WoG 0015 - Walls Of Genius - Embarassing Moments Cassette
A 90 minute cassette officially attributed to multiple bands all of which were later considered the "band" Walls Of Genius.
- Road Damage (Ed Fowler, Evan Cantor, David Lichtenberg, Brad Carton) - recorded Saturday, March 3, 1984, at the Hall Of Genius, 2473 20th Street, Boulder, Colorado.
- Religious Services (EF, DL, Dena Zocher, EC) - late April, 1983.
- Spazz Attack (DL, EF, EC) probably the weekend of March 26th and 27th, 1983.
- The Crooning Goons (DL, EC) - Saturday, March 26, 1983.
- Major Faultline (EF, Marsha Wooley, EC) - Friday, May 12, 1983.
- Mersey Less Beats (EF, DL, EC) - Sunday, May 1, 1983.
- Good Enough For A Hell Hole (DL, EC) - Saturday, May 6, 1983.
- Big Man On Campus (David Lichtenberg and Evan Cantor) - Saturday, May 21, 1983
- Vegetables Behind The Wheel (DL, EF, EC) - Sunday, March 20, 1983
- Charity Cases - Saturday, March 5, 1983
- Psychotic Bozos - Sunday, March 6, 1983
- The Pots'n Pans Party (EC, DL, Chris Norden, Scott Childress, David Stiles, Sean) - Friday, August 6, 1983.
- Joe Colorado (EC) - June 1983
All tracks except those by Road Damage were recorded at Natasha Brown's house, Eldorado Springs.
- Road Damage (Ed Fowler, Evan Cantor, David Lichtenberg, Brad Carton) - recorded Saturday, March 3, 1984, at the Hall Of Genius, 2473 20th Street, Boulder, Colorado.
- Religious Services (EF, DL, Dena Zocher, EC) - late April, 1983.
- Spazz Attack (DL, EF, EC) probably the weekend of March 26th and 27th, 1983.
- The Crooning Goons (DL, EC) - Saturday, March 26, 1983.
- Major Faultline (EF, Marsha Wooley, EC) - Friday, May 12, 1983.
- Mersey Less Beats (EF, DL, EC) - Sunday, May 1, 1983.
- Good Enough For A Hell Hole (DL, EC) - Saturday, May 6, 1983.
- Big Man On Campus (David Lichtenberg and Evan Cantor) - Saturday, May 21, 1983
- Vegetables Behind The Wheel (DL, EF, EC) - Sunday, March 20, 1983
- Charity Cases - Saturday, March 5, 1983
- Psychotic Bozos - Sunday, March 6, 1983
- The Pots'n Pans Party (EC, DL, Chris Norden, Scott Childress, David Stiles, Sean) - Friday, August 6, 1983.
- Joe Colorado (EC) - June 1983
All tracks except those by Road Damage were recorded at Natasha Brown's house, Eldorado Springs.
Little Fyodor (David Lichtenberg):
Compilation releases had become a big thing in the underground in the 1980s, and those aspiring to make and release one would put out the call throughout the underground through various means of their intention and of their interest in receiving submissions for it. We previously made reference to the call that went out for a “Louie, Louie” compilation that inspired us to record that song multiple times for The White Cassette. Another specialized call for specialized recordings for a specialized type of compilation came from one Ken Clinger of Bovine Productions (based in San Francisco at that time). I had already been playing some of his own cassette material on my KGNU radio show, Under The Floorboards. Ken was asking folks to submit their “most embarrassing moments” to him. We sent him some material and he ended up including a healthful heaping of it (maybe all of it?) on his compilation cassette called Winnie & Friends: WINNIE’S GOLD STAR. He put our “Hava Nagila” and “Doom in Kansas” and “Daydream Believer” and “Inna Gadda Da Vida” on this tape, even starting the whole thing off with that last one and splitting up the first two of those into separate sections and giving their latter appearances his own funny names, such as “Hava More Nagila” and “Hava More Still”! One interesting thing about Ken’s comp that I vaguely remember but just barely well enough to speak of it as fact is that he told contributors that they may use assumed names in order to conceal their true identity. That might be why I don’t recognize any of the other names on the tape (other than one who was a friend and collaborator of Ken’s)! (One recurring unrecognizable name on there is Juan Big Hahdon!) (I do recognize Ken’s own voice on some pieces, though his name never appears!) So what did WoG do? Well, we used our usual band names! We were Religious Services and Major Faultline, etc, just as we were on our own tapes! Ironically, this was almost as much “cover” for us as it was for anyone who made up names out of the blue just for the tape as we were already mostly known as Walls Of Genius throughout the underground except to people who actually bought our tapes or received and had thoroughly read our catalogs, or maybe very occasionally one of our band names would be mentioned in a review, but still, mostly we were known as WoG, so, yeah, we just went by our “band names”….
Evan Cantor:
This takes off where The WoG Sampler! left off. Only 4 copies of this title are documented as having been distributed, so a rare very few people ever heard any of these tracks, with the exception of the one that appeared on a compilation. This cassette included out-takes from several sessions, mostly in 1983 except for the Road Damage tracks recorded in March 1984. These were all tracks that we liked for some reason, but felt weren’t strong enough for regular release. As we had been taking some flack for releasing so much material, this cassette proves that we did edit our material and were pickier than most folks ever gave us credit for. We were inspired to make this collection by the Winnie & Friends Compilation of embarrassing moments that was produced around this same time. We gave it a WoG “I.D.” number and put it in our catalog in the spirit of having as many titles available as possible. But nobody was sufficiently enthusiastic about WoG to spend money on this, perhaps the single most expendable WoG title in the catalog. Nonetheless, I find it to be a fun listen.
LF:
This request for embarrassing moments lit up a light bulb in Evan’s head that told him we should have our own complete Embarrassing Moments release. And why not? We were certainly in the habit of releasing large swaths of the material we had produced and of thinking of our material as wanting to be heard and not buried, as I described in my notes for the WoG Sampler. And since we were often goofing off and not taking ourselves very seriously and just going for it in the face of obstacles that would have immediately ordered mere mortal bands to put down their instruments and watch TV instead, it would seem we would have no lack of embarrassing moments! Some people would likely even claim much of our “seriously” released material to be pretty embarrassing! Especially in light of that latter aspect of what we did, it was a little abstract to think of anything we did as embarrassing actually, and there’s actually some good material on this tape, although it certainly does document some of our most especially silly moments and some of our less consistently engaging jam sessions, made even more glaringly so by a lot less care being given to editing than would have been the case for a more “serious” release. (Also, I added later, some of my lousy guitar playing!) Anyway, we put this together mostly for the fun of it and barely distributed any copies before deleting it from our catalog. But we did it and thus I guess it is part of our legacy! And just in case you ever found yourself looking at all the other titles on our reel boxes that didn’t show up on our regular releases and were wondering what they sounded like….
I should apologize in advance for remembering a lot less about the contents of this tape than most of the others. A function, I’d imagine, of our not taking this tape very seriously (to the extent that we took anything we did seriously!)…
EC:
All of the band names have been discussed in previous sets of notes: The Mersey Less Beats, Religious Services, Major Faultline and Good Enough For A Hell Hole were discussed on Sunday, Monday Or Always! Big Man On Campus was discussed on Almost Groovy! and The Many Faces Of Mr. Morocco. Spazz Attack, The Crooning Goons and Vegetables Behind The Wheel were discussed on the original Walls Of Genius cassette. Charity Cases and Psychotic Bozos were discussed on Johnny Rocco. The Pots’n Pans Party was discussed on Little Victor Meets Violent Vince. Joe Colorado is always Evan Cantor doing a solo thing. Road Damage had not yet appeared on a WoG release, but would contribute many WoG classics to Crazed To The Core, credited simply to Walls Of Genius by the time of that release.
There was no cover to this. The liner notes were a simple j-card with a list of the songs, band names and month/year the song was recorded.
LF:
The liner notes and package were very bare bones, reflecting the less than ambitious nature of this release. My copy of the tape has no adornments at all other than the Walls of Genius rubber stamp that was probably created for the White Cassette….
Compilation releases had become a big thing in the underground in the 1980s, and those aspiring to make and release one would put out the call throughout the underground through various means of their intention and of their interest in receiving submissions for it. We previously made reference to the call that went out for a “Louie, Louie” compilation that inspired us to record that song multiple times for The White Cassette. Another specialized call for specialized recordings for a specialized type of compilation came from one Ken Clinger of Bovine Productions (based in San Francisco at that time). I had already been playing some of his own cassette material on my KGNU radio show, Under The Floorboards. Ken was asking folks to submit their “most embarrassing moments” to him. We sent him some material and he ended up including a healthful heaping of it (maybe all of it?) on his compilation cassette called Winnie & Friends: WINNIE’S GOLD STAR. He put our “Hava Nagila” and “Doom in Kansas” and “Daydream Believer” and “Inna Gadda Da Vida” on this tape, even starting the whole thing off with that last one and splitting up the first two of those into separate sections and giving their latter appearances his own funny names, such as “Hava More Nagila” and “Hava More Still”! One interesting thing about Ken’s comp that I vaguely remember but just barely well enough to speak of it as fact is that he told contributors that they may use assumed names in order to conceal their true identity. That might be why I don’t recognize any of the other names on the tape (other than one who was a friend and collaborator of Ken’s)! (One recurring unrecognizable name on there is Juan Big Hahdon!) (I do recognize Ken’s own voice on some pieces, though his name never appears!) So what did WoG do? Well, we used our usual band names! We were Religious Services and Major Faultline, etc, just as we were on our own tapes! Ironically, this was almost as much “cover” for us as it was for anyone who made up names out of the blue just for the tape as we were already mostly known as Walls Of Genius throughout the underground except to people who actually bought our tapes or received and had thoroughly read our catalogs, or maybe very occasionally one of our band names would be mentioned in a review, but still, mostly we were known as WoG, so, yeah, we just went by our “band names”….
Evan Cantor:
This takes off where The WoG Sampler! left off. Only 4 copies of this title are documented as having been distributed, so a rare very few people ever heard any of these tracks, with the exception of the one that appeared on a compilation. This cassette included out-takes from several sessions, mostly in 1983 except for the Road Damage tracks recorded in March 1984. These were all tracks that we liked for some reason, but felt weren’t strong enough for regular release. As we had been taking some flack for releasing so much material, this cassette proves that we did edit our material and were pickier than most folks ever gave us credit for. We were inspired to make this collection by the Winnie & Friends Compilation of embarrassing moments that was produced around this same time. We gave it a WoG “I.D.” number and put it in our catalog in the spirit of having as many titles available as possible. But nobody was sufficiently enthusiastic about WoG to spend money on this, perhaps the single most expendable WoG title in the catalog. Nonetheless, I find it to be a fun listen.
LF:
This request for embarrassing moments lit up a light bulb in Evan’s head that told him we should have our own complete Embarrassing Moments release. And why not? We were certainly in the habit of releasing large swaths of the material we had produced and of thinking of our material as wanting to be heard and not buried, as I described in my notes for the WoG Sampler. And since we were often goofing off and not taking ourselves very seriously and just going for it in the face of obstacles that would have immediately ordered mere mortal bands to put down their instruments and watch TV instead, it would seem we would have no lack of embarrassing moments! Some people would likely even claim much of our “seriously” released material to be pretty embarrassing! Especially in light of that latter aspect of what we did, it was a little abstract to think of anything we did as embarrassing actually, and there’s actually some good material on this tape, although it certainly does document some of our most especially silly moments and some of our less consistently engaging jam sessions, made even more glaringly so by a lot less care being given to editing than would have been the case for a more “serious” release. (Also, I added later, some of my lousy guitar playing!) Anyway, we put this together mostly for the fun of it and barely distributed any copies before deleting it from our catalog. But we did it and thus I guess it is part of our legacy! And just in case you ever found yourself looking at all the other titles on our reel boxes that didn’t show up on our regular releases and were wondering what they sounded like….
I should apologize in advance for remembering a lot less about the contents of this tape than most of the others. A function, I’d imagine, of our not taking this tape very seriously (to the extent that we took anything we did seriously!)…
EC:
All of the band names have been discussed in previous sets of notes: The Mersey Less Beats, Religious Services, Major Faultline and Good Enough For A Hell Hole were discussed on Sunday, Monday Or Always! Big Man On Campus was discussed on Almost Groovy! and The Many Faces Of Mr. Morocco. Spazz Attack, The Crooning Goons and Vegetables Behind The Wheel were discussed on the original Walls Of Genius cassette. Charity Cases and Psychotic Bozos were discussed on Johnny Rocco. The Pots’n Pans Party was discussed on Little Victor Meets Violent Vince. Joe Colorado is always Evan Cantor doing a solo thing. Road Damage had not yet appeared on a WoG release, but would contribute many WoG classics to Crazed To The Core, credited simply to Walls Of Genius by the time of that release.
There was no cover to this. The liner notes were a simple j-card with a list of the songs, band names and month/year the song was recorded.
LF:
The liner notes and package were very bare bones, reflecting the less than ambitious nature of this release. My copy of the tape has no adornments at all other than the Walls of Genius rubber stamp that was probably created for the White Cassette….
Side 1
IN A GADDA DA VIDA Road Damage 3-84
PICTURES OF MATCHSTICK MEN Road Damage 3-84
HAVA NAGILA Religious Services 4-83
LAY DOWN SALLY Spazz Attack 3-83
I WANT TO BE A JAMAICAN Crooning Goons 3-83
EVAN'S RAGA Major Faultline 5-83
RECORDER DUET #1 w/PUNK GUITAR Major Faultline
RECORDER DUET #2 w/PUNK GUITAR Major Faultline
DOOM IN KANSAS Major Faultline
INTROS TO SHIVA REALITY LESSON Major Faultline
IN A GADDA DA VIDA Road Damage 3-84
PICTURES OF MATCHSTICK MEN Road Damage 3-84
HAVA NAGILA Religious Services 4-83
LAY DOWN SALLY Spazz Attack 3-83
I WANT TO BE A JAMAICAN Crooning Goons 3-83
EVAN'S RAGA Major Faultline 5-83
RECORDER DUET #1 w/PUNK GUITAR Major Faultline
RECORDER DUET #2 w/PUNK GUITAR Major Faultline
DOOM IN KANSAS Major Faultline
INTROS TO SHIVA REALITY LESSON Major Faultline
“In A Gadda Da Vida” (Road Damage)
EC:
This track appeared on the Winnie & Friends Embarrassing Moments compilation. Road Damage was a kind of “mellow metal” session, with full drums by Brad Carton. It would contribute fabulous tracks to a future release (Crazed To The Core). This particular out-take opens with the Iron Butterfly lp on the stereo, playing the gothic organ introduction and then we launch into our own warped version of the song. Almost immediately it collapses and you hear my voice ask “Is this working or what?” We never revisited it, so it must not have been working… this is such a funny failure that it could easily have found a place on a WoG release, but I think we wanted the compilation to have something that wasn’t on a regular WoG release.
LF:
I believe Clinger’s comp must have come out by the time Evan mixed down our own Most Embarrassing Moments tape, providing inspiration for our tape to likewise start out with “Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida”. Which I think was a good way to start! It must have seemed like a cool and funny idea to use the organ intro from the original record to start the song and then jump in ourselves with the famous riff and then take it away from there. It sounds like Ed and Evan maybe weren’t quite on the same page, but otherwise I don’t really know what derailed this, though Evan’s overly-loud-in-the-mix vocals were a bit overbearing, even for our standards!
“Pictures Of Matchstick Men” (Road Damage)
LF:
Our Ed-led take on "Pictures of Matchstick Men" is a bit of a surprising choice, not just cause there’s nothing particularly embarrassing about it, but also because (like “Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida” actually) it was an outtake from a session that, in effect, hadn’t been released yet! That is, the selections that saw more “official” release from the Road Damage session came out on Crazed To The Core, officially released later than this tape (WoG 017 for Crazed and 015 for this). I wish I could remember (and thus be able to tell you!) what was up with that, but I guess either the catalog numbers weren’t reflective of the real time reality of the situation or else we (or more likely Evan) already had decided what was or wasn’t going to eventually get released more officially from the Road Damage session at the time this tape was being put together. This sounds like a pretty decent WoG cover song to me, even if maybe just not as good as the other Road Damage material. I could probably be accused of being a little clunky and inelegant on my percussion part (alongside Brad’s drums), but then I could be accused of plenty worse on plenty of other WoG pieces! Oh, and as we’ll tell you again for Crazed to the Core, this session featured me and Evan and Brad and Ed….
EC:
This was a cover of a psychedelic song that we knew. It features some nice leads by Ed Fowler, but this is so straight a rock-band version, it was not nearly sufficiently crazed for regular release.
“Hava Nagila” (Religious Services)
EC:
This is an epic jam that should have been released. This is not your Jewish Grandma’s Bar Mitzvah version. At the time, we thought the poor tape quality, leading to some dropouts and pop-music bleed-thru from previously recorded music made it un-releasable. In retrospect, that all seems like par-for-the-course for Walls Of Genius and who would object to the “found tapes” effect? We had used the happy accident of bleed-thru in the past. In any case, it begins with the bleed-thru as Dena Zocher struggles with the main theme on her cello, channeling the so-bad-it’s-good ethos. Evan comes in with a heavily-reverbed rockin’ rhythm guitar. Ed pipes up with some lead guitar, but it sounds like he has no idea what to play or even how to play the melody of Hava Nagila. Ed is so laid back at this point, he must be half-asleep with his guitar in his hands. David is vamping the slide-whistle and sounds good. Finally, Ed comes alive as Evan morphs the rhythm guitar into a space-jam. Ed is making terrific wailing whale sounds while Evan visits the main theme in broken-up parts. Then Evan changes the key and starts rockin-out in an unrelated groove while Ed goes absolutely haywire on the Echoplex. Evan returns to the Hava Nagila theme on single-notes and then plays some weird scales that develop into a descending death-metal pattern to form yet another groove, dueling with the cello while the Echoplex continues to shriek in the background. We return to the main theme once again and David does a little “religious wailing” in the background. The track ends with a fade-out on bleed-thru pop music.
LF:
Since I’m writing all this to tell you what I remember, I’ll tell you that what I remember being the “problem” with “Hava Nagila” that being that two of those present, Dena and someone else, I would guess Evan, knew this song in entirely different keys! But true to our WoG MO, we plowed ahead with it anyway, expecting we’d make it work somehow -- only to find that this time we really couldn’t! That said, I can’t hear now who was playing in a different key from her (or from anyone else), so I can’t really say if that’s what happened or what else it was that led to us all heading off in different directions after the start. You could almost look at this as an actually almost good jam that just shows what a thin line there really is between Genius and Idiocy! One overt problem in the sound quality was that the music that had already been on the used reel to reel tape we recorded onto didn’t get entirely erased when we recorded this over it….
“Lay Down Sally” (Spazz Attack)
EC (Evan Cantor - not Eric Clapton):
This is a cover of the Eric Clapton hit. Ed knew the rhythm guitar part, so we dove in, with David doing more of a Smedley voice than Little Fyodor on this one. Ed and Evan traded rhythm and lead parts on electric guitars. The vocals were a little muddy and we didn’t feel that this track, while amusing in its own way, was deserving of regular release.
LF:
“Lay Down Sally” finds me stretching to sound like a rockabilly redneck and to make lewd jokes out of the word “lay” (and some other dumb jokes, too). I didn’t know ANY of the words to this song (obviously?) outside the title, but Ed knew how to play it and so he and Evan did so and told me to sing, and this is what I came up with. Beavis and Butthead step aside!
“I Want To Be A Jamaican” (Crooning Goons)
LF:
This version of “I Want To Be A Jamaican” was our first attempt to do something with this reggae-ish two chord riff I came up with and the catchy, melodic bass line Evan came up with to accompany it. We reprised it a week later with Ed and Brad present and made a nice jam out of it that finishes off the Johnny Rocco tape. Here, Evan and I both delivered what amounted to our own separate comedy routines based on our own separate interpretations of the title. Again, it was almost good. I think Evan’s vocal is muted and muddied because of problems with his Dokorder four-track recorder that were soon corrected. Charity Cases was the very first session featuring me and Evan trying to record as a duo. My main memory of this song is Evan getting mad at me for not being able to sing in key. Heh, little did he know what bad Fyodor singing lay in store!! Heh-heh….
EC:
This is an alternate version of the same song that appeared on Johnny Rocco by the Ed’n Evan Hullabaloo. Once again, it features David’s rhythm guitar and Evan’s popping bass line. This is a much more well-developed version, with a lot more vocals, but David’s verse is nearly unintelligible and mine is not much better, although you can hear me pining away “I and I be high all day.” There is a lot of overdubbed mania. My guess is that although we wanted to pursue the idea, we felt the result wasn’t strong enough for regular release.
“Evan’s Raga” (Major Faultline)
EC:
This is a nice guitar piece, but based very loosely around the signature riff for “I’m So Glad”, which we had already visited on a previous release.
“Recorder Duet #1 w/Punk Guitar” (MF)
EC:
Marsha Wooley’s voice comes over the guitar, saying “Throbbing Gristle”, although I think Ed’s punk guitar part is more reminiscent of The Sex Pistols than Throbbing Gristle. Fun stuff, probably not released because Marsha’s voice-over is distracting and doesn’t add anything to it.
“Recorder Duet #2 w/Punk Guitar” (MF)
EC:
Hey, we try it again. Who says we never practiced anything? This is the better of the two, but still we never put it on a regular release. I’m not sure why, it stands up pretty good.
“Doom In Kansas” (MF)
EC:
Another out-take from the Major Faultline session. Marsha starts strong, waxing eloquent about doom in Kansas, entirely off-the-cuff. There’s lots of percussion while Ed wails away on the guitar and some recorder comes in. Ed goes wild again on the Echoplex and we start up a tom-tom beat with some wild-west Indian chanting as the Echoplex keeps going. Ed devolves into a Hendrix progression and Marsha comes back, but doesn’t say much. As the music peters out, a grunting duel ensues between Marsha and Evan. There’s a lot of growling and then Evan barks and howls. This piece could have been so much more, but between Marsha not realizing her potential on the Kansas theme and Ed devolving into recognizable Hendrixiana, it just didn’t work on all cylinders for a regular release.
LF:
Major Faultline was Ed, Evan and Marsha Wooley. I’ve skipped over the recorder and punk guitar duets and want to point the reader (visitor?) to my handwriting next to the song listing on the inside of the cover of this session’s reel box (see below). Next to “Doom in Kansas” I wrote, “GREAT! SEZ FYODOR”. I had evidently listened to this tape, which I recall happening well after the Sunday, Monday or Always! release which originally featured some of its material, and I was struck by this piece which didn’t make it onto that cassette. Listening now, I believe it was Marsha’s sardonic lyrics and very nimble at times delivery at the outset that I was taken with. Plus Ed also plays some especially crazy guitar! Again, at the outset. Then the jam gets rather ridiculous (even by our standards!), devolving in various ways including Ed playing Hendrix and Marsha singing a second or two of Pink Floyd, but this could have been a perfectly good WoG piece with some attention paid to the editing, but of course this was our Most Embarassing Moments tape, so the whole gory thing is included! I believe that’s the little pseudo Indian tom-tom that Evan bought in Estes Park that Marsha’s pounding on between sardonic lines….
EC:
This track appeared on the Winnie & Friends Embarrassing Moments compilation. Road Damage was a kind of “mellow metal” session, with full drums by Brad Carton. It would contribute fabulous tracks to a future release (Crazed To The Core). This particular out-take opens with the Iron Butterfly lp on the stereo, playing the gothic organ introduction and then we launch into our own warped version of the song. Almost immediately it collapses and you hear my voice ask “Is this working or what?” We never revisited it, so it must not have been working… this is such a funny failure that it could easily have found a place on a WoG release, but I think we wanted the compilation to have something that wasn’t on a regular WoG release.
LF:
I believe Clinger’s comp must have come out by the time Evan mixed down our own Most Embarrassing Moments tape, providing inspiration for our tape to likewise start out with “Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida”. Which I think was a good way to start! It must have seemed like a cool and funny idea to use the organ intro from the original record to start the song and then jump in ourselves with the famous riff and then take it away from there. It sounds like Ed and Evan maybe weren’t quite on the same page, but otherwise I don’t really know what derailed this, though Evan’s overly-loud-in-the-mix vocals were a bit overbearing, even for our standards!
“Pictures Of Matchstick Men” (Road Damage)
LF:
Our Ed-led take on "Pictures of Matchstick Men" is a bit of a surprising choice, not just cause there’s nothing particularly embarrassing about it, but also because (like “Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida” actually) it was an outtake from a session that, in effect, hadn’t been released yet! That is, the selections that saw more “official” release from the Road Damage session came out on Crazed To The Core, officially released later than this tape (WoG 017 for Crazed and 015 for this). I wish I could remember (and thus be able to tell you!) what was up with that, but I guess either the catalog numbers weren’t reflective of the real time reality of the situation or else we (or more likely Evan) already had decided what was or wasn’t going to eventually get released more officially from the Road Damage session at the time this tape was being put together. This sounds like a pretty decent WoG cover song to me, even if maybe just not as good as the other Road Damage material. I could probably be accused of being a little clunky and inelegant on my percussion part (alongside Brad’s drums), but then I could be accused of plenty worse on plenty of other WoG pieces! Oh, and as we’ll tell you again for Crazed to the Core, this session featured me and Evan and Brad and Ed….
EC:
This was a cover of a psychedelic song that we knew. It features some nice leads by Ed Fowler, but this is so straight a rock-band version, it was not nearly sufficiently crazed for regular release.
“Hava Nagila” (Religious Services)
EC:
This is an epic jam that should have been released. This is not your Jewish Grandma’s Bar Mitzvah version. At the time, we thought the poor tape quality, leading to some dropouts and pop-music bleed-thru from previously recorded music made it un-releasable. In retrospect, that all seems like par-for-the-course for Walls Of Genius and who would object to the “found tapes” effect? We had used the happy accident of bleed-thru in the past. In any case, it begins with the bleed-thru as Dena Zocher struggles with the main theme on her cello, channeling the so-bad-it’s-good ethos. Evan comes in with a heavily-reverbed rockin’ rhythm guitar. Ed pipes up with some lead guitar, but it sounds like he has no idea what to play or even how to play the melody of Hava Nagila. Ed is so laid back at this point, he must be half-asleep with his guitar in his hands. David is vamping the slide-whistle and sounds good. Finally, Ed comes alive as Evan morphs the rhythm guitar into a space-jam. Ed is making terrific wailing whale sounds while Evan visits the main theme in broken-up parts. Then Evan changes the key and starts rockin-out in an unrelated groove while Ed goes absolutely haywire on the Echoplex. Evan returns to the Hava Nagila theme on single-notes and then plays some weird scales that develop into a descending death-metal pattern to form yet another groove, dueling with the cello while the Echoplex continues to shriek in the background. We return to the main theme once again and David does a little “religious wailing” in the background. The track ends with a fade-out on bleed-thru pop music.
LF:
Since I’m writing all this to tell you what I remember, I’ll tell you that what I remember being the “problem” with “Hava Nagila” that being that two of those present, Dena and someone else, I would guess Evan, knew this song in entirely different keys! But true to our WoG MO, we plowed ahead with it anyway, expecting we’d make it work somehow -- only to find that this time we really couldn’t! That said, I can’t hear now who was playing in a different key from her (or from anyone else), so I can’t really say if that’s what happened or what else it was that led to us all heading off in different directions after the start. You could almost look at this as an actually almost good jam that just shows what a thin line there really is between Genius and Idiocy! One overt problem in the sound quality was that the music that had already been on the used reel to reel tape we recorded onto didn’t get entirely erased when we recorded this over it….
“Lay Down Sally” (Spazz Attack)
EC (Evan Cantor - not Eric Clapton):
This is a cover of the Eric Clapton hit. Ed knew the rhythm guitar part, so we dove in, with David doing more of a Smedley voice than Little Fyodor on this one. Ed and Evan traded rhythm and lead parts on electric guitars. The vocals were a little muddy and we didn’t feel that this track, while amusing in its own way, was deserving of regular release.
LF:
“Lay Down Sally” finds me stretching to sound like a rockabilly redneck and to make lewd jokes out of the word “lay” (and some other dumb jokes, too). I didn’t know ANY of the words to this song (obviously?) outside the title, but Ed knew how to play it and so he and Evan did so and told me to sing, and this is what I came up with. Beavis and Butthead step aside!
“I Want To Be A Jamaican” (Crooning Goons)
LF:
This version of “I Want To Be A Jamaican” was our first attempt to do something with this reggae-ish two chord riff I came up with and the catchy, melodic bass line Evan came up with to accompany it. We reprised it a week later with Ed and Brad present and made a nice jam out of it that finishes off the Johnny Rocco tape. Here, Evan and I both delivered what amounted to our own separate comedy routines based on our own separate interpretations of the title. Again, it was almost good. I think Evan’s vocal is muted and muddied because of problems with his Dokorder four-track recorder that were soon corrected. Charity Cases was the very first session featuring me and Evan trying to record as a duo. My main memory of this song is Evan getting mad at me for not being able to sing in key. Heh, little did he know what bad Fyodor singing lay in store!! Heh-heh….
EC:
This is an alternate version of the same song that appeared on Johnny Rocco by the Ed’n Evan Hullabaloo. Once again, it features David’s rhythm guitar and Evan’s popping bass line. This is a much more well-developed version, with a lot more vocals, but David’s verse is nearly unintelligible and mine is not much better, although you can hear me pining away “I and I be high all day.” There is a lot of overdubbed mania. My guess is that although we wanted to pursue the idea, we felt the result wasn’t strong enough for regular release.
“Evan’s Raga” (Major Faultline)
EC:
This is a nice guitar piece, but based very loosely around the signature riff for “I’m So Glad”, which we had already visited on a previous release.
“Recorder Duet #1 w/Punk Guitar” (MF)
EC:
Marsha Wooley’s voice comes over the guitar, saying “Throbbing Gristle”, although I think Ed’s punk guitar part is more reminiscent of The Sex Pistols than Throbbing Gristle. Fun stuff, probably not released because Marsha’s voice-over is distracting and doesn’t add anything to it.
“Recorder Duet #2 w/Punk Guitar” (MF)
EC:
Hey, we try it again. Who says we never practiced anything? This is the better of the two, but still we never put it on a regular release. I’m not sure why, it stands up pretty good.
“Doom In Kansas” (MF)
EC:
Another out-take from the Major Faultline session. Marsha starts strong, waxing eloquent about doom in Kansas, entirely off-the-cuff. There’s lots of percussion while Ed wails away on the guitar and some recorder comes in. Ed goes wild again on the Echoplex and we start up a tom-tom beat with some wild-west Indian chanting as the Echoplex keeps going. Ed devolves into a Hendrix progression and Marsha comes back, but doesn’t say much. As the music peters out, a grunting duel ensues between Marsha and Evan. There’s a lot of growling and then Evan barks and howls. This piece could have been so much more, but between Marsha not realizing her potential on the Kansas theme and Ed devolving into recognizable Hendrixiana, it just didn’t work on all cylinders for a regular release.
LF:
Major Faultline was Ed, Evan and Marsha Wooley. I’ve skipped over the recorder and punk guitar duets and want to point the reader (visitor?) to my handwriting next to the song listing on the inside of the cover of this session’s reel box (see below). Next to “Doom in Kansas” I wrote, “GREAT! SEZ FYODOR”. I had evidently listened to this tape, which I recall happening well after the Sunday, Monday or Always! release which originally featured some of its material, and I was struck by this piece which didn’t make it onto that cassette. Listening now, I believe it was Marsha’s sardonic lyrics and very nimble at times delivery at the outset that I was taken with. Plus Ed also plays some especially crazy guitar! Again, at the outset. Then the jam gets rather ridiculous (even by our standards!), devolving in various ways including Ed playing Hendrix and Marsha singing a second or two of Pink Floyd, but this could have been a perfectly good WoG piece with some attention paid to the editing, but of course this was our Most Embarassing Moments tape, so the whole gory thing is included! I believe that’s the little pseudo Indian tom-tom that Evan bought in Estes Park that Marsha’s pounding on between sardonic lines….
“Intros to Shiva Reality Lesson” (MF)
EC:
These are a couple of snippets with Ed playing a wild rhythm track and Evan on Bass—it stops, you hear us call out “Take 3”, we start up again and then the tape cuts off. This was used to fill out the side of the tape. “Shiva Reality Lesson” itself was released on the Raw Sewage series as a previously unreleased track.
LF:
On the same inside cover, I wrote “Nice!” next to "Shiva Reality Lesson", which saw a more complete release on one of the Raw Sewage tapes we put out later primarily as retrospectives.
EC:
These are a couple of snippets with Ed playing a wild rhythm track and Evan on Bass—it stops, you hear us call out “Take 3”, we start up again and then the tape cuts off. This was used to fill out the side of the tape. “Shiva Reality Lesson” itself was released on the Raw Sewage series as a previously unreleased track.
LF:
On the same inside cover, I wrote “Nice!” next to "Shiva Reality Lesson", which saw a more complete release on one of the Raw Sewage tapes we put out later primarily as retrospectives.
Side 2
DAYDREAM BELIEVER Mersey Less Beats 5-83
MY GAL IS RED HOT Good Enough For A Hell Hole 5-83
THE STUPID BLUES Big Man On Campus 5-83
I'M SICK, I'M EIGHTEEN Big Man On Campus 5-83
ED'S BRAIN Vegetables Behind The Wheel 3-83
I AM IRON MAN Charity Cases 3-83
CHEAP/THROBBING IDIOCY Charity Cases 3-83
WHY ARE WE HERE?/HELP ME, SPOCK Pots'n Pans Party 6-83
I'D NEVER LIE TO YOU Joe Colorado 6-83
DAYDREAM BELIEVER Mersey Less Beats 5-83
MY GAL IS RED HOT Good Enough For A Hell Hole 5-83
THE STUPID BLUES Big Man On Campus 5-83
I'M SICK, I'M EIGHTEEN Big Man On Campus 5-83
ED'S BRAIN Vegetables Behind The Wheel 3-83
I AM IRON MAN Charity Cases 3-83
CHEAP/THROBBING IDIOCY Charity Cases 3-83
WHY ARE WE HERE?/HELP ME, SPOCK Pots'n Pans Party 6-83
I'D NEVER LIE TO YOU Joe Colorado 6-83
“Daydream Believer” (Mersey Less Beats)
EC:
David’s near-Fyodor vocalization is strangely charming in its own way, but was recorded poorly and is unintelligible in most places. This version was not sufficiently crazed for regular release.
LF:
“Daydream Believer” sees me doing my best/worst imitation/parody of Davy Jones of The Monkees. I don’t think this was necessarily any more ridiculous than my similar treatment of Robert Plant that got “official” release on Cultural Sabotage, though my off-key singing was maybe just a little more chalk on blackboard jarring on this one! This came from the Mersey Less Beats session which was entirely acoustic except for Ed playing through his little battery fed Marshall amp, which he does on this one. At one point you can hear evidence of our spontaneous one take approach when I start to anticipate the start of a new verse only to cut myself off immediately when I apparently heard the music not going where I’d expected!
“My Gal Is Red Hot” (Good Enough For A Hell-Hole)
EC:
This begins with Evan’s overdub experiment, with three of his own voices going in a kind of round. The lines “My Gal Is Red Hot” are offset by “My gal likes to fuck”. “Red Hot” was a fifties rockabilly tune that had recently been revisited by punk-rocker Robert Gordon at the time. David grunts and then his rhythm guitar comes roaring in with Evan’s bass. This part is unrelated to the song “Red Hot” and it fades out all too quickly. This should have been on a regular release. It’s possible that we were nervous about the obscene language but that had never stopped us before and certainly wouldn’t in the future.
LF:
I might be doing that growling underneath Evan's recitation of "My Gal is Red Hot". Then we hear the start of the already released "Have Money" (from the Sunday, Monday or Always tape), which quickly fades out, probably a mistake that was left in to add to the sense of it being an embarrassing mess....
“The Stupid Blues” (Big Man On Campus)
EC:
David’s rhythm, Evan’s lead guitar. This is another one of those “is it so bad it’s good?” tracks. It ends with a fabulous tape-gets-eaten effect, as no doubt the tape did get eaten by the machine. This is another one that should have been on a regular release. We may have felt it was redundant with the other “bad blues” pieces already released.
LF:
Oh hey, more stupid blues, this time actually just called “The Stupid Blues”! This one is bad because I’m even worse at (flanged) blues rhythm guitar than Evan is at blues lead guitar! I think Evan intentionally manipulated the reel to reel tape into sounding like something was getting eaten during the mix-down….
“I’m Sick I’m Eighteen” (BMOC)
EC:
An alternate instrumental version of one of our old favorites. Sounds like Evan experimenting with overdubbed guitars. Too mellow and not sufficiently sick or twisted for regular release.
LF:
On another early duo session, Evan competently plays Alice Cooper’s “Eighteen” while I embarrass myself on (flanged) lead guitar! I almost know some of the basics of how to play lead guitar, almost…. I have to say that at least WoG got me out of some of the comfort zones that I’ve since fallen back into! Whether the world is any better off for that or not, I’ll leave to posterity….
“Ed’s Brain” (Vegetables Behind The Wheel)
EC:
The title refers to a Star Trek episode, “Spock’s Brain”. Ed’s guitar sounds like a steel drum and the leads are mainly by Evan until he starts blocking out a rhythm pattern. It eventually devolves into one of Evan’s typical death-metal minor-key doom riffs. It ends with Evan’s voice crying out “I want to go back home to Greenland”. While this is not a bad piece, it’s not truly outstanding and we likely felt it was redundant to a lot of the stuff we had already released.
LF:
Ed must have been using a flanger in its non-swooshing mode to get this very metallic sound. I was clattering on something while he and Evan dueled it out…. I think Evan named this in reference to the Star Trek episode called “Spock’s Brain”….
“I Am Iron Man” (Charity Cases)
EC:
This is an alternate version of a riff we revisited on occasion. This time it is just Evan on bass and Ed on lead guitar. Nothing particularly exciting and, again, it was redundant to another version previously released.
LF:
Oy vey, this rendition of “I Am Iron Man” sees more of my flailing attempts at lead guitar. I swear, it’s not my fault, I take no responsibility, Evan made me do it! Twisted my arm, put a gun to my head, you name it! No not really, I was a willing accomplice to this crime…. It’s almost good near the end when I stop trying to play notes…. (I guess this really IS embarrassing, to me, anyway!)
“Cheap/Throbbing Idiocy” (Charity Cases)
LF:
I originally performed “Cheap” as a solo piece on which I overdubbed all the parts on the reel-to-reel machine Evan had lent me. This was our attempt to re-create that magic (?) as a duo. The expression of angst is there but maybe not the sincerity, though there’s a few good lines, like Evan demanding that I leave a tip and my asking where does your shit go anyway. Then Evan reads something of his own (“Throbbing Idiocy”) while I continue the same “Cheap” riff and end with my own exclamation in reference to his words….
EC:
This is an alternate version of Little Fyodor’s solo vehicle that appeared on The Many Faces Of Mr. Morocco. This is another case where it appears we wanted to develop the idea and pursue it further but then decided the results weren’t what we had hoped. “Throbbing Idiocy” is Evan’s recitation that was tacked on at the end alongside David’s relentless rhythm guitar.
“We Like Michael” (Psychotic Bozos)
EC:
With the radio sounds in the mix up front, it appears we were trying to tune in Michael Bellan. Michael had been the charismatic leader of Rumours of Marriage, the band that predated WoG with Ed and Evan that also included occasional WoG participant Brad Carton. David’s voice insinuates that Michael has gone to hell. There are a lot of hellos from the old bunch and talk of New York City, where Michael had gone after leaving Rumours Of Marriage the previous year. He had essentially been swallowed up the city and we may have been wondering, not for the last time either, what had become of him. This is such an inside joke, there was no point in putting it on a regular release. Besides, it just wasn’t that strong a track in the first place.
LF:
“We Like Michael” was an audio letter of sorts. The “Michael” in question was Mikal Belan, formerly of Rumours of Marriage, the band in which Evan met Ed and Brad. “Ed would say hello except he had to work at the airport today”! Well I guess we know now why Ed missed the Psychotic Bozos session! Airports are open 7 days a week, so I guess Ed had to work some weekends. Evan also mentions Rianne, who was also in RoM and who also moved east with Mikal. There were some names mentioned I don’t recognize, though Evan also mentions a few of the early pre-WoG band names. The synthesizer being played was brought by Brad and is probably being played by Brad or Rachel, the gal he also brought to the session. I think that’s me yelling “in hell” near the beginning….
“Why Are We Here?/Help Me Spock” (Pots’n Pans Party)
EC:
This is the heavily echoed Pots’n Pans Party. Evan and Scott Childress’ voices are run through a digital delay and Evan is cracking up as he intones “why why why why”. Scott is mostly unintelligible until he begins talking about “stereophonic sound” and taunting Evan: “Mr. Virginia! Never seen a canyon before!” Scott goes on, makes fun of the bunch of stoned people all banging on pans and instructs us to stop. Evan claims he “had to keep drinking.” Scott says “Help Me Spock”, a quote from a Star Trek episode where a character mimics Spock’s voice to trick Captain Kirk. There are some great manipulations of the voices through the delay at this point, but Scott’s contribution is both unintelligible in most places and too personal in others to be relevant to a listener. So this piece never made it to a regular release.
LF:
That’s Evan asking “Why Are We Here?” amidst the clatter of the Pots’n Pans Party. I think that’s Scott Childress responding to him and then being a general pain in the ass, though I’m not sure. I guess it’s obvious when it switches to “Help Me Spock”….
“I’d Never Lie To You” (Joe Colorado)
LF:
I think “I’d Never Lie To You” is a Evan Cantor original, though I really don’t know, Evan will have to tell you!!
EC:
Even though I (Evan) wrote this and performed it solo for this recording, I remember nothing about this song. In retrospect, I can’t even figure out what kind of tuning I was using on the guitar. And I’ve tried. And I’m pretty good at figuring out that kind of stuff… Which is too bad, because I think it’s a good song and I’d be happy to play it again if I could only figure out how it goes. It should have seen regular release, but we probably thought it wasn’t sufficiently crazed at the time or perhaps we wanted rich people to spend money on our music and didn’t want them to be insulted by the verse about “you can’t trust the rich.” Er, well, probably not sufficiently crazed!
EC:
David’s near-Fyodor vocalization is strangely charming in its own way, but was recorded poorly and is unintelligible in most places. This version was not sufficiently crazed for regular release.
LF:
“Daydream Believer” sees me doing my best/worst imitation/parody of Davy Jones of The Monkees. I don’t think this was necessarily any more ridiculous than my similar treatment of Robert Plant that got “official” release on Cultural Sabotage, though my off-key singing was maybe just a little more chalk on blackboard jarring on this one! This came from the Mersey Less Beats session which was entirely acoustic except for Ed playing through his little battery fed Marshall amp, which he does on this one. At one point you can hear evidence of our spontaneous one take approach when I start to anticipate the start of a new verse only to cut myself off immediately when I apparently heard the music not going where I’d expected!
“My Gal Is Red Hot” (Good Enough For A Hell-Hole)
EC:
This begins with Evan’s overdub experiment, with three of his own voices going in a kind of round. The lines “My Gal Is Red Hot” are offset by “My gal likes to fuck”. “Red Hot” was a fifties rockabilly tune that had recently been revisited by punk-rocker Robert Gordon at the time. David grunts and then his rhythm guitar comes roaring in with Evan’s bass. This part is unrelated to the song “Red Hot” and it fades out all too quickly. This should have been on a regular release. It’s possible that we were nervous about the obscene language but that had never stopped us before and certainly wouldn’t in the future.
LF:
I might be doing that growling underneath Evan's recitation of "My Gal is Red Hot". Then we hear the start of the already released "Have Money" (from the Sunday, Monday or Always tape), which quickly fades out, probably a mistake that was left in to add to the sense of it being an embarrassing mess....
“The Stupid Blues” (Big Man On Campus)
EC:
David’s rhythm, Evan’s lead guitar. This is another one of those “is it so bad it’s good?” tracks. It ends with a fabulous tape-gets-eaten effect, as no doubt the tape did get eaten by the machine. This is another one that should have been on a regular release. We may have felt it was redundant with the other “bad blues” pieces already released.
LF:
Oh hey, more stupid blues, this time actually just called “The Stupid Blues”! This one is bad because I’m even worse at (flanged) blues rhythm guitar than Evan is at blues lead guitar! I think Evan intentionally manipulated the reel to reel tape into sounding like something was getting eaten during the mix-down….
“I’m Sick I’m Eighteen” (BMOC)
EC:
An alternate instrumental version of one of our old favorites. Sounds like Evan experimenting with overdubbed guitars. Too mellow and not sufficiently sick or twisted for regular release.
LF:
On another early duo session, Evan competently plays Alice Cooper’s “Eighteen” while I embarrass myself on (flanged) lead guitar! I almost know some of the basics of how to play lead guitar, almost…. I have to say that at least WoG got me out of some of the comfort zones that I’ve since fallen back into! Whether the world is any better off for that or not, I’ll leave to posterity….
“Ed’s Brain” (Vegetables Behind The Wheel)
EC:
The title refers to a Star Trek episode, “Spock’s Brain”. Ed’s guitar sounds like a steel drum and the leads are mainly by Evan until he starts blocking out a rhythm pattern. It eventually devolves into one of Evan’s typical death-metal minor-key doom riffs. It ends with Evan’s voice crying out “I want to go back home to Greenland”. While this is not a bad piece, it’s not truly outstanding and we likely felt it was redundant to a lot of the stuff we had already released.
LF:
Ed must have been using a flanger in its non-swooshing mode to get this very metallic sound. I was clattering on something while he and Evan dueled it out…. I think Evan named this in reference to the Star Trek episode called “Spock’s Brain”….
“I Am Iron Man” (Charity Cases)
EC:
This is an alternate version of a riff we revisited on occasion. This time it is just Evan on bass and Ed on lead guitar. Nothing particularly exciting and, again, it was redundant to another version previously released.
LF:
Oy vey, this rendition of “I Am Iron Man” sees more of my flailing attempts at lead guitar. I swear, it’s not my fault, I take no responsibility, Evan made me do it! Twisted my arm, put a gun to my head, you name it! No not really, I was a willing accomplice to this crime…. It’s almost good near the end when I stop trying to play notes…. (I guess this really IS embarrassing, to me, anyway!)
“Cheap/Throbbing Idiocy” (Charity Cases)
LF:
I originally performed “Cheap” as a solo piece on which I overdubbed all the parts on the reel-to-reel machine Evan had lent me. This was our attempt to re-create that magic (?) as a duo. The expression of angst is there but maybe not the sincerity, though there’s a few good lines, like Evan demanding that I leave a tip and my asking where does your shit go anyway. Then Evan reads something of his own (“Throbbing Idiocy”) while I continue the same “Cheap” riff and end with my own exclamation in reference to his words….
EC:
This is an alternate version of Little Fyodor’s solo vehicle that appeared on The Many Faces Of Mr. Morocco. This is another case where it appears we wanted to develop the idea and pursue it further but then decided the results weren’t what we had hoped. “Throbbing Idiocy” is Evan’s recitation that was tacked on at the end alongside David’s relentless rhythm guitar.
“We Like Michael” (Psychotic Bozos)
EC:
With the radio sounds in the mix up front, it appears we were trying to tune in Michael Bellan. Michael had been the charismatic leader of Rumours of Marriage, the band that predated WoG with Ed and Evan that also included occasional WoG participant Brad Carton. David’s voice insinuates that Michael has gone to hell. There are a lot of hellos from the old bunch and talk of New York City, where Michael had gone after leaving Rumours Of Marriage the previous year. He had essentially been swallowed up the city and we may have been wondering, not for the last time either, what had become of him. This is such an inside joke, there was no point in putting it on a regular release. Besides, it just wasn’t that strong a track in the first place.
LF:
“We Like Michael” was an audio letter of sorts. The “Michael” in question was Mikal Belan, formerly of Rumours of Marriage, the band in which Evan met Ed and Brad. “Ed would say hello except he had to work at the airport today”! Well I guess we know now why Ed missed the Psychotic Bozos session! Airports are open 7 days a week, so I guess Ed had to work some weekends. Evan also mentions Rianne, who was also in RoM and who also moved east with Mikal. There were some names mentioned I don’t recognize, though Evan also mentions a few of the early pre-WoG band names. The synthesizer being played was brought by Brad and is probably being played by Brad or Rachel, the gal he also brought to the session. I think that’s me yelling “in hell” near the beginning….
“Why Are We Here?/Help Me Spock” (Pots’n Pans Party)
EC:
This is the heavily echoed Pots’n Pans Party. Evan and Scott Childress’ voices are run through a digital delay and Evan is cracking up as he intones “why why why why”. Scott is mostly unintelligible until he begins talking about “stereophonic sound” and taunting Evan: “Mr. Virginia! Never seen a canyon before!” Scott goes on, makes fun of the bunch of stoned people all banging on pans and instructs us to stop. Evan claims he “had to keep drinking.” Scott says “Help Me Spock”, a quote from a Star Trek episode where a character mimics Spock’s voice to trick Captain Kirk. There are some great manipulations of the voices through the delay at this point, but Scott’s contribution is both unintelligible in most places and too personal in others to be relevant to a listener. So this piece never made it to a regular release.
LF:
That’s Evan asking “Why Are We Here?” amidst the clatter of the Pots’n Pans Party. I think that’s Scott Childress responding to him and then being a general pain in the ass, though I’m not sure. I guess it’s obvious when it switches to “Help Me Spock”….
“I’d Never Lie To You” (Joe Colorado)
LF:
I think “I’d Never Lie To You” is a Evan Cantor original, though I really don’t know, Evan will have to tell you!!
EC:
Even though I (Evan) wrote this and performed it solo for this recording, I remember nothing about this song. In retrospect, I can’t even figure out what kind of tuning I was using on the guitar. And I’ve tried. And I’m pretty good at figuring out that kind of stuff… Which is too bad, because I think it’s a good song and I’d be happy to play it again if I could only figure out how it goes. It should have seen regular release, but we probably thought it wasn’t sufficiently crazed at the time or perhaps we wanted rich people to spend money on our music and didn’t want them to be insulted by the verse about “you can’t trust the rich.” Er, well, probably not sufficiently crazed!
