So here's the words to "the wheels have come off":

"The wheels have come off
I'm more or less set adrift
And it's a big horizon
When your perspective shifts
But I'll pick up the pieces
As that's all there is
(I know)
As the world turns around
It spins only one way

You can't help but move on
Take it one day at a time
I'm losing track of my metaphors
In a sea of bad rhyme
But it helps to get it out
Just as it sometimes helps to cry
But don't take my word for it
You should try it sometime

As another day gets put in the ground
It'll come back on the other side
(solo section)

I keep hearing her voice
Its like I have no choice
Shes still right here as if she never left
worn at the edge
The memory's frayed
But well worn just the same

The wheels have come off
Seems like I drag through the day
Slowly passing through the hours
And I sometimes don't know what to say
I know this too will pass
And it won't always be this way...

I'll put it all back together
In the proper time and place."

It sometimes seems to me this mourning over my mother may be a bit much. No one really wants to hear it, as it's something that everyone fears if they haven't gone through it, and feels deeply if they have. But that's just it, doesn't all this poetry and music spring from that fear and memory?

So I've been posting my songs up on MacIdol for over a year now, ever since I got Apple's Garageband software and discovered that place that offers free hosting of songs for users of that software. I also signed up for MacJams around that same time, though they didn't actually have on-site hosting, just linking to the mp3s that you hosted somewhere else, and being technologically challenged as I am, I couldn't figure out how to do that. Mostly I posted songs at MacIdol at first, but also iCompositions (until that site became too unweildy for efficient uploading and browsing through). Later when MacJams changed to allow mp3 hosting on their site, I started to post the songs there.

This ties in with my initial name post, because I signed up to all these sites using different names. That's not a real uncommon occurance, but for someone as straightforward and unsecretive as I usually consider myself, it seems to call for some explanation. I signed up for MacIdol as James Bouchard, since that's what I used for my .mac address and I used that for my .mac account name because that's the name on my credit card and bank account and all. But then I signed up for iCompositions as toots since I'd put out my CD years ago called Toots Rambles, and that place seemed to be more of a "screen name" sort of place. Then I signed up for MacJams as Jim Bouchard, since that was the name I'd gotten used to using mostly over the years, and the artist name the aforementioned CD was released under.

I participate pretty heavily at MacIdol, and since MacJams was sort of not a viable place for me at first, I think most of my notoriety on the internet comes from that place. MacIdol has a very good site design aesthetic with the jamrooms acting as a personal website, and it googles really well. If you don't already know, here's my page there: http://www.macidol.com/jamroom/bands/367/

I did get to know some other artists pretty well through MacJams after a while though, and was able to collaborate very well with some of the MacJams artists, most significantly Iseae. The type of site that MacJams is seems to encourage that. On the other hand it is a site that has a rating system that is supposed to help visitors to decide what songs to listen to, of the hundreds of songs that get added every week, and as you might imagine, this can be of debatable merit. It's been debated a lot, in fact.

Since a lot of my music is of a highly personal nature, having grown up in the era of the confessional singer-songwriter, this rating system can be quite damaging. Recently on Macjams I posted a song I wrote about my mother's passing away called "The wheels have come off" and it got pretty great marks from some and some really middling marks from others and it really bugged me. So I took it off and felt really discouraged about it, really felt like pulling all my songs off (and I've got a lot there; I don't know how many, maybe 50?) that website. But a lot of people there have been really supportive and written good things about me and my songs, so I shouldn't let a few bad apples...etc...

But anyway, there you have my rant so far for today...

So, first of all, I've got to pick a name for this blog. Most obvious is my name, but then I think that maybe I need something a little more imaginative. Trouble is, I'm not really over-brimming with imagination, so I resort to my old Toots Rambles name, but no, rather how about Jimbo? Some people have called me that in the past...and then this will ultimately be my place to ramble, where I just write anything... so maybe that's good enough for now. I shouldn't have any problem with the rambling. It's a start.

Hopefully this will give me a space to start on the great autobiographical novel that I keep telling myself I will start tomorrow. That between mastering the ukelele and painting my house and everything else. Well that's enough for now, I'll come back to this later, folks...