| Neologistics→ Music → Whatever |
The artwork for Whatever Works was created by Charles Wolff, and also all the grunt work of extracting it from tapes. A short discussion of each recording follows the cover images. I will likely never add MP3s. Most things here are represented in better versions on other CDs.
This song was the closest thing I ever wrote to a pop hit. Our studio recording of it is the lead song on the album Dog Days. The incredibly sloppy performance here is significant because it includes the young guitar player Ron Renninger, who was with us for a few months, but had moved on by the time we made the studio recordings.
This was written by Tom McFaul, and is also on Dog Days in a studio-recorded performance. Therefore, this version, which again has Ron Renninger, is different.
Another song by Tom McFaul that is also on Dog Days. This version is just a voice and piano demo, somewhat longer than the too-short version we recorded with the band. I have no idea when this recording was made, and didn't know it existed until it was unearthed during this reel-to-reel excavation project. Tom may have recorded it long after we split up.
This song is by Tom McFaul, with the background tape by me. Tom hates it, but I don't. A reasonably well-recorded version is on Before There Was Time. This badly recorded version is a live performance, taken from our SUNY debut concert.
A song of mine also found on Before There Was Time, this version taken from our SUNY debut concert.
This song is by Lou Reed, from his days with Velvet Underground. We played it simply because we liked Velvet Underground, and the epic nature of this song. The working people of Buffalo hated it when we played it in bars and threatened to beat us up. I don't blame them.
My best student composition, for flute, clarinet, harp and tuba. The better performance is on Classical Works. This one is from my senior recital on July 29, 1966. The other performance is much better, and there were problems with the sound on the recital tapes.
The best of three performances of this is on Classical Works. This performance was made about two weeks later at University of Illinois, by which time everyone had forgotten how to play it and lost enthusiasm for doing so.
The third performance, from my ill-fated senior recital.
This song was written by one or more of the Finchley Boys, and was played as a spontaneous and unannounced encore at the Black Bag concert. I had nothing to do with it. If any of the old Finchley Boys happens to stumble across this Web site, write me and I'll be happy to see you get a copy of this recording.
The remainder of the tracks on this album are identical recordings to their counterparts on Dog Days. However, in the transcribing them, Charles had some controls set differently such that these are actually of somewhat greater presence and better overall sound quality than the ones that wound up on the original (home made) version of Dog Days. For the Shadocks Music release, available from Psychedelic-Music.com, I created a new master, substituting these tracks.