Author: Berkeley Cat Records

We’re from Berkeley. We are cats. We make records.

Come On, Won’t You Dance With Me by Eric Din

This song started as a blurt. I had this idea for a rock n’ roll rave-up one night and recorded it as a voice memo as it came to me. Something possessed me to share that, and soon after, I decided to make a full-on band recording of it. All of the other recordings I’ve made in the last year and a half have been either me alone, or me collaborating with cats remotely. Once we were all vaccinated, and it seemed reasonable to do a live session, I was hungry to play in real-time with a band again. So I assembled a “band-for-a-day” of some of my favorite cats for a one-song session. I sent them my blurt-demo and we set a date at East Bay Recorders with my producer/engineer hero Michael Rosen. We practiced it, recorded it, took a little snapshot and bye-bye. I took that home, finished the lyrics, and came back a week later to caterwaul. And caterwaul I did! I am very pleased with the result, and so grateful to these cats for bringing this baby home for me. I wanted a fun, loud, joyous rave-up to close my album, and here it is. The verses express my love for playing live music, in studio or on stage, and my love for dancing to a live band in a club or concert venue – all things we haven’t been able to do much of lately. Funny detail – I organized this production as sort of a birthday present to myself. I can’t have an in-person party this year, but I can share this song as a kind of virtual party, and, everyone is invited! I hope you enjoy. Dancing shoes recommended! And thank you.

Eric Din – Acoustic guitar and vocals
Sean Griffin – Electric guitar
Damon Wood – Electric guitar
Dave Ellis – Tenor sax
Kevin T White – Bass
JT John – Drums

Recorded and mixed by Michael Rosen at East Bay Recorders
Produced by Eric Din for Berkeley Cat Records
Cover design by Paul Jackson
Berkeley Cat Records logo by Shannon Wheeler

————–

Come on, won’t you dance with me
Come on, won’t you dance with me
Come on, won’t you dance with me
Come on, won’t you dance with me
Come on, oh won’t you dance with me

It’s been so heavy and we made it thru some crazy,
Gonna have a little caterwaul and party,
I like that feeling when they open up the doors,
The band is gettin’ ready and we step on the floor,
I like the way they crash it down on the one together,
And when ya raise your arms even better,

Come on, won’t you dance with me..

Promenade

It’s been so lonely in this social isolation,
Been so crazy what be happenin’ in the world,
So today I’m pressing record with some friends,
On these instruments they made in the before time,
Do it once, ain’t no lookin’ back,
Don’t fix it, it’s broken, we like it like that,

Come on, won’t you dance with me..

It’s been so heavy and we’re livin’ thru some crazy,
Gonna have a little caterwaul and party,
I like that feeling’ when we’re bouncing off the floor
The house is getting sweaty and we call out for more,
And when the last big chord echoes through the hall,
It’s thank you for coming, and we love you all,
Good night

Come on, won’t you dance with me..
Come on, baby won’t you dance with me

© 2021 Eric Roy Dinwiddie
King Roy Music, BMI

Released August 1, 2021

Songs From The Garden

Origins of This Album:

Beginnings

When I first held my newborn son in my arms, I had the sort of palpable image-experience that causes people to join sects of believers-in-weird-things.

I was seeing, thinking, occupying an image of the pulse of his birth pushing up a gigantic plume of water representing new life. This pulse, in the center of the vast ocean of life, pushed all adjacent water toward the shores where the last waves broke and sunk into the sand, returning the water to the cyclical life-and- death process. Indescribable sounds accompanied the image. It was daytime and I was fully awake. I felt pushed a little closer to shore.

I made sure that my new playmate-in-sound got to hear everything I heard and liked. His sister heard everything while in the womb and was happy to tail along as his mother and I delighted in David’s blossoming into a fine musician.

Then, one day, Zoe started to sing. Now, music permeates Ellis family culture. I’m happy to include something from everyone on this album.

The album itself is a happenstance. When I had my granddaughter, Bella, put the song “Eliza” up on YouTube, David added the note “From the album Songs From My Garden, coming Fall 2019.” I thought, “there’s an idea.” Why not? It’s Summer of 2021, but here’s the album.

-Russ Ellis

Mankind (the Remix)!

Stop the presses. Press the stoppers. Damn the torpedoes and speed the ducks, it’s Comeback Pete’s epic Mankind single, remixed by Eric Din! That’s right kittins, with the formidable foot of Larry Lynch on a live kick drum, and Mr. Din himself on a real live Fender bass! Pete’s timeless message remains, more urgent than ever, we must save the earth my friends or there ain’t anything else to be saving. Lyrics in the vid. Music by John Philip Sousa, lyrics by Pete, vocals by a choir of earthlings and a duck. Berkeley Cat Records is proud to present, Mankind, the Remix!  Free to play and share at will.

In Pete’s own words:

“I didn’t plan to write a patriotic song, but both of the other songs that I recorded were in the “P’ as a first letter” genre (porn and psilent) so stretched further by the bicentennial in 1976.  I was so sure I was stating the obvious, I never performed this song  publicly, and now it’s 45 years later, I question. Was that a mistake? Now I realize we live in the Dark Ages. Eric has currently remixed this song about our endangered planet for the better and released it on Berkeley Cat Records.”

– Comeback Pete, 2021

 

Pod Cats Run Amok

We’ve submitted the RSS feed for Berkeley Cat Records PodCats to Apple for world-wide kittypod foistribution. We’ve also upgraded our Simplecast account so now I can embed the show here and not just individual episodes. Shocking progress. We like to embed because cats like beds and are often embedded in guitar cases, boxes and other cozy spaces which were obviously created for us to embed in.  Here’s a pic of The Great Cat Burley, co-founder of Berkeley Cat Records, proving the Theory Of Spontaneous Open Guitar Case Cat Generation (TOSOGCCG) for which we await our Nobel.

Now let’s try the embedpodding..

W00t! It works! We are amazed. Our PodCats is the worlds greatest PodCats in that it is the only one.

Simplecats (oops) Simplecast! makes distribution very easy (simple, if you will) and we at BCR World Corporate Headquarters (my bedroom) have decided to try many, purrhaps even all of them. Click the play button above and give ‘er a whirl!   It’ll play the most recent episode and run back thru time like sci-fi magic.  So fancy.

Berkeley Cats Go Beserkley

Episode 5! Epoch-shaking, house-quaking, baby-making rock and roll baking Episode FIVE!! Stop all the presses and start them again. Berkeley Cat Records PodCATS visits Beserkley Records after a fashion, satisfies an insatiable rock n’ roll hunger, and goes FISH3N, all in twenty minutes. Incredible.

We play:
REMEMBER by FAVES
HUNGRY ALL THE TIME by Damon and the Din
MANKIND (the Remix) by Comeback Pete
and GONE FISH3N by Eric Din

We mention:
Freedom by the Four Tops (what?!) Why yes, Petunia, brand new Four Tops no I am not kidding.
!!

Enjoy. Share. We love you. Bye.

Hungry All The Time by Damon and the Din

Berkeley Cat Records is tickled pink to announce a new artist and single! Hungry All The Time by Damon and the Din is up on Bandcamp and we have embeddededed it here. Press play, have a listen, do. Damon Wood and Eric Din have collaborated once before in these pages, with I’m So Terribly Stoned. This time the boys went large and recruited the towering talents of Thomas White, Steve Lew, Steven Bernstein, Jacob Aginsky and John Mader, for an epic rock n’ roll original penned by Wood himself. We’ll supply the streaming gizmos soon enough and for now you may acquire an mp3 or if you prefer, a full-res high-fidelity FLAC or WAV file. A nerdly note about that – this recording was made in stunning 96kHz, 24-bit resolution, and yes Arabella, we uploaded a high-res master and yes we encourage purchasing it for a buck and saving it to your magical device-thingys. But more simply, you can listen by just clicking Play below. The Future has its merits. We love you. Bye.

GONE FISH3N

Another surprise single! What?! So many surprises. We’ve gone fishen.

BACK IN THE DAYS OF ANSWERING THE PHONE
(Back in the days of answering the phone)
THERE WERE THINGS THAT PEOPLE DID AND STUFF
(There were things that people did and stuff)
NOW WHEN IT RINGS I CHUCK IT IN MY BAG
I DO NOT NEED WHATEVER THEY MIGHT HAVE
WHO CAN IT BE, I DO NOT GIVE A DAMN
LET’S CRUSH OUR SIM CARDS AND GO ON THE LAM

I’LL LEAVE A SIGN IN CRAYON, ON THE CLUBHOUSE DOOR

Bye bye
GONE FISHEN
Ciao!
GONE FISHEN
Tschuess denn
GONE FISHEN
Fare thee well
GONE FISHEN

I QUIT THE OLD APARTMENT AND I QUIT MY WORRYIN’
I QUIT ALL OF MY QUITTIN’ AND I QUIT IT ALL AGAIN
I QUIT THE QUITTIN’ HELP GROUP THAT I NEVER REALLY JOINED
I QUIT AND SPLIT AND DID IT WITH THE KIT THAT WE PURLOINED

SOME FAKE FRIENDS WHO WERE NOT NICE TO ME
I QUIT THEM, FOR I AM FOND OF ME
DON’T MISS THEM, IT IS NO MYSTERY
GONE FISHEN, GONE FISHEN, GONE FISHEN

BACK IN THE DAYS OF ANSWERING THE PHONE
IT USED TO WORRY ME, IT USED TO VEX ME,
EXHASPERATED, WRESTLING FOR CONTROL
I DON’T MISS IT, GONE FISHEN
NOW WHEN IT RATTLES I HEAVE IT INTO A VOLCANO
I DO NOT HEED WHATEVER THEY MIGHT EXPLAINO
REPORTED IN AS MISLEADING OR SCAM
DELETE THE SPAMBOTS AND THE PHONY JAMS

WE’LL LEAVE A NOTE IN LEMON JUICE ON THE CLUBHOUSE DOOR

Bye Bye
GONE FISHEN
Hasta Luego
GONE FISHEN
Ciao Bella
GONE FISHEN
Sayonara
GONE FISHEN

Eric Din – Guitar, Bass, and Vocals

© 2021 Eric Roy Dinwiddie
King Roy Music, BMI

Artwork by Shannon Wheeler