Local Teen - Micah Long Ox - A one man DIY band

I'm one guy in his basemant that works on music nearly everyday and put its it up on spotify grateful that no matter how small, he has an audience that likes the art he makes.

[shoppingshoppingshoppingshopping]

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF AND EACH OTHER

LISTEN HERE: https://shopping.bandcamp.com/album/take-care-of-yourself-and-each-other

OR HERE: https://linktr.ee/localteen

New album time!

Yep it's official. Every time I release an album I feel less bad about the things I had to let go to get this finished. Art isn't completed. It's abandoned goes the saying.

As usual I am completing songs in the order I started them. Most of these were started in fall of 2019. When we first started to hear about Covid and our beloved cat Ladybear died.

1 divine umami ecstasy - I had the album done and thought "I need one more". SO I went into the archives and found this. It was pretty much done. The lyrics were about a severed genitals on a table. That felt like too much. Also I've got a kid that will play my music on spotify so I changed them to be about desiring a specific visceral flavor Uncle Junior would be embarrassed to admit he loves.

I added one or 2 guitars and it was done. So quick. Also quickly turned into my favorite tunes because it took 2 weeks to get it 90% done and not months and months like these other songs.

2 today it's true-

I really should look up and see how much of this was recorded when I started the finalization. But I am so sick of these songs after tweaking the mixes for months and months. I think Everything was there except the lyrics and vocals. Also I have the worst memory now so who knows. I recall recording new half time drums recently in the bridge.

I like the idea in the chorus which is don't do something now if it doesn't feel right. That means it's always going to bother thee.

The drum pattern I borrowed from Kuduro which is an African genre I heard about ln like 2010. I probably have that wrong but you can look it up if you want to know more. I just remember hearing some of these amazing grooves on mix tapes back then when mixtapes were the greatest way to find new music that excited me.

3 dont you worry- is it "dont you worry" as in youll be ok. or is it "why aren't you concerned?". a message to all the unreliable folks out there.

the guitar build after the 1st chorus accidentally shows off my early get up kids influences now that i hear it back.

4 lady bear i miss you: this was off the dome right after our cat ladybear died. people get sad about forgetting dead loved ones. i'm pretty sure that's the way its supposed to go. i miss her. but i have forgotten her smell, much of her voice. I forgot what the love felt like but i remember remembering the love. its ok. her death was a gift in that i was able to find gratitude for the connection in all grief. it told me not to fight grief. it's best to let it take me over and sit in it. once i find the bottom it blooms into love and a connection with something greater.

5 when will this be over - how many times have you been at a car dealership, dmv or at the mercy of some organizations less than transparent timelines? An anthem for all of us who feel imprisoned by other peoples schedules

6 cant happen here - nope. cant. that stuff happens other places. we're ok. is it a song for those that have faith in institutions or those that are pessimistic? love the pianos on this. I layered the one in my living room that my cat likes to play at 3am. ive become a person that really like playing piano

7 more or less - drums inspired by that band ocean that's been sampled a million times. recorded with 2 $20 MXL ribbon mics. fun mics. more or less is more or less is less more and more. was it americas most blunted where the sample says "as soon as you start sleeping catching you off guard"? Respect to madlib for the direct influence on these lyrics.

8 no granola - had some wack beat up on the old studio computer when my kid and a friend came in to the basement studio and started freestyling. Quickly dropped the beat and recorded this track for them to sing on.

9 diva fierce will forgive you now - was picturing a different dude when i wrote this but now wondering if was talking to my younger self that had to learn this lesson?

10 you're not that good - as in talented. but that's fine. you don't deserve what you want. doesn't mean you shouldn't try or that you're bad for wanting it. just keep making shit. thats all that matters.

11 this is serious - various domestic scenes in this world of modern blah blah blah . man i spent so long on these mixes and now listening back i keep hearing changes i want to make. which are probably reversals of the last changes i made (vocals down -1db, snare up .5db, etc).

ok i gotta let this go. time to move on to the next record.

thanks for listening

Helpers:

Me Lady for covering for me when I'm in the basement making noise. Me little lady for singing on stuff and tolerating her dads loud ass drum set and guitars.

Keith and Dov for feedback and for helping with album order.

Jaime for video help

[shoppingshoppingshoppingshopping]

https://shopping.bandcamp.com/album/dead-stock-dreams

Listen to the new album above or on your favorite platform here.

Hey y'all! I'm back with a new album. And as is customary here's my unedited random thoughts about the making of this.

Thanks to: jess hectic for the harmonium free rental

my girls and especially suga boo for inspiration

Both Keiths for ideas and feedback.

I know:

during the mixing of this i experienced just knowing. i didn't need to check or test on analyze. I just new, which is such a point of growth for me and something i want to experience more of... so i ask myself how do i try to do that? but there is no try for this, its the absence of effort and its countervailing force whatever that is. its so hard to explain this. i have a feeling there's probably something in Buddhism about this idea. it's not a confidence. exactly. because confidence seems to be in relation to others. this is not knowledge but it is a true fulling knowing experience. you just know. The chatter in my head seems so tiny and unimportant in this zone. i want more time in this space. especially when it comes to news, current events and how the people around me react. life is a journey and i gain so much experience from my music making. thank you music for all you have taught me. may more peace be upon all of us.

1 i wanna get high, get by, survive and die old with you

unlike the other songs this one came to me quickly and was written and recorded with in the 2nd week of jan 2025. I'm breaking up my pattern of finishing older songs in order. because I might die soon and if the desire is there to keep going imma gonna take it by golly.

the song kept wanting to have the lyrics "i wanna get high with you" but i found those lyrics so lame and yet i couldn't stop singing them. it took a while until i cracked the story which would be a young dude in his 20s and the different stages with who would soon become his wife. we go from working a shit job in a new city doing menial IT work and feeling like life is pointless then meeting a girl. thinking the pinnacle of relationships was getting high together and then fast forwarding into home owner ship, kids, pets and money troubles and appreciating that just surviving together is the apex of this time period. And looking forward to aging together. to me it's sweet but i am sure like most of my life someone will tell me a pure honest thought i had is some how dark or inappropriate to say.

I feel so much more comfortable with my lyrics now. I have much more of a sense of what doesn't work. Does what I wrote work? I don't know but if it doesn't give me a specific pebble in my shoe feeling then it stays.

I also made a video for this song. I used to make videos for all my songs. I missed it. I'm such a visual person it's kinda crazy i've taken such a long break.

I'm tempted to post this all over the over 40 sub reddits as a proper middle age love song.

2 worry about the wrong things at the wrong times

this one was fun but dark to write. thinking about a lost boy looking for meaning in a world others have convinced him can only be saved by his violent death. the chorus lyrics were inspired by the opening of that book "i am worried about this black box of doom" or something like that. Jason Pargin wrote it. I loved the cultural criticism in that book. He nailed a feeling I have but couldn't put words to.

3 wouldn't it be cool

a disassociated fathers guilt for all his babies (fur and or human) as he struggles to be present when holding them, as i type this one of them is blocking my access to the keyboard and wants my attention and here comes the guilt that i am still typing. you can also hear one of my wards yelling at me during the second pre chorus. it happened when i was recording drums for that section and it fit perfectly in with the theme of the song so obviously i had to leave it in. it also triggers my guilt every time I hear it which was probably 165 times in the mixing of this song because my music is so dense and messy that changing one tiny thing effects everything else.

also i just realized i did this song in threes instead of the usual 4. meaning each section repeats 3 times instead of he usual 4. that's a cool idea to explain with music: a mind that can't slow down to be present so it rushes forward.

my coworkers were listening to interpol the other day and I was like "oh i wonder if thats what inspired my guitars on this song"? music just comes out of me. i rarely think of a reference and try to mimic.

4 what can you do?

another song about a divorce. but this time i'm talking to the dude. im really proud of the gentle tone i take with him for a big chunk of the song. and how he and his ex-wife still have love for each other even though there're not together. the parts that fell in love and made things click still exist inside of them. I'm probably giving voice to my inner child of divorce here and what he wish he could figure out to say to his parents and since we are in pure fantasy here they would have listened. but i've never had those kinds of parents.

5 guess im done with having other kids

"yo soy un hombre!" after i wrote this i was like "oh this is kinda feminist" specifically the part about the burden of pregnancy and its much much bigger effect on a woman than a man. ok maybe it's not feminist but more sensitive dude that can hang out with women? i dont know. why put a label on it?

anyway it's from the perspective of a feller with one kid considering a vasectomy

6 you have no clue just how lucky you are

some tough love for a lady with a racist bird that complains about modern dating life. a spot of gratitude goes a long way

7 we've got happiness flowing through the bloodline

drunk guidos outside the club about to get into a fight and this is what's going on in their heads

8,9,10,11,12 i wrote a bunch of music for the wort wrangler podcast and these are the songs I wrote. shout out to antonio of said podcast that uses my music for a ton of stuff and always sends me really nice texts. he's a great fella and a fan of my music so of course i'm gonna like him.

[shoppingshoppingshoppingshopping]

Listen/purchase: I'm Sorry That Happened so Fast by Local Teen

OK new album write up time.

Well, it looks like I screwed up the release date and set it for september 2023 when it was supposed to be september 2024. so the question is will it always be out of order for the rest of time or will i be able to fix it at some point?

cdbaby as usual has awful support and still hasn't gotten back to me to fix the date. why is support so bad everywhere? anyway....

I was doing all the boring technical stuff as i thought it was ready and then cdbaby rejected my files. apparently they don't take 96k audio. so now i am opening up each session and having to re-render at 44/16. Which is a total drag cuz now i have to relisten to the entire album again. I love most of these songs but i am also so damn sick of them now after hearing them 1000 times.

all these songs except the neat neat neat cover are from 2019. Meaning I started them then. Many were just chords and maybe a melody. A few had lyrics and were mostly done except needed clean up and a mix.

ok so first song,

away from home: this one I think I had almost everything except lyrics. All those were recorded this year. This album took forever to put together. I think I finally sat down and decided to finish it right after I released the last one. Lemme check. Oh crap that was december 2023! Damn I take forever. Or not. I know what I like and i get pickier as time goes on. I guess this is just what it takes.

I am finding I have less desire to polish old songs that don't have much to grab me. Like one of the ones in this pile was this really cool bass line and drums. I've spent maybe 20 hours trying to shape it into a song and I haven't figured out yet how to do that. There are a few like this. A few albums back I wouldn't give up and would eventually find it. But I dunno. It's just so much effort and pain. When I have literally 100s of songs that will come together easier when I finally get to them. So I'm wondering why bother.

Another lesson is that album of unfinished songs I put out. A few of those will come on my spotify shuffle and now I can hear exactly how to finish them. So the lesson there is wait. It might come. If not? that's OK. This is life. Ya gotta let go sometimes. There is pain in making music/art. It's uncomfortable. The hard part is figuring out what kind of torture is good and what isn't.

Anyway, Away from home has lyrics about a violent cartel crime situation. I love crime movies. I just rewatched michael clayton again for the 10th time? it's so good. Pulp fiction too. Which took a while to pull me in but after the overdose I was in all the way and didn't want to leave it. Butch's girlfriend isn't as bad as Bill Simmons says she is. In fact she's just fine. John Maclane yelling to himself in the car felt a little forced very "acting".

BTW it's taking at least 20 minutes just to open the 3rd song session. I think there's over 250 tracks in there.

Listening back. Away from home chorus is sooooo good. I couldn't stop myself from recording this really jazzy harmonies. My music theory talk sounds like I know something but really I aint shit but I think there's like 9ths and 7ths and diminished somethings in there.

I played the broken cello I got from craigslist free on this. Some wood glue and a jerry rigged "clamp" using ratchet tie downs and it's playable. I have no idea how to play the cello but I was able to get some good sounds out of it for this song.

2: use a hoe

this is kinda funny. i found an earlier version of this. Spent MONTHS on it. Then towards the end of wrapping up the album figured I needed one more song. Went into the next batch of unfinished songs and found this version. I thought it was so much better. It was completely done except for some clean up and much needed mix changes.

lyrics are about some of the poor folks I spent a lot of time around when I lived in florida. when people say "i don't get trump voters" I always think "Ah you never spent any meaningful time with different kinds of people."

this is one of the negatives of tiered experiences like fast pass at an amusement park or anything not general admission at an event. a society is better when different people mix in positive ways over a shared enjoyment.

It's funny that this is bragging now but my florida experience gave me bonds with fresh off the boat Hatians, Cubans and pretty much all of latin America, not to mention kids whose family have definitely been at a KKK BBQ before (or maybe it was just a rumor that everyone that lived near moon lake was KKK. I dunno. I was too scared to go) and just all sorts of people with lots of debt, loyalty to the strangest things, strong family bonds hidden under resentment and the types of folks the media just never ever shows you.

Lower Middle Class life just isn't romantic. There's a fair amount of substance use, lots of humor, missing teeth and bad tattoos on even worse skin. That doesn't make for good streaming content. One lady I knew had no front teeth and her car was literally infested with roaches. You'd see them crawling all over the seats at any time of day. how the florida heat didn't kill them? I have no idea. Also if her car was like this what was her trailer for of kids like?

Who are they going to cast to depict her in a show? Glenn Close? She has the face of a shoe that only rich people know about.

i'm solid to maybe upper middle class now but those folks still exist inside me like guardian angels. They write a lot of my lyrics. I get them but i also resent them for not doing what i would do. not that that's right, but just reporting from subconscious.

When I was 16 working in fast food, I worked with a 40 year woman named BJ. She said it was short for something like "Billie gives the best blow jobs". Kids, the 90s were wild. or maybe just florida or both. This lady also was kind of illiterate and her kid names on his birth certificate was "BRAIN" no Brian. I hope she's doing well but I doubt it. The world has changed in a way that hasn't been protective of folks like that. That's just sad. I liked these people. We worked together as team. There is a special bond you gain when working on a time crunchy environment. I hope they made it out of poverty OK or least didn't go lower.

3: send the girls over

This was one of those songs I couldn't stop writing. It was so inspiring. So many ideas and lyrics. I saw a songwriting friend recently and told him I wanted to be better at lyrics. Then I went back to finish this song and saw that I'm not crap. I can pull it off sometimes. Cuz I am so proud of these lines:

so you didn't want to lie yet we did watch it grow that thing upon your face that drips when you get cold that looks down on the poor turns up when you get old through which you soon will pay for sticking it where it surely doesn't go

Keith Hopkin of The Blue Album Group and Asobi seksu sang on the woah parts. I love his voice. We used to be in a Weezer cover band together.

So did my nephews, probably the missus as well. I had anyone that came over sing on those woahs for a few weeks.

I just love this song. Listening to it now the "I knew it was you part" still gives me chills. I also played the trumpets on this. I don't know how to play at all. Yet I was so inspired that when I hit record and blew my heart out and ya know what? the right notes just came out! I WAS FUCKING FEELIN' IT! God is good, man. I'm tellin' you.

That's the magic of music, man. It can make you do stuff you can't usually do. It's like a super power. I can feel my version of god in this moment. Thank you universe for the gift to stick with this craft and to keep trying to make songs I like. And thank you for the love I get to feel for myself when I hear what I made.

Ok now I feel exposed.

I'm pretty sure there's 250+ tracks in this. It became impossible to work on because it uses more resources than my computer can handle. But nevertheless he persisted.

4: come on baby

there's a version with 3 other parts not in this one. They were more metal/butt rock than I like. So I wrote all new parts. And then ended up redoing everything. Vocally I was trying to find the right voice then heard a DFA1979 song and thought "oh I should try that".

My les paul through my orange tiny terror is the perfect guitar tone for this kind of song. Its my favorite amp/gtr combo just because when it's right it's just perfect. It's just not always right for each song.

5: why start now - a classic vibe of "why bother? let's get ta slackin'". feels very 90s to me.

I love my funky bass lines. I feel like I should show them off more cuz I do some pretty cool stuff sometimes.

You know what's very un 90s? The amount of self love I have for my work as I write this today. It took lots of therapy, will power and the desire to change to get here. Don't get me wrong I hear the "you suck" voice daily. Just now I thought "you're being really honest here. We feel vulnerable. don't do this" then another voice said "no one listens to your music and never will so who cares?". Then another voice said, "just be in your creative space and flow. this is a gift to have this. so many people wish they could make things. you're lucky".

This song had a completely different feel. Then I went on a dancehall trip with my spotify deep dives and realized I should try that. Re did the drums. Then realized lots of other stuff needed to be redone but cause it didn't work with my new groove. so yeah, this is a dancehall song. for me.

6: neat neat neat - i made this in like a week towards the end of my last album. it came together to quickly. i put it on there but then went i went to release it Landr was like "no covers otherwise you can't make any money from ANY of the other songs on the album".

So I am putting it on this one since I am using CDbaby to release this one and they won't ding all the other album tracks if they get lots of youtube streams.

Keith Hopkin sang on this too!

7: What we are

I have a slight headache. I probably have covid. this morning I had a million great ideas for a new song I am working on. I was also so excited to do all this admin work to release my new album. but now I just feel so scattered and can't wait for this to be over.

first line is something i remember steve albini saying in an interview when asked about movies or tv shows. talk about yucking someones yum! i often have to turn steve off in my head when i am watching something mediocre. i can see the acting and just how silly it all is.

i used a lot of 1176 compressors on the first version of this. ended up removing nearly all except on the gtrs. i dunno why but that thing never worked for me. I have friend that loves it. I don't like his drum sounds. but i get that it's a classic sound.

8: use a hoe slower

spent a long time trying to get this one to work. i like it's chill vibes.

Do I sing about being dead or alive a lot? I think I sang something similar on another song on this album. I dunno. I make a lot of music. I'm bound to repeat myself

Ok i'm done. I just did a proof reading pass about a week later. I definitely have covid. I toggle between dizzy, tired, confused, hungry and inspired to make dance music. I've started 3 tracks with beats and basslines and then stop. That's fine. It takes a lot of practice to get good at a new genre.

[shoppingshoppingshoppingshopping]

Listen/purchase: Culo Sucio by Local Teen

Ayo! I've been putting this off for like a month now.Probably more. I'm supposed to write sumthing here on each album I release so here it is.

Lemme hit play and see what memories come up.

Title: my moms cousin used to call me this nickname CULO SUCIO. #suciogang

Massive by discovery: I have no idea how I got this guitar sound. I recorded everything but the vocals like 3 or 4 years ago. When I finally got around to opening up the session they sounded amazing but I couldn't get them to work with anything else in the track. They took away from everything else and when I went to carve them up they lost thier power. 200 hours later trying to recreate them I ended up figure it out. what? I have no idea. This was like 3-6 months ago. But it sounds good now

wait on you: I dont wanna write about all these songs.

I like this album. skipping

Yakubian Yeex - ah this one I love. It was originally this boring punk song. just chords and drums. I was going to delete it. then i solod the bass and heard just how good it sounded. I did a quick chop and came up with the bassline and just started vibing with it. I pulled out the les paul and ebow and got this haunting cello sound and started freestyling. I recorded all of them in 20 min or so. When I went back a week later to edit and form into a song I could not recreate that sound no matter what. Which wasd a good thing. it forced me to comit to what was there.

I think i did a great job on this. I just love the vibes on this. Puts me into such a zone.

The end took forever to figure how to get a smooth transisiton into somethine "nice".

When you were a kid: so personal. cant listen to this.

afraid of divinity: inspired by the show getting on. niecy nash, alex borstein and laurie metcalf and everyone else on that show made something so beautiful and human. inspired me to write this plus all the videos of cops killing people goin round when I wrote some of the lyrics.

timeline: I was doing a david fincher rewatch when lots of these lyrics were written. i think hes my most rewatched director of all time. they all get better every single time. thanks to da finchman for art that gets inside me as deep as yours does. this was me mostly inspired one after noon and writing all these cool baselines. much later I shaped into this song with all these new ideas and atmospherics and sound fx.

keith st l says this was my best song.

neat neat neat: did mostly in an afternon. keith hopkin sings on this

[shoppingshoppingshoppingshopping]

What It Wasn’t That It Isn’t - New Album!

Listen/purchase: What It Wasn't That It Isn't by Local Teen

Aye yo!

New album!

So these tunes were started late 2018 early 2019. It took maybe 6 months to shape them into what they are now. Actually, lemme go check on that. I looked at the file dates and it looks like I started shaping these in early Feb 2023 so that's about 4-5 months. I have probably 100+ songs to shape up and finish so at this rate it's going to take me 4-5 years to where I am releasing songs I wrote within the past 6 months. I am getting better at making songwriting and production choices that make the process faster but change is glacial. Like I finally figured out that I need to carve out 100-150hz for the bass to be heard on the bluetooth speaker I use to check my mixes on. Usually that means I can hear it in my airpods which are not known for decent bass. Anyway, Let's move on. I finally got diagnosed with ADHD last year so if it's obvious to you that tangents can take me away from my original point then good for you for figuring it out wayyy before I did.

ok first song:

Living in a fantasy: This one goes hand in hand with another song on the album. I won't say which but they both have the same chords. I came up with a chord structure I love and tried it maybe 8 different ways. I kept working on each version until I ended up with 2 completely different sounding songs. I didn't make a conscious choice to make them different. I just kept following what it sounded like and seeing what my subconscious wanted to add to these songs. Even now when I hear them they do not sound like to my ears at all. The lesson here (and I am saying this to myself) is that you can completely steal from someone else and still make it your own. So don’t worry that someone else will notice. It’s not a ripoff if it’s coming from your nondecision making place.

I love the drums on this. That beat comes so naturally to me that I can play it reasonably in time with very very few edits to the drums. Unlike other beats where there’s a lot of chopping up to make it sound like a decent drummer is on the track. (I’m not a good drummer but boy do I love playing drums).

I spent a lot of time shaping these words to make sense. I usually hear a line in my head then lay it down and listen back. Often my first choices are so cringe. Like “will you be cool when I put up a fight” was originally “will you be cool or put up a fight” and that sounded super rapey. Then when I switched it to the narrator's point of view that was way more interesting since it’s a dude saying it. This song also was way longer. Keith tells me my songs are often too long so I chopped it down before I even sent it to him.

Also, I fucking HATE when dogs jump on me. That had just happened twice that week when I sang the line “keep that goddamn dog away from me”. It should have been cathartic but instead it's just kind of bringing me back to that awful powerless, unsafe feeling (I’m avoiding saying “Trauma” here because I dislike the overuse of the term in pop culture but this is the term my therapist uses and I think devalues its meaning). I often explore the bad feelings I have in my music. But I’m pretty sure that doesn’t make things feel better when they come up. But it’s better in that it’s out there and I can accept who I am a little more. And that’s a big chunk of what making music brings me is closer to self acceptance. I make what I make and I need to feel happy that I can make stuff and not feel bad that I can’t make stuff that appeals to more people or meets the standards I want to hit.

At the end of the song is a clip of my baby girl that I recorded as a drop for the how neal feel podcast which I sprinkled in I think one more time on the record.

2 tengo miedo - means “I’m scared” in spanish. And I do hate when people say “I’m not going to lie”. I get that it’s supposed to sound like they are being honest but really what I hear is “I usually lie but in this rare case I will tell the truth”. Also “tengo miedo” is more fun to sing than “im scared”. It’s hard to put some english (billiards term! And a pun!) on those syllables.

This song was not intentionally meant to sound like someone else’s song but by the time I was almost done I realized I kind of came really close to a famous indie rock song. I’m not gonna say which one. You’ll have to figure it out.

My baby girl sings on this one. In the last chorus she’s layered in with me.

Keith says I did a reggie and the full effect thing with the synths at the end. I dig some of the reggie ideas, never liked the sound. I was going for that Rentals/Blue Album B-side/I just threw out the love of my dreams kind of vibe. That’s how you do synths over fuzzy gtrs. The cars did it well too. Most every punk and indie band of the late 90s early 00s did it badly.

3 I dont care what theyve got on me: I recall this song coming together really quickly. Hearing all the parts as soon as the chords came out of fingers. The drums sound a little like samples to me but I swear they’re real. I have no idea how I got that snare sound. I must have tuned it in a unique way and changed mic placement. It’s all there on the track if you solo it.

I dunno why but writing about fraud and crime comes so easily sometimes. I love love love crime movies. Probably since Goodfellas had a huge impact on me as yoot.

Big homey Dov sent a voice recording to our whatsapp group and it’s at the end of this song cuz it made me laugh and I wanted to give you lay-down-in-the-dark headphone listeners some ear candy to discover.

4: I was watching a movie depicting an extremely stressful and lonely situation and it hit me: This is what my inner childhood body feels like. Alone, lost, no one to help, no one to protect me, no one I can trust. “There’s no hope, no love, no safety, no belonging.” Those lyrics just came out. There was no need to think about it. It was all there. In the pre-chorus I am saying “Coño” which if you google will say It’s used as a vulgar term for vagina. That is not how I know it or use it (or like it). I use it in the Miami way which you say when a bad situation presents itself. Kinda like, “son of a bitch” or “ain’t that a bitch” or “damn, bro!”. When I lived in Miami it would often get shortened to just “...ño” which, to you non speakers, you say with an extra Y sound on it like in “onion” so it’s more like “conyo” with a lot of accent on the “ny” the worse the situation is like a smashed big toe or shat pants or dropping your cortado on your brand new car seat covers.

5: round 3 with beth - I’m already running out of steam here writing these liner notes but I think I recorded the guitars and they felt like something I had done before so I chopped them up and came up with a new chord structure and rhythm. I then played them back over the new idea and layered them up. I’m about 60% sure of this but don’t feel like opening up the ableton session to see what really happened cuz as the saying goes “art is a lie that tells the truth”. I heard that quote this week and I like it.

6: pay me in guitars - I usually write music before melody and lyrics. This title came to me when I had to pick a file name to save what I had recorded. It’s a good title. I am saying “crack” the way Kurt does in Lithium with that weird A sound “Crayck”. That’s a nice lil nod to my teenage man crush.

The end was so hard to mix correctly. It was initially a crazy wall of sound that to me sounded awesome. I could hear all the melodic ideas in there. But when I took a break from it and came back weeks later it was just too much noise noise noise. So I cut most of that out and played up one of the 20 guitars I layered because I came up with some jazzy chords that sounded awesome. I don’t know what they are called but I know I’ve seen them used in Radiohead guitar tabs. You basically take the high octave and flatten by a half step. They’re sad and dissonant and sound best on not super distorted guitars

7: walts got a hernia - I think I stole these chords from a song my friend keith wrote. I realized they were a staple of pop punk and don’t think I’ve ever used them before. Also, for one brief moment there’s a riff in there that might be the same as maybe one of the biggest pop punk songs of all time. I only realized this way after the fact. Funny how the songs you love sneak their bits and bobs into the songs you make. I recorded all the guitars in one go. I had the session up on my computer (I usually have a song open at all times so that when I have to work I can indulge my ADHD and hit record and see if anything comes to me).

Story: IIRC Walt came over to hang out and made me touch his gorgeous man abs to see if the weird thing he was feeling was a hernia. After he left I went to the basement studio to probably check work email and instead hit record. All these words and vocals and melodies came out with zero forethought in one straight take…. As my favorite rappers say “off the dome”. And I can hear the difference in the melody and lyrics. It’s got spaces and fills and call backs I have never used consciously before.

I tried rerecording the vocals a few times but nothing ever came close to the natural laid back delivery I had the first time. I realized that what I had was actually cool. So it stayed and I made it work with some clever edits you can’t hear.

8 yesenia - I was listening/watching so much of the bodega boys when I wrote this. I was picturing Mero’s sassy Yesenia character and my desires to court the gorgeous and stop-your-clownin’ Dominican woman I imagined.

OK I’m all out of energy. I’ve been writing for an hour straight. The rest of the songs are all stuff I wrote for the How Neal Feel podcast. Why aren’t they all on their own release? Well I spent 2 fucking weeks prepping probably 80 fucking songs on 6 different albums (where I created unique artwork for each) I wrote for podcasts/commercials/shows that happen to be 30 seconds long or less.

So why didn’t they get released?

And now we get to modern tech platforms ruining art.

First: if a track isn’t 30 seconds or longer and you can’t get paid for a stream.

Second, they will not allow an album where the average song length is less than 60 seconds. So at the end of this record it had to go. I get why they have to do that but still. Fuck them. How about instead of a blanket policy you allow some carve outs for people not trying to scam the system by uploading 30 seconds of noise with the same song titles as other artists? I mean clearly this can be fixed if humans are incharge and not algos.

They would say, “there isn’t a single streaming platform that has ever turned a profit. Do you know the cost it would take to hire and train that many people?”.

I say fair point.

But then let me counter with: that’s cuz y’all made a shitty deal with the major labels when you set such low streaming rates that now kinda fucks all artists except the top 1%.

The whole system is screwed up and I get the economic realities the companies have to deal with. Hopefully AI can help automate some of this and a feller like me who makes music every day with an addiction like dedication can make a modest living from his art one day. “From my lips to gods ears” as my dad likes to say.

I honestly dream about waking up and having a solid 6-8 hours every day to make music in between bouts of building stuff, painting stuff, playing games and what not. And enough to live near a warm ocean with waves. I think I’d really like surfing. That would be just the greatest. So share this with people that might like it. The more listeners I get the more music I can put out and maybe one day this can be my full time job.

Jah Bless.

Credits: R and E sang on stuff. Dov makes an appearance. Keith gave me feedback. Trevor too. I played, recorded, mixed and did everything else.

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Jabber Wappin!

I realized I forgot to write updates ont he last 2 albums! Jeez, Way to be on top of it, dude.

So this new album... is good. Hold on let me hit play while i write whatever comes to mind.

so where was i.... oh, so I wasn't completely sick of it when checking the final mixes/mastering in the car 3 days ago. I've listened to it 3 times since then. Yeah there stuff I still want to fix but I need to move on. I have nearly 5 years of songs to finish!

I checked the file dates on the songs and they were all started in summer of 2018! See, I get new song ideas nearly daily. It's so easy for me to write the chords and tempo for a song and basic vocal melodys. often lyrics too. Starting a new song is so much easier than finishing one. Which is why I am 4 and half years behind on my song backlog. I spend most of my music making time trying to make this stuff sound good. My process is usually this when opening and old session:

Listen back and wait for the first thing to trigger a negative feeling. Then fix it. It's often a bad mix issue like you can't hear the kick drum or the snare sound was awful or I played something really badly or the lyrics are too simple, obvious. Sometimes I'll open up a song and it's all there. Here is where I would segue into talking about "Lawyer, guns and crypto" but let's just go in order.

Its so sad: I think this one might be older than 2018. I recall playing this over and over again on guitar when putting my daughter to bed each night and trying different ideas. At one point I realized my vocal line was a complete ripoff of another song. It was nigh impossible to find something else that worked. When I finally popped this open in november of 2022.. (I think that's when I said, "NO NEW SONGS! FINISH THE NEXT ALBUM!" ?) I was able to approach with fresh ears. Well, that was after listening to the 6 different versions I made of it. The really slow sad one was pretty cool but the least finished and I honestly didn't feel like I have the experience to make that one sound like a "song" rather than some boring collection of sounds. So anyway where was I. I dunno. I have ADHD (officially diagnosed thank you very much). I just checked my winter 2022/2023 folder and It looks like I have 6 songs I started when I declared I wasn't going to make anymore until I finished this album. I nodded to that original vocal melody that I accidentally stole with one line of lyrics on this song. I also added a capo at some point because playing this in C felt too obivous (is F with a high E, C, G they key f C?)

I stay Ho ho: I think this started with me chopping up my nephew saying somthing into the mic. There was a track of him singing chopped up n stuff. I also had my lady do it too. they're all layered and edited on top of each other. There's a quote from a movie in the lyrics. Probably easy to spot for many of you.

Hold me im home: I found 2 versions of this. And just the other day i was playing these chords and started a new song before it hit me that i might have used them before. The other version was similar it just didnt have the dream crystals on it and the lyrics were weak.

Still cant chake that feleing: i think my daughter helped me write the melody for this one because I found a track with her freestyling notes and words. I asked her to come sing on it for real but she refused because "i'm not a music person" Oh really? We litterally play "alexa" where she asks for a made up song title and then freestyles a whole new song on the spot nearly everytime we're in the car. I love the dembow sorta beat in this one.

let me alone: man i love that dreamy sound on top. That's an ebow and a slide and some pedals and a guitar of course. I liked the old timey way of say "leave me a lone" I think fred norris of the howard stern had a drop from an old marlon brando movie where he would say it like this.

Lawyers guns and money: this was my favorite song but Keith told me I shouldnt start with it. I just love the narrative about trust fund crypto bros going to columbia and ripping off prostitutes not realzing they're now in the targets of the cartel. Daddy is a senator and needs to send the aformentioned lawyers guns and crypto to save these little shitheals. And yes I am referencing the warren zevon song here. Felt like its a modern update to the idea i think his song is about. I dunno. ive deliberately avoided the song to not be influenced. i guess now that its done I can se how they compare

I pooped on your drums: I have no memory of making this but when I opened the session there was a recording of me telling different kids to say this into a mic. I doubt it was my idea at first. Whenever kids come over they always want to make music. This was originally a trap beat until I heard some bmore/jersey club and thought "oh this would be way better for that song". It took maybe an hour or 2 to whip this into shape.

Ok, so: a crime song. i can write lyrics about crime and corruption so easily sometimes. I just start seeing the movie in my head and write what comes out. Making the words rhyme however is so much harder. the lyrics were hard to tell even soloing the vocal tracks. They're my best guess for my mumbly mouth and what it says. Looks like I just freestyled this one right off the dome as there were no edits at all and nothing was written in the lyrics.txt file in the folder. Other than doubling the solo and giving it a better mix this one was pretty much done. oh and i added the end lyrics during this latest round of finishing

keith, no 1: kieth is my unoficial producer. i send him the songs (not soon enough) to get feedback. i really should do it earlier in the process as he has good ears and great ideas. when he told me he was going to be a dad i thought "dude, you're not gonna be ready for this" and tried to put it in a song that used chords from a song he wrote. which i think was called "gay racists" or something? I dont even remember just that that title is somehow linked to a song idea he sent me. Maybe that his title? Im just guessing. As I am listening back to the song as I type I hear how this is kind of U2 joshua tree era thing. a lot of my references just come out and I dont cacth them until much later. And yeah keith said I could use his 4 chords on the first section.

Look whos trying: my friend meets sent me a song he was working on and I whipped up the front part of this for him to sing on. We never finished it. When i went back this winter to finish thse songs I found it i tried to see if I could write something new to it and it worked! so its his chords for the first half. i recorded and played everything. He gave me permission to use it. His melody and lyrics are different and likely better. IIRC his first line was "drinking, stinking and never thinking" or somehing like that. The end is all me. Thanks for the permish, meets!

I shoulda kept more notes because I think i had help on one of these from someone else. Probably my lady since I love her voice and ideas. She's always giving me better lyric ideas and melody tweaks.

oh now i remember. Will helped me using AI to generate the characters on the cover. Everything else was me except the dudes will helped with. He and Jaime provided feedback on the design. Thanks dudes!

The title is a quoe aunt em says in the wizard of oz. we were watching it the other night (spolier: its kind of creepy) when she yells "quit yer jabber wapping and get back to work!". I immediately grabbed my note book and wrote it down hoping to gather more good words and quotes but we didnt finish it because it got way to scary for the kid.

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NEW ALBUM! I'm a few days late to post this. I wanna write a bunch about it but I have so fucking much to do today and it's already 1pm and I haven't finished the shit I was supposed to get done YESTERDAY. (Lord make me rich so I can hire a personal assitant to do boring grown up tasks for me. Amen) This dude wrote a really nice review of the album: https://www.americanpancake.com/2021/11/local-teen-and-scenic-garage-rock-views.html He has good taste. Read his other shit.

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Listen/purchase: Good Kid, Bad Family by Local Teen

As I put the final touches on this new album I am starting to see the repeating themes lurking in my subconcious: lots of feeling worthless, unwanted and unseen. A desire to feel better by being desired sexually. Pure rupublican ego boasting "I did all of this. No one else helped! Fuck you!" My buddhist better self knows that you can't be a big success with out other people. It's all connected.

I love that song "Salvation" from the cranberries. It's just 3 chords. If you play them on your own you would not hear any obvious melody in them. You would not know it's salvation. Unlike knocking on heavens door from dylan. You play those 3 chords and you can hear the entire song.

So anyway I always found the crannberries song interesting because it's all about melody, melody, melody. Those notes just bounce and fly over those chords. I am just in awe with them and what they do. I had a major drive to cover it just to see if I could internalize what I view as major, major feat of songwriting. It's like the hetero pornographer Al Goldstein said, "I saw that magnificent beautiful cock and I wanted to put it in my mouth just to understand what it was like to have one". That's not a direct quote. That memory just popped up from my subconcious. I remember understanding what he was saying as someone who has always been super interested in other peoples experiences. I'm going to google to see if I can find this quote. Nothing came up. My search history is now full of permutations of "Al Goldstein" and "sucking cock". Sounds about right. Anyway...

I did a version with me singing and I just couldn't find the way to connect to the vocals even though I love this song. It sat my on hard drive for a few years. Then my nephews came to visit and I realized it would be super cool if kids sang the song. See, the lyrics are someone telling kids not to do drugs and parents to keep an eye on them. Wouldn't be way cooler if a 10, 7 and 3 year old sang them? The answer? Yes. It's funny but it also makes a point that someone at Pitchfork could write an interesting few sentences about if this was 2003 and Pitchfork still liked rock music and not a loose gathering of bleeps and bloops that my dad would not consider music in anyway.

I sound like I am hating. I am. Better buddhist self, jump in here: "It's not loving or kind to yourself to seek anyones approval. And you do not want to be judged for loving the art you like so don't judge others for thier taste for it's what they were exposed to that makes taste. It's luck, not a choice." Thank you, Better Buddisht Self (BBS).

I like the songs on this album. My mixing is gettign better. My singing is getting better. I just open up my brain and these songs come out. I try not to filter them or ask what they mean. It's too scary.

Like "Dick in yo mouth". There was a part of me that was terrified if I put this out someone would take it as kinda rapey. If you don't listen to all the lyrics and wanted to make a snap judgement and don't understand that I am borrowing from the hip hop I grew up on and you were just looking to feel morally superior you'd take it that way.

I really tried to stay with my juvenile, powerless inner teenager that was in charge when this song was coming out of me. It made me laugh and that brought me joy. Now I feel terror. I am so scared of being judged. But I feel like the brave thing to do is to say to myself, "This is my art. This is my process. All this song making is subliminal disapatches. I am just reporting what is in this head of mine. I don't condone it or judge it".

I kind of get into this idea in the bridge of "don't act impressed".

Lyrics:

i know its hard to walk through this life when everyone's outraged all of the time its not your fault we're monkeys with phones our brains are too weak, they are mad hackable however it is your job to attack when someone states an opinion as fact

Actually after reading that back maybe not. I dont know. It's hard to think right now. My brain is shutting down. I want to go back to sleep.

OK I don't want to say any more about the new album. Just go listen. It's pretty good. I plan on doing this for life. Trifle with me. _local-Teen

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That's the cassette above. Cool right? The cassette is a limited run of 100 on blue shells. This first run has 2 bonus cover songs that are not available and will never ever be available on the intranet (not unless some jagoff rips them and puts them on Kazaa). Cassettes come with a sticker and cost $10. They will be collectors items.... Any future runs will not have the 2 bonus tracks on them (inshallah). There's a stream of consciousness lyric sheet inside with music video ideas and a tiny bit of directors commentary. Buy the cassette here. I ship all orders the same day. Don't have a cassette player? NO PROBLEM BRO! Local Teen's Dark Shart is streaming right now on all of the sites and apps you use for music: Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Youtube, etc.  You can also download it from iTunes, Bandcamp and a bunch of other sites. BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE: FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE HISTORY OF THE INTERNET: Local Teen's past library of 3 albums and one EP is also available on all of the aforementioned sites above. Here's a Youtube link. OK TIME FOR A SLIGHT FAVOR Let's say you think my art is shit (and I can totally see that. What I make is personal. I can't help it. I make it for me and I like esoteric difficult stuff). I don't make a product for mass consumption or Red Robin commercials. Look, ya'll know I don't ask you for much but in this music internet economy thing shares, playlist adds, streams/plays all trick the musicbots into thinking something is worth sharing. So even if you don't like what I do but you still love me and you want to support this softening punk rocker... interact with my tunes. Add them to a playlist you won't ever listen to. Stream the album and walk away to watch whatever just OK show just came out on Netflix that has you hooked just because you're 4 hours in and if you stop now it would all be a waste of time (but would it?). It helps get the music bumped up in the recommendation algorithms. Send it to that weird teen in your life that might like guitar music about divorce, daddy issues, poop embarrassment and the accidental dismantling of childhood friendships. It helps. Forward this to that new dad that complains he doesn't know what's going on in the underground anymore and listens to too many sportsball podcasts in the off season just to keep the voices in his head that question whether or not he's leaving emotional scars on his kid. It all helps get the music into the ears of people that might like it. I love all of you and I thank you for the support. I hope to see you soon in person so I can give you a hug and break eye contact even though I know I should look up. But it's all so intense at first. I just need a few minutes to warm up and feel safe. Sorry.

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Listen/purchase: Dark Shart by shopping

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SHOPPING IS DEAD

SHOPPING IS DONE. from the ashes LOCAL TEEN has risen like a fart from a dead crust punk. fentanyl is a helluvadrug. Micah Long Ox is now the leader. TRUST AND BELIVE IN HIM. WORD IS BOND. new album 2/28

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Listen/purchase: "practice" by Fourth Grade Gladiators

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Gizzard Shingles

This post serves as the announcement of my new album caled GIZZARD SHINGLES

Gizzard Shingles by Shopping

I love reading about the making of an album while listening to that album. So I give you.... Random Thoughts about the making of this record: Your listening to a guy who's really frustrated with his voice who is yelling at his voice about how frustrated he is with it. Everytime I start to yell it's because I am so pissed I had trouble croaking out the sound I wanted to hear in the previous line. It's real. All of the drums were recorded with one mic: a single SM57 aimed at the wall the drums are smashed against in my tiny, tiny studio. The kit is some student kit I got on Craigslist for $100. It's the tiniest fullsized Kit I've ever seen! But it works. And I used this one awesome free plug in on all of the drums tracks that just sounds amazing: ThrillseekerVBL from: https://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/downloads/ Most of the tape delay sounds are from the same folks. It's called NastyDLA. I heard about it from an interview in Tape OP with Caribou. Tape OP is my favorite magazine of all time. And I love Caribou when he locks on to a thing that works. I usually chose the blue golf ball when I play mini golf and if I am forced to pick a number I go with 2. Most of the guitar sounds are a Teisco Tulip and a pedal I built that I have plans to get into production at some point in my lifetime. I'm packing up to move to a different place as I compile this record. I'm looking around and appreciating the studio/work space I got with this apartment. It's one tiny laundry room. It's 7 feet by 6 feet. I was some how able to cram an entire drum set in here, lots of amps and guitars and countless other things. I'm listening to the final mix for "Me X You" as I write this and I feel a sense of nostalgia for it. Probably a hundred or so songs were written in here. I some how got a drum sound I liked with one fucking microphone in here. I shipped thousands of orders from here. Built hundreds of guitar pedals. It was really good to me. The solo on "It Burns" is not a keyboard. It's a guitar and ebow and a socket as a slide (because I couldnt find my "real" slide) and pedals and lots of takes to get that right. It's also possibly my most favorite moment on the record. I Steal Pills is auto biographical. Now, in hind sight I can't belive what a scumbag drug thief I was. At the time it felt like I was possessed, I couldn't stop myself from popping whatever pills I could find in my mouth. I wouldn't have ever stolen anything else from you. But once I got in your bathroom I would be shifting through those cabinets in a flash. How not to get a job: Also a true story. The line about asking your moms boyfriend to teach you how to tie a tie makes me sad for that kid everytime I hear it. There's a quiet little stab at a kids dignity when he has to say those things. The failure of the parents marriage leaves the stink of failure on the kids. They carry that around. The term, "my mom's boyfriend" can't be said with your head high. Let it go just came out with no thought. Now that I hear it back I hear some Clash influence and a fuzzy jones/super beagle dancehall intro that totally just came out when i was recording and was not planned.

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New Album!

Urge Surfing by Shopping

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New SOng!!!

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new song!

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New song! This ones about fathers and sons and pussy