Rock and roll songs with great lyrics. Simple, profound, shallow, complex, and mixed for iPod® with ear buds. Listen to the "hifi" samples. Click on "PLAY ALL SONGS (broadband)". The "lofi" clips are low quality. It is the 21st century. Upgrade your ears.

10 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Rock & Roll, ROCK: Space Rock

Show all album songs: She Likes To Play Songs


Details:
[Important: These songs were recorded, mixed, and mastered on an Apple® computer using the most advanced digital studio software available at the dawn of the early 21st century. The sonic landscape is very elaborate, and it is digital, which maps to needing all its data. The "lofi" (dial-up) Flash and individually clickable songs clips are dithered, filtered, compressed, and generally downgraded in terms of audio resolution, which effectively destroys the sound by arbitrarily discarding data. Even the "hifi" sound clips are done this way, but not so much as the "lofi" clips. Without wandering too far into advanced acoustic physics and perception, the reason that you are able to locate the source of a sound very precisely is that your ears hear the same sound perhaps hundreds of times very rapidly with each instance being just a tiny bit different, for example due to it first traveling to a nearby wall and then reflecting to the nearest ear, while part of the same instance travels to an opposite wall and then reflects to your other ear. In a small room, these different instances occur typically in a in a matter of milliseconds (thousandths of a second, if you prefer). In a larger room, the delay and reflection times are longer, sometimes being a few seconds for really big rooms, and this is one of the ways a simulated binaural landscape is created using digital recording, mixing, and mastering software. There are subtle (and not so subtle) changes in frequency or pitch, as well, and all this stuff is important. It is stored in binary bits within the MP3 audio files, and if you start tossing some of the bits arbitrarily, the illusion stops working, because the additional instances of reverberated, reflected, delayed, and echoed sounds simply are not there. These songs are mixed exclusively for listening through headphones and ear buds, ideally using an Apple computer, iPod®, or iPhone® playing the songs in iTunes with the Equalizer set to "Rock" or, if you prefer more bass, "R&B". In particular, the tone is adjusted so that it does not overload the audio components in Apple computers, iPods, and iPhones no matter which Equalizer setting is used at normal volume, and even at full volume the tiny bit of overloading that occurs is just enough to give the songs a nice blur that perhaps is the modern equivalent of the blurring that vacuum tubes created in the 1950s when teenagers listened to Elvis Presley songs at full volume through car radios. All this stuff is done to make it possible to use binaural sound placement techniques, which are more realistic than stereo in terms of being able to place specific instruments, reverberations, echoes, and everything else in very precise locations within the sonic landscape. Instead of sounding like a 20th century style recording, some of the instruments and voices sound like part of the band is just outside your left ear, while another part or section of the band and its instruments and voices are just outside your right ear. Then, the binaural aspects make it possible to place other instruments and voices at the top of your head, in front, outward to the left or right, as well as somewhat downward and behind, although the downward and behind stuff is more difficult. It also makes it possible to move all this stuff around every so often to provide additional mappings of individual instruments and voices to the lyrics, so that for example a particular nuance or definition of a word which has many nuances and definitions is made a bit more obvious by associating a specific sound with the word, and it enables the creation of auditory illusions (which are grand fun). Apple iPod ear buds are pretty good, but a set of high-quality studio headphones with excellent isolation is better. The songs are mastered using the IK Multimedia T-RackS stereo mastering plug-in via Digital Performer 5.11, and the artist currently known as himself suggests that the clues provided in some of the blurbs and song overviews about sounds moving around in your mind as you listen to the songs are very accurate in the higher resolution digital universe when you listen via headphones or ear buds. This also occurs when listening inside a car or spaceship that has a great sound system with left, right, front, and back speakers, since these types of audio systems tend to be tuned very accurately to the acoustic characteristics of the interior cabin space. The broadband samples are tolerable but not so deep and rich as the 192 kbps songs you get when you purchase the album (download or physical media), noting that 192 kbps looks to be the highest practical resolution for typical MP3 songs, which is the reason it currently is the preferred resolution. This is the way it is, and the laws of physics make it abundantly clear that while it might be possible to put a three-ring circus inside a jelly bean, this tends to require that the jelly bean be at least as big as a three-ring circus, which is not what happens when the three-ring circus is compacted or dithered so that it can be packed into a tiny jelly bean and then sent electronically via a dial-up web connection. Stuff like this is one of the reasons for composing and writing "Nothing Is Real". There is more information on the digital recording, mixing, and mastering at the Surf Whammys website, along with insights into some of the instrumental and vocal techniques, including a bit of information on how to make an inexpensive set of Pulse® drums and cymbals sound fantastic for studio recording purposes . . . ]

Now for the silly stuff (one of the many blurbs for this album) . . .

Some historians and researchers have suggested that the Surf Whammys are a musical group formed in the mid-1950s in a remote section of Lower Alabama ("L.A.") during the early years of what soon became to be known as instrumental surf music.

However, another group of historians and researchers suggests that the Surf Whammys were created in an advanced biological laboratory by Japanese scientists using cloned genetic material which was carefully collected from various rock and roll memorabilia, such as autographed albums, personal letters to fans, guitar picks, and assorted soda pop containers. And yet another group of historians and researchers are convinced that the Surf Whammys are none other than Ravi "Reverb" Ole, Rama "Ding Dong" Lama, Darnell "Cootie" Farnell, and Milford "Finger Puppet" Whittle--four musicians who together with their manager (Billy Earle "The Major" Lama, the identical twin step-brother of the band's drummer) have made the transition from traditional instrumental surf music to modern rock and roll.

Could the Surf Whammys be genetic clones of some of the great stars of rock and roll? Is it possible that the Surf Whammys were created in an advanced biological laboratory soon after the military accident in 1959 that ended the career of the original Elvis Presley and the tragic airplane crash in 1964 that ended the careers of the original Beatles all too soon?

Is "Reverb" the genetic super-clone of George Harrison, John Lennon and Elvis Presley? Is "Ding Dong" the genetic clone of Ringo Starr? Is "Cootie" the genetic clone of Paul McCartney? And is "Finger Puppet" really the identical twin step-brother of "The Major", who actually is the brother of his third cousin, twice removed, who is "Ding Dong's" uncle, as well as being "Reverb's" personal tailor and "Cootie's" spiritual advisor (since he is the only one in the group who has a telephone)?

Is this all part of an extraordinarily complex scheme devised by the aliens from outer space who currently are circling our planet in a spaceship toward the dual goals firstly of stealing our dreams, our desires, our women, and our rock and roll music and then secondly of using all that stuff to create a giant thinking machine which will be used to locate the missing mirror matter that the aliens from outer space accidentally misplaced while on a reconnaissance mission during the late 1940s in an obscure part of the desert outside of Roswell, New Mexico?

More importantly, why is mirror matter necessary for making popcorn, and what do the aliens from outer space do with popcorn that makes it so vital to their ability to travel quickly through the myriad dimensions of spacetime?

Why do the instruments and voices move around inside your mind when you listen to the songs through ear buds on an Apple® iPod®?

And what does any of this have to do with using orange juice cans and string to construct a low-cost intercom system?

Probably nothing, but since nobody actually has seen the Surf Whammys or the aliens from outer space, the answers to all these puzzling questions continue to be one of the great mysteries at the dawn of the early 21st century!

Soon, there might be answers, but until the answers appear, the only confirmed fact surrounding the mystery of the Surf Whammys is that they can play rock and roll music pretty good, especially when their manager brings them plenty of Moon Pie® cookies and Mexican Coca-Cola® soda pop.

(P)(C) 2007 RAE Multimediaâ¢. Songs and lyrics by J. D. Evans, Jr. (BMI). Visual concept and artwork by Simmons Design and Photographyâ¢.