As a younger man (22 or 23 years old), I wrote and recorded several songs. For several reasons, I have been reluctant to share them on this site.

Part of the reason is that my performances are dreadful — truly wretched — and I was reluctant to put them out there, simply because of how bad they are. (This is not false modesty but objective truth. The recordings are muddy, my voice is sometimes off-key, and my guitar playing is barely competent and often laughably bad. There are almost no redeeming qualities to them whatsoever.)

But even more important, I feared that people’s perceptions of the songs themselves would be colored by the poor quality of the performances. It’s difficult to hear a song for what it is, when the substandard quality of the performance serves as a constant distraction.

That bothered me . . . because I always kind of liked the songs. And I didn’t want people to think poorly of the songs, just because the performances were so terrible.

Well, things are starting to turn around.

I am working on a little personal project in which I try to convince some of my musical heroes to record some of my songs. I have found three victims so far, who have promised between them to record five songs in all.

The identity of these performers is a mystery/secret. For now.

But . . .

Three of those performances, all from the same artist, are in hand. I have begun to share them with family and friends. And I am going to roll them out over the next three weeks, beginning tomorrow.

Because this project is important to me, I am going to debut the songs one at a time, one per week, over multiple posts. Each Monday for the next three Mondays, I will debut one of the songs. On Tuesdays, I plan to publish the lyrics for the song I debuted the day before. And on Wednesdays (God help me; I may change my mind about this part) I will (unless I talk myself out of it) publish the original recordings, from around 1992. Now that there is a creditable performance of the songs available, it bothers me less to have my own crappy versions out there. So, I plan to publish them, mainly for amusement purposes — and so you can see how the performer took the cacophonous musical clay, and molded it into something that I hope you’ll enjoy.

So: first song is published tomorrow. Here’s a hint: if you are a fan of the Northern Pikes, you’ll find the artist of interest.

Until tomorrow . . . enjoy the Super Bowl. Die Yankee cheaters!

[guest post by Dana]

Super Bowl Sunday. For a great number of Americans, it’s all about the … commercials. Because really, football?? Anyway, this year finds protests and petition campaigns mounting against those ads already deemed offensive. Unfortunately, some advertisers like Go Daddy have already caved. Because puppies:

And, proving that America is dangerously close to losing its sense of humor, NASCAR’s ad is also facing a Change.org petition to pressure the company to pull their commercial. The spot pokes fun at a nation so soft that eating gluten is considered a dangerous activity . Protesting are those suffering from Celiac disease:

NBC is running a Super Bowl ad that makes fun of those who are gluten-free. It implies that we’re soft…we’re weak…we’re part of America’s problem. When all we’re trying to do is manage our disease. Celiac can be a true pain. The media is not helping and this petition is get NBC to see the light of day.

The company yielded to demands and will air an edited version of the commercial during the game.

Today may bring more opportunity for yet more grievance groups to air their, well, grievances against companies airing spots that might offend. Such groups may or may not include:

The technologically-challenged.

Small-breasted women.

The fashion-challenged (or the non-vapid people of America). It could go either way.

Girls with short hair.

(I won’t post the actual videos in case some of you prefer seeing them run during the game.)

And so it goes this Super Bowl game day in America, land of the easily-offended.

–Dana