Category Archives: Music & Pictures

Sounds, Stills, Films and Zoetropes. You can also stream the entire catalog at my Bandcamp page.

An Update

Attempt #4 at the elusive Middle Song In the Health Adventure Show is a blend of the best lyrics from Attempts 1 & 2, with all-new music I’m quite happy with so far. It even has my favorite chord in it.

Granted, Attempt #4 is only two hours old, so I need to sleep on it for a few days to make sure, but I think it’s going to stick better than those did.

Attempt #3, for the record, had a very short life. It was a similar blend, but I realized a few hours after I’d written the music that actually Stephen Lynch had written the music and I was just accidentally stealing it.

So here’s hoping #4 came from the “new stuff” part of my brain.

20 Years!

News From Around the Bend album cover

It has come to my attention that my first proper album, NEWS FROM AROUND THE BEND, came out exactly 20 years ago today!

Yes, in a fit of pure, unbridled synergy, I named it after the zine I’d been making for 11 years at that point. ICYMI, I just published the 31st anniversary issue of NFATB last month.

It came out during the window of time where I was still insisting my stage name was just Ross, but everyone had started calling me Acoustic Ross, even putting it on flyers that way. So the first 100 physical copies have just ROSS on the spine – but within a week or two of the release, I decided ACOUSTIC ROSS was the better name, and made it official, so every subsequent printing of the disc has my ‘real’ stage name on the spine.

The release party on this night, 20 years ago, was at CD Warehouse in Brookside, early enough that folks (including me) could also make it downtown to see They Might Be Giants at the Sager Center. Those two venues are long gone, but TMBG and I are still around. And you can still get a digital copy of this little batch of ditties over on Bandcamp.

News From Around the Bend insert photo

News From Around the Bend release party photo

2020: Year in Review

2020 year in review

Can we just all be happy 2020 is over, and then never speak of it again?

Despite being… well, the WORST… I am somehow managing to end this year as alive as I started it, and despite being, again, the WORST, this year did bring something of a creative burst or two.

In the early days of the lockdown era, I played a living room concert broadcast on the fantastic rsuradio.com. It was so much fun that I later released two more living room shows of my own: Live at San Quarantine, Volumes 1 & 2.

You can stream, download, and purchase both volumes of Live at San Quarantine over at Bandcamp. New stuff – old favorites – new versions of old favorites, including a milestone update to “Pushin’ 40 Mid-Crisis-Life Blues” – and the Medley to boot. Will there be a Volume 3? Only 2021 can say. But frankly I don’t trust that guy just yet.

I also managed to find a little bit of time to knock out two new issues of the loooong-running zine News From Around the Bend, which you can go download and/or read for free at your leisure at nfatb.com. (How long is “loooong,” you ask? Our 30th anniversary is coming up in February 2021.)

And finally, I also managed to finish writing all the songs for the long-awaited CARDIAC ADVENTURE piece. The last two songs’ lyrics were finished written on a plane the second week of March. Just under the proverbial wire. I also worked on writing the connective-tissue talking bits for that set, and the visuals, and I’m hoping to end the live-performance hiatus by debuting that show sometime in the coming year. (If the coming year decides to allow such things.) At the very least, the “album version” will be in the works VERY soon.

So that’s my year and a quick look at the coming one. If you’re still here, or even if you’re not but you were for a while – thanks for being here. Hang in there and maybe we can do this in person again soon.

New Music in 2019: Part 3

Downloadables

The story so far: After a 4-year hiatus, we are approaching The Coming Out Of Some New Things, so in the coming months, I’m releasing odds & ends that fell through the cracks during that gap.

Today’s entry is (FINALLY) our first original track in this series. It’s a demo of a track I’ve been playing live for a while, and it’s also a somewhat shocking true story.

In early 2006, Russia finally revealed that late one night, more than 22 years earlier, their missile defense early-warning system (named Oko, old Russian for “Eye”) reported five missiles coming in from the US. The supervisor on duty that night, Stanislav Petrov, read the warnings and determined it was unlikely to be a real attack. Had he followed orders (as most of the military folks who rotated on that shift would have done), it could have meant the end of the Cold War in explosive fashion. Fortunately, he was right to ignore what turned out to be a false alarm. (Which falsely alarmed repeatedly that night.)

Stanislav Petrov saved the world, and you never even knew about it. The whole story around it is nuts, and Wikipedia is a good place to start digging into it.

So my love of history gave me the idea, the blues gave me the structure, and the Beatles and the Russians gave me the title. Check it out here: The Ballad of Petrov and Oko.

New Music in 2019: Part 2

Downloadables

The story so far: After a 4-year hiatus, we are approaching The Coming Out Of Some New Things, so in the coming months, I’m releasing odds & ends that fell through the cracks during that gap.

Today’s entry is another cover: “Whipping Song (Who’s Gonna Whip You),” originally performed by the CRIMINALLY underrated Sister Double Happiness. I worked on a handful of covers and originals for what was to be a sideshow/carnival-themed EP, including this, “Two Headed Boy” (our previous entry), my own “Make It Crispy!” and feat-of-strength medley, plus a number of other original & covered goodies. That EP never materialized, but a few things did get completed, so here’s one of those nuggets.

It was a great excuse to break out my old MATH LAB growl. That’s me on all instruments here, including the acoustic bass I had just snagged from a pawn shop right before recording. I was a bass player long before I played a 6-string, and it’s always nice to let that guy out again for a bit.

(It was also fun to bash the crap out of that hi-hat.)

Check it out here: Whipping Song (Who’s Gonna Whip You).

New Music in 2019: Part 1

Downloadables

Hi folks!

After a long hiatus (4+ years), we are finally approaching The Coming Out Of Some New Things. Over the next few months, I’ll be releasing some odds and ends that fell through the cracks during the gap.

First up is a cover of a Neutral Milk Hotel classic, “Two Headed Boy.” Recording was pretty straightforward, other than a double-mic / bounceback / reverb thing I did on the vocals. I sung into two mics, adjusted differently, at different distances (one of them in fact moving throughout), in a corner behind a door and a pair of Zappa posters. Those vocals were smoothed out and blended by doing sort of a double-wide mixdown, some layers with and some layers without a slight room reverb.

It all seemed like a good idea at the time, as did recording it a half-step low. Over time, the downbeat sounding flat started to get on my nerves, so I finally pitched it all back up that half-step, and here we are.

Check it out here: Two Headed Boy.

The Self-Improvement of Acoustic Ross

THE SELF-IMPROVEMENT OF ACOUSTIC ROSS
Downloadable Mix Tape. Released December 2014.

Self-Improvement

I made you a little mixtape for your December holiday of choice. Fifteen songs of various vintage, mostly remixed and remastered.

Yes, the title is another Twilight Zone reference.

Stream for free, or pay-what-you-like starting at less than 50 cents per song, exclusively from Bandcamp:

 

The Anarchist Fakebook

THE ANARCHIST FAKEBOOK
CD. Released July 2008.

The Anarchist Fakebook

By a landslide, the best-sounding Acoustic Ross release to date. It was a tedious process pulling this thing together but the album is the better for it. I’d been trying to get this thing off the ground since the EP came out four years earlier, and somehow finally managed to pull it off.

Recorded at home in the spring and summer of 2008, through entirely different (and entirely superior) equipment than the previous albums. Looking back at the old catalog, you may recognize a couple titles, but these are all-new recordings. This is also the first Acoustic Ross album to actually feature guest musicians. See below for some links to lots more info about this one.

Tracklist:
history lesson – part iii
misanthropic love song #95
pushin’ 40 mid-crisis-life blues
swept down the plain
+3 sword of protection
*blushes*
ugly american
48 days adrift
rough weekend
the anarchist fakebook
ruby
without
the r.i.a.a. took my baby away
life imitates life
fault country
+ 6 super-secret bonus tracks

All songs by Acoustic Ross.

For more, check out the Merch and Lyrics pages.