Sorry Bill, but I had this one queued up for today.

This one is an early Rolling Stones song. Their 60’s and early 70’s records always struck me as being raw and non-pretentious.

No pitch correction. Guitar, piano and organ. Once again I sound like a comatose David Bowie. Enjoy.

This is a song by a band called Dead Can Dance. Their style spans a range of genres, and they have had an enduring influence despite never really being successful in the commercial mainstream (whatever that means).

The original version of this song always struck me as very exquisite and ethereal, though I think I mangled it. No worries, this is just an exercise.

I went for a simple arrangement here. Less is more. No pitch correction. 2 guitars, 1 synth pad, vox, and a piano.

This is a cover of a song from an Isreali band called The Churchills. As a band, their style was a survey of late 1960’s pop, with some mediterranean flavors added into the mix.

The original song is called “Straight People” (straight as in conformist). I decided to make the intended meaning more explicit by changing the lyrics to “Bland People”. The original tune was almost certainly done in emulation of The Doors.

Once again, all instruments were done by me. No pitch correction.

Greetings. I am new to the Hella Gems roster, but I hang out with the East Coast Hella Gems people in real life. The Hella Gems concept poses a challenge to me, as it is very difficult to compose, perform, record, and produce a new song on a weekly/biweekly basis and have it turn out the way you want to. I tend to spend much time trying to perfect my musical undertakings (keyword: trying), and such a schedule would easily drive me insane.

So, for the time being, I have decided to remove the composing step from the four-step process outlined above, thus reducing the emotional investment I put in each piece, by doing covers of songs by other artists. I view this as a chance to experiment with arrangements, production techniques, and to improve my singing (you will see what I mean).

I was inspired to take this approach after reading the Wall Street Journal and learning about some of Beck’s impromptu and odd covers of Velvet Underground songs.

My first entry is a song by a 1980’s synth-pop outfit called Bone Symphony. They only released one EP and recorded a song for the Revenge of the Nerds soundtrack. It is this latter item that I cover in this entry. It is a classic example of a 1980’s “fix-em-up” song, i.e. a song that is played over the montage that depicts the protagonists hatching some grand scheme and setting to work implementing it.

As those who know me will protest, I probably doubled my voice too much (however, I used no pitch correction). I couldn’t understand the lyrics on the original song , so I approximated them the best I could.