MidiMike

On most of my tunes, I play all the instruments and sequence the drums and other sound effects.  I usually sing lead or I have my wife take the vocal lead.  Once I started working in music stores selling instruments and sound equipment, I asked friends (and customers at the time!) to come over and lay down guitar solos or I might have a guest vocalist.  What I do at Night was one that we did ourselves.  I play all guitar parts and the back up vocals.  I think at this time I had graduated from a Yamaha MT4X (I think they were called and this was a 4 Track double speed cassette recorder) to the Alesis ADAT.  So now I had an amazing 8 tracks to record on!  Actually I needed one track to record the SMPTE time code so the Alesis ADAT would sync up to the computer (now I actually have a PC and put the Atari in deep storage).  I can go into this details on this system for a later post when I am feeling nostalgic, but it allowed unlimited MIDI tracks on the PC or Atari and connect to the playback of the ADAT.

The song itself reflects my thoughts on a number of topics.  I really like to drive.  I don’t have a fast or luxury car.    I just like to drive.  When I have some free time or just want to think, I often find myself cruising the local  country side.  I would listen to music while driving and that sometimes adds to the frustration.  Most of the music you hear on commercial radio is garbage or re-packaged songs and ideas I have heard for the last few decades.  Like a lot of us struggling artists and performers, we see a bunch of bands with lots of air-play and they are just so-so.  OK music, but nothing special.  As a songwriter, I get so tired of the same theme or idea in every song on the radio and they seem to get played non-stop.

One line reflects this fairly well…. ” so I turn the radio over to the right, playing the same songs as the other night”.   Originally titled – “Rainy Day”, What I do at Night has become one of my favorite driving songs.  Enjoy.