In the Key of K

Note: This is a massive post for an old band from the 90s. I wanted to put everything in one place for those interested. You can listen to our shitty demo, stroll down memory lane, read the lyrics, or learn tab/chords to some of the songs. This is more for the people who were there 30 years ago (as of 2026). If you weren’t there you probably won’t care but it can be summarized as Grunge inspired music by angsty teens. Please enjoy.

Hard to believe it’s been 30 years since the band broke up! I finished high school in May of 1995 in Missouri and moved to northern Texas. I enrolled in a community college to study electronics and joined my first real band with my cousin. We were called Loaded Dice and my cousin wrote lyrics and sang, I played drums–we had several guitarists at various times and maybe one bass player (who was also a guitar player). We never played any gigs but had lots of fun practicing, hammering out original songs, and rehearsing cover tunes. I still admire my cousin’s songwriting and he is still working at it today. Life moved on and by chirstmas time of ’95 I had dropped out of college and was back in Missouri.

I was jamming with several people that were a few years older than me, really good players but most were, at the time, the type of people who would get the itch to play really badly one night and then be uninterested in playing for a month or more. Playing with them wasn’t panning out or happening as often as I needed, so I was open to finding something new. As a side note, these are wonderful people who still play today. I have played music with them several other times through the years until the mid aughts but haven’t connected with them recently.

Anyway, looking for more stable music partners,–I don’t remember how we got in touch but–I met up with some people I went to school with. Both were a year or two younger than me and still in school but we jammed a few times and it all came together. We started looking for a band name.

We landed on Nothing Special–we often wrote it like this: Nøthing Special. At this time, I was newly playing guitar so I was writing small riffs and lyrics but also drumming furiously. The other two, on guitar and vocals/guitar, also wrote music and lyrics for the band. We had a few temporary bass players but no one ever stuck for very long. At the very end of the band the guitarist started doing some singing too.

Where we lived there was nowhere for underage kids to play live music so we organized a barbecue (maybe some kids could play at church or something but that was definitely not our scene). We made flyers and handed them out. We advertised free BBQ and played at our practice space out in the country, on a very sparsely populated dirt road. We were so awesome that the police even came to our first show! But they weren’t there for the barbecue or the music. ☹️Fortunately, we only had about a half hour of music so I think we had played it all by the time the cops showed up. Our guitar player’s aunt called the house and left a voice message that police were coming and we used it as an intro for our demo tape, (listen below if you dare!).

We had a few other gigs or barbecues in small town Missouri. We faced the continuing problem of only a half hour or so of material so we would just play it all again. One time there was a fist fight while we played at some party. I didn’t know it at the time but it is a pretty common occurrence at shows, parties, and bars–anywhere where alcohol is involved. Good times.

During this time, I was facing violence from my step-dad and moved out of the house (more alcohol related violence!). He was an okay guy until he started drinking and then he became a total asshole. I moved into a shithole apartment for a few months.

By the time spring of 96 rolled around the guitarist and I decided to move to California, where he was originally from. Our singer wanted to finish high school first so he was going to meet up with us in a few months (and he did).

We drove for 36 hours until we arrived at San Martin, CA near Morgan Hill, about a half hour or so from San Jose and lived in a barn beside a trailer court for a few months. Eventually we rented a little one bedroom cottage on a chicken egg farm/walnut grove. A whole lot of crazy destructive antics and rock star posing ensued. We spent all our time wrecking stuff and getting wrecked. Until one day that fall I came home from my day job at a record/video rental store and both of them had packed up and moved back to Missouri. They left me note, I think. Eventually I went back to Missouri too but that was the end of Nothing Special.

I was in Missouri for maybe another six months before I moved to Maryland to stay with my grandparents for a while. While there, I started my own thing called Lewd Blue for a few years and then, as the years trickled by, moved back to Missouri and became a classical guitarist, music scholar, and composer. Listen here for Lewd Blue music (recently re-released is In the Key of K) from 1997 and 1998. Listen here for my 2009 classical guitar album– my latest guitar album, Stone Sonatas, will be released on November 6th 2026. Tons more old rock music coming soon as I edit and remix stuff –and, of course, lots of brand new rock and solo guitar music too. Since my kids are getting older, I’m working more consistently and diligently than I have in years.

Demo information:

Side one and side two of the cassette were the same. I recorded the original tape into a digital space and then ran it through Moises, an AI music software, trying to separate the parts into different tracks to mix and get rid of noise. It separated the tracks poorly due to the really terrible quality of the audio. So that was no help. Instead, I pulled the whole thing into my DAW and edited and mastered it to try to remove some of the noise and boost the volume. To preserve the cassette tape experience, I have decided not to chop it up into individual songs. You have to listen to it like it’s 1996. 😱

Intro by Aunt Joy
1. Belligerence
2. Little Town
3. Blood and Guts
4. The World Today
5. Burnt Heroin Toast
6. Bizarre Poetry
7. Black Hearted Aliens
8. The Darkest Void
Hidden track: Dead Things Make Me Happy

Sidenote: in the late 90s I used a four-track to re-record Belligerence, The World Today, Black Hearted Aliens, Blood and Guts, and Shit (mentioned below with other songs). I played all the parts. At the time, I had planned to record all the NS songs I could remember how to play but never got around to finishing the project. If there is interest I can try to clean up the old four-track recordings and re-master them (I doubt there is interest). As briefly mentioned above, If you want to hear other stuff I was writing around that time, I recently re-released some of my music from the late 90s, post Nothing Special: Volume 1, 1997 and Out of Time Out of Tune (from 1998). There will be another album from this era (1999-2000) but it requires cobbling together lots of audio notes and recording more than half of it from scratch. Also, most of the 1999-2000 music is very different from Nothing Special and my first two albums. 🤷‍♀️

Moving on, below are lyrics, chords/tabs, and some notes about each song. I definitely have some of the lyrics wrong.
//
Belligerence
I don’t care about the government
And I don’t want to intense it.
You’re far away but close enough.
Maybe you’re not so tough

Shit upon the people, Shit upon the fools.
Knock up the ones who look like the girls.
Can’t stand the pressure, can’t help your problems.
Get away you people, dream away you fools.

Couldn’t care less about your knife.
Or if you use it to take your life.
Dreary thoughts of afternoon shade.
Go to sleep and hope to die soon.

Shit upon the people, Shit upon the fools.
Knock up the ones who look like the girls.
Can’t stand the pressure, can’t help your problems.
Get away you people, dream away you fools.

Run the marathon, swallow the blade.
I think I can call you caged.
No need to kick me out the door.
Can’t kick a dead man across the floor.

Shit upon the people, Shit upon the fools.
Knock up the ones who look like the girls.
Can’t stand the pressure, can’t help your problems.
Get away you people, dream away you fools.
//

This song was wholly written by our guitar player.
Chorus: |Em C5 G5 A5|
Verse: |Em***|

//
Little Town
Gotta, gotta get out of this little town.
Where the KKK do the killing on the play ground.
And if your opinion isn’t theirs they’ll knock you down.
If you’re a little different you’re just a freak or a clown.

Just put all their bones into the ground
And no one cares enough to make a sound.
Freaks die alone with one foot in the ground.
In this little town.

Gotta, gotta get out of this little town.
Where the jocks and the cowboys run around.
Just chew your Skoal and don’t say no.
They ask you for a fuck
And everyone drives a big flatbed, pickup truck.

Just put all their bones into the ground
And no one cares enough to make a sound.
Freaks die alone with one foot in the ground.
In this little town.

Tell me would it be wrong to try
To put a bullet between their eyes?
We’ll make a commune of our little town.
And freaks will come from all around.
Jocks and the cowboys will not be found.
We’ll love our little town.
Love our little town.
//

Our singer wrote this one. I don’t know the exact words to the chorus or the spoken word at the end. Later iterations of this song had an intense double time punk rock feel at the end that really enhanced the mood of the song and people moshed to it. The words for that section were either ‘Love our little town’ or ‘Fuck our little town’–maybe either or both depending on the mood. The words speak for themselves–fuck you small town racist assholes.
Verse: |E5***|C5***|G5***|B5***|
Chorus: |E5***|G5***|A5***|C***|

//
Blood and Guts
Blood and guts, blood and guts, all I want are blood and guts.

I’m taking a knife unto you
Spill the blood as the guts spew
A great big pot of juicy stew
I’m drinking the blood of the life that I slew
A human life means nothing now.
I am to you as you are to cows.
Put you in the freezer and take a bow
But there’s nothing as good as raw flesh right now.

Blood and guts, blood and guts, all I want are blood and guts.
Blood and guts, blood and guts, drink the blood and eat the guts.

Everyone says that my head is fucked
Cause all I think about are blood and guts.
Ingredients: man, child, and sluts
It tastes so good it’ll drive you nuts.
Well I’d like to stay and talk to my food
But I have to tend to my boiling stew.
So eat up my friend, become a fat dude.
I’ve got a special dish planned just for you.

Blood and guts, blood and guts, all I want are blood and guts.
Blood and guts, blood and guts, drink the blood and eat the guts.
Where’s the beef?
//

This song was also known as “An Evening With Jeoffrey.” I wrote the lyrics and about half of the music for this song. It was written around the time Jeoffrey Dahmer was first in the news. Please excuse the sexism, I was an 18 or 19 year old and didn’t know any better. I don’t think I was ‘slut’ shaming so much as just finding an offensive way of including all people and find the quick lazy rhyme–it was pretty common among the people I grew up with to demean women with that type language and negative connotation–I would never write anything like that today and I apologize if I ever hurt anyone with language like that. I am doing better and improving every day.

I was not vegan or vegetarian at the time I wrote this but I’ve always leaned that way (I’ve been vegetarian/vegan for 19 years at the time of writing this blog post–2026). Part of the message of the song is that it is no different whether you eat humans or cows or any other animal. We are all the same animals. It’s gross to eat flesh and tiddy juices. 🤮

Verse:
|E5 F5 E5 F5|E5 F5 A5*|
|E5 F5 E5 F5|E5 F5 A5 E5|
Chorus riff:
————————————-
————————————-
————————————-
———————–2-1———–
————1-1-2-2———-2-2-2-2–
-1-1-2-2——————————–
Followed by chords:
|C5***|C5*G5|

//
The World Today
People say there’s nothing left.
Everybody’s running out of breath.
And they say there’s only death.
Coffins everywhere down in the depths.
Green house effects with religious sects.
Come on over we can place our bets.

The world’s gone mad no reason just has.
It’s a shame. It’s a shame.
I feel quite sad.
It’s a shame. It’s a shame.
Hot cocoa, more fizz.
It’s a shame. It’s a shame.
And you feel just like a college whiz.

People say that thoughts are crazy.
Everyone’s thinkin nothing.
And they say that standards losing
??????
Green house effects with religious sects.
Come on over we can place our bets.

The world’s gone mad no reason just has.
It’s a shame. It’s a shame.
I feel quite sad.
It’s a shame. It’s a shame.
Hot cocoa, more fizz.
It’s a shame. It’s a shame.
And you feel just like a college whiz.
//

Our guitar player wrote all of this one. I did the drums, as typical for me at this time, I tried to make them unnecessarily complicated until I started learning to write for the song not for me. The final version had less busy drums. There are some lyrics that I don’t know.

Verse: D5***|A5***|B5***|G5***|
Chorus: C5***|G5***|F G F G|

//
Burnt Heroin Toast

Burnt Heroin Toast take one

Lunch lady over there
Looked at me like I was qu33r
When I came in it was noon
That bitch asked ‘what’s wrong with you?’
I said I was sick, she gave no reply.
Then she placed some toast, right in front of my eyes.
Burnt heroin toast, makes me feel very good.
Burnt heroin toast, I always knew that it would
//

This song was written at the first practice we had with a bass player (probably also the last or next to last–they never stuck around very long!). We went to someone’s house (maybe the bass player? I don’t remember). The bass player was a cool guy and he had access to a PA system that we used way longer than he played with us. This was the first song written as a group including several people not in the band, if I remember correctly. It was a bunch of silly teenagers who had no idea what heroin was, trying to sound edgy and funny. Someone also had some irrational dislike of the lunch lady at school. I was mostly back seat in the writing of this one except for the drums–again, I had originally made them REALLY unnecessarily complicated but it eventually evened out. Juvenile writing because that’s what it is.
Verse: E5***|E5***|E5***|C5***–Not sure about the rest

//
Bizarre Poetry
During the same rehearsal for Toast, someone suggested (maybe me, maybe not) that we do a writing exercise where each person wrote one line of a poem. There were several other people there besides the four of us in the band, I think everyone contributed. The lines were cut up and drawn from a hat or bowl or something and then read while we jammed a droning thing. I might be misremembering some of the details. 🤷‍♀️This was performed at that rehearsal and never again. It’s more atmospheric than anything else. It was only on the demo tape because it was an okay recording and we didn’t have enough songs to fill the tape at the time. 🤣 No lyrics or chords here. I can’t decipher enough of it. I do remember that the bass part was twisting the tuning key up and down while striking the low string the entire time.

//
Black Hearted Aliens
Black hearted aliens all around.
Black hearted aliens underground.
Cut your hair when you’re not aware.
Say what you want about them, they don’t care.
Abductees setting social norms
Wanting me to conform
If you see one on the street,
Grab a bat and start to beat.
Black hearted aliens implantations
Black hearted aliens in my head
Black hearted aliens ejaculations
Black hearted aliens in my bed.

Black hearted aliens.

Black hearted aliens running scared
Black hearted aliens full of dread
We have bats, knives, and guns
All the aliens are on the run.
Beat them beat them in the head
Just don’t stop until their dead.
Black hearted aliens entrails thrown
Black hearted aliens with no head
Black hearted aliens go back home.
Black hearted aliens or you’ll be dead.

Black hearted aliens.

//
Our singer wrote all of this one. I think it’s one of our best. It was fun to play and embodied the spirit of the band. It is one of the only songs where we all three really gelled and enjoyed our parts. None of us ever complained about playing it, ever. I remember it being played in E not Eb but it is Eb on the demo tape (transcribed below in E). Maybe our guitar guy was tuned down a half step or the tape was lagging. He is a huge Nirvana fan so it’s probably the former.

Verse: |E5***|A5 B5|
Pre-chorus: D5***|A5***|
Chorus: C5***|G5***|

//
The Darkest Void
Life. Shall be my death.
Death. Shall start my life.
Hate. Can bring us bliss.
Love. Cannot exist.

The darkest void can’t penetrate
All the things the good call great.
Chasing after selfish desire
Our brains explode, our time expires.

Light. Blinds my mind.
Darkness. Makes me high.
God. Don’t look my way.
I be burning, the rest of my days.

The dimmest light can’t make you see
All of life’s realities.
Live your life a hedonist.
Have we not always done this?

The darkest void.

//
I wrote the lyrics for this song and some of the music. The rest was, I think, our guitar player. This song is firmly against established religion, shaming pleasure, and social christian norms. Complete nihilism. Angsty youth.
Verse riff:
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
-0-0-7-0-0-4–
Second riff: It’s an E5 chord with doodles I can’t remember.
Third section: I don’t remember–maybe a chromatic thing?

//
Dead Things Make Me Happy
Dead things make me happy.
Dead things aren’t alive.
Dead things never talk back
So lets cause genocide.

Dead things make me happy.
Dead things make me smile.
Come on over and sit by me
And we’ll die for a while.

Dead Things. Dead Things.

Dead things make me joyous.
Dead things make me glad.
Let’s go make some dead things
Make everyone else sad.

Dead things make me happy.
You know that’s what I said.
The only way to achieve world peace
Is to make everything dead.

Dead Things. Dead Things.

I love all the dead things,
You should love them too.
Cause if you don’t like dead things,
You’ll be dead real soon.

Dead Things. Dead Things.

//
I wrote the lyrics and the guitar player wrote the music. I sang (if you can call it that) two songs with Nothing Special: Dead Things Make Me Happy and Hungry Children. When I sang, our singer played drums. The purpose of this song was to challenge social norms. Some of it is saying outrageous things with grains of truth. That mixed with a whole lot of angsty youth. The en vogue thing to do in the mid to late 90s was to have a secret track on your cassette or CD. There is around 30 seconds of silence on the demo until this song starts playing. It was our “hidden track.”

The way our guitar player played this was by strumming open stings in between each chord change–really that applies to almost all of the songs above (also, he loves to write about sleep–it’s one of his favorite things and shows up in most of his lyrics 😂). Another fun note, our guitar player, being a fellow left hander like me, played guitar backwards and upside down, unlike me. He just took a right handed guitar and flipped it around. I play like any right handed person–I’ve always believed you need to treat both hands equally. Left handed guitars are a scam. There. I said it.
Verse: |G*D*|G*D*|G*D*|Bb*A*|
Chorus: |G*D*|C*D*|

Other Nothing Special songs (in no particular order):

Bitches and Beer: not a real song. ‘Written’ towards the end of the band. When we were in CA, some of the kids hanging around asked us “why don’t you have any songs about bitches? Or beer?” So that became the jam. A boom-tap punk song where the only words were “Bitches and Beer.” Every one sang along! We probably only played it a few times.

Please Don’t Strangle Me With Shoelaces: also just called Shoelaces, I always really liked this one and I’m sad that it wasn’t on the demo. I wrote a bunch of absurd lyrics and it became this song. I think the guitarist wrote the music.

Cosmic Ray Deflector Song: I only have a vague memory of this song. I remember a little of the drumming but nothing else. I think this is one of the guitarist’s songs. I only really remember it because it was printed on an old set list.

Haze: our singer wrote this one. He didn’t put as much out there as the guitar player and I did but everything he put out was always great. I’m sad this wasn’t on the demo.

Drone: No memory of this one. If it wasn’t on an old set list I never would have known about it. I later found a lyric printout. Probably written by the guitar player.

Fading: I’m not sure who wrote this. I honestly didn’t even remember it until I went through the old papers and saw a set list and lyric sheet. It looks like something I would have written but it was the guitarist’s hand writing. Like most of these songs, it was is angsty and rebellious. I’m not including it here because it is very cringy and glamorizes suicide.

Head: I don’t remember this song at all. It’s on a set list and I have the lyric sheet–it looks like the guitar player’s handwriting.

I Helped Feed Hungry Children: what happens when there is excessive underage drinking and you already sang the one song you sing with the band but the singer doesn’t want to stop drumming? You improvise a new song. I sang two songs with Nothing Special, Dead Things and this one. This was probably the last song we wrote together. When we were in CA, we somehow acquired a bunch of stickers from some charity organization–the stickers said “I helped feed hungry children!” In the flashing of the strobe light during a late night of jamming and binge drinking, I saw the sticker and improvised words and started screaming, the guitar player produced a heavy, tasty riff, and the singer started pounding a beat on the drums. The singing had a death metal vibe with harsh screaming vocals and and then a spoken word section. We played it bunch of times in CA in our cottage in the walnut grove on the chicken farm. 90% of the lyrics were just “I helped feed hungry, children.”

Kingdom of His Own: guitar player song. I don’t remember it despite having the lyric sheets.

The Need to Go: One of my songs. I’m only guessing because the lyric sheet was in my handwriting. I don’t really remember this one but it appears to be about suicide. Too cringy to include here. Note: I don’t think any of us were suicidal–to us (me specifically), it was more of a taboo thing that you weren’t really supposed to think about or talk about.

Neutral: I don’t know for sure, but I think this was an instrumental jam that the guitarist and I use to do. It appears on at least two old set lists. It fits the timeline to be the instrumental piece I’m thinking of but I don’t know for sure. If it is, it was a cool fun jam with lots of artificial harmonics on the guitar and some fun boom-tap double bass drumming.

Shit: I wrote most of the music for this one and our guitar player wrote most of the words. The tone of the song is set with the opening line: “Shit…shit…shit….SHIT!…And the truth shall never be told, the value of shit be the value of gold.”

Withered: I wrote this song but we all hated playing it. We would struggle through practicing it again and again until one day at rehearsal the singer was like, “this song sucks dude. I fucking hate it.” It was ‘eureka’ moment that not all ideas are good and not all the songs you write need to go in the set list. We never played it again. 🤣