All of these songs were recorded between January 2003 and August, 2003. There are a couple of songs that I'm singing on - I haven't done that for a while! (Well, Angels Cry and Pink Meat on Hot Shot .45 had my voice, but it wasn't really singing!). Check out the lyrics to my songs on the song information pages.
This collection of songs is a follow up to Hot Shot .45. The last song I did for Hot Shot was "Yangster", which was a bit more up tempo and had a harder rock and roll flavor than the other songs on Hot Shot .45. I'd been practicing more, with the goal of increasing my playing speed and accuracy - influenced by Joe Satriani (I'm not worthy). I wanted to do some more songs along the same line as Yangster, and this CD is the result. Hope you like it!
During the recording of these songs, in January 2003, I suffered an injury to my right shoulder. The doctor told me I needed surgery to clean up some torn tissue in the socket, and that I also had raging bursitis. The bum shoulder really affected my playing. It basically forced me to reduce the amount I played, as well as slowed down my playing speed - which was / is contrary to the whole point of my playing! At the time of this writing (June 2003), I still haven't had the surgery and my playing is still affected.
One final note - as you can tell from the song titles, I got on this kick of using my initials (RAM) in some of my song titles. I initially thought I'd try to do that in every song, but didn't make it. This CD was initially titled "S.I.G.P.", for "Self Indulgent Guitar Player", and the "RAM" songs just seemed to fit that theme. But then I thought up the "Gutwrench" title, and switched to it instead.