Title of Photograph: Filled With Dread in Los Angeles

by Chuck Hoffman

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1.
03:55
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2.
03:00
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3.
04:42
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4.
03:41
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5.
05:06
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6.
04:01
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7.
02:51
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8.
04:30
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9.
03:03
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10.
06:32
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about

I, Charles Hoffman, fully support paying $0 for music downloads. Enter a buck or two or five if you're feeling generous and want to show some appreciation, but if it means the difference between you listening to my stuff or not listening to my stuff, I'd rather have you listening. Thanks.

Five years in the making, probably not even originally intended as an album, the one-man home recordings of Chuck Hoffman between the breakup of Exit Drills and the day when Beck and Co. ruined another good thing; collected and "released" in a bout of unemployment in early 2008, titled after the cover photo taken ca. 1998 by Barb Schilf of House Of Large Sizes; sold on home-burned CD-Rs and forced upon the unwilling during the Samuel Locke-Ward and the Solid Gold Dancers/Teddy Boys July 2008 tour. Songs that may not be radio-safe are #2 and #8.

credits

released 15 February 2008
Most sounds made & recorded by Chuck Hoffman. A Centipede Farm product.

tags

tags: experimental waterloo bedroom pop indie industrial lo-fi noise-rock postpunk punk songwriter Des Moines

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about

The Centipede Farm began as a name for Chuck Hoffman's music blog and a label-name to put on his own self-released material. It grew into this little cassette-and-net-label dealing in a variety of musical styles, most of them noisy, lo-fi, experimental, homemade, or outsiderish in some sense. ... more

discography

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Track Name: Twisted Pair
Yow! It's getting better all the time,
unfettered running through these
corners of the mindscapes' open-ended destinations
We're gonna leave it all behind
the refrigerator for the mice to find,
and they'll eat well tonight of regrets and old frustrations

Some say there's an escape from Hell
but if I don't find it, it's just as well
"How Can Hell Be Any Worse"
than some of the lives that go before
Let's find a new friend we can tell
the same old stories to we've
told to all our old friends and each other
about a hundred times or more

It's getting better all the time,
untrammeled rolling past the
backyards of a minefield's open-ended explorations
To shield each other from interference
all communications clear,
it's clear to hear it now
I'm listening to a voice that makes no sound
makes no sound
makes no
sound
Track Name: Mathcore Song for the Next American Idol to Sing
When the world is on your shoulders
and you need a helping hand
I know what you need because
I understand

I've been through all the struggles,
I've been through all the pain
and though sometimes we need a push
this one thing still remains

Life is a journey, there are bumps along the way
But you gotta keep movin' on, it's gonna be OK
Love is the answer, I'll show you that it's true
Every day in every way you're beautiful, and I thank you

And something tells me that you love me
And something tells me that you care
I thank you for looking out for me
and I thank you for being there

Life is a journey, there are bumps along the way
But you gotta keep movin' on, it's gonna be OK
Love is the answer, I'll show you that it's true
Every day in every way you're beautiful, and I thank you
Track Name: Those Jerks Started a Cult
Cyanide pills of irrelevance
for a new generation of the bored
washin' 'em down with green apathy koolaid
You're gonna drop off to sleep in a spacesuit
You were walking around with a headset on
looking for someplace to plug it in
until you found this facade on a glorified boombox
in a basement room filled with broken tools

You say you wanna rock & roll? Well good luck with that
You wanna sit at the controls of nothing at all
You're getting real world experience, real world experience
You can list on your resume: "talking to a wall."

Use it or lose it like I lost mine
Now point and laugh while I fight to get it back
My Arrow Of Light broke by the time I realized
that being average is overrated
Now I'm a ghost in this place, hear me rattle my chains
With a few more like me we'll rattle louder
Impermanent records the paper's not acid-free
Turns out I burned out whatever I was schooled into

You say you wanna rock & roll? Well good luck with that
You wanna sit at the controls of nothing at all
You're getting real world experience, real world experience
You can list on your resume: "playing to an empty hall."

Bad credit do I even exist
Can you fulfill my need of conveyance
from one frustration to the next
It's a crumbling rust before it's paid for
Or take these broken sounds make them soar the airwaves
Let go of the edge of seventeen
Yeah I belong to the multiple choice generation
I can take it or leave it, I think I'm gonna leave it


You say you wanna rock & roll? Well good luck with that
You wanna sit at the controls of nothing at all
You're getting real world experience, real world experience
Well your real world experience isn't real at all
Not at all
Not at all
Not at all
Not at all
Track Name: I'm a Blueser, Baby, So Why Don't I Kill Myself
Well I woke up this morning
All crumpled up in a heap
Didn't feel like doin' nothin'
except go back to sleep
I got this hole in my stomach
where it feels like my brain is bleedin' out
and I think I'm losing my mind just wonderin' what my whole stupid life's about

Well I ain't got much hair left
I keep pullin' it out of my head
Hang around this town much longer baby you know
I'm gonna wish that I was dead
You know I hear the freight train comin'
think I'll try to see how cut it I can close, or something like that
Yeah I think I'm losing my mind mama like I'd almost rather be comatose

Well I go to get some breakfast
But the silverware was all gone, don't ask me where it went
My arms both fall off
And of course I can't pick 'em up to stick 'em back on
So I just jump out of a window
and as I'm falling to the street
well I know for sure I've lost my mind
and I know the whole damn thing's got me beat
oh yes it does
Track Name: Jackhammer
Just now I'm starting to notice
that this place is smelling so bad
from the stink of the rot of the corpses
of the things that I should have had
Now I'm trying to erase my memory
for I think it will clear my mind
and starve out the voice that keeps telling me
that I've already run out of time

So it's time for you to leave
You're keeping me from all my goals
by using your mass and its gravity
to pull me back into your hole
where you put your tentacles around me
and cling to me until I can't move
then serenade me all in baby-talk
like it's something you're trying to prove

Trying to fix it with medicine
but we only end up feeling dead
I can pull my head out of machinery
but I can't take the noise from my head
Jump up and down like a jackhammer
when this energy needs a release
Until we're released from each other
neither will have any peace

Frustration frustration jump up and down
I am a jackhammer pounding the ground
Frustration frustration jump up and down
Cracking the pavement I'm on my way down to here

Frustration frustration jump up and down
Jackhammer jackhammer breaking new ground
Frustration frustration jump up and down
Cracking the pavement don't follow me follow me follow me

Frustration frustration jump up and down
I am a jackhammer pounding the ground
Frustration frustration jump up and down
Been there and back but I'm coming around to here
Track Name: Shine Your Weary Eyes On Love's Corpse
If I had your luck I'd think the world was out to get me too
Remember how they tried to pin some old retroscript on you
Biographies of the Standardized
A bunch of old stock footage carelessly spliced
And remember how you cheated on the personality test
The young man who knows what he wants and disregards the rest
Oh no, I never knew
What I was supposed to do
To mine own self be true
Didn't even know who my self was

Remember how you watched the universe shrink to a dot
Floating before you feverishly, your stomach in a knot
and who'd you dedicate that vision to?
Try to walk in one-size-fits-all shoes
Now your flying car is broken down, your robots went on strike
Your timeshare on the moonbase lapses as you drown in paperwork
I got a head full of ideas
they're driving me insane
Chip-chip away at my skull
but fear that I'll never escape my brain
Track Name: To Hell With You
Flying away on a chariot of black
You're going to Hell in a K-Mart sack

Like every morning you come too late
to where your little coffin home awaits

Why bother going? You'll only come back
to invite us to write a role for you to act
Track Name: Cartesian Laundri
This is my least favorite song
but I just keep trying to tune it in through a social static
that's obscuring things I think someone ought to say
but it turns out that if everyone could break through it
everyone would scare everyone else away
but then where would we escape as humanity pours forth
as if from some paint can to cover the Earth?
If there was this built-in prefab Meaning Of Life
don't you think we'd already know it at birth?

All right here we go
with all this speculation, "Hey, maybe it's just me"
but it's really probably both of us gone insane
To say nothing of the rest of the world don't matter
now that we can block it out and dismiss it as make-believe
and you live so near just inside my head
and around me all of the time
Track Name: Busted Old Walkman
When she was a little girl she'd stack up blocks as high as they would stand
just to send them crashing to the floor with one wave of her hand
Grown-up now she plays those same old games, it's just with different toys
The overly obvious rhyme to wind up this line would be something about boys
So many times she'd build me up just to knock me down
but she turns back into you

The past is like this rolling snowball I'm dragging up a drifted hill behind me
You could lend the warmth to melt it, you could speak your mind to unremind me
because it's enemies and friends like these that I don't need, I can hurt myself just fine
or leave me freezing here when I disappoint you as I'm sure to do in time
I only wanted you to feel good, that's what turns me on
Let me come back to you

I don't need stroking or poking with a stick, just treat me like a man
I know you can