A Sort of Discography

Christmas 1998 saw the 'release?' of 'Smug and Sanctimonious Songs', 20 copies made in all. This contained the first 12 songs I'd written and while I know I have a copy somewhere, I can't lay my hands on it now. Some of the songs from it are on 'Losers & Sinners', some on 'Dead Birds & Funny Fish' and some on 'Odds & Sods'. Songswise, it was a good album but it was done on a 4-track machine and by the time the duplicates were done, you'd have to be very keen to hear them, to tollerate the poor sound quality. Maybe sometime I'll revisit it digitally - probably not.


'Losers & Sinners' - I call this my accidental album - happened about tan and a half months after I wrote my first song and less than ayear after I began to sing outside my bath. Two tracks from it and the lyrics can be found on the site. Here are the sleeve notes.

Monday 12th July 1999

Does anybody else read sleeve notes? Just in case, I'm writing these, while listening for the second time to a tape of a two hour recording session at the home studio of Peter Vastl. This was the morning after doing my first ever paying gig (40 pounds), in O'Chea's wine bar* in galway, from 12.30am to 3.00am. The recording session cost me thirty pounds so I'm already ten pounds in profit (soon give up the day job). The voice, despite a good spoon of honey, is rough here and there, but I kinda like it like that.

The songs, sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow are from a selection of fifty I've written since my first, 'Nice and Sleazy Caledonia Blues' - 24th August 1998, sung in no particular order - the newest, the album title was four days old and now two days later, I know I can do it much better but, having been a perfectionist for most of my forty eight years, I'm now learning to let things go (even the cough near the end of 'Unidentifiable Residential Object').

My son, Emmet donated the grapics and design, so this is probably the most inexpensive album ever produced but I want to put something of what I've been doing for the past year into the public domain. While a guy can learn a lot singing and playing on the street, he can also get pneumonia.....

Sean 'almost a Legend' O'Neill
e-mail; seanbirdfish@hotmail.com

Ps. I like to think of this as a concept album, actually a three concept allbum;

1 Going with the flow, I threw away my maps and user guides 12 months ago and have had an amazing year.
2 Quitting the day job
3 To raise funds to buy a decent left handed guitar for further recordings etc.

While retaining copyright on the songs here, I have no problem if you wish to tape it for gift and would appreciate it if you can take the time to write out some sleeve notes - at least my name. Thanks.

There's also the the third verse from 'No Hard Feelings' but I'm not going to type that out when it's already on the site.


'Odds & Sods - an interim album'

The follow up to 'Losers & Sinners' should be 'Dead Birds & Funny Fish'. The plan was to do a 'radio friendlier' album on a budget ten times that of L&S - ie three hundred pounds or the euro equivalent. It will be done but logistically, it won't be easy. So far, I've used about half that budget. I've found the studio - Cosmic in Ballymun. I've recorded a pile of stuff there and need to go back with my musicians - all of whom I've met through knocking on doors. They've offered their services - free - but they are fairly scattered around the country so getting them to Dublin and accomodating them is something that needsa a bit of planning.

My dad died last year - the June bank holiday weekend. He was still throwing himself at the world and keeled over - two bites into his last supper - and that was it. He'd been asking me for a while, when I was going to put out 'The Badness'. This track is on 'Dean Birds & Funny Fish'. I decided, following the funeral, that I was going to do an album - in a day - and that, along with that track, it would have songs that someone, somewhere was looking for a copy of, and that I'd call it 'Odds & Sods'

I'd met Aiden Roberts through IMRO and a friend, Josh Johnson - a great piano player - had told me that he had a really nice studio. I did my day there and then decided to go back and do another and get Aiden to put some other instrumentation on top of the guitar and vocal recordings we had. That actually became four more days and what was going to be a second CD to sell on doorsteps, will be going into a lot of radio stations soon - and maybe getting played occasionally.


'Dead Birds & Funny Fish'

Watch this space.


'Free as a Breeze & Fresh Out of Vitreol'

Not quite written yet.