Back in 1998 or so, I was spending time in Michigan and staying at my friend's house. When I was carrying all my luggage into his apartment, he said, "You're like a Sherpa," and I thought, "Wow, that would make a great name for a band." Soon thereafter, I was back in San Francisco, roadying for The Mermen (Who have a great new album coming out) At the same time the band, "Fantomas," was just beginning to form and I was inspired to write some short, weird songs while discussing Fantomas with Mike. I was also listening to the film composer, "Manabe," who wrote these great, short film pieces. Also, the record store, "Amoeba" had just opened in the Haight and had a lot of Kraftwerk and OMD CDs on sale, so I was heavy into that too. Anyway, my friend gave me a little Casio keyboard and a Shure SM58 and told me to go record. The first tape I came up with is the "Lost Tapes, Pt. One." I tried to write a bunch of little compositions keeping all of the aforementioned influences, calling the project, "Sherpa." I came up with about 38 songs, made a cover at Kinkos (Drawn by my friend, Mike Peoples in New Orleans, way back in 88) and dubbed off about 20 copies of the tape. I then sold them on the Secret Chiefs 3 southwest tour -each tape had a different "secret song" on it and I encouraged people who bought the tape to try and exchange songs with each other. I don't believe that ever happend.
The second recording is "Lost Tapes Part Two." This contains far more experimental recordings, some of them dating back to 1991, through 2007. My influences were far more vast than the previous recordings, but still kept a certain "Sherpaness" to them.
The "Nasturtium" recordings are more recent, recorded within 2006-2009. These too have are fairly experimental, mixing surf guitar, ambience and African percussion. Anyway, I've uploaded them to Mediafire, and they are all free to download. Enjoy!
Cover by Michael Peoples
The Lost Tapes Pt. 1 The Lost Tapes Pt. 2NasturtiumPinkyAlso, please leave a comment if you like what you heard...
