Gila

Written, performed (guitar, bass, rhythm programming), produced, and engineered by Christopher Oberst.

Instruments: Yamaha Weddington Custom guitar, Paul Reed Smith Custom 22 guitar, Kramer "The Duke" bass guitar, Roland R-5 drum machine.This piece was written and recorded in 1994 and is still one of my favorites out of the material I've recorded. My initial idea was for a track that would combine Mahavishnu Orchestra and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I think the final result shows the Peppers' influence, but somehow the Mahavishnu part of the equation seems to have disappeared. What really jumps out at me now when I listen to it is how my bass playing is indebted to The Fish. There are certainly worse influences to have!! As far as tricky rhythms go, Gila is full of time changes. The initial part is the weirdest: it consists of four bars of 3/4 followed by this sequence of single bars: 5/8, 7/8, 9/8, 2/4. The title on this track means absolutely nothing.

Passing Years

Written, performed (guitar, bass, keyboards, electronic percussion), produced, and
engineered by Christopher Oberst.

Instruments: Jackson 1988 Limited Edition electric guitar, the infamous "El Cheapo" Spanish nylon-string guitar, Kramer Specter bass, Korg X3 workstation. I wrote and recorded this piece in 2000. I tend to write material in a bassackward manner--and "Passing Years" is no exception. I started with a scratch rhythm/keyboard track containing a rudimentary chord progression (this track isn't used in the final mix). From there, I worked up the bass line, then the rhythm guitar, then the final drums--with no sense of the melodies that I would use!! Weird, huh? Anyway, at that point, the track was starting to sound rather slick and "Sherwoodian", so I figured that I ought to mess things up a bit by playing some nasty, tasteless, overdriven lead guitar over this. Mission accomplished!! Imagine what would have happened if Frank Zappa had played lead guitar over tracks on Open Your Eyes. That's sort of the idea I was going for, though the guitar is a bit more chops-heavy than Frank's style. Normally, I program the drum parts, but here, I actually 'played' the drum parts live on my keyboard, first doing the kick/snare/toms, and then the cymbals on separate tracks. This is difficult to do, but I'm fairly happy with the results. As far as the little guitar intro and exit parts, those I added later to try and inject a little more 'Yessish-ness' into the piece after I decided to include it on this album. As far as the title goes, there is a persistent sense of melancholy to this piece that somehow reminds me of time marching forward, and our inability to do anything about it.

Christopher Oberst makes his living as a Legal Editor at Pike & Fischer, in Silver Spring, Maryland. But his real passion in life is recording non-commercial music in his basement. Chris began playing guitar in 1982, with the goal of becoming just like Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath--even down to the fu-manchu mustache!! Fortunately, Chris soon realized that there were other guitarists to emulate, and he has been laboring feverishly in recording instrumental guitar-based rock for the better part of 15 years. Among the guitarists that have inspired Chris over the years: Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson, Frank Zappa, Alex Lifeson, Allan Holdsworth, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Beck, Steve Howe, Trevor Rabin, Albert King, Ritchie Blackmore, Steve Vai, John McLaughlin, Al DiMeola, Carlos Santana, and too many others to mention. Chris was in one band briefly during his college years, and it was such a traumatic affair that he has devoted his energies since then to learning bass, keyboards, and percussion programming well enough to fool the uninitiated into thinking that he plays with a band on his recordings. Nope. It's all him. Although the '90s weren't a particularly productive era for Chris in terms of recording music, the '00s promise to be better, since Chris has finally gotten over being pissed at the ascendancy of grunge music and has recently discovered how useful those mysterious 'MIDI' plug-ins on his musical equipment can be.

[more Christopher Oberst recordings]