Cicca Bupop

Being ancient in age if not soul, I feel a strange nostalgia for those long-ago days when I would go over to Fo Jammi's little house in South Saint Louis and shoehorn myself into the large closet he had carefully crafted into a studio, using mostly his wits, a determination not to spend a dime more than he had to, and carpentry skills. We did this almost every Monday night for a year or two, and then stopped for some reason, probably paying recording projects that he took on instead of self indulgent projects with me.

My selfish agenda was, and still is, to record every song I ever wrote, and to re-record some of the songs I felt hadn't been done justice to. As time passes I have become more and more convinced that this ambition will never be realized; it's just not important enough to me to take the place of family and work. But we didn't just record Tony Patti songs, thank god. We would also kind of horse around and do little one-off experiments with total freedom, too.

Cicca Bupop is one of those little sketches. As we threw this together, playing keyboards, Fo Jammi would make midi loops on his extremely useful and capable Atari computer. I would play something simple that repeated itself and he would add whatever he wanted, being able to play keyboards with both hands in a rather expert, show-offy kind of way that did little to increase my delusional regard for my own abilities.

The Atari was quite a decent midi editor. I've yet to see a program to surpass it for usability and interface, and think Fo Jammi hasn't yet really found something he likes as much, since he uses midi very little these days.

As we were putting together this mellow little jam I felt the need to interrupt it totally with some kind of harsh punk freak out. So don't turn up the volume on it and hold on to your hats. It lasts just a few seconds, then calms right back down again. Kind of like life.

Download Cicca Bupop.