unnecessary
songs by ollie powers 
1. Be My Summer Love
2. I’m In No Hurry
Not much liking to be time-pressured, I wrote this song as an expression of my inclination to take my time doing things. Considering how long it took me to pull this particular album together, this probably should be the title tune! The vocals at the end turned out quite pleasing and effective, to my ears; I hope you’ll agree!
3. Disconnected Number
A song that sat in a notebook for longer than I am willing to admit, this is a song that I never got around to recording for some reason. Lo and behold, it works! (Did I ever doubt that it would?) It also serves as a showcase for my Squier Vintage Modified Bass VI, a six-string electric bass guitar, which puts in several appearances as a solo instrument. I HAD to have an instrument like this after hearing the 1962 recording by Jet Harris of “Besame Mucho”. It’s up on YouTube, naturally; go check it out! I’ll wait. Oh, I forgot to mention that this is the very first song I have ever recorded where I played the drums, for real. Yes, I needed to clean it up in a few places—but I did it!
4. Hey Cat!
Originally I was leaning towards making this a song with kid‘s voices, like something you would hear at camp. In that vein I had a lot of fun writing the lyrics. But when I actually got around to recording it, the guitars kind of took over, and now it almost sounds like The Ramones (except for the vocals). In addition, this is the OTHER song I have recorded (so far) where I play drums. I topped it off with some square waves gliding up and down, inspiration for which I got from a theme song to an animé series which I will not identify. (A free CD to the first person who can name it! You must also identify which season had the sound, since it wasn’t in all of them.)
5. Pony Girl
In this cynical age, the particular number heard here might not be fully understood. It is simply and absolutely without a drop of cynicism or double-entendre—it’s INNOCENT, I tell you! I’m not even sure why a pony had to be brought into it in the first place, except to match the clip-clop sort of rhythm of the music. No relationship to the 1909 tune “My Pony Boy” so perhaps you should forget I mentioned it.
6. She Done Me Wrong
For reasons unknown I created this song that seems to be channeling some kind of hillbilly hootenanny. I had fun in the recording of it, however, by throwing in more an more instruments and voices with every verse, until things really start to get out of control! The song comes to an end just in the nick of time.
7. She Is A Season
The storm of the previous track is followed by the calm of this song, which for most of its length probably uses the fewest instruments of any of the songs on the album. I also use one of my favorite alternate guitar tunings again, namely D A d f# b e'. (I’m sure this won’t be the last time I write with it, either.)
8. Love Is Gonna Make Me Crazy
I was going to just call this song “Crazy” until I found out just how many songs there are with that title. So I pulled out the entire first line of the lyrics as the title, and so far it seems to be holding as unique.
9. Drifting
The only song in this collection to feature a mandolin, this is an expression of an unfocused sadness I am usually not prone to. I wrote the song and the sadness went away. Guess I showed it! The sounds of the celesta, the piano, and the strings all came from the “DLS Music Device”, which is essentially the built-in sounds available on Mac computers. I thought I would be replacing the sounds with better ones, until I kept noticing they were sounding fine as they were. (I tried and tried to add one or more theremins to this song, but they just didn’t want to fit in. There was too MUCH drifting. If you get my drift.)
10. Touching You
I had originally done a demo of this song on a four-track recorder. When I went to make a “better” version on my 8-track, I lost a lot of the spontaneity of the original; it wasn’t better! Eventually (many years later, in fact) I tried all over again in Digital Performer, this time keeping as close as possible to the feel of the four-track original. One of the important things was to maintain the original tempo and the original arrangement, but just making sure all the performances were decent. Finally, I think I got it.
Something that surprised me when I went to write the song down in notation (key of D-flat Major): It had NO accidentals! (Only the high square-wave synth part towards the end has a lowered seventh of C-flat in it.)