These two tunes, “Whistle Song” and “Hall of Godcar,” on Sigmund Snopek III’s double-disc rock opera “Trinity Seasseizesees,” represent my one and only professional recording gig as a, um, whistler. When I did this gig with Snopek in his cluttered East Side apartment recording studio in 1999, I learned that when you record the sound of your whistle you have to point your lips away from the microphone so the sound isn’t all wind noise.
Snopek, who played keyboards with the Violent Femmes for a minute and is an excellent flute and other wind instrument player, deserves credit for completing a project of the scale and magnitude of this rock opera, which he started way back in 1973, when I was one year old. It’s definitely the antithesis to today’s track-oriented iPod music mentality; at 120 minutes, it’s a commitment to sit down and listen to, but worth it.
You can purchase the full double album on iTunes, and can find plenty of info about it with a simple web search. Here’s the link to an Amazon.com page about him: http://www.amazon.com/Sigmund-Snopek-III/e/B000AQ3AO2.
I think his website is now defunct.
Writing in the Flat Keys: Thacher Schmid's Portfolio 