St. Michael's Podcast

OK! Here is how we are going to do this. I am going to post tunes by Oswald And The Herringbones to this blog page. ( I have also posted them on their own page here on the site!) They are going to be scattered versions scanning our many years. Some will be very poorly recorded, that is to say the quality was not all that great but they will be here anyway to give you some idea of the depth and changes for the span of years we played.

I will add tunes here every now and then. It is going to take me a few months to post all our tunes because we have around 300. So bear with me. The songs will not be in cronological order. They are just going to be posted in what ever order I can get them here. The id3 tags will give the dates of the recordings where ever I can get them edited.

Feel free to snag the tunes for your ipods and get into the band. We have great fun doing this for you so have great fun listening too. One thing to remember; if you do not like something by us, go to the next tune. They will rarely sound the same. We do all kinds of styles and genres so don’t run out on us if you don’t like a certain style or song. Just go to the next one! Happy Listening!
Michael A. Barone
Oswald And The Herringbones

Here are the songs:

My Father Didn’t Fight In The War (Bethel Rd. Studio Version)

My Father Didn’t Fight In The War (Norm’s Basement Version)

Standing In Line

Running Drag (Delashmut Rd. Studio Version)

Running Drag (Delashmut Rd. Studio Pre-Album Version)

Running Drag (Final Album Cut)

She

At The Point

Alice’s Rigatoni

Dishwasher Blues (Neal’s basement)

Hey Oh

I Think She Knows I’m Lethal (Delashmut Rd. Studio Worktape)

Rain (1982 Recording Workshop Studio)

Not Gonna

Be By Yourself

I Love You Baby ( What’s The Matter With You?)

Where To Go

(Let’s Make) Romance

My Friends Have Become Wolves (( By the way, this is true now more than ever!))

Together We Are One

The Barberettes

(Hang On) Sloopy

Ok! This is all I have had time to post as of 3-17-05 I will be posting more tunes soon. If you get crazy for more Click Here
There are 19 more songs by us that you can get as well.

Post to you soon!
Michael A. Barone
Oswald And The Herringbones

******** New Tunes Posted after this line *******************

OK,

These are add-ons. April 18th 2005.

I got a very nice email from Brian Smith stating that he had “in a fit of nostalgia” done a search on the internet to see if he could find some Oswald And The Herringbones tunes. Little did he know that he would stumble across this minor goldmine plethora of OATH songs. Never doubt the power of the World Wide Web.

Apparently Brian’s wife and his friends are big OATH fans too. They have requested a tune called Cross-town Shuffle.

This song was a hoot to play…literally since I played the sax on it! There are all kinds of hidden meanings in the lyrics, see if you can find some meaning for yourself. We used to challenge everyone at our concerts to try to dance all the way through the song. Most of these versions of it are around 10 minutes long, but occasionally we went for the gold and made it really long for a Jane Fonda Workout version (Our record was 22 minutes one night).

The first version I’m posting is one from the house studio at Bethel Rd. Mark Merchant and Tom Boyer were engineering it and Tom was also playing bass of course. Cross-town Shuffle Bethal Rd. studio version. (1982-84)

When we finished with the tracks after days of mixing down we decided to add the traffic sounds which we created by setting one microphone up in our extensive driveway and driving all our cars and my motorcycle around in circles while we yelled back and forth at each other.

The last thing You can hear is Tom saying is “you Joker!” But since we were fading the traffic track out in the mix down, it sounds like an obscenity, but it really is the word “Joker” not the “F-bomb” as the teens like to call it now.

Tom caught a lot of flack for it from the rest of the band. Mainly because we knew what he really said, but we always acted like we were disgusted with him for cussing, and (to this very day) we never cut him any slack for it. (By the way if he reads this, I’ll deny I wrote it!)

This first version is shorter and fades with the traffic sounds. Neal is playing most of the leads with Tom on bass. The next 3 versions
A) (Cross-town Shuffle from “Oswald And The Herringbones – Live At Presley’s”)
B) Cross-town Shuffle from “Oswald And The Herringbones – Victory Party Live At The Newport1985″)
C) (Cross-town Shuffle from “Oswald And The Herringbones – Live At Chelsea’s II”)

of it are the live dance mixes with various leads by Neal and Andy.

I hope Brian and His Family and friends like them still, and I hope the rest of you find a new gem or two as well. Thanks for caring enough to check back and listen!

Michael A. Barone

Kathy
This is my 3rd attempt at a podcast. I’m still working out the bugs on how to get stuff out to you through RSS etc.

This podcast is the behind the scenes story of the song “Kathy” by “Oswald And The Herringbones”, (or OATH). Basically I needed to have some audio materials to work with so this seemed like the best way to sharpen my skills in audio editing (for the pod casts to come) while not violating anyone else’s copyrighted materials. Having written, or co-written the tunes I’m working with definitely has its advantages!

I spoke with Neal Havener of OATH just a few days back by email and since he and I own the copyrights to our music…I’m in the clear! Props to the rest of the band as well who were and are always brothers of different mothers! Steve Sims on Drums, Andy “Ydna” Harrison on guitar, Tom Boyer on everything except the Giant Metal Jahoozi (that was me I think). Norman Hicks and Brad Haley were also in the band at different times as well as Neal and Myself. Anyway if you are pod casting yourself, do make sure you are careful about using other’s materials without permission. Clear your copyrighted materials before you use them!

On to “Kathy”, I have a little explanation about the writing of the song in the podcast so I won’t go over that again, but know that the actual “Kathy” who I wrote the song for, was a very nice person. Despite my goofing around in the song’s monolog, she and I were never dating or together for that matter other than what I describe in the podcast. The speaking parts of the song were added later during concerts when we needed to keep people entertained and so they stuck when we went to the recording studio with the song.

I hope you enjoy it.

If you are looking for more specifically Catholic (youth ministry) related materials, I hope to have more of those up soon. I just need to practice the pod casting format a few more times. So keep checking back here until you see them here.

Beware The Dogs is a self indulgent trip down a musical memory lane for me. It has nothing to do with Catholic issues and is pretty much a chance for me to check out my second podcast to make sure we are up and working. The podcast follows the four different reditions of a song I wrote (when I was 18 years old) as it was recorded over a 10 year period by my MTV Basement Tape award winning band “Oswald And The Herringbones” Check out Vitaminic.com and search Herringbones for 19 more songs we wrote in the big 80’s. It is interesting if you have never heard a song go from its most basic tracks to a multitrack recording. The first two versions are pretty weak but by the last one hopefully it is worth the wait (I’m sure it will be if you are a Cleveland Browns Fan or a DAWG POUNDER!). Special thanks go to all the different band members over the years, Steve Sims, Tom Boyer, Neal Havener, Norm Hicks, Brad Haley, and Andy “Ydna” Harrison. I hope you like the podcast it is really just a fun one for me. The bottom line is that we (The Herringbones) loved the 1988 Cleveland Browns Football team and the song at the very end is dedicated to them. There is nothing overly Catholic about the podcast this time unless you agree with us that The Cleveland Browns are probably God’s most favorite team in the NFL. Here is why…He only chastizes those he loves… and it has been… well close to the required 40 years since we have visited the promised land of the Superbowl!

Michael A. Barone