The Smush Newsletter, May 17th, 2002, Vol 2.2 Contact: lemonhead@goombas.org Back issues available at http://smush.goombas.org/news.asp Table of Contents: 1. Intro .................... 18 2. Good Smush For Pop Mush .. 25 3. New Smush Music .......... 60 4. Potential ................ 91 5. Classics ................. 135 6. If You Want More ......... 157 INTRO ----- Well, looks like you got lucky, here's another Smush newsletter in just over a week, with fresh content right from my open source! Will we go for the "hat-trick", as our Mexican friends say? Hang on to your sobmrero, amiga! GOOD SMUSH FOR POP MUSH ----------------------- It seems like a few fans of ours have set up a service that they call the "Good Smush for Pop Mush Exchange Program". The idea is to set up a file sharing server on the Gnutella network, where people download their favorite pop hits, but when they try to listen to them it turns out they're really smush songs! It's a great idea, and I'm surprised that noone has thought of it before! Please note that we don't run these servers ourselves. That would be wrong. Here's how it works. They downloaded the names of top fifty singles from www.billboard.com, and they downloaded their favorite fifty Smush songs. Then they renamed the smush songs to the names of the pop hits, and padded their size to the size of the pop hits as well, by repeating the last 30 seconds over and over. Good thing there aren't many smush songs under thirty seconds! That sounded like a lot of work to me, but it turns out they just wrote a couple of programs to do it... it works great! I connected to their Gnutella server and searched for the latest J-Lo song, and before I knew it, I was listening to DAL -- one of our best "genre" pieces. They tell me they're getting upwards of a hundred downloads per day, which is most excellent, but I worry that people will learn to be wary and avoid these tempting-looking "honey-pots". I encourage all of our other fans to set up similar servers. If you don't want to go through the work of converting all the smush songs... well, they've sent me the executables of the programs they've written, but in this day and age with viruses everywhere I don't think I should be sending it to everybody. Instead, email me with your name and address and I'll mail you a CD-R! Unless you live, like, too far away. Just be sure to avoid networks that try to be "smart" and grab the ID3 information, because the ID3 tags for all the mp3s still say "smush" -- how else will our brand-new fans find their way to our web site, after all? NEW SMUSH MUSIC --------------- wud - lemonhead - http://smush.goombas.org/search.asp?name=wud This is a concerto for distorted acoustic guitar in the key of Fb Badass. Did you notice the talkbox effect on the lead guitar? Since it was played on an acoustic, we had to simulate a talkbox by making a gigantic, electronically controlled mouth, with hydraulics acting as lip muscles. And lets not even go into the tongue! bzp - R.F. - http://smush.goombas.org/search.asp?name=bzp One last beautiful swan song from R.F., unless we find another. His room is still caked with trash, and we don't dare hire professional cleaners to take care of it; they might accdientally throw away a demo tape or something. web - rubbahead - http://smush.goombas.org/search.asp?name=web This song was inspired by the brothers Crenshaw and W.E.B. DuBois. Their unmatched sibling rivalry was well known in their time, and it continues unabated to this day, the 150th anniversary of their deaths. mud - rubbahead - http://smush.goombas.org/search.asp?name=mud You're in deep mud, mister! 800 - lemonhead - http://smush.goombas.org/search.asp?name=800 A cast of eight hundreds conspired to make this song. Actually, there was just one, and i multitracked. So sue us. The one was me, lemonhead. I did wear different outfits for each of the tracks, though. For instance, when I played bass, I wore Bassist brand running shoes. POTENTIAL --------- Even though Rubbahead and I start and end in the same places, we use different methods of transportation to get to work. Rubbahead rides his bicycle, whereas I prefer to take the bus. I think he's missing out on something very special: sometimes, when I'm not wearing headphones, I hear kids freestyling at the back of the bus. Now, I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, they're spouting the kind of violent, misogynistic juvenilia that's only good if it's as done as cleverly and professionally as NWA did it on Straight Outta Compton. On the other hand, hey, it rhymes. You know, ever since Depeche Mode did that cover of "Enjoy the Silence", U2 and Depeche Mode have been permanently and inextricably fused together in my brain. I can't tell them apart. It's like prosopagnosia, but for music. So one day I walked up to the rapping youths and asked them if they were serious enough about their craft to actually put out an album. Unfortunately, it seems like they're all living way below the poverty line and can't afford even our minimal production fees. I had considered going the other way, and hiring one of them as a frontman. One observation R.F.s mother made, before he died for the first time, was that the main obstacle preventing Smush from developing a larger following was the lack of any sort of vocals. At the time, I attacked this assertation with a vengeance, citing modern examples such as Yanni, Kenny G, George Winston, and John Tesh. My change of heart might just be general feelings of concilliation resulting from R.F.s death -- I think his mother would have loved dearly to see him touring with a popular band -- but now I think that a lead vocalist might just be what we need. Probably not a rapper, though. I have great respect for both good rappers and good rap producers, but I don't think it's the path we want Smush to take. On the other hand, I still have the urge to produce a good rap song now and again... maybe the real trick is to try to find people freestyling behind the wheel of a 'Benz. How am I going to go about doing this? A cherry-picker, maybe? I don't have that part worked out yet. Any ideas? CLASSICS -------- FF5 - The Desperate Monkey - http://smush.goombas.org/search.asp?name=FF5 Facial fantasy five. The Desperate Monkey keeps seeing faces with milk mustaches, except the milk is all over the faces instead of just on the upper lip. What can it possibly mean?? We don't know! BBS - lemonhead - http://smush.goombas.org/search.asp?name=bbs B(ig) B(rass) S(lammer): Remember pogs? They were like Magic: The Gathering" trading cards "for the rest of us". Well back in the 1th grade, Rubbahead was addicted to playing that game and he had this awesome big brass slammer. Over the summer, he slammed all the time, for 60 hour blocks, only stopping to sleep for 12 hours, and then he started the process all over again. It took a toll on him: after that summer he had a nervous breakdown and is now unable to write music without drums. ham - lemonhead - http://smush.goombas.org/search.asp?name=ham If I had green eggs and ham, I'd ham it up in the morning with a fox.