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It appears the MP3s are finally fixed and working correctly. Finally.

We encourage sharing this music, so feel free to distribute it however you see fit.

thanks,

-Michael

Invisible (1994)

I can't say much about Invisible, I wasn't there. It's still a darn great first album.

4 & 8 Track Cassette Demos (1995)

When I was working (briefly) at a recording studio in Lubbock, we found an old 8 track cassette recorder. That's a LOT of information to stuff onto the 1/4" bandwidth that a cassette provides. This is not a format that really ever caught on. Nonetheless, we recorded some demo stuff on it as well as on a Tascam 4 track that I later sold for $300. Back in the day, kids, a new 4 track was over a grand. Ahhhh, technology.

Lynn's friend John (?) played bongos on "All Return" if memory serves.

There was a short period between "Invisible" and "Microphonic" when alot of the music got really "heavy" and (oh, God, i can't believe I'm going to use this term) "grungey". A lot of songs had the whole loud then soft Nirvana thing. It was short lived, but most apparent in "The One to Blame", "Difficult but Typical", "Red" and a song called "Wasted" that I don't think ever got recorded. I always thought Brian was saying "cannonball" and it turned out he was saying "camouflage" which, in retrospect, made much more sense.

"Red" used to be the first song of EVERY show and I loved it. Then, we saw Rubberbullet ( a short lived Dallas band with the amazing Earl Harvin on drums). This prompted us to try "Red" with a "quaalude thunder" drum part. To fully understand the importance of quaalude thunder, you must read "The Real Frank Zappa" by Frank Zappa. This also explains the terms "weenus" and "point your guitar skyward" which were oft used among the Spilling Poetry ranks.

"Breathe" was my old roomate Keith's favorite. Keith liked the Cure a LOT. I mean, a LOT. I miss Keith, he lives in Seattle now and works for Microsoft.

"Servitude" is not in it's full splendor because it was put on a CD back in the day when CD burning was new and I was stupid.

There are 2 versions of "Serve Yourself". One was recorded on the 4 track and one on the 8 track. The quality of format is equally crappy.

Microphonic (1996)

Microphonic was engineered by me, Brian and Alan Crossland. Jamie Sanders was just leaving SP when this came out, but he played on, I believe all the songs. "South Central" and "Fry" were engineered and mixed by Alan Crossland at Caldwell's Studio. Caldwell's eventually became Brazos and now I think it's a dress shop, which is a shame. This was released on cassette only which was still a somewhat popular format in 1996, believe it or not.

8 Track Cassette Demos (1997)

Back again, to the marvelous 8 track. "Painted Fool" should have made it onto a proper album. I'm not sure why it never did. "Insecure" shows up in full form on Telepathetic. "Separate Unequals" was another song that should have made it onto a "real" album. Me and Ryan would always trade a look at the big chorus part and it never failed to make me happy.

Telepathetic (1998)

The biggie. This one was recorded at our old rehearsal space and Dallas Sound Lab. Engineers included me, Brian and Tim Kimsey. We were able to get some cheap "late night" rates at Dallas Sound Lab. Tim Kimsey is a hell of an engineer a super nice guy and he worked like a dog for us. Most of the stuff we did at DSL was cut live with some vocal and guitar overdubs. Which means we got to play in the same room and look at each other, which was a BIG deal.

"Burn" was pretty simple and straight up rock n' roll. I remember Brian bringing it into rehearsal and it getting worked up pretty fast.

"Valerie" had been around for a LONG time and I think that by the time it was recorded we were all fairly sick of it. At least I was.

"Weight of the World" is still my favorite song here. I remember early on we had worked on it and it just wouldn't come together, so it was shelved for at least a year or two before popping back up here. We were fortunate enough to get a live recording of it as well at The Curtain Club (scroll further down for the Curtain Club stuff )

"Telepathetic" was originally titled "Stereo". We got to record it in the "A" room at DSL which was a pretty cool experience for us at the time. Scott couldn't understand what the lyric "Donna soulless" meant until we explained to him that Brian was actually saying "dinosaurs". Oh, Scott.

"Live Wire" was one of the first songs we wrote when I joined in '96 and the only song I ever sang.

"Insecure" is just rock and roll. Nice and simple.

"Carolann" was alot like "Stealing" to me. I remember when we were mastering, we were looking for some way to make the intro more interesting, so we reversed some of it, stuck it at the front and wa-la, there it is.

"Stealing Flowers" had a cool piano part that was lost due to some "mono" and "stereo" issues that I won't go into here. If I had a dime for every version of this song that we worked on.........

"One Fine Day" has the fewest lyrics of any SP song ever and I think that's super.

"Anything" was another one that had been around for so long that I think we were all relieved to finally get it recorded. It was usually the first song of our set.

"Pocketful" was cut live with me playing guitar and Brian singing. It was originally in some crazy-weird open tuning that no one could remember so we opted for standard tuning.

Live at the Curtain Club (2000)

James McWilliams at the Curtain Club engineered this onto a used cassette we gave him before the show. Anything that sounds good is due to his superb engineering skills. Anything that sounds bad is our fault. There was never any plan to release this stuff, but it ended up coming out pretty good and, at this point, what've we got to lose?

Demos for "deletia" (May 2000)

We had planned to do some recording with Tim Kimsey ( who mixed and engineered most of "Telepathetic" ) in the Spring/Summer of 2000. So we demo'ed a bunch of songs that we had been working on. Most of them were still in the "working" stages. This was done in our rehearsal space, live, with 2 mics. If memory serves, we decided to record "Human Trampoline" with Tim. He did a fantastic job, as always.

Deletia

We never properly sequenced this record or decided on artwork or anything, so I'm taking liberties here. It's tempting to re-mix or fix some of these things, but the sentimental part of me just screams that it's not right. I still think this was some of our best stuff, and wish it could've been put together properly, but, hey, life's messy. Things don't always work out . Jen Caddell, my lovely girlfriend, took a lot of photos for the artwork for Deletia. You can see them here. The title (deletia) was taken from the Douglas Coupland book "Microserfs". He defines it as "all that was lost". And we had the title BEFORE it was all over. Weird.

Crediting the proper people is important. "Freeway" and "Never What You Need" were engineered by Casey Diorro ( from Valve-RIP ) and mixed by Eric Delegard. Jaret Reddick (from Bowling for Soup) co-produced with us. Tim Kimsey engineered and mixed "Human Trampoline". The rest of the songs were engineered by me, Brian or Scott and mixed by Brian.