In the winter/spring of 1991, I was a sophomore in college, and I registered for a class called Electronic Music. The course involved learning about and applying what was then fairly state-of-the-art recording techniques involving computers and other equipment. Not being a particularly technologically-minded person, none of this knowledge stuck with me for very long (which should be evident to anyone who's heard my low-tech music lol). But the course did leave me with three songs that I recorded as class projects. The third one, recorded on April 27, 1991, came to be known as "Song For An Airport".

The keyboard parts are really simple. I've admitted before that I barely consider myself a legitimate musician. I can play well enough to write my own songs, get them recorded, and then never have to play them again. This song, however, wasn't written in advance. It was pretty much made up on the spot at the time of recording, so I kept it simple and repetitive, knowing that if I didn't, I'd only screw it up lol. The saving grace of the song is the guest guitar-playing by one of my classmates, a guy by the name of Walter. He came in, helped me record the song and laid down a sweet solo in one take, and then after the class was over, I never saw or heard from him again.

As for the title of the song, I can't remember exactly how that came up. There's a sound effect of a plane taking off at the end of the song, but I can't remember whether the sound effect inspired the title, or whether the title came first, and that's why I put in the sound effect. Either way, to me, the music sounds like something I can picture playing in a comedy movie, during a frantic scene where someone's running through an airport trying to catch their plane, with every conceivable obstacle getting in their way. One of my classmates had a very different idea, saying that it sounded like the soundtrack for a porn flick.

I decided to take that as a compliment, although I don't know whether or not it was meant as one lol.

I've also uploaded a really cool alternate version/'remix' of this song called "Gnostropria".


"Song For An Airport" (4:44)
Recorded April 27, 1991
Walter J. - guitar