In a fit of nostalgia, I listened to the album recently. Surprisingly, or not, it still seems fairly fun. We were always careful to try and not fall into stereotypical genre patterns — things that tend to sound dated as music and tastes change.

So, for a short time, I am going to make the album and some extra material available for download here (link at the bottom). Sure, it might cannibalize all those iTunes sales we have (hah!) but what the hell.

Disclaimer: If Dee starts flinging poo at me for doing this, I’ll take it down and replace it with incriminating pictures I have of him.

These were the original “headshots” I drew for our press kit (oh such hubris!) We came up with the idea for a “virtual band” with a crafted backstory when we first started working together in the early 90′s. I choose to believe that Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett based The Gorillaz on our groundbreaking efforts. I choose to believe a lot of things that are probably not true. Anyways, the backstory is lost to the ravages of time and excess, but I do recall it had something to do with time travel back from an apocalyptic future… one that we may have had a hand in creating. (Then again that sounds a lot like the backstory we had for our industrial band Meinschlagen).

The album itself had a couple of different covers. Here they progress from earlier to later as they go left to right. It also had a  few different track orders. What I’ve listed here is what I consider the “correct” one.

Jack In, Log On, Nod Out

Ready To Begin / Patterns

After putting the SimStim project away for a couple of years, this is the song that got it rolling again. After seeing the movie Π (Pi), we knew we had to create a song based on samples from it. The opening sequence is from the original Rollerball movie.

(Love Is The Law) Love Under Will

Oh, our crazy flirtations with Uncle Al and his wacky band of sorcerers. The title is obviously a Crowley quote. And that is definitely not a Dead Can Dance sample. Nope no way. Not a chance. We’re not fools like FSOL were…

The Eternal Question

How many times in your life can you get Ice Cube to name check you in a song? As many times as you can splice them in with an audio editing program, that’s how many!

Ghosts & Empties

A long with the name of the band, here is another nod to the man who created our future, or at least a dark dystopian view of it. To this day, William Gibson still ranks as one of the major influences on my ideas towards the uses (and abuses) of technology.

No Dancing

The vocals for this were rescued from a cassette tape recording of a performance Dee gave with his high school punk band. Add in some organs, a funky bass, and some sloppy rhythms and mix to taste.

Swamp Thing

The Chameleons, duh! It’s funny. I can remember we were always throwing out ideas about how “this or that “song would be great to cover. Must have had thousands of ideas. We ended up only doing this one.

Truly Bitchen’

We have “Chinanski” to thank for this one. James was a guy we hung out with back in the day. James had, let’s say, eclectic interests. One day he showed up with a cassette tape that we had “just had to listen to”. It turned out to be a recording some kids made while talking to an overnight security guard at Knott’s Berry Farm over Ham radio or walkie talkies. His unique vision of the future became the vocals for the song.

Street Trash

This one is very simple. It was written with specific imagery in mind. Stephen King’s The Gunslinger. Following the Man in Black across the desert and through the town of Tull.

Orgiastic

Dee worked audio miracles to extract that Germs sample from the rest of the song.

Parsifal

The vocal samples for this were taken from Truffaut’s film version of Fahrenheit 451.

Jack In, Log On, Nod Out – Bonus Track

Before we put the SimStim project to bed, we put out one last single, Pass The Plate.

SimStim – Ultra Rare Trax

The following tracks were never formally released. They were early works in progress. Some got rearranged in to new tracks. Others were just left as-is.

Desdemona

T.W.E.A.K. (Therapeutic Waveforms Evoking Ambient Kaos)

Zaibatsu

The Sinful Adventures of Bhagwan Dass

Razorblade

It’s been fun going through these tracks, thinking about the shows we played in lofts, clubs, parks, and farms. And yes, if you hear a story about a band that wore steaks instead of clothes, that was us at The Temple of Sound. Fortunately, no pics have surfaced to date.

A convenient zip archive of all the audio can be downloaded here for now.

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So, what I want is a plugin similar to the dictionary widget. That one allows you to look up a word in the current text you are reading. In this case, however, it triggers on currency amounts.

Suppose you are reading Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (which, oddly enough, I am) and you see a line of text that reads

For a fare of twenty francs, the vehicle went down Broadway
to Union Square, took Fourth Ave. to its junction with Bowery St.,
turned into Katrin St. and halted at Pier 34.

I want to select twenty francs and have the plugin determine the publish date and tell me what that is in today’s US Dollars. Simple. To the point. And for me, incredibly informative.

Remember, as with all my “prior art” entries, if you make it and sell it, I want my cut.

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I work at a fairly large corporation that feels its necessary to treat their employees as children. To that end, they have installed one of those subscription based proxies/firewalls that blocks internet content based on URLs.

I also read a number of mailing lists everyday and the number of links that are floated my way on a daily basis is staggering. The number of them that will make it through the firewall – not so much.

I am ok with ocassionally hitting the “Bad Dog No Biscuit” page when a request goes through. What I don’t like is hitting that page for the same URL/domain multiple times. Sure, I know that I cant click on certain links, but my tiny brain refuses to remember them all.

So – I would like to see a Firefix plugin that can capture those error pages and if I click a link that would trigger another one, have the plugin alert me before the request goes through.

Get on it plugin developers!

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Currently, I am reading a hard cover book that is nearly 1000 pages long. Amazon pegs its weight at 2.8 pounds. Now that’s a hefty chunk of words to be throwing in my messenger bag and toting around all day to read on the MAX or at lunch.

So, here it is. Sliced Books. Allow me to purchase a volume where the binding is designed to cleanly separate into more manageable chunks – 100 pages or so. Then, I can just grab the volume that I am on, and am good to go.

As always, if you are a book publisher and you use this idea, I want my vig!

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When your mobile device pauses a song and its on its home wifi network (example: you just walked in the door, and hit pause on your iPod) it should signal iTunes on a designated machine to start playing where the iPod left off.

I want this app to be free, so in lieu of my vig, you can just credit me. Otherwise standard million dollars and controlling ownership of your company is just fine.

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Remember, if you turn this into a million dollar idea, I want my vig.

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Setup some applescript to do two things:

1. Fire off an audible alarm. delegate to the Alarm Clock app most likely.
2. If script is not killed within 10 minutes or so, start Twittering embarrassing personal info into the ether.

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