This song is a re imagining of Charle’s Baudelaire’s poem Bohémiens En Voyage, from his collection Les Fleur Du Mal, which has been my favorite set of poems for a year or two now.  (I prefer the Richard Howard Translation.)

It was also very influenced by the gypsy characters who appear in the book 100 Years of Solitude.  Its a song about what we believe in and why we believe in it.  Its a song about trusted sources of truth.

This is a simple recording I did of it a couple weeks ago,  with just me and Louis. More stripped down then the version on B3nson Family Funsgiving from a year ago but to me, more effective.

Mp3:Gypsies on the Road

Alex Muro

This song was supposed to be called while waiting for the space age, like the album, but sometimes a name just sticks.

We recorded the song in the sessions for Charles Minugs’ Garbage pile but we decided not to use it at the time. It ended up being released on the B3nson Family Affair (b3022).

Mp3: Synchronized Swimming

This song has been floating around the internet for a while at a couple different places but I decided to put it up here anyway. The first verse of a song is a translation of a Zen enlightenment poem, which is a poem written by a monk right after becoming enlightened. The rest of the verses are much less enlightened.

mp3: Seasons

Every action in time is irreversible and affects what will happen in the future. Isn’t that crazy?
Many thanks to Jon Fink (Jon of the Atom/Dead Canaries/New Wave Dirt) for recording the clarinets.

mp3: Cause & Response

mp3:mushroom nova scotia

Emma Goldman may or may not have anything to do with this song in a similar fashion as whether or not she had anything to do with the death of William McKinley. Influences are funny that way.

mp3:Emma Goldman

This is what our band sounds like now. I think its pretty neat. Can you pull the acorns from your chest where your ribs meet up?

mp3:Goin Nowhere

One day I woke up to thunder. My first thought was that it was a bombing (how often do you hear thunder at 9 am?). It was coming from the south. Delmar, NY is south of my bed and my friend Dan works in Delmar. For an instant I was really scared. Then my brain woke up, and more thunder boomed, and I understood what was going on. So I woke up and wrote down my first thought of the day, and then wrote the first verse to this song later that morning. Then, that evening, I discovered that it was Semptember 11th. I thought that interesting enough of a coincidence to share. Thanks to the German American family next door who unknowingly let me and Dan record their wind chimes and creepy kid repeating “You know what happened? The tide came in.” The picture is of a forest fire in Oregon that I could smell from my tent.

mp3: You Know What Happened? The Tide Came In

Another song with all the lyrics plucked from the pages of Rainer Maria Rilke. It’s the last song written for an EP almost entirely based on his major prose work, “The Notebooks of Malte Laudris Brigge”, which is available at b3nson.net or just by asking us.

mp3: The Table and The Cup

Is realism the purest form of Art? Does that even have anything to do with this song what so ever? I feel like this is a good time to point out the commenting system that we recently implemented on our web page where you can tell us what you think.

I also think it might be a good time to point out the donations button over on the side of the page and the fact that not a single person has ever dropped even a dime in our proverbial internet guitar case.

mp3:Realism is the Purest Form of Art