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To hear a remastered version of this recording, which is also available for download, just go to the Love or Freedom compilation, featured on this site. Eventually, I will get all the Lil Tiger songs remastered, but for now just those included on the compilation have been given the treatment.

Another Lil Tiger song that would be very difficult to recreate in a new recording due to the analogue oddities that we employed. A.I. was highly dependant on a piece of vintage kit that Tim Mooney had lying around: the Optigan, kind of an early electronic keyboard that used film discs to play pre-recorded loops and riffs which were then pitched according to which note was pressed. The restrictions inherent in the instrument also reflect on the lyrical musing over whether or not machines would one day be able to have independent existence. I remember I'd had a big argument on this topic with the painter Felix Macnee, who maintained that it was possible. I said it wasn't, that there would always be some fundamental difference, call it spontaneity. I didn't fare that well in the argument and so I wrote this song as my version of what I wished I'd said at the time.

lyrics

Human wants to be a God-man
And make a man-machine
Certain he can someday somehow
Make it do something more than think

I wonder
Can he make it feel?
I wonder
Would it lie and steal?
Could it ever
Re-invent the wheel?
I wonder
Can it ever be real?

Scientist, philosopher
Mechanic of the soul
Tries with pliers and copper wires
To build a living doll

I wonder
Can he make it cry?
I wonder
Would it wonder "why"?
Could it ever
Fall in love and sigh?
I wonder
Can he make it die?

I wonder
Can he make it feel?
I wonder
Could it ever be real?

Could it ever be real?

credits

from The Tragic Tale of Lil Tiger or How the Music Bizniz Destroyed My Best Recording and Derailed My Life (San Francisco 1999​-​2001), released December 31, 2000
Tim Mooney - drums, Optigan keyboards
Michael Belfer - guitars, noises
Joe Goldring - bass, engineering at Pigshead Studio,San Francisco
Diana Trimble - vocals
Produced by Craig Silvey and Lil Tiger at Toast Studios, San Francisco
1999

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Diana Rosalind New Orleans, Louisiana

After being discovered by Bobby McFerrin as a young vocal improviser in San Francisco, I spent some years writing and performing with ensembles that remain important in the history of Bay Area arts, then did time tangling with the music biz in LA & NYC, followed by a decade in Europe, recording all the while, before coming "home" to NOLA. This is a partial musical record of that journey. ... more

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