Soulful singer songwriter Derek Pauls is catchy, quirky and eclectic, a lyrical lyricist as likely to wax rhapsodic about short skirts as to yearn mellifluously for divinity. A nimble composer, Pauls uses oblong chords and double entendres to stamp his distinct musical sensibility atop a wild range of styles, from jazzy pop to funky rock to psychedelic three chord soul.
My Existential Resume
Sisyphean Efforts
To leave no more for the reaper than the desiccated corpse of one who lived each day like the last.
Futile Exercises
Institution: College of Self-Righteous Disgust,
School of Hard Knocks
Location: United States of America
Degree: Masters in Cynicism
Date of enrollment: September 1968
Date of completion: Election Day 1994
Institution: Ivy Hype University,
School of Medicine
Location: Inner City, Eastern Seaboard
Degree: Doctor of Medicine
Date of enrollment: August 1994
Date of completion: Ongoing
Institution: The Local Music Scene,
Rocky Mountain Chapter
Location: Cowtown, CO
Degree: Honorary B.S. in Persistence
Date of enrollment: Autumn 1985
Date of completion: The Second Coming
Wage Slavery
Taskmaster: College of Urban Decay
Location: scene of '68 riots
Work detail: Writing instructor
Duties: To edify working class students trained by Philly's shitty inner schools to be
illiterate sheep, while reminding myself of the ethical obligation to refrain from flirting
with frosh whose grades I held in my palm.
Duration of toil: One school year, hard labor
Taskmaster: Bad Band Names, Inc.
Location: the street where you live
Work detail: Band leader
Duties: To articulate the intuitive exotica of Planet Paul to my band mates in terms of
verse chorus verse, to haul equipment to and from gigs, and to collect minstrel's wages
from such Denver venues as Herman's Hideaway, the Deadbeat Club, the Lion's Liar
and Cricket on the Hill.
Duration of toil: One school year, heavy lifting.
Taskmaster: Another NIMH
Location: Level 42
Work detail: Mouse keeper
Duties: To clean the cages of cannibalistic bitches who ate their weak pups and to pad
my check by spending on the clock hours exploring the Health Sciences Center's bowels
Duration of toil: About twenty-four months, served over a period of ten years
Dubious Distinctions
Second Millennial Eyes of Surprise Prize, given for best dramatic interpretation
of cradling in one's arms the bullet punctured skull of a dying shooting victim
William Carlos Williams Existential Schizophrenia Fellowship Recipient,
received for the egocentric inability to establish reasonable expectations
The Coveted Golden Shovel, awarded for excellence in obnoxious alliterative
excess expressed imaginatively uninsightfully
additional fictions available upon request