The SMARAGD logotype

Projects

Miscellaneous lyrics

For lyrics to assorted songs, check the miscellaneous lyrics page. Separate pages exist for lyrics to songs appearing on the Suchness EP and on Mythconception.

Mythconception

Mythconception is going to be a full-blown concept album set in a world where science and scientific thinking have entirely defeated myth, religion, and spirituality. The Mythconception project is Smaragd’s current focus. For more details, see the page about Mythconception. See Smaragd’s news page for the latest news about progress on the project.

Preconception: Mythconception In Progress

Preconception: Mythconception In Progress is a nine-track collection of unfinished material for the Mythconception album. For details on this collection, see the page about Preconception.

Atman Gita Sutra

Atman Gita Sutra is an unfinished, unreleased full album-length conceptual story about a man who loses his wife and daughter in an automobile accident. Written in the mid-1990s, it was originally intended to be a Jawbone project. The first few songs were recorded, but the rest of it never has gone beyond the demo stage. I haven’t decided whether it will ever be finished, but the lyrics and the project remain very close to me and important. The title is Sanskrit meaning something like “The Song of the Thread of Life.” Wonderfully pretentious! But early on, the project had a number of wildly inappropriate and nonsensical working titles, such as Uncle Ted’s Monkey Farm.

Box

Mostly written in late 2000, the lyrics didn’t get as much careful attention as I might have liked, but they’re passable, and besides it was the first new song I had written in years. I spent months with “Box” in limbo, occasionally jamming on the idea. Once I got the DigiTech RP-6 effects pedal, I started jamming on it regularly, and finally came up with a distinctive delay pattern and a three-chord pattern that uses it. I initially planned for there to be a long instrumental which I envisioned as being veru much like the jamming in Genesis’ “Abacab.” Having recorded one very rough demo of the song’s musical ideas, I started recording the full song on 9 May 2001. Recording was finished the morning of May 10. The song was comletely re-recorded for the Suchness album in November and December 2001. The finished song appears on the Suchness album, along with an instrumental remix version.

Idun’s Apples

The name of an instrumental in 5/4 meter. I only have a very crude demo, but intend to eventually get around to recording it properly.

Palingensia

This unreleased song was written in the mid-1990s, date presently unknown. The lyrics deal with individual spiritual evolution and one of my favorite topics, immovability. A very rough demo was recorded at the time the lyrics were written. The song has now been fully recorded, and is planned to be included in the Mythconception album. However, if the other tracks run too long, it may be dropped from the album. It will, however, be issued one way or another!

Revealed In Stone

The lyrics to this song about dinosaurs and our minute place in the scheme of cosmic history were originally written on 27 January 1995. The song was recorded not too long after as a Jawbone song with Rick on guitar. An effort to re-record it started in 2003. The new version is not yet finished.

What Have You Done

I originally wrote the lryics and musical “skeleton structure” of this song for Jawbone. We jammed on it, but never got around to fully developing it or committing it to tape. It lay in limbo for a couple years until I committed it to tape on my own in 2000. The recording (without any effects except one distortion pedal!) is on the Suchness album.

Tao (You Cannot Move Me)

An old Canary Thunder song which became part of the Smaragd canon. The song relied on a guitar strung “Nashville Style,” a trick I learned from David Gilmour who used the tuning for “Hey You.” The lyrics are based on excepts from two chapters of the Tao Teh Ching. The idea of being immovable was inspired by Joseph Campbell’s writings and lectures. The song is on the Suchness album.

The Reverend’s First Groove

An un-Smaragd-like instrumental. Thrown together while learning to use Apple’s GarageBand application. The track sounds to me like suitable music for a white pimp stuck in the 1970’s. Named for my alter-ego, Reverend Day-Bu. Download “The Reverend’s First Groove.”

Covers by Smaragd

Smaragd recorded three Pink Floyd covers under his real name (Dave Ward) for some Pink Floyd fan tribute recordings. They are:

Matilda Mother. Recorded in 1996 for A Saucerful of Echoes, vol. 1: Piper to OBC
Wish You Were Here. Recorded in 2000 for A Saucerful of Echoes: Singles I
You Gotta Be Crazy. Recorded in 2000 for A Saucerful of Echoes, vol. 2: Dark Animalistic Wishes

Smaragd also recorded a medley cover of three Roger Waters songs from his album The Pros And Cons of Hitch Hiking. The cover, also credited to his real name, was issued on a by-fans-for-fans tribute album circa 1999.

In October 2002 Smaragd recorded a cover of King Crimson’s “Dinosaur.”

On September 8, 2004 Smaragd posted a short, incomplete cover of Porcupine Tree’s “Voyage 34, Phase I”, retitled Voyage 33.

Naturally there are many, many other songs Smaragd plays covers of, including songs by Rush, Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree, and others. The above are just those which have been committed to tape.

RIAA: screwing artists AND consumers since 1952