For the first time, herein a sampling of music from all of my 'periods', from the embarassing beginnings to the yet more embarassing present, with a nougat middle. If I feel there's any point, I'll rotate the songs that are on here, so keep an eye out, as painful as that sounds. If you'd like better quality files of any of these songs, do let me know.

Honest Ben Jonson and His Band of Some Renown (1998-99):
The story of Honest Ben Jonson has been better told elsewhere; suffice to say it was a time of innocence and drumming. These three songs come from our sole recorded output, "Grand Fortune." The smash hit "Mr. Five Hole" was written collaboratively by three of the members and a rhyming dictionary, with contributions from the pigeons that mated every afternoon on the air conditioner outside my bedroom window.
Mr. Five Hole (Does it Again)

Purple Girl (1999-2001):
Like a lot of my music projects, this was only a real band for a short period of a few weeks when I convinced some guys to play in my dorm's "Quadrapalooza" at the end of freshman year; soon after they all bolted. But as a period, Purple Girl produced many of the songs I'm most proud of, and I must attribute that to the quality of my muse. I also played one of my most successful shows ever at the Halfass, and recorded a 6-song CD in two nights in the dorm's practise rooms.
All You Wanted

The Zero Effect (2001-2003):
This was my first real foray away from standard modern rock songs, influenced by two years at college that brought many wonderful indie bands to my ears. The endeavor bearing this name later transmuted to include Amanda and Jonah, newer songs written by all of us, and briefly a drummer named Matt. We played two shows, which is about the average for a band I'm in, and recorded some songs in the summer of 2002. The live recording of "Best Dressed Couple" comes from the open mic night where I met Amanda, and listening to it is probably enhanced by this explanation: I was playing my acoustic guitar which was on my neck, my electric guitar was lying on the stage, and it was plugged through a distortion and a delay pedal which were also hanging around my neck. In the second part of the song I engaged the two pedals and began sliding the headstock of my acoustic guitar along the neck of the electric, kicking it, and otherwise abusing it, while still playing the acoustic and twiddling the control knobs on the pedals maniacally. This performance of the song, two days after I wrote it, has not since been exceeded.
Best Dressed Couple (live)
Working in Construction circa the mid-1990s

The Jay & Amanda Band (Summer 2002):
This project was an outgrowth of The Zero Effect after Jonah left for Graduate School and I became inspired again. The 8-song CD I made is currently one of the rarer objects in the world, having lost my enthusiasm since the Purple Girl days for trifles like 'packaging' or 'copies.' An untimely hard drive crash destroyed the files containing the individual track recordings of these songs, so the mixes are all that exist now. "Starcase Militaire" is built around a recording of me descending the stairs of my Ann Arbor apartment building, 2 at a time as always, with the resultant booms.
Starcase Militaire
We Take Place

Hostile Harry (October 5th, 2002):
[little is known about Hostile Harry]

Music Composition Class (2003):
In my last semester of college I finally got to take a class I had been trying to take for 4 years, called Creative Musicianship. It was taught by a great professor who loved experimental music and exposed us to a lot of good stuff. We had to do a lot of songs for the class, which was good for me, because I didn't have as much time to agonize over each one. We only had very loose requirements, such as having multiple time signatures or a harmony. I was constantly going back and forth between pop and experimentalism, and between having a reason for every note (sometimes very obscure and mathematical) and just doing whatever. "As Fault" is one of the poppier ones, with some nice Pavement melodies in the chorus.
The final project was a live performance, a big concert with one song by each student, and for mine I wrote a song called "Control" and got as many people as I could to play on it. The recording alone really doesn't capture the experience, so I've written up a photo-enhanced story.
As Fault

In May 2003 I joined the band A+ Attitude and went on a little tour with them. The songs at the aforelinked site were not composed by me, but amazingly they're still pretty good.

Spring 2004

I've done some new songs recently, and this time I am determined to make it into a real band according the definitions of all involved. I'm not going to name the project until there are other members and we decide on a name together--doing otherwise can only end in tears. In the meantime the songs can be heard here.