All of these songs were recorded on my 8-track in March of 2007. I heard about the RPM Challenge too late to do anything about it so I tried to do it in March on my own using old songs as an attempt to get my fingers into playing shape to do a second Challenge in April that would be all brand new songs. I still haven't finished the April challenge... or the 2008 RPM Challenge.

Here are some notes on where these songs came from. I don't consider any of these to be final mixes. Everything is still rough, and one song is still missing a guitar part.

"A Matter of Time" was written while I worked at the tech school formerly known as Northeast Broadcasting School in 1994 or '95. I supervised student access to the recording studios and got to spend lots of free time playing with the equipment. I got into a groove of writing little 4 or 8 bar phrases using a sequencer and then sticking them together. This was written around a piano/bass/drums thing in A minor that I kinda liked. The song was briefly done by a band called Prime Meridian in late 1999 or early 2000.

"Blink Your Eye" was written in 1997 by a band I played in called Prime Meridian. It was also known as "Mega Closer" because we'd just make noise forever at the end. The lyrics were the result of getting supremely pissed off at work one day. I actually quit the job the next day. I shortened the ending up for this version because you can only do so much with a drum machine.

"Four Walls" is the oldest song of the bunch. It was written early in 1992. I had been working with a drummer friend of mine for a while during the Fall 1991 semester. We'd get together once every few weeks and write and record to 4-track one or two songs. I was having a blast doing this. They were the best songs I had written to that point... possibly still to this day. Things changed though. The drummer joined a full time band and didn't have time to for our little songwriting exercises, and then my guitar was stolen and I was out of commission for a while. Once I got a new guitar I tried carrying on by myself for a while, playing my brother's drums. The quality of the songs (and the drumming... ouch) went down, but occasionally I'd pull out a good one. In the years that followed I tried starting a few different bands with a bass player friend of mine and a parade of different drummers. This song was played by all of them. Only one of those bands actually played a gig, my brother was the singer in that band but 2 or 3 days before the gig the drummer quit and my brother switched to drums while I handled the vocals, and this song was in the set. Around 1997 it fell out of favor, but in 2003 I brought it out of storage for the band Break Even and it was eventually recorded for the band's second CD.

"Mall Rat Blues" was written by Prime Meridian in 1997. It was the 2nd song we wrote. It was also the first song we dropped. I don't think we ever played it live. It's stupid and boring, but I have never been able to completely give up on it. I decided to use it in this project just to see if time made me like it anymore. It didn't.

"Photograph" was written in March of 1999 during my Spring Break. I challenged myself to write a song a day over that week and I did it. I was noodling around on the opening arpeggio and my brother came running into the room, jumped onto his drums and started playing along. The lyric is about a photo I saw at my grandmother's wake. She was 92 when she passed away and I was 27. There was one picture of her and my grandfather taken before they were married. They were being goofy kids together and it was odd for me to see my grandmother as a goofy kid.

"Something New" has a bit of a history. I wrote it in 1992... I think... during a power outage. After the lights came back I recorded it on a 4-track and forgot about it. Then in 1998 or so I found it and rewrote a lot of it and played it with Prime Meridian. We played it live once but never recorded it. Then in 2004 I found a video tape of that P.M. show and relearned the song and played it with Break Even who also never recorded it.

"Stupid Punk Song" is... well... stupid. I woke up one morning and the entire song, lyrics and all, was stuck in my head. I let it rattle around for a few days before putting it down on my new 8-track. I played it for Break Even once but they didn't seem too interested. Rightly so.

"The Sun" is another well traveled tune. It, like "A Matter of Time," was written at Northeast Broadcasting School. This was probably 1995. It was a recording experiment. All of the drums, bass, and keyboard parts were done using a MIDI keyboard, but I synced the sequencer to an ADAT and recorded each individual instrument part (including the individual drums) onto one track each. I then took the 2 or 3 ADAT tapes into the school's main recording studio and replaced the bass part with a real bass, and each individual drum part with a professional sample. The drum samples were the whole point of the song, which is why the verses use so many different toms. I then overdubbed guitars and some quickly written lyrics and mixed it down... and I liked it. I never like my own songs, but I liked this one. A couple of years later Prime Meridian played it, although I don't think we played it live. Then in 2003 it was played by Break Even with the verses and the lyrics rewritten. It too ended up on the band's second CD.

"Thursday" was written during my second one-song-per-day-over-spring-break challenge in March of 2001. It was written on... wait for it... Thursday. I still don't know what to call it. The lyrics are basically about not having anything to write about. The well was running dry by that point. This one, like "Photograph" has never been played by a band. Just by me and my home recording gear.

"Vanishing Point" was an attempt to force myself to write a full song. I had been playing in Break Even for about a year and found myself completely unable to write music. I had just set up a nice little 8-track studio (sort of) at home and I used that to demo the first ideas that came into my head. That ended up as "Vanishing Point." I am constantly waffling back and forth over whether the guitars in the verses should be acoustic or distorted electric. I think I've changed this recording at least three times. I played my original demo for Break Even and, except for thinking the little spoken word section was cool, there wasn't much interest.