators, some of whom have been good and other terrible.

In college I was in a little jazzy trio, our drummer so high on marijuana that he often played lying down on his bed, because we practised in his apartment.

Then there was a terrible chain of events that caused me to be in a basement with three very foul men, and the one called Bob was very cranky. There too, a lazy drummer who would sometimes simply forget to drum, slow down and speed up at will, and whose haggard wife did not enjoy our noisy nightmare underneath her floor boards. The ‘insulation’ consisted of a couple of egg cartons, randomly stapled to the ceiling. I could hardly blame her as she scowled at us when we left.

After this, I was the singer in a band called Rat King and another called Strega. Fantastic drummer (girl, the same girl) for both. She pounded the hell out of the drums and her idol was Scott Asheton Enough said.

She was also a crazy guitar player who loved the wah pedal and played clarinet. Both were hard rock bands that involved Marshall Stacks, blown out PA systems and fights. Our bassist was exported back to Manchester after kicking someone’s head in with his steel-toed boot, and rendering him eyeless. It was strange, because we had all known each other by then for 5 years, the two of them were roommates.

After this, I became pregnant, and tapered off from these loud, crazy, jam fests of hate and joy. I became the lonely piano player, a Tascam four track cassette recorder (the very same model on which Bruce Springsteen’s seminal ‘Nebraska’ was recorded), a baby crawling around, an old sure SM 58 microphone, which I still have and always use. It is a great microphone, despite its many trips to the floor, dents, and indelible spreads of dark red lipstick, when it was fashionable to wear (and now it is again) in the 1990s.

Music has changed. I am sitting on an mp3 file now, from someone in Belgium, about to voice some new lyrics for him. I am helping the talented James Mullan from Bedfordshire, England, record an alternate demo of a very pretty song. Four years ago, when I started arranging digital music, I came up with a name, Kaer Trouz, which meant beautiful noise in Breton, an ancient language of Celtic origins, with a Gallic twist. Kaer is fading into the background though now too although she will remain a singer, and I am emerging, Shebnem, my real name. A new collaboration sits in the western skies, and very soon I will tell about it. This involves a very good drummer. A very smart, good drummer.

On an unrelated note, one of the loopermen(call DJ S1N), from looperman, put forth a series of tracks requesting vocals. I downloaded some of them, and one really called “Into The Darkness” really caught my attention- a raw hypnotic, industrial sounding track. I put a hard, carnal vocal track over this. DJ S1N was not over the moon about it, but allowed me to post it here. This is NOT appropriate for work, or those easily offended by cursing. Just so you know.

Into The Darkness, DJ S1N, Vocals by Kaer Trouz

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