Rage building...

I've played guitar for a pretty long time. I started in like 1993 with a crappy guitar, which was good since I was a crappy player. I learned to play some chords and eventually could strum and sing at the same time. I eventually got higher-quality guitars and would goof around with them every once in a while.

Fast forward to me now. I still am pretty crappy with the instrument, especially given how long I've played.

But a couple months ago, I decided that I was going to take my meager guitar skills, I was going to use my untrained and uneven singing voice, and I was going to use a cheap mic and some free software I downloaded from the Web (legally, natch) to record some songs in my apartment. You know, for fun.

Weeks passed. Nothing was recorded. I wrote down some "lyrics" but those were entirely absent of any sort of musical underpinning and were (to be honest) more me whining than anything particularly creative.

Last week, I looked around my apartment and had nothing to do, so I picked up my guitar and I started fiddling (as normal) but then it suddenly came to me: I had to write and record a song. Like, right THEN.

So I gave myself three hours. The song that I'd been playing around with (Teenage Fanclub's "Don't Look Back", from their excellent Grand Prix disc... I just turned it on as I'm typing this after thinking about it) calls for (at least as I play it) a capo on the third fret, so I started playing around with chords there, settled on something simple, wrote some lyrics and recorded something. All within three hours.

I wasn't happy with the way I sang the chorus. I wasn't happy with how short it was nor with just HOW simple it was. But it was a good first attempt. I sent it to a friend to get his feedback (leaving his name off, so he won't get blamed if/when it's unleashed on the world) and he liked it. Or at least confirmed that it didn't totally, totally suck.

So a couple nights later I made another one. A bit over three hours. Not quite the energy of the first one, but a little more complicated and I was getting my feet under me a bit more with the editing process.

I've shared the two songs with some friends, who have all been supportive and seemed to have genuinely liked them. Getting over the hurdle of some people close to me hearing my attempts was big for me, and I decided to put them up on MySpace, at least for a while, just to overcome a bit more discomfort/fear in my life.

I created a MySpace music account and uploaded them on Wednesday, expecting a 24 hour delay. Here I am, 48 hours later, and the songs still don't load.

Goddammit.

I'm eager to get them posted and available soon because I'm still really nervous about anyone hearing them, and I fear that I'm going to lose my nerve because of MySpace technical delays.

But they'll be up, for better or for worse. Eventually.