THE FIRST 13 SECONDS OF THIS SONG ARE GUARANTEED TO SCARE THE HELL OUT OF YOUR CAT

[toomanycats]

Trust me, I know. When I play it half of my colony of nine bolts under the furniture, and the other half run to look out the window with their hair standing up like a Halloween witch's cat yard display.

“Wolf Pack” was recorded over a decade ago using a BOSS BR-1180 recording studio, in a small apartment above Eli Zabar's E.A.T. restaurant in NYC. One of the long time tenants in that building told me that my apartment was formerly rented by Adam Sandler, reminiscing how she felt compelled to dote on him when his mother from New Jersey wasn't there visiting. It was implied that Adam was a bit of a mamma's boy.

I tracked the song entirely "in the box" using the BR-1180. There was no way I could crank a real tube amp in that apartment. The neighbors probably wondered what all the screaming was about the day I tracked the vocals. For guitar tones back then I was putting an ART Tube MP and an Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer in front of the recording input, which was set to one of BOSS's COSM British settings. Sometimes I miss the simplicity, limitations, and physical feel of that BOSS recorder, with it's tiny LCD screen, real faders, and actual knobs. I've still got it buried somewhere in a closet, so maybe I'll revisit it someday.

I uploaded "Wolf Pack" to my Myspace Music page at the time I originally recorded it, though a short time later I abandoned my account. Given the somewhat eerie nature of the tune, I figured that the week before Halloween was a good time to finally put it out there again.

As with any piece of art, the listener is going to read whatever they want into it. That being said, when composing the song I was consciously and simultaneously referring to the biological animal known as Canis lupus, the mythological wolf as writ large in human consciousness and expressed by things like the werewolf, and the dual nature of man.







WOLF PACK

We run in the rain,
We feel no pain,
Snapping at your heels
Dark comes on fast,
Don't take a chance,
Or you'll go down for the kill

Daylight will come
Along with the sun
To view bleached bones
Left all alone

The hills hide our tribe
In the shadows we lie
waiting for cold moonlight
We hunt to survive
Your flesh keeps us alive
We live for the kill and the fight

Daylight will come
Along with the sun
To view bleached bones
Left all alone
Don't cry for me
I was born to be free
To run with the pack,
wolf pack!

I like tender bits that I have on the night
I sink in my fangs, it's my greatest delight
I'm bad and I'm mean, I'm and eating machine
I like little girls, if you know what I mean

Around the bend
Howling on the wind
The scent on the air marks our trail
If no luck tonight
Shiny eyes
We'll gnaw on old bones in the vale

Daylight will come
Along with the sun
To view bleached bones
Left all alone
Don't cry for me
I was born to be free
To run with the pack,
wolf pack!


Mrs TMC wants everyone to know that she cowrote the lyrics, so on this one it's music and lyrics copyright 2023 TMC and Mrs TMC.

[tonebender]

Cool song, Miss Purrl hightails it as soon as I move towards a guitar no matter what I play.

[tlarson58]

The first 13 second scared me. My cat (Gulliver) fears nothing. He's going to get his ass handed to him one of these days.

[toomanycats]

The first 13 second scared me. My cat (Gulliver) fears nothing. He's going to get his ass handed to him one of these days.


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Do you ever hear or see wolves out there in Colorado? I've seen your videos where you trek out in the wild and I've gotta imagine that there's all kinds of wildlife, possibly even wolves .

[tlarson58]

The first 13 second scared me. My cat (Gulliver) fears nothing. He's going to get his ass handed to him one of these days.


R0011661 (2).jpg

Do you ever hear or see wolves out there in Colorado? I've seen your videos where you trek out in the wild and I've gotta imagine that there's all kinds of wildlife, possibly even wolves .

Garbage-loving black bears*, moose, mountain lions (ever-present but rarely seen), occasional ex-girlfriends and elk. No wolves around here but they were re-introduced in CO a few years back. It's a political hot topic so let's stay clear of it. We hear coyotes once in a while.

* We have one in the neighborhood. City ordinance dictates bear-proof trash cans. 'Doesn't stop them from trying, though.

[Narsh]

OK so my dog flipped out a little bit. Nicely done!!!

[toomanycats]

OK so my dog flipped out a little bit. Nicely done!!!

Thanks. I was going use a more cliche werewolf howl, ya know, like what you hear in An American Werewolf in London and movies like that. But then I came across the vocalizations of real wolves and found them at once terrifying, haunting, eerie, just expressive of so much wild pathos. I knew I had to use that for the tune.

[mickey]

The first 13 second scared me. My cat (Gulliver) fears nothing. He's going to get his ass handed to him one of these days.




Do you ever hear or see wolves out there in Colorado? I've seen your videos where you trek out in the wild and I've gotta imagine that there's all kinds of wildlife, possibly even wolves .

Garbage-loving black bears*, moose, mountain lions (ever-present but rarely seen), occasional ex-girlfriends and elk. No wolves around here but they were re-introduced in CO a few years back. It's a political hot topic so let's stay clear of it. We hear coyotes once in a while.

* We have one in the neighborhood. City ordinance dictates bear-proof trash cans. 'Doesn't stop them from trying, though.

My niece lives in North Georgia (up where @tonebender took a bike trip some months back.)
The land across the road from her driveway is National Forest property.
A couple of years ago there was a fire in the forest & the firefighters set up a command post across the road from her driveway.
My niece is a great photographer and lives with a camera in her hand & I mean a real high end camera NOT a cell phone!
She is always looking to get a shot she can sell to the TV news, etc.
Naturally, she took a few shots of the firefighter's command post.
No one noticed until the following day there was an adult bear in the tree above the command post!

[Tonray's Ghost]

The ferals on our street seem to congregate near our front door whenever I bring out the acoustic. Perhaps it sounds like scurrying mice to their frequency range of hearing ?

[toomanycats]

The ferals on our street seem to congregate near our front door whenever I bring out the acoustic. Perhaps it sounds like scurrying mice to their frequency range of hearing ?

Well, there's this old saying . . .

But then you've got the American version . . .