december 28 2008
Petrified Wood (Remix) © 1992 e. rader, recorded 2008 at Chupacabra Studios, West Seattle
november 29, 2008
an old favorite, re-interpreted with piano rather than guitar: Circle © 1990 e.rader, recorded 2008 at Chupacabra Studios, West Seattle. sounds oddly prog, it does.
november 26, 2008
see update dec. 28.
november 11, 2008
try this one on for size: Vision © 1992 e. rader, recorded 2008 at Chupacabra Studios, West Seattle
november 4, 2008
it's been a few years...but better late than never. [depending on how you look at it, either two weeks, or 23 years...]
dig it: The Last Problem.
october 27, 2008
while we are waiting for something new to appear on the "history" page, here's a little experiment i hope you find entertaining.
october 21, 2008
working on another track to upload to the "history" page. aren't you excited? you should be.
i'm figuring if things go well i'll be able to get it uploaded by this weekend. if that small attainable goal works, who knows - i might be inspired to keep going. stay tuned.
October 20, 2008
at long last - something new. recorded at XelaJu Studios in West Seattle, here's...
starboots.
september 20, 2008
an updated remix of the song heaven can be found here.
august 26, 2008
updates are somewhat infrequent here; you might find more activity at my myspace page, or my extremely boring facebook page [look me up].
march 27, 2008
more internet flypaper:
STEVE ROSENTHAL, DRUMMER
BERKELEY HIGH CLASS OF 1983
please contact me with any information - thanks
there - let's see if that works.
february 17, 2008
uploaded new version of roma - listen here.
january 28, 2008
so, uh.....if i made an EP of some new material - basically, fatter more studiod-up versions of the most recent songs you've heard rough, Lo-Fi mixes of - would you buy something like that?
january 8, 2008
aha! first post of 2008: my internet flypaper has worked, along with the auspices of said - ugh - social networking site.
why should you care, gentle readers? simply google said subject's name, and you will find a veritable treasure trove of music history from the last century. i am indeed blessed and honored to have once called him "roomie".
october 10, 2007
no results from internet flypaper as of yet. i may need to, ugh, scan the various "social networking" sites.
writing is hard enough; editing makes it an agony. this applies to the writing of songs as much as anything else.
september 17, 2007
<INTERNET FLYPAPER>KEVIN MCKEREGHAN</INTERNET FLYPAPER>
there. let's see if that works.
july 17, 2007
sorry! looks like i FUBARed the cgi script that made the "contact" form work.
no wonder i haven't been getting any email. please try again.
july 14, 2007
you can't know where you're going unless you know where you've been.
june 29, 2007
i have just re-registered with BMI.
may 27, 2007
you may notice that i've been going around this web site, scrubbing "BLIND WATCHMAKERS" off of everything and putting my name up there instead. maybe i'm superstitious, but i have a feeling this is a necessary part of this going solo process. maybe the reason i've been struggling so much is that i was still trying to hide behind an imaginary backup band. so, i will try this on for size...it's my name, it's been my name for 41 years, it's me.
may 15, 2007
i am goofing around with the images page. deploying newest version of Simpleviewer. check it out if you are interested in such things.
may 13, 2007
See the announcement for Salon Non Grata 2007.
Mostly we're not going to "curate" this salon, but we're probably going to screen out the nut cases. So, if you're hoping to screen your latest porno, or show blowups of crime scene photos, etc. etc., we're going to have to say "no thanks". Otherwise, it's pretty open ended. The most important rule though is, BRING FOOD. Email us for further details.
may 7 2007
come see me perform solo at studio 7 in the lovely sodo (south of downtown) district of seattle washington, this thursday may 10th at 7:00 pm. you can find a link on the home page from which to download this show's awesome, brilliantly creative poster, designed of course by me.
mike skinner, who's been my engineer, accompanyist and guitar technician for the past few months, was going to get up and make some noise, but he had to bow out due to scheduling conflicts, so once again it's just me up there. and as paul weller once said, "if it's not you up there, it's some other idiot".
april 10, 2007
rupert murdoch sucks!
so i'm playing at studio 7 again. thursday, may 10, 7:00 pm. contact me if you live in seattle and want to buy some tickets in advance.
november 30, 2006
it's less work to enter posts at the myspace blog, so look there for more frequent updates.
one week to go! see you on the 7th!
november 27, 2006
rehearsing alone is weird. you can't yell at yourself for making the same mistake for the tenth time, for example.
did i mention that text edit mode in Fetch totally rocks??
</geek>
and finally, a reminder that true to my creeping regression into adolescence, i now have a MySpace page.
november 12, 2006
i'm working on my patter. because you're supposed to have patter.
i'm pretending i'm on VH1 Storytellers. that helps. i practice how many minutes i can kill in my set by saying things like "this song is about this time when i was out of my mind on amphetamines, and i had a religious experience reading a poem written on the bathroom wall.
...but not really."
november 9, 2006
well, here we are closing in on the end of the year. i'm going to be performing solo at C & P Coffee in West Seattle on Thursday, Dec. 7 [no jokes please] at 6:00 p.m. - not rock and roll time, obviously, but fine mommy and daddy time for all you mommy and daddies.
another boring technical note: as part of my dogged and probably hopeless pursuit of learning ASP.NET, i'm probably going to write a new site in it and stick it in a folder and ask some of you to go test it out. how will it be different, you ask? not enough to really matter or for anyone to care...but it might be good practice.
so come see me dec. 7! after all...it's free...and aren't the best things in life?
october 27, 2006
here's the post-mortem on the show last night. thanks to all for coming out. it was painful, but most birth experiences are. i'm afraid i'm simply going to have to put all of you through this torture again and again, until it feels complete. that's art for you. enjoy!
october 26, 2006
READ ALL ABOUT IT: our first live appearance in five years thursday october 26 7:00 PM at studio 7 in sodo. be there. or be nowhere special. $10 at the door, $7 FROM YOUR NEAREST BAND MEMBER. c'mon. you've spent more on over-priced well drinks at jax's steak house.
UPDATE: download the über-hip poster
october 4, 2006
don't ever let anyone tell you that rock and roll isn't hard work...because it is. sometimes, it will literally cause you to lock yourself in your parked car and cry like a baby for fifteen minutes.
september 21, 2006
first rehearsal with seattle musicians in our basement this evening - consummate rock and roll people. totally on top of it. i'm excited about how things are sounding. tonight we covered "roma", "starboots" and "all this".
i wonder if Big Time Seattle would have offered us this gig if they knew we...heh heh...didn't have a drummer yet? "dude...our drummer, like, imploded!!"
i have a funny feeling that something magical may be afoot however, and for magic to work, there must be trust...along with the sweat and tears of course...
september 6, 2006
i've finally figured out how to explain my musical influences.
basically, most of my songs are a mashup of the following chord changes, tonal values, production values, guitar sounds and vocal/lyric styles:
- "from silver lake" - jackson browne, saturate before using
- "behind blue eyes" - the who, who's next
- "freaks" - soul asylum, while you were out
- "complete control" - the clash (single)
- "problem child" - AC/DC, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
- "thick as thieves" - the jam, setting sons
- "total abandon" - patti smith group, radio ethiopia
- "cry for everyone" - gentle giant, octopus
- "talking to myself" - let's active, big plans for everybody
- "sun god" - squirrel bait, squirrel bait
so basically, it's D, E, G,and A, gibson SG through a marshall, with depressing and/or cynical lyrics. GO!
UPDATE:
okay...not really. obviously it's a lot more complicated than that. particularly since i find myself listening to a mix that includes the cure, wire, albinoni and AC/DC...
june 14, 2006
sad news - the passing of an old friend, vic ratto, far too soon.
june 10, 2006
testing a new ftp client and updating this page in TextEdit while trying to feed and entertain a 5 month old...is a challenge!
march 27, 2006
well, i am waiting for a phone call from a potential client in 3 minutes, so my 3 month old daughter, wife of 13 years and 4 year old dog might not starve to death after all.
then i can get back to the ROCK...
ciao,
e.
march 23, 2006
can you believe how long it's been since the last update??! that's because of the new member of the family...
be advised that, because of some broken ".htaccess" functionality, all the stuff you had to log in to see is now accessible to all.
TTFN -
e.
october 22, 2005
erik at the haas maritime wedding 2004, accompanied by karaoke machine
october 20, 2005
okay, okay - so very lame for there to be no updates for the entire month of september. i accept full responsibility.
bambina is growing like something out of h. r. giger's imagination, and is a dancer just like her mother. sometimes when i put my hand on her apartment i can actually feel her fingers drumming on the walls. once i could have sworn she gave me a high five.
i've been thinking about what i would teach a child about rock and roll. i'd have to start with the chronological "rock 101" course everyone ought to take, of course. the one that starts with ragtime, some hudy ledbetter, robert johnson's "hellhound on my tail", skip james, john lee hooker, maybe some django reinhart, cruising through some of elvis' sun sessions, buddy holly and the crickets, little richard, jerry lee lewis, carl perkins, some doo-wop, motown, phil spector, the beatles, the san francisco sound, jimi hendrix, the doors, british invasion bands like the who, the kinks and steve marriott's small faces, maybe a chapter on the stones, of course led zeppelin, glam rock, prog rock, disco, funk, berlin/krautrock, "art rock" like van der graaf generator, then on to pub rock, power pop, punk rock, post-punk, punk funk, new wave, no wave, avant garde, ska, psychedelic revival bands like r.e.m. and let's active, metal, speedmetal, death metal, goth metal, black metal, the vast soggy morass of "indy rock", etc. finish up with 80's sound revivalists like interpol, bloc party and so forth. have quiz questions about the influence of early 80's british northern soul vocal acts on the goth movement, or how cat power is a direct descendant of the carpenters, and how quasi is a direct descendent of the captain and tennille. stuff like that.
august 30 2005
so sorry it's been so long since the last update - we've had a bit of a distraction around here....
august 4 2005
occasionally i am asked who my favorite singers are, or which ones have influenced me. this is a valid and meaningful question; people who have spent any time watching TV or listening to the radio in my company know that all it takes is a few seconds of a mediocre or bad singer for me to change the station. i feel a sympathetic vibration inside my air cavity when i listen to singers, and so i have a gut reaction to over-stylized or insincere singing.
i was reminded of this question by catching the video for the new willie nelson cover of johnny cash's "i'm a worried man" with guest vocals by toots hibbert. man, toots is a badass motherfucker. i tell you what. that's why willie picked him for a duet. i remember we had bought tickets to a concert at the berkeley community theater in what was it, 1980 or 81 or something like that, to...who? black uhuru i think. anyway - somebody huge like that, and they cancelled for some reason, and so toots and the maytals filled in. the sound mix was terrible of course. it was like a fucking school assembly.
but toots as always pumped out a massive performance with his rich, passionate voice. he had disgruntled fans of the band that had cancelled dancing in the aisles before he was done.
"sweet and dandy" off of "the harder they come" soundtrack is a song that makes me want to cry, laugh, jump, shout, sing, dance, and break things. it was pretty much the track that got me interested in the ska/blue beat genre, next to "concrete jungle" by the specials. "sweet and dandy" is everything music can be - a slice of life enlarged into a metaphor of existence, and its cyclical nature. somewhere in the multidimentional universe there is a wedding going on and on and on. it's really a religious metaphor for heaven in a way, the union of christ with his church, or the male with the female, or whatever, like the song of songs in the bible. anyway, enough of that - the core of it is toot's voice, which vibrates so intensely you think his heart is going to explode.
without toots you have no chris cornell. pure and simple. even if chris does not know this, there is an intrinsic lineage of this sort that extends through music history. just as without jim morrison you have pretty much none of the top 40 rock singers since he died.
moving down the list, people who know me well also know that johnny rotten is pretty much the source of everything that motivates me as a performer. some people might be surprised about this if they haven't seen me perform. to most people, i think, johnny isn't a "real singer", because of the rough treatment he gave most of our concept of melody. but make no mistake, nothing that ever came out of johnny's mouth was accidental, or easy. hearing him sing "bodies" for the pistols or "theme" for PIL really drives home his command of rhythm, phrasing, and tonality, not to mention his total commitment. commitment is a big word for me in the arts - it's an element you can see in any good dance, painting, or musical or theatrical performance. commitment is when the artist gives themselves so much to the art that they disappear in it. it's actually quite rare. johnny is one of maybe a dozen people who had total commitment as a performing singer. joe strummer, man, he had it coming out of his ears like steam out of a coal train. janis joplin, she had that commitment. james brown. little richard. there's something that happens to a singer with total commitment. it doesn't just come out of their mouth, it comes out of their eyes, out of every hole. it reaches out and grabs you with its authority.
there's a lot of fake or feigned commitment, a lot of fake authority out there. i think b. j. armstrong of green day has the beginnings of the real thing, like he's in training for it, but he needs to get a little older before he gets all the way there. i know that sounds bad in this world of "die before you're 25" pop music, but if you're supposed to die before you're 25 i fear it's already too late for b. j.
well there it is, my thoughts on singing and performing for this particular moment. ask me, i could go on about this for hours. maybe i'll write some more about it later.
august 1 2005
latest update: a little bit of background added to the lyrics page for "weather". a brief glimpse into where some of my lyrics come from. a lot like peter gabriel, the meanings behind some of my lyrics are less obvious than they are at first appearance, but this is one of the more obvious ones. i think "weather" is my most joseph campbell/c. g. jung-ridden song of all, although "vision" and "hangover" are pretty close.
i am getting ready to begin the long path of developing a new site design. thankfully as i have stuck as much as possible to standards based design, i ought to be able to meddle with the styles separately from the content, but you never freaking know with this kind of thing. i'll do it in a test directory and keep the old style handy.
i'm also revisiting a couple of old issues: whether or not i should implement a CMS of some kind, and/or start using a database-driven framework rather than a whole bunch of HTML pages. it's kind of incredible to think that i could make this supremely light site even lighter.
i will, of course, provide updates on this process as it evolves.