Saturday, August 31, 2024

My Secret Career 11: Sun Zed’s 2018 short album “Sun Zed”

So the last nom-de-plume I adopted was Sun Zed. 

Sun Zed is an umbrella that encapsulates tracks I recorded sporadically in Los Angeles that were never associated with any other imaginary musical outfit. 

Four of these years overlapped with the advent of my official screenwriting career and the seasons I was privileged enough to work on “Survivor’s Remorse”. I have never worked as hard as I did on that show and I am forever grateful to my cousin for taking a chance on me. True trial by fire.

To call it a learning curve is to do injustice to curves.

One great side effect, though, was that my focus was so intently trained on that process that I started recording almost without paying attention. It was a release that I needed to deal with the pressure that comes along with writing for a television show.

It was so all-encompassing that I let go entirely of music as a public pursuit. Oddly this led to a kind of relaxation into it, and the ease of GarageBand made experimentation more accessible and more fun than ever before.

I was also routinely filming myself sing cover songs I loved and posting them to Facebook which scratched my performance itch. But I was always uncomfortable with asking friends and family to be an audience.

Up til 2009 I usually did one or two shows a year, either with a full band or solo acoustic. Now it has been fifteen years since I did a full show. 

This coming weekend I will be singing a few songs at an event created by my sister Siobhan called The Wedtchester Songwriters’ Circle.

I am determined to get back on the horse after she has given me this leg-up. So coming soon to a theater near you: Brendan O’Malley as Bull De Jour.

In the meantime, follow me into the recent past and enjoy Sun Zed’s eponymous EP/short album.

Sun Zed. Los Angeles 2016-2018.



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