Weird Tales Playlist

I recently set up a recording studio so I could get back into recording some of my songs. I started out with a crazy project called Groon Radio just to loosen up and get into the swing of things. Now that I’ve got that out of my system, I am now working on a new project.

I have been reading the old Weird Tales Magazines from the 1920s, and I thought it would be a fun experiment to use the common tropes found in weird literature. Haunted houses, ghosts, unknown creatures, space aliens, flying saucers, men from Mars, strange sea creatures, mysterious voyages, voodoo, magic, witchcraft, mental anguish of war, end of the world scenarios, hospitals, aging, the loss of love, the difficulty of marriages gone wrong.

I also wanted to create a character and an atmosphere for each song. Voices influenced by Boris Karloff, Mel Blanc, Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Sid & Marty Krofft, Dr. Seuss, Sponge Bob, and Bowie. Each song is a different place, with a different feel. The only thing binding them together is the weird trip it takes you on.

I totally geeked out making the Weird Tales videos, that I’d like to call, Tales Too Terrible To Tell. I used Cartoon Animator 4 to bone and animate the characters to make them move or sing. I used Toonly to make the flat 2D animated bits. Wondershare Filmora is my video editor that has all the shiny elements and bling. I generate A.I. images and then fix them up in Photoshop for many of the characters and backgrounds in these videos.

I Love Driving My Car

This years data concludes that carbon emissions are at an all time high. This year marks the fourth highest increase ever recorded. Here’s a stupid video about it all.

Nursey

Nursey is now on Spotify

I have found a new addiction, and it’s playing around with A.I. technology. I buy tokens, and I have to spend 30 tokens every time I generate an image. I have to write my description, and the A.I. makes the art. I get four different images each time, hoping at least one is what you are hoping for.

Every time I write a new description, and wait for my four pieces of artwork, I get a huge thrill from the ups and lows. It can take about a minute or so for the artificial intelligence to make the art, and then it downloads to your computer. It’s a short wait, but it builds so much anticipation waiting to see what you get. It’s a total dopamine rush. When I describe what I want really well, I get what I ask for, and the results are spectacular. When I am too vague, I have just spent money on a bum batch of art that I can’t use. The bad results make me want to have another go by refining my terms.

Writing the query is like searching on Google, but instead, you’re searching your imagination. If you have ever had to speak in such a literal fashion to get what you want from a stubborn 10 year old, you are ready to make A.I. art. You have to go into details and be very descriptive, so it’s a fun challenge to try and figure out how to communicate with the machine, and collaborate to make wonderfully disturbing images.

Since I love all things slightly unsettling, artificial intelligence tweaks my brain each time it wraps a third leg, or merges arms into the chair a character is sitting in, I like how it hurts my brain. I want to make sense of it all, but it doesn’t always make sense. It looks all normal at first, but then you notice that it’s not right. Something is wrong, and it’s not from this universe at all.

Land of the Home

Land of the home. Free of the brave. Music by Jay E Moores

Land of the Home. Free of the Brave. Music and Animation by Jay E Moores. Now on Spotify!

When I was a kid I asked my grandfather why he walked with a limp. He told me a story about how he got injured in World War II. During the Battle of the Bulge he said a mortar went off and it blew his head and chest apart. As he lay there dying, he overheard the medics say, “This one is far too gone to save, let’s move on.” And he had to scream, “I am alive!” to be rescued. He said all he could think about was getting home to my grandmother. He promised her that he would come home to marry her, and he kept that promise. They rebuilt his skull with a metal plate that would forever set off airport security. They would repair all of his chest wounds and heal his body, although forever riddled with scars where the crippling shrapnel had pierced the flesh and blood of his able and lithe 20 year old body. I was to be born twenty years later in 1964. Long enough for the man to heal, raise a couple daughters who then married, so that in turn I was born. I owe my very existence to the fact that my grandfather had the tenacity to get home after that injury. My grandfather walked with a limp, and I knew why. He was afraid the fighting would get to us if he didn’t go to war. He didn’t want to see war in our backyard, and he felt it was coming, especially if he didn’t do anything about it. He went so the crosshairs of the battle would be on him because he did not want to wait until the enemy was taking aim at one of us. In the land of the home. Free of the brave.

Land of the home. Free of the brave.

The army characters in the video above were generated using the AI feature in Buildbox Classic, touched up in Photoshop, bone animated using Cartoon Animator, and the final video was edited using Wondershare Filmora. Animated GIF eagle logo was made using Inkscape, Photoshop, and Adobe Image Ready. Music was recorded using Garageband. Nerd out!

Snow Day

It snowed hard here in Maine. As I looked out into the backyard and the snow was accumulating fast, this song appeared in my head. I began to sing it. Then it got stuck in Miss Hazel’s head. So we grabbed the kid’s Mac and recorded our little Snow Day song so it can get stuck in your head too.

Snow Day is on Spotify

Put on your Gortex. Give me a shout. Hurricane’s a blowin’. It’s snowin’ out. Pack up your sled dog. Put ’em on the run. Leaping through the piles of snow, having lots of fun.

Hooray! Hooray! There’s no school today. It’s a snow day it’s a snow day! We can all stay home today. Hooray! Hooray! There’s no school today. It’s a snow day it’s a snow day! It’s all postponed until another day.

Jim Bob phoned and he wanted to say: Hooray! Hooray! There’s no school today. It’s a snow day it’s a snow day! We can all stay home today. Hooray! Hooray! There’s no school today. It’s a snow day it’s a snow day! It’s all postponed until another day. Put on your Gortex. Give me a shout. Hurricane’s a blowin’. It’s snowin’ out.

Fly Away

Fly Away by Jay E Moores is also on Spotify

Cosmo wins Best Trick at the dog show! If you make a hoop with your arms – he jumps through!

So after 17 long years my dog Cosmo died here at home in Miss Hazel’s arms, which makes him a very lucky dog. He was my recording buddy, his toe nails click clacking across the wood floor every time I tried to record a track. He’s buried out in our Puja Circle, one of his favorite places to stand in the sun, sniff flowers, and nibble grass. He did it every morning during the warm months here in Maine. I wrote a ton of songs about good old Cosmo over the years, he had so much character for a wee little Rat Terrier. The kids loved him so. Fly Away is the song where Cosmo gets his angel wings and flies away. Thank you little doggie.

End Of A Long Vacation

Maine has claimed the name Vacationland on her license plates because in the few short weeks of the summer, life is as good as it gets on planet earth. Lucky folk migrate north east to our wild and wooly state, and brave the temperatures of 70-80 degrees Fahrenheit (with a mild breeze so you can hear the leaves rustle). It’s magical. A Maine summer can fill a heart with just enough hope to get the locals through her winter. If you come here only for the summer, you could last a few years any where else on the joy that will have filled your soul. It’s sorta like cheating if you don’t winter here. By visiting Maine in the summer, you can set the balance of joy in your favor.

I’m in love with my home state.

Hooligan Heart

Here is a song by Miss Hazel. Her lovely voice sings backing vocals on many of my songs. She also played a lot of keyboard tracks, and bass tracks. Here she is singing and playing ukulele. She told me that this song was inspired from the books, How To Train Your Dragon. I made the creepy animated doll video. Your welcome.

I Am Alive ~ YouTube

I am slow but surely getting my crazy animated videos up for my songs. As I complete each one I post it on YouTube into a playlist. Listen to my new album, I Am Alive, and watch my strange animated videos. Thank you!

Close Your Eyes

2020 was really tough on my family. My sister is a nurse, and she had her elderly mom and dad living with her. Between tests, she caught and brought home Covid, and both her parents got it and died, including the cat! It was a huge loss to our family, and we are all still a bit lost and confused.

My aunt and uncle are now my only elders. I was talking with my aunt and she asked me if I believed in a Heaven where we are all reunited with our loved ones. I told her that I believe that whatever we believe our brain gives us. Our last few seconds of life feel like an eternity on the other side. I told her that I believed we close our eyes and we see the one we love. I believe our loved ones come and get us. Where they bring us really doesn’t matter, as long as we are together.

This song is about that. Wishing we had more time with the ones we love, and wishing we get that time with them in an afterlife. So often we fall down the wishing well of life with good intentions, but get swept away and not ever notice how many dreams have passed us by. Time is what people want more of. It’s the only real currency. We want more time so we can spend it with the ones we love.

We can only hope that all those things we wish we had done during life are still possible in Heaven. The only regrets we have on our death bed are the things we wished we had done, but didn’t, even though all the elements were within our grasp. This is a reminder to take some time for the ones you love while you are still on this side of life. Include yourself in there too. I really want to thank you for listening to my songs about love and life. From my heart to yours. Big hugs for all!