Album Notes

As long as you have come this far to visit me, I must say thank you for dropping by.

I picked some popular tunes that most people should enjoy in order to provide a pleasant listening experience.

I have noticed, however, that this album sounds a lot better when it is played through a good amp and speakers than when the samples are downloaded and played through small computer speakers. So if you like the samples at all, you can expect the real thing to be even better.

Cielito Lindo was included because it has become sort of a theme song in our family. A loose translation of the chorus is "Sing and don't cry, because our hearts lift themselves up by singing." Everyone has times in their lives when they cry, but if a person can manage to squeeze out a few bars of Ay ay ay ay, they surely will feel a bit better.

You won't be able to hear it in the two minute sample, but there is the sound of tap dancing near the end of the Bo Jangles tune. That's supposed to be Bo dancing across the cell.

The internet is amazing. I needed a didgeridoo track for "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport". Following instructions found on the web, I made a rough instrument from PVC pipe, but it would have taken years of practice to do a decent performance with it. An online search revealed a store in LA that sold genuine Australian instruments. They put me in touch with a musician in Portland, Oregon.

I contacted him, Ed Drury, by phone and told him I needed a 4 minute didgeridoo stereo track in the key of D. He agreed to sell it to me, free and clear, for a modest fee, artistic credit, and a copy of the finished CD. He also helped me decide how to handle the controversial reference contained in the author's original recording.

As soon as he got my check, he posted the track on one of his web pages so I could download it and sail it right into my computer recording program. Wow! Never met the guy but there he is wailing away in my tune. And I didgerido didgeridig what he didgeridid with that didgeridoo.

The album's title is a word play on the famous Harley-Davidson slogan, "Ride to live...live to ride." The cover photo is just a snapshot of myself and my wife, Marcia, taken by a biker friend. But we really like it. I particularly like the way Marcia leaned forward and smiled. I didn't know she was such a ham.