Choice Cuts - The Best of Agog (1995-2000)

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All songs written & produced by Jeffery Greb 
All vocals, instruments, programming, & toys performed by Jeffery Greb
(except tracks 8 & 13 - bass Geoff Meneses & drums Art Meneses)
Transfer of audio from analog to digital by Carl Henry

Tracks 1,7,8,10,13 from A Buzz in My Head  recorded @ The Biggest Little Studio in the World 
          (basic track 8 & all of track 13 recorded @ The Marguarita Room)
Tracks 2,5,11 from Insectorium recorded @ The Biggest Little Studio in the World
Tracks 4,6,9 from In the Ointment recorded @ Rancho Grebo
Tracks 3,12 from Mealworms for the Monkey recorded @ Rancho Grebo
Instrumentatlity in Db 4:19
Instrumentality in Db
Having just completed a complex recording with many tracks requiring lots of overdubbing and bouncing tracks, I sat down with my Tele and slapped a capo at the sixth fret and started fooling around. I liked the simple progression in that key and plugged the guitar directly into the four-track recorder. The backing track is the bridge pickup, which provides a little distortion. The lead is on the Tele neck pickup. One pass each, and I was done. (And the results were much better than the complex track that had given me so much trouble.)
Three Day Rain 4:26
Three Day Rain
The vocals are through a Playskool karaoke machine miked by an AKG. I had recently learned “Nowhere Man” by the Beatles, and the bridge section under the solo is the chords from that song in a different order.
House 13 6:42
House 13
The title comes from the label for the main setting I used on the drum machine. Both guitar tracks are through a Carvin amp and are my G&L Legacy.
Lima Bean Pillow 3:02
Lima Bean Pillow
The main track is my Alvarez 12 string. I ran it through a Dean Markley ProMag and into a Digitech Whammy 2. I used the whammy to split the signal, wet and dry, running the wet signal up another octave. The dry signal then went through an Electro-Harmonix Small Stone Phase Shifter before hitting the recorder. This meant I could make one pass, get two tracks perfectly synched, and multiple octaves from both the strings and the effect. There’s another 6 string acoustic track that was miked with an SM57.
Six Pack / Big Faced Woman / Blue Horizon 14:49
Six Pack/Big Faced Woman/Blue Horizon
I had three different songs in the same key and found a keyboard rhythm patch that worked for all three. I then recorded the patch; Ijust let it run for the entire side of a tape. The first two songs were structured and planned for a certain length. The final song is mostly improvised.

"Six Pack" ends with me cranking the low E string slack; a trick I watched Junior Brown perform. Then there's a transitional phase as I work in the new riff. The lyrics to "Big Faced Woman" were written just to put something over the music. My wife's head and face are perfectly normal sized.

“Blue Horizon” features a backwards guitar solo. This was accomplished the old fashion way: I recorded a solo, flipped the tape and rerecorded it onto the track. A little tricky to think dynamically backward, but fun when it fits and is timed out properly.
Suicidal Rabbits 5:38
Suicidal Rabbits
I had just purchased my Vox Pathfinder amp, and I wrote this riff to take advantage of the amp’s tremolo. The effect seems a little too heavy to me now, but at the time I was enamored with it. With the lyrics, besides the silly conceit, I was interested in varying the line lengths while keeping the rhyme the same.
Building on Fire 1:26
Building on Fire
My son’s toy fire engine had three buttons that caused it to play a siren, “building on fire,” and “hook up.” I was more fascinated by the toy than he was and “played” it.
Anon 4:22
Anon
I wrote this music and “Simon Sez” at the same time. I had the chance to fly to LA to visit Art, and we recorded it. I borrowed Art’s Strat and Armand’s Yamaha G100 amp, and Geoff, Art, and I ran through the song once and recorded it. The solo is on that take, and when I got home, I recorded the rhythm guitar track.
Chemical 7:39
Chemical
This song was written around the time my son was diagnosed with Type I Diabetes. I recorded both vocals through my Alesis Midiverb III on a reversed, gated reverb setting. The main guitar part is played with an E-bow on my Les Paul (with an acoustic playing chords underneath), and the solo is the LP again through the Alesis on a 490ms repeated delay.
Water on the Moon 3:43
Water on the Moon
I had been playing variations of this chord for some time when I read a column by Mike Keneally in Guitar Player where he used the very same chord. (Another mysterious case of parallel evolution!) I created a structure, and there you go.
Burnt Cornea Part 2 5:01
Burnt Cornea Part 2
The heart of the track is the weird, dissonant chord in the turnaround. There are many electric and acoustic tracks layered here with many little unique tics and variations to the theme. Each has its own brief moment in the sun.
Skippy 9:50
Skippy
A heavy riff came first, and when I discovered the drum setting on Armand’s drum machine, I knew I needed some angry lyrics. It’s all Les Paul/Marshall. The solo went to surprising territory and stayed there.
Simon Sez / A Bad Day at the Dog Track 7:50
Simon Sez/A Bad Day at the Dog Track
“Simon Sez” was written expressly to do something with a key change and then changing back. I showed it to Art and Geoff, and we just kind of agreed we’d come out of it with something bluesy starting on a B, and that became “Dog Track.” The cheapo mike on the guitar amp failed once during each song – the guitar dropping out is not purposeful – but the track was so otherwise inspired, I decided it could not be out done when I discovered the error.