Album Notes

ME : I am a serious guy. I have had a serious education in music. I have attended prestigious East Coast conservatory. I have attended hipster West Coast art school. I play the Piano which is by all accounts a quite serious instrument. I play Jazz which is AMERICA'S CLASSICAL MUSIC. I play with Kneebody which is by all accounts a quite serious band. I play with Dave Douglas who has won the Downbeat poll for Best Jazz Trumpet a lot of times, and damned if that ain't serious. [The people that vote in such polls have Beards, people. and Glasses.]

TOOLS USED TO CREATE THIS ALBUM : Macintosh Powerbook computer. Garageband Version 1.0. Oxygen-8 2-octave USB controller keyboard. Powerbook internal microphone. The body of work known as Jazz Standards.

THIS ALBUM : This is a serious album. Seriously funny !!!! No. really. This album began as a joke. Because I loved the Alto Saxophone sound in Garageband. and the Slap Bass sound. Why did I love these sounds? Because they were funny, but it turns out if you spend long enough staring right at them, they're not so funny anymore, they're actually a Thing of their own right. Then you combine them with synthesizers and reversed cymbal samples and distorted bit-reduced recordings of the powerbook internal CPU cooling fan. Then it's not funny at all, and simultaneously really funny. Then you use these tools to create terribly obscure renditions of traditional jazz standards. By now all hell has broken loose. And despite everything, the result is somehow an effective expression of what it is to be a TV-watching Graduate Student in Jazz, in America, in 2006.

ADDITIONAL REASONS TO BUY THIS ALBUM : 1) the funniest part of the album is actually the liner notes. And you cannot download them. 2) The songs are in alphabetical order. 3) Where else can you hear Someday My Prince Will Come performed by a Choir of Synthesized Slap Basses?