My Secret Career 43: The New Mischief EP And The High School Hero EP

Sometimes you don’t need an album. Sometimes a few songs gather together and resist addition.

I wish New Mischief had turned into a full-fledged project and that we had completed an album. But life got in the way and we only completed these three songs. And completed is a very loose term. “Brainstorm” is done, “Feel The Vibe” is probably at 50% completion, and “What Is This?” is just a sketch waiting for a real work over.

High School Hero was the name I arrived at as the name my fictional character in “Searching For Certainty” would have for his band. These three songs seemed like they came from him, a deliberately tragic figure who was desperately trying to pull himself up and out of the void he had created.

Enjoy New Mischief and High School Hero, two wildly different styles.

My Secret Career 41: Onion Hits The Big Time

My childhood nickname was Onion. Which is ironic because I absolutely hate onions. But I never minded the nickname. Teammates called for passes in soccer games by shouting, “Onion, I’m open!” Like, it wasn’t one of these nicknames that only pops up occasionally. It was my NAME.

So I thought it fitting that I would release an album under the name “Onion”. 

I lived in New York City by that time and my real career was chugging along. I was doing regular plays, experimental theater, commercials, TV shows, student films, indie films, you name it I did it.

But I was also nursing My Secret Career in private.

The result? The claustrophobic and disturbing Beauty Is Ordinary.

If you’re counting, this is album number four. Shit’s about to change.

My Secret Career 41: The Rhode Island Trilogy

I am winding this project up by highlighting each “album” along the way.

By the time I left Rhode Island for New York City in the fall of 1994, I had recorded three albums worth of original material.

1985-1987 brought Fecund Youth’s modestly titled Hung Like A Bull.

1993 saw The Mahoneys’ deliver the rough and tumble Live From The 20th Century.

Following that was 1994’s Cocksure? by Rhode Island Red.

These sound primitive because they were. But they will tell you what my life was like throughout that whole period.

Peruse at your leisure!

My Secret Career 28: brenwillsull “I, Phone”

This one accidentally became an album.

I don’t even remember when I got my first smart phone. I suppose I could ask the algorithm and it could find a dated image of me from some surveillance footage at a Mac store and find out, but I prefer the haze of my awful memory to pixelated truth.

Whatever day that was, it started a looooong recording process. I would noodle around on my guitar, if a melody clicked I would spew forth improvised words until something concrete locked into place, and then I would record a voice memo of the song as a placeholder.

The idea was always that I would return to these sketches and flesh them out. Finish them. Produce them.

But years went by. The songs started to pile up. I showed no signs of moving towards any official recording.

Finally in 2018 I had had enough. I did an extensive search of my phone and chose the best of the bunch. For every one of the eleven tracks in this album, there are ten that failed to pass muster. A siren interrupts, a note goes awry, someone knocks on the door, someone yells shut up, something ruined many of those voice memos.

But these eleven? These eleven songs are only possible because of two things. I and phone.

So please give a listen to brenwillsull’s 2018 album called I, Phone. Oh, and the “band” name? Since this is in a way the most basic version of me and my music (an acoustic guitar and a voice), I thought I would almost be myself.

First name, Brendan. Two middle names, William and Sullivan, after my father’s first and mother’s maiden name. 

It took a computer in my pocket for a decade for me to make it.

My Secret Career 39: BOMER-B Double Album, Circa 2000

Music will always be about the album. Forever.

Here is that essential album for any band or artist. The double album. The concept album/double album.

I have written about many of these songs individually but they will always be this:

Out of Charactor: Act I: Id City and Act II: Americana Subversive by yours truly,

BOMER-B.

My Secret Career 30: #Disenchanthem (This Machine Kills Fascists)

I recorded this one in my office on Sunset Boulevard while writing on the Starz sitcom “Survivor’s Remorse” in 2016. 

I kept my acoustic at my desk as a release valve. The pressure of putting a television show together is unlike any other I have experienced. Someone once said it is akin to putting ten pounds of shit into an eight pound bag, and that’s about right.

Adding to the stress was the horror of the 2016 election. The entire office walked around dumbstruck after Trump’s victory and trying to be funny was impossible. 

One night I was there very late, working on a pitch I had for an episode. No one else was in the office so I was free to strum and sing at the top of my lungs.

A coworker had said that I looked like a protest singer with my big bushy beard and furrowed brow. If I was such a thing, I should have a protest song, right?

So I put my pitch aside (no one else on the staff thought it was funny so it died a quick death) and furiously wrote and sang the following song. My one and only protest song.

#Disenchanthem, from 2018’s Sun Zed album by, who else, Sun Zed. 

Fuck you, Fascists. If everything goes haywire on Tuesday, you can be sure I will be a proud member of the Resistance.

My Secret Career 38: California Waltz

I have a penchant for writing songs about places that I have lived. First there was “Always Leaving Providence”, then “Good Bye New York”, and finally California Waltz from 2018’s “I, Phone”. Maybe someday I’ll get around to writing about Salt Lake City but perhaps the less said the better.

Imagine you have clawed your way across the vast American Midwest. You drag your caravan over a mountain range and see the Pacific Ocean.

That’s what it feels like to live in Los Angeles. It gets a bad rap as “fake” from people who have never been there. Sure there are fake PEOPLE, but they are a distinct

minority. Most Los Angelenos are hard-working and genuine people. There are phonies everywhere, not just in the film industry.

The world looks to Hollywood for a reason. True storytelling is inclusive and empathetic. So is the heart of the city it sits in. Los Angeles. Sooooo tired of the right-wing attitude towards culture.

California. Here’s a waltz in your honor. Except I’m pretty sure it’s not even a waltz. Just pretend.

My Secret Career 34: Rowena

Occasionally something comes to you that seems like it came from someone/somewhere else.

Driving along one day in LA, I saw a street sign. Rowena.

Literally minutes later I was singing this song into my phone. I got home, dug out the guitar, and presto!

Rowena.

I am linking to two versions of the song.

The first is from brenwillsull’s 2018 album “I, Phone” and is an acoustic live performance captured by my iPhone.

The second from Sun Zed’s 2018 album “Sun Zed” and has drums, bass by Cashel, electric guitars and even (gasp) a little solo! This one works really well cranked thru headphones.

Here is Rowena. And Rowena.

My Secret Career 31: Morning Parties

My father used to wake us all up in the morning with a sailor’s chant. “Rise and shine, Sailors! Pretty little craft in sight!” He took joy in interrupting our sleep with a heave and a ho.

Our family motto is “Terra Marique Potens”, Latin for “Strong On Land And Sea”, a nod to our tradition and power. My Dad scoffed at the notion of the O’Malley family crest, which he saw as a British imposition on a Pagan Irish past. 

But I still love the snarling boar, the striking ship, the sails billowing with sea wind.

Melody’s mother made every day life celebratory. She found humor and fulfillment through the rituals of life that many people take for granted. She was one of those people who effortlessly stay grounded in the present moment and treat it like a  gift.

She was a teacher and students constantly talked about how deeply she affected their lives. A heroine of the highest order, to kids who needed it the most.

I wish they’d gotten to meet. 

They would have gotten a kick out of each other. I used them as a jumping off point for yet another love song. After all, they’re directly responsible for us meeting.

RIP Bill O’Malley 

RIP Wanda Garren

Morning Parties from 2018’s Sun Zed album by Sun Zed

My Secret Career 23: New Mischief “Brainstorm” # 1 With A Bullet

I have been in exactly three bands. Fecund Youth, The Mahoneys and New Mischief. Who were a crew, not a band.

I knew Buzz through Andy. Andy and I had been roommates my first year in New York and had remained an integral part of my life. Somewhere in there he met Buzz. So I met Buzz, too. He held court at a bar near NYU and Washington Square Park. I would meet Andy there close to closing time and then Buzz would lock the doors and we would have the run of the place.

When Andy told me that Buzz had recorded some hip hop tracks, I insisted he come out to Windsor Terrace and visit the basement. Buzz is an imposing person and he seemed like a panther in a kitty cage down there with those low ceilings and tiny spaces.

The whole thing was a brainstorm. Over the course of a couple of months, Buzz would pop over and we would work on the three tracks we initially concocted.

My facility with an electric guitar has never been higher and the sonic textures Timothy was presenting me to play over extracted a level of creativity that I was unaware I possessed. When he played me the drumbeat he had in mind for “Brainstorm”, I knew exactly what to do.

The structure of the song is classic. Instrumental intro with beatbox, Pimp Fu declaration, Bomer-B verse, Buzz verse, Pimp outro, instrumental outro.

I keep talking about the alternate universe, but God Damn King Kong if this motherfucker ain’t a hit.

There aren’t too many rap crews left these days. The solo pursuit has obliterated the sense of unity and support that is integral to crews or bands. I am glad to say I was, for a brief moment, a member of a crew.

Here is Brainstorm by New Mischief from 2000.