In Vegas back in 1996, my boy Jamie Bullock and I stumbled upon a strip club called The Glitter Gulch up on Fremont Street. Since I wasn’t old enough to get in, we never did get to see the inside. But we imagined it akin to a psychadelic and disturbing Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, filled with graphic potrayals of S&M, sodomy, woman fucking beast, mythological creatures, and other things you could only dream up on bad acid. A few years later I put together the theme music for the “room-to-room” walking tour. Headphone material.
Girls of the Glitter Gulch
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Atlantis was a late-album track from Secret Plans. It’s a song I began writing when I was 16, reading a lot of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and feeling inspired by some early Bowie fantasy tunes. I finally got an opportunity to record it in 2000 when I bought some real production gear. While it’s not the most epic story, I was always very proud that it came out exactly as I had envisioned it years prior.
Jeff Brown – Atlantis
Back in the late 90′s I became enamored with the revival of the breakbeat, and big beat artists like Fatboy Slim and The Crystal Method. I decided I wanted to try my hand at that genre. Some evidence of this exists on tracks 4 and 13 of Secret Plans. My first attempt was a song called The Bell Stomp Break. The song was crafted almost entirely of samples with a little help from my friend Jason Babcock spitting Watto quotes from The Phantom Menace. It got a little play from a DJ friend at bars in the area. Most of the time it emptied the dancefloor. I recall at least one premature fadeout straight into Papa Roach.
The Bell Stomp Break
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Diojee’s first song actually pre-dates the original band. Prior to the establishment of Diojee proper, 3 members of the original line-up used to fuck around with a another bassist and wrote the licks that would eventually become Diojee’s Desert. The tune, originally an instrumental, was created by Diojee v1.0 guitarist Tyler Bradford. In the summer of 2001 Kevin Murray gave me a recording of the song and told me to write some lyrics. When their original bassist skipped town to dodge the law, I showed up at practice with Internet-find Postmaster Pete Deeney (bass) and Diojee was born. Desert was the name of the original instrumental and the title was left as-is.
What you hear below is the original recording given to me by Kevin Murray, as well as a 2004 recording from our EP that closer represents how Desert sounds present day.
Pre-Diojee – Desert (Original)
Diojee – Desert
More from the Dan Moore (Fantastic Plastic Man) poetry album Word Salad. These are the some of the tracks that take a few dedicated listens to fully digest. Produced by Jeff Brown but in every way orchestrated by Dan. Don’t sleep on Exists. It’s slow to start but in my opinion the zenith of that entire disc. Outro track performed by Jason Babcock.
Dan Moore – Blossom
Dan Moore – Crimson Window Rhapsody
Dan_Moore – Exists
Jason Babcock – Fantastic Plastic Man Outro
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Back in 1998, my friend Jason turned me on to some audio (via the Howard Stern Show) of a belligerent John Wayne giving a speech on the subject of patriotism. That audio stands up fine on it’s own, but we took a little time to put it to music for added effect. Here is The Duke, from 30 years prior, shit-faced drunk on what it means to be an American. It is your civic responsibility to listen to this front-to-back.
Jeff Brown – Rigoddamneddiculous
This is a tune that Diojee still plays from time to time, but a polished studio recording was never completed. This track came from Diojee’s (ultimately failed) attempt at a full-length studio album in 2005. The recording is fully tracked, but neither mixed nor mastered. Like most of the recordings from this session it was recorded a little too hot to be fixed in the mix, and the entire project was eventually scrapped. Less Than a Mile is a song about those times in childhood when you may have inadvertently crossed paths with the love of your life.
Diojee – Less Than a Mile
Funky Penetration was born in 1995 in Blacksburg, VA on the campus of Virginia Tech. It was a project founded by my good friend Jamie Bullock… an attempt to capitalize on the new funk/rock/rap thing that started happening in the post-grunge mid-90s. Think 311. He enlisted me on wah guitar and vocals, and 2 other freshman also living with me in Thomas Hall. Julian P. Hayes was the black dude slapping out RHCP at the end of the hall (who eventually became my child’s namesake), and Nick “The Animal” Grana was the ADHD percussionist from the floor above us that kept everyone up at night beating on anything that made a sound. For 2 years we played frat houses and random house parties playing mostly 311 covers and novelty party music. We did record an album of originals in the VT studios in 1997. This was the opening track to the album Really Tricky, written by me and co-written by my buddy, and friend of the band, David O’Brien.
Funky Penetration – Gap-On Blues / Superfly Girl
A few years back I was given an assignment to take a collection of frantic voicemail messages and turn them into something exciting. I put together the first track and was given another batch about 3 months later. The first one turned out okay, but with the second I had the presence of mind to accent the violent hang-ups that closed each voicemail. Both tracks are posted below. As a PSA to all my bros, if you are fortunate enough to have your grandma still alive, please give her a call every once in a while.
Jeff Brown – Hi, this is Nana
Jeff Brown – Tyler, Please Call Grandma
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James R. Bullock, keyboardist for Long Beach, CA’s International Farmers (website | iTunes), was the brains behind this masterpiece. On a trip out to LA in 2008 I worked with him and the lovely Lara Beers to lay down the opening theme to Family Ties. Here is “Without Us”, complete with the rarely heard second verse. Sit Ubu, sit.
Jeff Brown and Lara Beers – Without Us
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