Girls On Fire Early Rarities Tape
includes earliest Leslie Singer solo recordings
includes earliest Leslie Singer solo recordings
Side X (the first side) contains several Psychodrama tracks that appear on 300 Days of Sodom and then a Bazilisk song and some From Far Away, Beauty?. The label is in Brett's handwriting.
Side Y is labeled "The Most Overrated Artist of the Year" which looks like it was cut out of Creem magazine or something and then written in is "Brian Eno." Psychodrama just couldn't stop giving ol' Bri-Bri a hard time. [Editor's Note: See the Psychodrama ad on the Early GOF page that includes a photo of Eno] This is all glued on to the cassette. That side contains more tracks from 300 Days of Sodom. Nothing new there, but also included on the side are my earliest original material solo recordings.
Side Y is labeled "The Most Overrated Artist of the Year" which looks like it was cut out of Creem magazine or something and then written in is "Brian Eno." Psychodrama just couldn't stop giving ol' Bri-Bri a hard time. [Editor's Note: See the Psychodrama ad on the Early GOF page that includes a photo of Eno] This is all glued on to the cassette. That side contains more tracks from 300 Days of Sodom. Nothing new there, but also included on the side are my earliest original material solo recordings.
Brett and I put the tape together "Exquisite corpse" style. He put together everything on Side X and the Psychodrama songs on Side Y.
Everything else, I recorded in my bedroom at 308 Summers Drive directly onto the tape -- so those are the "master" versions of my early solo stuff, which consists of two demos of a song I worked up called "I'm in Love and on KW". In this song, I assume the persona of a biker chick in love with my biker dude and PCP. Brett had told me that the biker term for PCP was Killer Weed. On the first version I'm playing a cheap toy organ that I bought at a garage sale. I sound kind of like Nico on crystal meth. The second take has guitar and perhaps electronic metronome in addition to my vocals. I think that "I'm in Love and on KW" was recorded in June 1982. I remember it being warm outside but not too hot.
Everything else, I recorded in my bedroom at 308 Summers Drive directly onto the tape -- so those are the "master" versions of my early solo stuff, which consists of two demos of a song I worked up called "I'm in Love and on KW". In this song, I assume the persona of a biker chick in love with my biker dude and PCP. Brett had told me that the biker term for PCP was Killer Weed. On the first version I'm playing a cheap toy organ that I bought at a garage sale. I sound kind of like Nico on crystal meth. The second take has guitar and perhaps electronic metronome in addition to my vocals. I think that "I'm in Love and on KW" was recorded in June 1982. I remember it being warm outside but not too hot.
The first version of “I’m in Love and on KW”- I don’t have the lyrics to that song but from what I can pick up, it is quite a doozy! Now listening to it, I think that I must’ve read a news story about a suburban housewife who meets and falls in love with a biker and then kills her husband so she can be in the biker lifestyle full time.
The song starts out with four garbled lines of god knows what verse fully embodying the influence of Mars’ China (Donna) Berg on my vocalization, then wrapping up with
“Rock’N’Roll and doin’ drugs
Blah blah blah and wreckin’ cars”
then the chorus:
“I’m in love and on KW
I’m in love with a biker
I’m gonna kill my husband
Baby, I hate you.”
Then the next verse sounds like it starts off with:
“Michael— he just makes me sick,
He draws teardrops in the apartment.
Then four more lines of discontent which culminate with “have some fun.”
Then another line:
“My husband I want to kill you.”
Four more lines of aggravation and then:
“Set him straight.
Shot him, tried to make it look like an accident.”
And then one more:
“I killed husband too.” This must be a conversation that she is having with a fellow inmate in jail.
Harrowing stuff!
The song starts out with four garbled lines of god knows what verse fully embodying the influence of Mars’ China (Donna) Berg on my vocalization, then wrapping up with
“Rock’N’Roll and doin’ drugs
Blah blah blah and wreckin’ cars”
then the chorus:
“I’m in love and on KW
I’m in love with a biker
I’m gonna kill my husband
Baby, I hate you.”
Then the next verse sounds like it starts off with:
“Michael— he just makes me sick,
He draws teardrops in the apartment.
Then four more lines of discontent which culminate with “have some fun.”
Then another line:
“My husband I want to kill you.”
Four more lines of aggravation and then:
“Set him straight.
Shot him, tried to make it look like an accident.”
And then one more:
“I killed husband too.” This must be a conversation that she is having with a fellow inmate in jail.
Harrowing stuff!
I think that the second version is all me. We used to use the cheapest Radio Shack microphones that we could get because of the weird effects these wonderful pieces of junk would could do on our vocals. I’m singing into a mic plugged into a guitar amp with the microphone plugged into the tape recorder is picking up that processed vocal and my natural room tone vocal at the same time. It created a harmony effect.
Then we get to the No New York cover band portion of the tape. There is my cover version of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks' "The Closet". My version is guitar, electronic metronome and vocals.
Next is my cover version of Mars' "Tunnel" with the toy organ and vocals.
The next piece is what I would describe as a sound collage. It sounds like I'm running a mic over some sort of surface to create a hellacious noise and then we go into a badly recorded bit from the James White and the Contortions album ("Bedroom Athlete" from Buy), and then back to the noise , a song by Fear, and then onto a badly recorded "Sex Machine" from a James Brown greatest hits album on Polydor which runs out with the tape.
I think that the intention behind using the James Chance, James Brown and Fear songs was an effort to illustrate the tension between commerciality/survival and doing one's own thing/damn the consequences. Also disco/new wave vs. punk/noise. With James Brown there is also the suggestion of different approaches to minimalism in music. Fear has that too - along with the nihilistic sentiments that are sometimes said to be invoked by minimalism in art and music. Though I think the Ramones could've been a better example....