WoG 020
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Above: One of a kind cover of the mysterious case of Pussy Lust, from the collection of Hal McGee
Below: From the May 1985 Cause And Effect Cassette Distribution Catalog, entry written by Hal McGee
Below: From the May 1985 Cause And Effect Cassette Distribution Catalog, entry written by Hal McGee
Little Fyodor:
The Mysterious Case of Pussy Lust was our follow up to Before …And After and our attempt to follow up on the latter’s success, though it was by no means an attempt to re-make that tape, its primary similarities being in the continuation of the shorter 45 minute (approximately) format and the attendant focus on shorter pieces and overdub projects over party jams, though there is a bit more improv and Ed does make more of a contribution and Brad Carton even returns (making me a liar when I said Crazed to the Core was his WoG swan song). Most importantly, it was just a whole new tape and we were always covering new territory….
Evan Cantor:
I was obviously indulging a fascination with James Bond as we had already visited the “James Bond Theme” on Wanna Beer? The invention of the character “Pussy Lust” recalls “Pussy Galore” from the movie Octopussy. I wrote an entire story about her for the catalog at that time. In many ways a “sequel” or companion piece to Before…And After, this release continues what had become a tried-and-true formula for Walls of Genius, namely several solo pieces by David and Evan, a solo piece solicited from Ed, a session (1-5-84) w/drummer Brad Carton, and a couple of collaborative pieces from David and Evan. More about why there was so much solo material in my track description for “Date With A Demon”.
The Mysterious Case of Pussy Lust was our follow up to Before …And After and our attempt to follow up on the latter’s success, though it was by no means an attempt to re-make that tape, its primary similarities being in the continuation of the shorter 45 minute (approximately) format and the attendant focus on shorter pieces and overdub projects over party jams, though there is a bit more improv and Ed does make more of a contribution and Brad Carton even returns (making me a liar when I said Crazed to the Core was his WoG swan song). Most importantly, it was just a whole new tape and we were always covering new territory….
Evan Cantor:
I was obviously indulging a fascination with James Bond as we had already visited the “James Bond Theme” on Wanna Beer? The invention of the character “Pussy Lust” recalls “Pussy Galore” from the movie Octopussy. I wrote an entire story about her for the catalog at that time. In many ways a “sequel” or companion piece to Before…And After, this release continues what had become a tried-and-true formula for Walls of Genius, namely several solo pieces by David and Evan, a solo piece solicited from Ed, a session (1-5-84) w/drummer Brad Carton, and a couple of collaborative pieces from David and Evan. More about why there was so much solo material in my track description for “Date With A Demon”.
EC:
One reviewer called this release a bad homage to Frank Zappa and the Mothers Of Invention. Now you might think that Walls Of Genius was a great admirer of Zappa, especially since Zappa had made a name for himself not so much for stellar musicianship and ensemble leadership, but with humorous material such as “Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow”. The truth, for me at least, is that I always wanted to like Zappa more than I did. It took me many years to reconcile myself that no matter how much I admired Zappa’s musicianship and the ideas he conveyed, I just didn’t get off on the music. I had had some Zappa records and, later on, a couple of Zappa discs, but traded them in the wake of realizing that I never listened to them. So when this reviewer compared us, not entirely positively, to Zappa, all I could do was laugh.
LF:
The reviews for this tape were immediately and consistently deflating in light of the reaction to Before …And After. Evan seemed to take it particularly hard, telling someone in a letter that the tape had been roundly panned in the underground press, though that wasn’t exactly true. Most of the reviews had actually been what I’d call mixed, though they had been getting slightly worse with each new one until we did get one god awful slam from a reviewer in Unsound. He called us a bunch of pimply teenagers out to imitate our hero Frank Zappa! He certainly had the right to not like the tape, but -- Zappa imitators? I doubt we ever even mentioned Zappa to each other. He also complained that we used our “rejection” as a badge of honor or some such (going off of memory here), prompting our musician friend Charlie Verrette to comment, “Since when has rejection been inappropriate subject matter for rock ‘n’ roll?” Good point, that. Maybe such a pan demonstrated that we’d managed to build up enough of a name, in some circles anyway, to have actually become targets, but it’s not like we were ever that “big”, not even enough to turn a profit, and the underground press was still the primary way people in this worldwide scene got their information about what was going on and who was doing it. And even if this was the only complete pan we got, the mixed reviews were disappointing and confounding as well.
For instance, in his review of Pussy Lust in OP Magazine, Richie Unterberger said this tape was better than the vast majority of underground cassette releases he’d heard, but you could be forgiven for missing that as every other sentence he wrote in that review merely compared the tape unfavorably to Before …And After. “Where is the political satire?” he complained. The thought occurs, mightn’t a critic be equally justified to complain if we seemed to be repeating ourselves? Not to diss on Richie, who has certainly said some great stuff about Walls of Genius, including mentioning us in his great book, Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll, and whom I’m in awe of for managing to carve out a career as a rock music historian. It’s just ironic that even a reviewer who seemed to like the tape mostly focused on his disappointment with it! And then, as I’ve said, it just went south from there. I was bugged, but I like to think I can keep criticism in perspective. Hell, some people hate the Beatles, and I once met a classical music aficionado who thought Beethoven was “too perfect”, etc. I did get the impression that Evan took the criticism somewhat harder and that it may have played a role in coloring his view of the underground scene and his place in it….
(Inserted note. Just noticed that the reviewer who hated Pussy enough to project physical and personality flaws upon us was the same person who previously gave a brief but highly complimentary review to Ludovico Treatment! I wonder if he knew they were both by the same band!?!)
This tape kind of had three themes: airports, tape speed differentials and, obviously, sex, that last one being treated in a way that, yes, reflected our sense of rejection and cynicism toward the subject (albeit more subtly not only that). Certainly the slap in the face delivered by my own composition, “Everybody’s Fucking”, right from the start likely put some people off right away. There’s four renditions of it on Side A, and it’s a love/hate type of thing that would certainly color anyone’s view of at least that side as it just keeps coming back. I remember when I toured with Negativland in 1993, their tour manager said I should make a demo tape to garner gigs and that I should make sure to use that song, which I had been playing in my set and which he thought was especially great. When I mentioned that it might turn some people off, he said, well, just don’t put it first! Heh. Actually my only regret is with the arrangement of the four renditions to each other as I think it’s too linear, each one being a buildup over the previous one, and by the end it I think it kind of leaves people a little flat and empty because the buildup is just too predictable, especially if they were prone to finding it gratuitous anyway. So I wish I had done something different with the order, like built it up then moved it backwards then built it up again, or built it up and then ended on a final step back. But alas, present day revisionism won’t change what was….
One reviewer called this release a bad homage to Frank Zappa and the Mothers Of Invention. Now you might think that Walls Of Genius was a great admirer of Zappa, especially since Zappa had made a name for himself not so much for stellar musicianship and ensemble leadership, but with humorous material such as “Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow”. The truth, for me at least, is that I always wanted to like Zappa more than I did. It took me many years to reconcile myself that no matter how much I admired Zappa’s musicianship and the ideas he conveyed, I just didn’t get off on the music. I had had some Zappa records and, later on, a couple of Zappa discs, but traded them in the wake of realizing that I never listened to them. So when this reviewer compared us, not entirely positively, to Zappa, all I could do was laugh.
LF:
The reviews for this tape were immediately and consistently deflating in light of the reaction to Before …And After. Evan seemed to take it particularly hard, telling someone in a letter that the tape had been roundly panned in the underground press, though that wasn’t exactly true. Most of the reviews had actually been what I’d call mixed, though they had been getting slightly worse with each new one until we did get one god awful slam from a reviewer in Unsound. He called us a bunch of pimply teenagers out to imitate our hero Frank Zappa! He certainly had the right to not like the tape, but -- Zappa imitators? I doubt we ever even mentioned Zappa to each other. He also complained that we used our “rejection” as a badge of honor or some such (going off of memory here), prompting our musician friend Charlie Verrette to comment, “Since when has rejection been inappropriate subject matter for rock ‘n’ roll?” Good point, that. Maybe such a pan demonstrated that we’d managed to build up enough of a name, in some circles anyway, to have actually become targets, but it’s not like we were ever that “big”, not even enough to turn a profit, and the underground press was still the primary way people in this worldwide scene got their information about what was going on and who was doing it. And even if this was the only complete pan we got, the mixed reviews were disappointing and confounding as well.
For instance, in his review of Pussy Lust in OP Magazine, Richie Unterberger said this tape was better than the vast majority of underground cassette releases he’d heard, but you could be forgiven for missing that as every other sentence he wrote in that review merely compared the tape unfavorably to Before …And After. “Where is the political satire?” he complained. The thought occurs, mightn’t a critic be equally justified to complain if we seemed to be repeating ourselves? Not to diss on Richie, who has certainly said some great stuff about Walls of Genius, including mentioning us in his great book, Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll, and whom I’m in awe of for managing to carve out a career as a rock music historian. It’s just ironic that even a reviewer who seemed to like the tape mostly focused on his disappointment with it! And then, as I’ve said, it just went south from there. I was bugged, but I like to think I can keep criticism in perspective. Hell, some people hate the Beatles, and I once met a classical music aficionado who thought Beethoven was “too perfect”, etc. I did get the impression that Evan took the criticism somewhat harder and that it may have played a role in coloring his view of the underground scene and his place in it….
(Inserted note. Just noticed that the reviewer who hated Pussy enough to project physical and personality flaws upon us was the same person who previously gave a brief but highly complimentary review to Ludovico Treatment! I wonder if he knew they were both by the same band!?!)
This tape kind of had three themes: airports, tape speed differentials and, obviously, sex, that last one being treated in a way that, yes, reflected our sense of rejection and cynicism toward the subject (albeit more subtly not only that). Certainly the slap in the face delivered by my own composition, “Everybody’s Fucking”, right from the start likely put some people off right away. There’s four renditions of it on Side A, and it’s a love/hate type of thing that would certainly color anyone’s view of at least that side as it just keeps coming back. I remember when I toured with Negativland in 1993, their tour manager said I should make a demo tape to garner gigs and that I should make sure to use that song, which I had been playing in my set and which he thought was especially great. When I mentioned that it might turn some people off, he said, well, just don’t put it first! Heh. Actually my only regret is with the arrangement of the four renditions to each other as I think it’s too linear, each one being a buildup over the previous one, and by the end it I think it kind of leaves people a little flat and empty because the buildup is just too predictable, especially if they were prone to finding it gratuitous anyway. So I wish I had done something different with the order, like built it up then moved it backwards then built it up again, or built it up and then ended on a final step back. But alas, present day revisionism won’t change what was….
WALLS OF GENIUS
the mysterious case of
Pussy Lust
W.O.G. 4520 1985
WALLS OF GENIUS PERSONNEL:
(Little) Fyodor: Kalamazoo guitar, electronic percussion, shower curtain, synthesizer, bongos, percussion, Farfisa organ, kazoo
Joe (Evan Cantor): Acoustic guitar, SG guitar, cork & screw, bass guitar, percussion, Farfisa organ, harmonica
Red (Ed Fowler): Tapes, Stratocaster guitar, bells, slidewhistle
Brad Carton on Drums & Addtl Perc.
Recorded December 1984 and January 1985.
the mysterious case of
Pussy Lust
W.O.G. 4520 1985
WALLS OF GENIUS PERSONNEL:
(Little) Fyodor: Kalamazoo guitar, electronic percussion, shower curtain, synthesizer, bongos, percussion, Farfisa organ, kazoo
Joe (Evan Cantor): Acoustic guitar, SG guitar, cork & screw, bass guitar, percussion, Farfisa organ, harmonica
Red (Ed Fowler): Tapes, Stratocaster guitar, bells, slidewhistle
Brad Carton on Drums & Addtl Perc.
Recorded December 1984 and January 1985.
EC:
The cover featured full-color cut-outs of women in swimsuits from a swimsuit catalog that I had taken home from the CU Recreation Center, where I worked. So each copy had a unique image. The title lettering was done with Letraset and the notes were made on a typewriter, reduced for photocopying. We thanked the “Sleepless Nights people at KGNU”, a crew of late night dee-jays who sometimes played our music on the air, which included our muses Stacy Benedict and Martha Roskowski. We thanked Brad Carton for his contributions on drums and additional percussion. We also thanked “Queen Bees and their Devoted Drones everywhere”, with the added comment “Miniskirts and Boots”. We were horny little devils! That was the over-riding theme of this particular outing. The notes featured a drawing of a heart with scars on it. The cassette itself had a label with a checkerboard pattern and little round labels stamped “A” and “B”. The credits were to Fyodor, Joe and Red, an extension of the alternate personalities theme.
LF:
The packaging for this tape was brilliant. Every cover was different, though each one was a cropped pic of a hot, sexy bathing beauty, the result of bathing suit advertising publications that Evan could collect at his new job at the University of Colorado Recreation Center, which included a swimming pool. Evan cut out the pictures and pasted them right onto the cassette cover, making for an attractive (ahem) color cover. There was a steady supply of these pictures coming to the Rec Center, so there was never any danger of running out. Evan would usually cut off the model’s head to help fit the picture into the allotted space but also with the result of making it especially objectifying, hopefully to the degree of being satirically so. Personally, I can attest that as a desperately horny 20-something, I was sure not averse to seeing women as body parts – and hell, y’know I’m still not entirely not (that’s not all I see them as, sure, but still, yeah). We weren’t afraid to reflect that reality, though this was hardly purely a frat boy gaze type of thing and it could just as easily be taken as a critical commentary of the phenomenon as it could be some sort of har-har look at that bod type message. Which was it meant to be? Well, it was meant to be open to interpretation, and I think it’s fair enough to say that we found our horny predicament to be as comical and absurd as it was painful and somehow seemed unjust, etc….
The cover featured full-color cut-outs of women in swimsuits from a swimsuit catalog that I had taken home from the CU Recreation Center, where I worked. So each copy had a unique image. The title lettering was done with Letraset and the notes were made on a typewriter, reduced for photocopying. We thanked the “Sleepless Nights people at KGNU”, a crew of late night dee-jays who sometimes played our music on the air, which included our muses Stacy Benedict and Martha Roskowski. We thanked Brad Carton for his contributions on drums and additional percussion. We also thanked “Queen Bees and their Devoted Drones everywhere”, with the added comment “Miniskirts and Boots”. We were horny little devils! That was the over-riding theme of this particular outing. The notes featured a drawing of a heart with scars on it. The cassette itself had a label with a checkerboard pattern and little round labels stamped “A” and “B”. The credits were to Fyodor, Joe and Red, an extension of the alternate personalities theme.
LF:
The packaging for this tape was brilliant. Every cover was different, though each one was a cropped pic of a hot, sexy bathing beauty, the result of bathing suit advertising publications that Evan could collect at his new job at the University of Colorado Recreation Center, which included a swimming pool. Evan cut out the pictures and pasted them right onto the cassette cover, making for an attractive (ahem) color cover. There was a steady supply of these pictures coming to the Rec Center, so there was never any danger of running out. Evan would usually cut off the model’s head to help fit the picture into the allotted space but also with the result of making it especially objectifying, hopefully to the degree of being satirically so. Personally, I can attest that as a desperately horny 20-something, I was sure not averse to seeing women as body parts – and hell, y’know I’m still not entirely not (that’s not all I see them as, sure, but still, yeah). We weren’t afraid to reflect that reality, though this was hardly purely a frat boy gaze type of thing and it could just as easily be taken as a critical commentary of the phenomenon as it could be some sort of har-har look at that bod type message. Which was it meant to be? Well, it was meant to be open to interpretation, and I think it’s fair enough to say that we found our horny predicament to be as comical and absurd as it was painful and somehow seemed unjust, etc….
LF:
The title seems too obvious to need explanation, but I’ll point out that the James Bond movie Octopussy was released in 1983. Evan slices our musical persona names down to one word each on the liner notes. He gets a little more abstract with the thanks, just thanking the whole late night shift at KGNU (Sleepless Nights is the generic name KGNU uses for programs starting at midnight and running till 3 AM). He then furthers the concept of the tape by dedicating it to “Queen Bees and their Devoted Drones”, perhaps a hint at an awareness that the worship of sexual allure should be kept in perspective, all the while we were engaging in it ourselves. I’ll use this paragraph to also mention that personally I think that, well maybe aside from the one inimitable track of “Four More Years”, this tape was a good 95% as good as Before …And After in my estimation. That said, a lot comes down to one’s view of “Everybody’s Fucking”….
The title seems too obvious to need explanation, but I’ll point out that the James Bond movie Octopussy was released in 1983. Evan slices our musical persona names down to one word each on the liner notes. He gets a little more abstract with the thanks, just thanking the whole late night shift at KGNU (Sleepless Nights is the generic name KGNU uses for programs starting at midnight and running till 3 AM). He then furthers the concept of the tape by dedicating it to “Queen Bees and their Devoted Drones”, perhaps a hint at an awareness that the worship of sexual allure should be kept in perspective, all the while we were engaging in it ourselves. I’ll use this paragraph to also mention that personally I think that, well maybe aside from the one inimitable track of “Four More Years”, this tape was a good 95% as good as Before …And After in my estimation. That said, a lot comes down to one’s view of “Everybody’s Fucking”….
Side A
Everybody's Fucking (Lichtenverg)
Don't Scratch Me There (Lichtenverg)
Everybody's Fucking (Lichtenverg)
Valleri (Boyce, Hart)
The Humiliation Of It All (Lichtenverg)
Everybody's Fucking (Lichtenverg)
Date With A Demon (Cantor)
Rewards (Cantor)
Bolt From The Blue (Lichtenverg)
Everybody's Fucking (Lichtenverg)
Pussy Lust (Cantor)
My World Is Empty Without You, Babe (Holland, Dozier, Holland)
Everybody's Fucking (Lichtenverg)
Don't Scratch Me There (Lichtenverg)
Everybody's Fucking (Lichtenverg)
Valleri (Boyce, Hart)
The Humiliation Of It All (Lichtenverg)
Everybody's Fucking (Lichtenverg)
Date With A Demon (Cantor)
Rewards (Cantor)
Bolt From The Blue (Lichtenverg)
Everybody's Fucking (Lichtenverg)
Pussy Lust (Cantor)
My World Is Empty Without You, Babe (Holland, Dozier, Holland)
“Everybody’s Fucking”
EC:
Little Fyodor sings this adorable little ditty all by himself. This is a kind of more-well-developed piece on the theme of “I Like The Way Your Boobs Bounce” [on Crazed To The Core]. Side A featured several versions of this short ditty, each one a little more desperate and crazed than the one before it.
LF:
There’s a bit of a time warp in my memory of this story, but I’ll tell it to you as I remember it. We had just completed our tape The Guilt Versus Time-Money Complex on which we included a collage of portions of the KGNU “Go For It” call-in show, which included a few bits from one Helen Broderick. Having identified her as the woman we heard on the show reading what we sometimes interpreted as some very sexual-sounding poetry, we decided to get her a copy of our tape in honor of her appearance on it. We had not yet met her in person, but we evidently had her address and must have planned to send her her copy shortly when I stayed up one morning instead of going beddy bye as usual right after one of my graveyard work shifts (something that always put me in a weird head space), and the thought occurred to me that I could use this time to deliver the tape straight to Helen’s door as she lived only a five or ten minute drive away. It was probably still fairly early in the morning when I arrived at the address, and what do you think I encountered there but the sound of the cries of love-making emanating from somewhere inside. What an appropriately ironic but weird introduction to this still as yet unseen love goddess! I quietly left the tape inside her screen door and departed, feeling, well, “shaken” would be a bit strong, but this 26 year old virgin was definitely affected! By the time I’d finished the short drive home, I’d written the song. Heh, I guess that’s maybe not such a big deal considering there’s not all that much to it….
It may have been right away or it may have taken a while (since Pussy Lust was probably released a year or more after Guilt Vs. Time, thus the time warp of which I spoke), but at some point I sat myself down with my guitar and my Jazz-Chorus amp and a microphone leading into some recording apparatus (I may have recorded it all straight to cassette as I hadn’t planned on any overdubs, and maybe this was before I had Evan’s permission to use his four track?) and recorded approximately twenty takes of this song. Obviously, it was pretty easy to record that many since the song is so short! I think my original motivation was just to see what different ways I could do it because I wasn’t sure which way would be “best”. But there was value in the various different approaches, and so we thought it would be funny to include four different versions of the song on Side A of the tape (the song’s brevity also lent itself to this), with each one building up in the intensity or looseness or emotionality of its performance over the previous one. The first one is sung in a very understated or plaintive or almost stoic style (“laconic”?), while by the last one I’m screaming in full Fyodor unholiness.
The songs were placed on Side A of the tape such that each one was separated by progressively one more additional track of something else before it than the last one. I.e., zero songs before the first one, then one then two then three songs separating the last two.
Some people hated this song and considered it obnoxious and annoying and puerile. Charlie Verrette thought it was the best thing WoG had ever done. Brian Kraft asked me how I got Syd Barrett to play guitar (something about the sound of the reverb). I’ve performed it at almost all Little Fyodor shows in the past 28 years, and in fact my current bass player, one Amadeus Tonguefingers, has convinced me recently that we should do it a cappella, with each band member singing their instrumental part, to give it a special spin since everyone already knows it so well.
EC:
Little Fyodor sings this adorable little ditty all by himself. This is a kind of more-well-developed piece on the theme of “I Like The Way Your Boobs Bounce” [on Crazed To The Core]. Side A featured several versions of this short ditty, each one a little more desperate and crazed than the one before it.
LF:
There’s a bit of a time warp in my memory of this story, but I’ll tell it to you as I remember it. We had just completed our tape The Guilt Versus Time-Money Complex on which we included a collage of portions of the KGNU “Go For It” call-in show, which included a few bits from one Helen Broderick. Having identified her as the woman we heard on the show reading what we sometimes interpreted as some very sexual-sounding poetry, we decided to get her a copy of our tape in honor of her appearance on it. We had not yet met her in person, but we evidently had her address and must have planned to send her her copy shortly when I stayed up one morning instead of going beddy bye as usual right after one of my graveyard work shifts (something that always put me in a weird head space), and the thought occurred to me that I could use this time to deliver the tape straight to Helen’s door as she lived only a five or ten minute drive away. It was probably still fairly early in the morning when I arrived at the address, and what do you think I encountered there but the sound of the cries of love-making emanating from somewhere inside. What an appropriately ironic but weird introduction to this still as yet unseen love goddess! I quietly left the tape inside her screen door and departed, feeling, well, “shaken” would be a bit strong, but this 26 year old virgin was definitely affected! By the time I’d finished the short drive home, I’d written the song. Heh, I guess that’s maybe not such a big deal considering there’s not all that much to it….
It may have been right away or it may have taken a while (since Pussy Lust was probably released a year or more after Guilt Vs. Time, thus the time warp of which I spoke), but at some point I sat myself down with my guitar and my Jazz-Chorus amp and a microphone leading into some recording apparatus (I may have recorded it all straight to cassette as I hadn’t planned on any overdubs, and maybe this was before I had Evan’s permission to use his four track?) and recorded approximately twenty takes of this song. Obviously, it was pretty easy to record that many since the song is so short! I think my original motivation was just to see what different ways I could do it because I wasn’t sure which way would be “best”. But there was value in the various different approaches, and so we thought it would be funny to include four different versions of the song on Side A of the tape (the song’s brevity also lent itself to this), with each one building up in the intensity or looseness or emotionality of its performance over the previous one. The first one is sung in a very understated or plaintive or almost stoic style (“laconic”?), while by the last one I’m screaming in full Fyodor unholiness.
The songs were placed on Side A of the tape such that each one was separated by progressively one more additional track of something else before it than the last one. I.e., zero songs before the first one, then one then two then three songs separating the last two.
Some people hated this song and considered it obnoxious and annoying and puerile. Charlie Verrette thought it was the best thing WoG had ever done. Brian Kraft asked me how I got Syd Barrett to play guitar (something about the sound of the reverb). I’ve performed it at almost all Little Fyodor shows in the past 28 years, and in fact my current bass player, one Amadeus Tonguefingers, has convinced me recently that we should do it a cappella, with each band member singing their instrumental part, to give it a special spin since everyone already knows it so well.
Above, Little Fyodor's personal copy of Pussy Lust.
LF:
After we sent Pussy Lust to the local arts oriented weekly, Westword, they printed some of the lyrics (slightly misprinted as “everybody’s fucking, aren’t you glad that I’m not”) and I showed this to a female co-worker whose response when I asked her what she thought about it was, “I think it’s sexist. And disgusting.” Uh-oh. I’ve actually wondered if this contributed to my firing not long after! This was ironic since I had previously always kept pretty mum about my musical activities at work, but then the aforementioned musical friend Charlie Verrette started working at the Hotel Boulderado as a busboy in one of its several restaurants, and he was the type to always proudly tell the world about his own musical activities, and he started proudly telling people at the Boulderado about mine as well, so then I thought what the hell, I’ll brag on myself too and show people how I got quoted in the paper…. This woman was the person I prepared my work for, and I’d always thought we’d got on just fine, but suddenly she was reporting to my superiors that I didn’t care about my work and was dumping it all on her! In retrospect I realized there was at least one other occasion where I probably came across as being too cavalier about some issue she had (I could be as cavalier as I liked previously on the graveyard shift!), but still, I wonder if her view of my song lyrics had some effect as well. In hindsight it’s also perfectly fine that I got fired, but still, it’s interesting….
After we sent Pussy Lust to the local arts oriented weekly, Westword, they printed some of the lyrics (slightly misprinted as “everybody’s fucking, aren’t you glad that I’m not”) and I showed this to a female co-worker whose response when I asked her what she thought about it was, “I think it’s sexist. And disgusting.” Uh-oh. I’ve actually wondered if this contributed to my firing not long after! This was ironic since I had previously always kept pretty mum about my musical activities at work, but then the aforementioned musical friend Charlie Verrette started working at the Hotel Boulderado as a busboy in one of its several restaurants, and he was the type to always proudly tell the world about his own musical activities, and he started proudly telling people at the Boulderado about mine as well, so then I thought what the hell, I’ll brag on myself too and show people how I got quoted in the paper…. This woman was the person I prepared my work for, and I’d always thought we’d got on just fine, but suddenly she was reporting to my superiors that I didn’t care about my work and was dumping it all on her! In retrospect I realized there was at least one other occasion where I probably came across as being too cavalier about some issue she had (I could be as cavalier as I liked previously on the graveyard shift!), but still, I wonder if her view of my song lyrics had some effect as well. In hindsight it’s also perfectly fine that I got fired, but still, it’s interesting….
“Don’t Scratch Me There”
EC:
David’s solo work, with a drum machine and scratchy vinyl sounds. This may have been the “cork and screw” credited (to Evan). There’s also a machine whine, likely David on the synthesizer. We were aware of a great version of the song “Don’t Touch Me There” by the Tubes, so the title (David’s) may be referencing that.
LF:
I wish I could remember more of the origin of “Don’t Scratch Me There”, whether I had an idea and then sought to realize it or if I started out playing around with stuff, particularly the drum machine, and then found the concept. I’d lean toward the former. Either way, Evan found me scratching out sounds on a shower curtain while the drum machine (still the Mattel Synsonics; I wonder when I finally got my other one??) played something resembling a funky beat (by this white boy’s standards, anyway) and a knowing glint came into his eyes as he silently made his way into the kitchen and returned with a corkscrew in a cork! So that’s what he plays, getting this gleeful squeak out of it, while I scratch away on the shower curtain. Our roles are almost reversed from usual as I’m more holding down the backbone of the piece while Evan has the chance to go apeshit on his corkscrew! His corkscrew playing almost sounds like a demonstratively freaking out hamster at times! Also on this piece is me playing siren sounds on the synthesizer. I played two sounds simultaneously using two different knobs, moving one down in pitch as the other was going up and vice versa. It’s because this was all done manually that the sirens are not consistent in their range, and it’s always annoyed me a little when I hear one or two of the more overtly stunted renderings. Also, Evan doubled the bass drum sound of the drum machine on the one beat with one of the bassier sounds he could get out of his roto-toms in order to give the sound of that beat more presence. He starts doing this when the “scratching” comes in, not on the intro. The title is a play on The Tubes’ classic song but otherwise has nothing to do with it.
“Valleri”
EC:
Evan’s solo outing on a Monkees’ cover tune. This is one of those completely emotionless, baritone vocal takes that changes the nature of the song completely. The vocal approach implies that Valleri is some kind of cock-teasing bitch giving the narrator a heavy case of the blue-balls. I learned it, piece-by-piece from a Monkees record. In those days, I had a lot of LPs. They’re all gone now and although I somehow got some Herman’s Hermits on cassette, I never bothered to get any more Monkees recordings. Somehow the music is so ubiquitous that I have had no desire to hear it at home. But! As a boy, my brothers and I regarded the Monkees as a kind of American version of the Beatles. We would stand in front of the record player and use badminton racquets to play air guitar along with our records and the Monkees were a big part of that. So they were very formative for us kids in the 60s. The Monkees’ TV show was probably based very much on the model of the Beatles’ A Hard Day's Night movie. I think they were very consciously going for that effect. I had no idea that the Monkees band was a manufactured production created mostly with studio musicians until many years later. In retrospect, when it comes to such 60s studio creations, I like the Grassroots far better than the Monkees, but we never covered a Grassroots tune. The Monkees tunes were just simple enough for me to figure out without the help of sheet music, which was expensive at the time, and no internet to point you in the right direction.
LF:
“Valleri” was all Evan, just him singing and playing with a little assistance from my digital delay, taking his stoic or “laconic” vocal style to its extreme, sometimes even letting it droop below a straight line, to use a visual description for sound…. It was about time we did a Monkees song!
“The Humiliation Of It All”
EC:
David’s solo work begins with a Farfisa organ theme and David’s Fyodor-squeals. I suspect that I am doing additional percussion. The Farfisa has a very carnival-like sound to it.
LF:
It seems quirky instrumentals were fast becoming my specialty. I don’t know that I had ever had a burning desire to express myself thusly, and the urge mostly dried up once WoG did, but while I felt an obligation to produce and had the opportunity to release whatever I could come up with for and on WoG, it kind of came naturally to me to work up simple keyboard melodies (simple as that was about all I could muster) to go along with whatever electronic rhythms I chanced upon and then overdub whatever else seemed to go along with it from what was available, from whatever was laying around or whatever. The “rhythm” for “The Humiliation of It All” was made up of some repetitive swirls that I worked out from my synthesizer’s automatic mode. The organ part might have been something I heard in my head but slightly more likely was something I chanced upon while noodling around on the instrument. I overdubbed items such as kazoo and bicycle horn and also a very poorly played Jew’s harp. I could never get the classic sound that one associates with the Jew’s harp, nor much sound out of it at all in fact, but I did get a little something out of it and what I got I overdubbed on this piece. (I should note, though it’s likely obvious, that we had been somewhat busy collecting items with which we could make odd or funny sounds; the sources of these various items varied with the item. I seem to remember paying a few bucks for the Jew’s harp somewhere sometime, maybe somewhere “legit” like a music store…? The bicycle horn was likely found (maybe by Frank Zygmunt?) or maybe purchased for change at a yard sale….)
Evan also plays percussion on this piece, apparently using his new percussion ensemble, a photo of which appears in the WoG Scrapbook, and this is probably its first appearance on a WoG tape (though “Date With a Demon”, just below, was actually recorded with it earlier). What this was was an assemblage all in one place of various percussion items Evan liked to play so that he could play them all at the same time without having to move around to get to them all, like a trap set. It included old WoG standbys like Evan’s roto-toms and the gong that was probably originally Ed’s, and it also included some newer items such as a small animal bone which might have been a cow’s vertebrae (small bone, that is, not small animal!).
EC:
David’s solo work, with a drum machine and scratchy vinyl sounds. This may have been the “cork and screw” credited (to Evan). There’s also a machine whine, likely David on the synthesizer. We were aware of a great version of the song “Don’t Touch Me There” by the Tubes, so the title (David’s) may be referencing that.
LF:
I wish I could remember more of the origin of “Don’t Scratch Me There”, whether I had an idea and then sought to realize it or if I started out playing around with stuff, particularly the drum machine, and then found the concept. I’d lean toward the former. Either way, Evan found me scratching out sounds on a shower curtain while the drum machine (still the Mattel Synsonics; I wonder when I finally got my other one??) played something resembling a funky beat (by this white boy’s standards, anyway) and a knowing glint came into his eyes as he silently made his way into the kitchen and returned with a corkscrew in a cork! So that’s what he plays, getting this gleeful squeak out of it, while I scratch away on the shower curtain. Our roles are almost reversed from usual as I’m more holding down the backbone of the piece while Evan has the chance to go apeshit on his corkscrew! His corkscrew playing almost sounds like a demonstratively freaking out hamster at times! Also on this piece is me playing siren sounds on the synthesizer. I played two sounds simultaneously using two different knobs, moving one down in pitch as the other was going up and vice versa. It’s because this was all done manually that the sirens are not consistent in their range, and it’s always annoyed me a little when I hear one or two of the more overtly stunted renderings. Also, Evan doubled the bass drum sound of the drum machine on the one beat with one of the bassier sounds he could get out of his roto-toms in order to give the sound of that beat more presence. He starts doing this when the “scratching” comes in, not on the intro. The title is a play on The Tubes’ classic song but otherwise has nothing to do with it.
“Valleri”
EC:
Evan’s solo outing on a Monkees’ cover tune. This is one of those completely emotionless, baritone vocal takes that changes the nature of the song completely. The vocal approach implies that Valleri is some kind of cock-teasing bitch giving the narrator a heavy case of the blue-balls. I learned it, piece-by-piece from a Monkees record. In those days, I had a lot of LPs. They’re all gone now and although I somehow got some Herman’s Hermits on cassette, I never bothered to get any more Monkees recordings. Somehow the music is so ubiquitous that I have had no desire to hear it at home. But! As a boy, my brothers and I regarded the Monkees as a kind of American version of the Beatles. We would stand in front of the record player and use badminton racquets to play air guitar along with our records and the Monkees were a big part of that. So they were very formative for us kids in the 60s. The Monkees’ TV show was probably based very much on the model of the Beatles’ A Hard Day's Night movie. I think they were very consciously going for that effect. I had no idea that the Monkees band was a manufactured production created mostly with studio musicians until many years later. In retrospect, when it comes to such 60s studio creations, I like the Grassroots far better than the Monkees, but we never covered a Grassroots tune. The Monkees tunes were just simple enough for me to figure out without the help of sheet music, which was expensive at the time, and no internet to point you in the right direction.
LF:
“Valleri” was all Evan, just him singing and playing with a little assistance from my digital delay, taking his stoic or “laconic” vocal style to its extreme, sometimes even letting it droop below a straight line, to use a visual description for sound…. It was about time we did a Monkees song!
“The Humiliation Of It All”
EC:
David’s solo work begins with a Farfisa organ theme and David’s Fyodor-squeals. I suspect that I am doing additional percussion. The Farfisa has a very carnival-like sound to it.
LF:
It seems quirky instrumentals were fast becoming my specialty. I don’t know that I had ever had a burning desire to express myself thusly, and the urge mostly dried up once WoG did, but while I felt an obligation to produce and had the opportunity to release whatever I could come up with for and on WoG, it kind of came naturally to me to work up simple keyboard melodies (simple as that was about all I could muster) to go along with whatever electronic rhythms I chanced upon and then overdub whatever else seemed to go along with it from what was available, from whatever was laying around or whatever. The “rhythm” for “The Humiliation of It All” was made up of some repetitive swirls that I worked out from my synthesizer’s automatic mode. The organ part might have been something I heard in my head but slightly more likely was something I chanced upon while noodling around on the instrument. I overdubbed items such as kazoo and bicycle horn and also a very poorly played Jew’s harp. I could never get the classic sound that one associates with the Jew’s harp, nor much sound out of it at all in fact, but I did get a little something out of it and what I got I overdubbed on this piece. (I should note, though it’s likely obvious, that we had been somewhat busy collecting items with which we could make odd or funny sounds; the sources of these various items varied with the item. I seem to remember paying a few bucks for the Jew’s harp somewhere sometime, maybe somewhere “legit” like a music store…? The bicycle horn was likely found (maybe by Frank Zygmunt?) or maybe purchased for change at a yard sale….)
Evan also plays percussion on this piece, apparently using his new percussion ensemble, a photo of which appears in the WoG Scrapbook, and this is probably its first appearance on a WoG tape (though “Date With a Demon”, just below, was actually recorded with it earlier). What this was was an assemblage all in one place of various percussion items Evan liked to play so that he could play them all at the same time without having to move around to get to them all, like a trap set. It included old WoG standbys like Evan’s roto-toms and the gong that was probably originally Ed’s, and it also included some newer items such as a small animal bone which might have been a cow’s vertebrae (small bone, that is, not small animal!).
All my overdubs are pretty much planned “on cue” affairs while Evan “improvises” his percussion part, at least in the way a drummer improvises when he goes into fills and such, I mean it’s just not completely planned or the same thing all the way through, as my overdubs are. Then at the end I end the insipidly happy carnival-esque melody and switch to switching back and forth between a chord on the organ as it normally sounded and a distorted sound that I got from hitting a switch (of what device, I wish I could remember). I think I had chanced upon this sound independently and thought it was neat and decided to tack it onto the end of this piece to give it a little avant-gardy grit. Maybe I had already thought of the title and thought this would represent the psychological dissonance underpinning the clowny outward appearance (a la Smokey Robinson?) of the melody, but I can’t say with certainty how it all developed, the title may have come later, though in that case it would still have been a reflection of how the two parts reflect on each other…. There’s no doubt I’ve felt this way plenty of times in my life, trying to look happy to hide my inner tension and unhappiness, though I doubt I set out to express this from the start of my work on this piece….
“Date With A Demon"
EC:
Evan’s solo work: Originally listed on the reel box as “Date With Evil”, this is a personal favorite. A two-chord dirge is helmed by the bass, playing chords, with doomsday organ overdubbed and evil laughter through a digital delay throughout. It is meant to represent a bad date.
At the time, my own sex life was essentially non-existent and I probably would have welcomed some dates, but I never did like bad dates and never felt comfortable taking undue advantage of women whom I thought I would not want to see again. It may also represent what you might think is going through a woman’s mind as she refuses you anything more than first base.
This is most definitely a response to my sex-less existence at the time, which was the result of a combination of factors, not the least of which was that a lot of folks in the local scene apparently thought that David and I were gay partners. What were they supposed to think? The assumption was based on the fact that we were fraternity brothers, had come to Colorado together, had an avant-garde art-band together, went on backpacking hiking vacations together and lived in the same house together. So I suppose this was a fair assumption. But not an accurate one. I believe that David was suffering, at this time, from the same sex-less existence as myself. I did have the one disappointing tête–à–tête with Helen, but that hardly counted as a sex-life to me.
By this time, there was also friction developing between David and myself. The Hall of Genius was a relatively disgusting place, sort of a lowbrow fraternity environment. It could have easily served as a poster-child for slobbiness and although I have never felt that I was a ‘neat-freak’, I blamed David for that. I would run a vacuum cleaner over the carpets one day and by the next, it looked like a tornado of filth had blown through. This was not a house to which I wanted, or felt that I could, bring a romantic interest, that the atmosphere itself would be a turn-off to anybody I wanted to turn on. To this day, I cannot stand puddles in the bathroom, smelly towels, dishes piled in the kitchen sink, things like that. So the Hall of Genius became a place from which I needed to escape occasionally. My absences contributed to the proliferation of solo tracks because David was so often asleep when I was working on music during the daylight hours and he had opportunities to do solo stuff when I was at work during the day and those times when I would periodically disappear from the scene. I don’t want to make too much of this phenomenon, it was simply the reality of our lives at that time.
LF:
Though I hesitate to claim that Evan was influenced by my lead, it’s a plausible enough possibility as he takes his approach further into the realm of what we might call quirkiness on this tape than ever before, even if “Date With a Demon” was hardly his first overdubbed instrumental (though at this point it becomes incumbent upon me to ask the perennial question, “Is it an instrumental if it includes non-verbal vocals?” I’m gonna run with, “Yes”!). One of the primary features of this piece was the recording of different tracks at different tape speeds. Evan’s percussion (on his new percussion ensemble!) and my synthesizer playing and maybe the intermittent Farfisa (thinking that’s Evan) were recorded at a faster speed than they were played back at during mix down, making them conversely slower than “real time” in the final result and thus giving them a distorted and ominous feeling. Evan’s evil (and echoed) laughter was recorded at its playback speed (thus played back in real time), as it of course needed nothing more to sound evil! There’s a two note (or two chord?) bass line subtly holding it all together (is it live or is it half-speed?). From the reel box notes, I glean that the synth and percussion were the original tracks, meaning the organ and bass were overdubbed. The organ also benefited from some of the shifting of delay settings that I used on my vocals on "Sister Schizo" [on Before ...and After]. That is, when you change the delay settings in the middle of a sound that’s going through it, you get some weird effects beyond mere echo. Heh-heh-heh, heh-heh-heh, heh-heh-heh….
“Rewards”
EC:
Evan’s solo work: The opposite of “Date With A Demon”, this is a brightly cheerful guitar workout utilizing different speeds on the reel-to-reel recorder (3 ½ and 7 ¾). There is actual high-pitch harmony vocals overdubbed, courtesy of recording the overdub at 3 ½ on a basic 7 ¾ track. Call it the “Chipmunks” effect!
LF:
“Rewards” is another such Evan quirky overdubbed instrumental, and I believe he played (and sang) everything on this. He reverses the above technique, recording some tracks at a slower speed to make them faster upon playback. (And from that previous track, we know he did this for effect, not to assist with deficient technique, a la George Martin!) I believe he’s even harmonizing with himself at different speeds. Another funhouse distortion of reality! Of course, speeding things up creates a light and silly feeling compared to the heavy and threatening effect of the slowed-down sounds. From the reel box notes, I would surmise this was originally titled “The Rewards of Solitude”. No idea why Evan changed it….
“Bolt From The Blue”
EC:
David’s solo work; organ comes in over synthesized bass. David’s voice is run through some kind of effect to achieve a wordless squealing whine.
LF:
I like the effect of combining machine and manual percussion, though it certainly presents a time-keeping challenge to the technically-challenged manual percussionist. This may again be my synthesizer holding down the electronic rhythm duties or it may be the first appearance of my Roland Drumatix that I know I got at some point, though if it’s the latter it must be going through some effects. And then I’m playing bongos too, as well as Farfisa and some (more?) synthesizer (kind of providing the “bolts”). I played everything on this one, another quirky one. Including some more insistent kazoo. I used the kazoo almost more as a vocal manipulator than as an instrument per se, as I mostly just kind of yell through it. I also mix some sustained and staccato organ playing as I did on “It’s A Scary World Out There”. Our new downstairs neighbor, Andy Brennan, with whom we jammed a couple of times though I don’t think he ever made it onto any of our releases except visually on the cover of Son Of Madness, told Evan this one sounded like a bossa nova, which made me wonder what exactly characterizes a bossa nova….
“Pussy Lust”
EC:
Evan’s solo acoustic guitar piece, with overdubs. This was an instrumental song, using a dropped-D tuning. One of my intentions with this piece was to ‘prove’ that regardless of whatever else we might do, the musicians in this group knew how to play their instruments. I had learned the dropped-D tuning because I used it on a folk song called “Railroad Bill”. The title is a double-entendre. It refers both to the invented character of ‘Pussy Lust’ as well as basic libidinal desire. As noted above, our collective sex lives were essentially non-existent at the time we made this album.
LF:
The ostensible title track of the tape, “Pussy Lust” (our only use of a title track?), was ironically sweet and sincere in contrast to its title and setting, written and played entirely by Evan on multi-tracked acoustic guitars (and bass?). Though an instrumental, it conceptually names and depicts the woman at the center of all this desire and mayhem, while musically it represented both Evan’s past and his nearish future poking their heads up as it’s reminiscent of both what he recorded just before joining Rumours of Marriage (the punk band in which he met Ed) and immediately after WoG’s breakup. In fact, Evan played bass back in Virginia alongside two acoustic guitarists in a band called the Folk Grass Blues Band. This was hardly the first WoG track that featured no overt attempts at humor, but it somehow managed to quietly scream, “I am SERIOUS music, unlike all the rest of WoG!” unlike anything else by WoG. Though perhaps its seriousness was its joke, its humor? Well, at least its irony, as I put it originally. It most reminds me of an earlier Neil Young influenced song of his called “Sleep With Me” for its sense of plaintive sexual pleading, though there’s also more serenity and optimism in “Pussy Lust’s” vibe. I think it reflects a similar view on male sexual longing as what I’ve always projected onto Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” (though I realize Bach claimed that was about a desire for God; George Harrison would likely say, “Whassa difference?”). I at one point suggested to Evan that we overdub both of us singing along with the melody in goofy voices that I demonstrated for him (maybe think Scooby-Doo), and he looked at me with some horror and made it clear that wasn’t going to happen, and I immediately dropped it….
“My World Is Empty Without You Babe”
EC:
This is my rockin’ cover of the Supremes’ hit, culled from my straight repertoire. It features my screaming lead guitar throughout, with a very sarcastic vocal approach, as if to say, “yeah right, empty… sure, oh and fuck you, too…” I believe David added percussion to this one.
LF:
This cover of the classic Supremes’ song was Evan’s idea and was played entirely by Evan except for me on bongos and gong. Evan sings this in a nasally voice that makes it goofy enough to fit in with WoG while also expressing an urgency that I’m sure he wanted to come through as well. I played the gong from across the room which Evan took pains to get me to do to get a more crashing kind of sound out of it. I was used to playing the gong right up close to the microphone, as I did on “March Slob” [on Before ...and After], to capture a lot of the subtler and bassier and more reverberant nuances of its sound, but Evan wanted a different effect, so he implored me to move back from the mike, and so I took a step back. “Further!” implored Evan further. I took another couple of steps back. “More!” Finally I relented and got way far away from the mike, and he got the effect he was after! He later expressed his pride in getting after me to do that, and he’s right, I probably would have given up if someone had given me that hard of a time….
“Date With A Demon"
EC:
Evan’s solo work: Originally listed on the reel box as “Date With Evil”, this is a personal favorite. A two-chord dirge is helmed by the bass, playing chords, with doomsday organ overdubbed and evil laughter through a digital delay throughout. It is meant to represent a bad date.
At the time, my own sex life was essentially non-existent and I probably would have welcomed some dates, but I never did like bad dates and never felt comfortable taking undue advantage of women whom I thought I would not want to see again. It may also represent what you might think is going through a woman’s mind as she refuses you anything more than first base.
This is most definitely a response to my sex-less existence at the time, which was the result of a combination of factors, not the least of which was that a lot of folks in the local scene apparently thought that David and I were gay partners. What were they supposed to think? The assumption was based on the fact that we were fraternity brothers, had come to Colorado together, had an avant-garde art-band together, went on backpacking hiking vacations together and lived in the same house together. So I suppose this was a fair assumption. But not an accurate one. I believe that David was suffering, at this time, from the same sex-less existence as myself. I did have the one disappointing tête–à–tête with Helen, but that hardly counted as a sex-life to me.
By this time, there was also friction developing between David and myself. The Hall of Genius was a relatively disgusting place, sort of a lowbrow fraternity environment. It could have easily served as a poster-child for slobbiness and although I have never felt that I was a ‘neat-freak’, I blamed David for that. I would run a vacuum cleaner over the carpets one day and by the next, it looked like a tornado of filth had blown through. This was not a house to which I wanted, or felt that I could, bring a romantic interest, that the atmosphere itself would be a turn-off to anybody I wanted to turn on. To this day, I cannot stand puddles in the bathroom, smelly towels, dishes piled in the kitchen sink, things like that. So the Hall of Genius became a place from which I needed to escape occasionally. My absences contributed to the proliferation of solo tracks because David was so often asleep when I was working on music during the daylight hours and he had opportunities to do solo stuff when I was at work during the day and those times when I would periodically disappear from the scene. I don’t want to make too much of this phenomenon, it was simply the reality of our lives at that time.
LF:
Though I hesitate to claim that Evan was influenced by my lead, it’s a plausible enough possibility as he takes his approach further into the realm of what we might call quirkiness on this tape than ever before, even if “Date With a Demon” was hardly his first overdubbed instrumental (though at this point it becomes incumbent upon me to ask the perennial question, “Is it an instrumental if it includes non-verbal vocals?” I’m gonna run with, “Yes”!). One of the primary features of this piece was the recording of different tracks at different tape speeds. Evan’s percussion (on his new percussion ensemble!) and my synthesizer playing and maybe the intermittent Farfisa (thinking that’s Evan) were recorded at a faster speed than they were played back at during mix down, making them conversely slower than “real time” in the final result and thus giving them a distorted and ominous feeling. Evan’s evil (and echoed) laughter was recorded at its playback speed (thus played back in real time), as it of course needed nothing more to sound evil! There’s a two note (or two chord?) bass line subtly holding it all together (is it live or is it half-speed?). From the reel box notes, I glean that the synth and percussion were the original tracks, meaning the organ and bass were overdubbed. The organ also benefited from some of the shifting of delay settings that I used on my vocals on "Sister Schizo" [on Before ...and After]. That is, when you change the delay settings in the middle of a sound that’s going through it, you get some weird effects beyond mere echo. Heh-heh-heh, heh-heh-heh, heh-heh-heh….
“Rewards”
EC:
Evan’s solo work: The opposite of “Date With A Demon”, this is a brightly cheerful guitar workout utilizing different speeds on the reel-to-reel recorder (3 ½ and 7 ¾). There is actual high-pitch harmony vocals overdubbed, courtesy of recording the overdub at 3 ½ on a basic 7 ¾ track. Call it the “Chipmunks” effect!
LF:
“Rewards” is another such Evan quirky overdubbed instrumental, and I believe he played (and sang) everything on this. He reverses the above technique, recording some tracks at a slower speed to make them faster upon playback. (And from that previous track, we know he did this for effect, not to assist with deficient technique, a la George Martin!) I believe he’s even harmonizing with himself at different speeds. Another funhouse distortion of reality! Of course, speeding things up creates a light and silly feeling compared to the heavy and threatening effect of the slowed-down sounds. From the reel box notes, I would surmise this was originally titled “The Rewards of Solitude”. No idea why Evan changed it….
“Bolt From The Blue”
EC:
David’s solo work; organ comes in over synthesized bass. David’s voice is run through some kind of effect to achieve a wordless squealing whine.
LF:
I like the effect of combining machine and manual percussion, though it certainly presents a time-keeping challenge to the technically-challenged manual percussionist. This may again be my synthesizer holding down the electronic rhythm duties or it may be the first appearance of my Roland Drumatix that I know I got at some point, though if it’s the latter it must be going through some effects. And then I’m playing bongos too, as well as Farfisa and some (more?) synthesizer (kind of providing the “bolts”). I played everything on this one, another quirky one. Including some more insistent kazoo. I used the kazoo almost more as a vocal manipulator than as an instrument per se, as I mostly just kind of yell through it. I also mix some sustained and staccato organ playing as I did on “It’s A Scary World Out There”. Our new downstairs neighbor, Andy Brennan, with whom we jammed a couple of times though I don’t think he ever made it onto any of our releases except visually on the cover of Son Of Madness, told Evan this one sounded like a bossa nova, which made me wonder what exactly characterizes a bossa nova….
“Pussy Lust”
EC:
Evan’s solo acoustic guitar piece, with overdubs. This was an instrumental song, using a dropped-D tuning. One of my intentions with this piece was to ‘prove’ that regardless of whatever else we might do, the musicians in this group knew how to play their instruments. I had learned the dropped-D tuning because I used it on a folk song called “Railroad Bill”. The title is a double-entendre. It refers both to the invented character of ‘Pussy Lust’ as well as basic libidinal desire. As noted above, our collective sex lives were essentially non-existent at the time we made this album.
LF:
The ostensible title track of the tape, “Pussy Lust” (our only use of a title track?), was ironically sweet and sincere in contrast to its title and setting, written and played entirely by Evan on multi-tracked acoustic guitars (and bass?). Though an instrumental, it conceptually names and depicts the woman at the center of all this desire and mayhem, while musically it represented both Evan’s past and his nearish future poking their heads up as it’s reminiscent of both what he recorded just before joining Rumours of Marriage (the punk band in which he met Ed) and immediately after WoG’s breakup. In fact, Evan played bass back in Virginia alongside two acoustic guitarists in a band called the Folk Grass Blues Band. This was hardly the first WoG track that featured no overt attempts at humor, but it somehow managed to quietly scream, “I am SERIOUS music, unlike all the rest of WoG!” unlike anything else by WoG. Though perhaps its seriousness was its joke, its humor? Well, at least its irony, as I put it originally. It most reminds me of an earlier Neil Young influenced song of his called “Sleep With Me” for its sense of plaintive sexual pleading, though there’s also more serenity and optimism in “Pussy Lust’s” vibe. I think it reflects a similar view on male sexual longing as what I’ve always projected onto Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” (though I realize Bach claimed that was about a desire for God; George Harrison would likely say, “Whassa difference?”). I at one point suggested to Evan that we overdub both of us singing along with the melody in goofy voices that I demonstrated for him (maybe think Scooby-Doo), and he looked at me with some horror and made it clear that wasn’t going to happen, and I immediately dropped it….
“My World Is Empty Without You Babe”
EC:
This is my rockin’ cover of the Supremes’ hit, culled from my straight repertoire. It features my screaming lead guitar throughout, with a very sarcastic vocal approach, as if to say, “yeah right, empty… sure, oh and fuck you, too…” I believe David added percussion to this one.
LF:
This cover of the classic Supremes’ song was Evan’s idea and was played entirely by Evan except for me on bongos and gong. Evan sings this in a nasally voice that makes it goofy enough to fit in with WoG while also expressing an urgency that I’m sure he wanted to come through as well. I played the gong from across the room which Evan took pains to get me to do to get a more crashing kind of sound out of it. I was used to playing the gong right up close to the microphone, as I did on “March Slob” [on Before ...and After], to capture a lot of the subtler and bassier and more reverberant nuances of its sound, but Evan wanted a different effect, so he implored me to move back from the mike, and so I took a step back. “Further!” implored Evan further. I took another couple of steps back. “More!” Finally I relented and got way far away from the mike, and he got the effect he was after! He later expressed his pride in getting after me to do that, and he’s right, I probably would have given up if someone had given me that hard of a time….
Side B
Kings Of Speed (Brock, Moorcock)
Terminal (Fowler)
Prom Night (Granat, Lichtenverg, Cantor, Fowler)
Palisades Park (Barris)
Eight Hours In Newark (Cantor, Lichtenverg)
Looking Into Cat's Eyes (Cantor)
Kings Of Speed (Brock, Moorcock)
Terminal (Fowler)
Prom Night (Granat, Lichtenverg, Cantor, Fowler)
Palisades Park (Barris)
Eight Hours In Newark (Cantor, Lichtenverg)
Looking Into Cat's Eyes (Cantor)
“Kings Of Speed”
Evan Cantor:
David introduced us to this tune by Hawkwind and we ran with it. I don’t know why it’s the only track on that date featuring drummer Brad Carton. I’m on reverby rhythm, Ed is on lead and David is on the organ. Synth and bass must have been overdubbed. This is a real showcase for Ed Fowler’s lead guitar. Ed did not appear on any of the tracks on Side 1.
Little Fyodor:
At some point -- part of me thinks it was a couple of years earlier, like when Evan and I lived at Bob and Brenda’s in Gunbarrel, and part of me thinks it was much more proximate to our recording of this -- but at some point while Evan and I were roommates, I bought an obscure three song EP by Hawkwind called "Hawkwind Zoo", which I’m learning from Wikipedia right now was actually some archival demos made before the band got signed and made their first record. One of the tracks on it was an instrumental version of “Kings of Speed”, later to be released by the band as a full song full of lyrics.
Evan Cantor:
David introduced us to this tune by Hawkwind and we ran with it. I don’t know why it’s the only track on that date featuring drummer Brad Carton. I’m on reverby rhythm, Ed is on lead and David is on the organ. Synth and bass must have been overdubbed. This is a real showcase for Ed Fowler’s lead guitar. Ed did not appear on any of the tracks on Side 1.
Little Fyodor:
At some point -- part of me thinks it was a couple of years earlier, like when Evan and I lived at Bob and Brenda’s in Gunbarrel, and part of me thinks it was much more proximate to our recording of this -- but at some point while Evan and I were roommates, I bought an obscure three song EP by Hawkwind called "Hawkwind Zoo", which I’m learning from Wikipedia right now was actually some archival demos made before the band got signed and made their first record. One of the tracks on it was an instrumental version of “Kings of Speed”, later to be released by the band as a full song full of lyrics.
When Evan heard me play the record, he really got excited by this instrumental “Kings of Speed” and it made him want to play the song himself. So Evan led us in a Walls Of Genius rendition one day while Ed and Brad Carton were over. It was a simple song and gave Ed plenty of chance to wail, and he kind of intro’s the affair as well with some guitar noise. Evan told us that he had been in bands that broke up over their inability to all change at the right time based on agreed upon counts and thus we should just change (between the chorus and the verse) whenever we heard him change, on his rhythm guitar. That’s why we play the chorus cycle four times through (which we were ostensibly aiming for) for three of the choruses but then six times through once and only two times through the one other time! Well, it’s such a simple song, that probably made it more interesting. I played two simple chords on my organ for the chorus and a little riff on the verse, all through my digital delay. Then while Evan overdubbed his bass line, I overdubbed some synthesizer, doing some accents during the chorus and making some more lead-y type semi-improvised noises on the verse. Evan occasionally sings the simple lyrics of the chorus off mike during the original jam; the non-instrumental Hawkwind version has lyrics on the verse too, so our version was kind of “in-between” the two Hawkwind versions (i.e., one being instrumental and the other vocal)! But after all my yapping about details is done and yapped, the best thing was just getting to hear Ed wail.
I remember our KGNU deejay friend Davide Andrea, who most liked European arty stuff (someone told me his favorite band was Kraftwerk) told me this song was too “garage rock” and seemed to think I had no choice but to agree, and I was like, “Huh? What? No! It’s fine….”
“Terminal”
EC:
Ed made a recording at Stapleton Airport, where he worked for Midwest Airlines at the time. Going along with the tape is Evan’s electric guitar run through a digital delay and David’s synth explorations. Bells and percussion were added after the fact. This is typical for how a Fowler song would be constructed at this time. Ed was (and is) a terrifically talented musician and a very creative intellect, but he was also very un-motivated a lot of the time. We would browbeat him to bring his ideas to the sessions and this was one of the results. We credited it to Ed alone, but the truth of the matter is that David and I had as much to do with the piece as did Ed. What Ed did was make the recording where he worked, at Stapleton airport.
LF:
Ed worked at the airport. In baggage handling, I think. This was Stapleton Airport, which was Denver’s main, big, international airport till they tore it down to be replaced by DIA in the 90’s. Once while he worked there, there was a plane crash and it made big national headlines and they stuck the plane in a secreted hangar pending some big, secret hush-hush investigation into what the hell happened, and Ed knew what hangar it was in and opened the door one day and took a peek at it – yeah, he reported to us, that plane was pretty messed up! Knowing that we were using tapes of stuff in our music, he got in the act by making some field recordings of his own in his own domain, just while walking around in his stomping ground. He made one recording of sounds in the terminal and another of sounds in a ramp. I believe we then jammed on both of them, but apparently we only used the terminal jam. Ed led the way playing guitar chords through his Echoplex – but wait, I would have thought that was Ed since the piece was his idea and he gets sole writing credit and that’s more consistent with my vague memory of it, but the guitar playing actually sounds a wee bit more like Evan’s to me now, so, I’m not sure? Anyway, that’s definitely me manipulating siren sounds on my synth. That is, there was a setting, a button or two to switch, that would get you these sweeping sounds (probably some kind of wave form, but I never paid attention to that stuff) that would play automatically yet you could also twiddle knobs to change the sound as it was doing this sweeping, which is what I did. You can hear the sounds of the airport terminal, especially some loudspeaker announcements, in the background. Evan makes intermittent scratchy noises on my little Jamaican drum and there’s some other percussion, probably overdubbed. Must be Ed on bells, based on his liner notes credit. And then the music ends and the sounds of the terminal come to the fore….
“Prom Night”
EC:
This is a story song in parody fashion after fifties pop music styles. It starts with David’s organ melody and Evan, in a very blasé, kind-of-bored voice, recites a fake memoir of going to the senior prom. It switches over to Evan’s operatic take on 50s romantic songs, “I fell in love that night” and “She had her hand in my pants”. It returns to David’s organ theme for the end of the story. “It was all-right. I had some fun”, Evan has now repeated several times. He sounds so bored, you have to wonder how much fun he really had.
LF:
My childhood chum Ed Granat makes his second consecutive appearance on a Walls Of Genius tape’s liner notes via the songwriting credit we gave him for the section of “Prom Night” that he inadvertently wrote as a result of making mistakes while he and I were trying to play “Midnight Cowboy” in my family’s living room as kids. Actually, Ed (Granat) and I turned his mistake into a new song that we kind of jammed on, back in that day, and that’s probably why I remembered it. It’s the descending part at the beginning of “Prom Night” that I’m talking about, and you might see the resemblance to the “Midnight Cowboy” theme’s opening lines. I added a few notes to this section, and Ed (Fowler) had a four chord pattern that he knew as something that he associated with sock hop era music which we used for the break in the middle (Ed may not have considered this his own original music but rather something “standard” for that time period). And Evan made up the words, probably mostly extemporaneously on the spot. So that’s where all the writing credits come from! As you can hear, Evan alternates between a “laconic” vocal and a quite over-the-top melodramatic one, each expressing in its own way a rather cynical view of finding love, or some semblance of it, on prom night. I remember someone, maybe Hal’s partner Debbie Jaffe, expressed getting a big kick out of the bit about “two abortions and a bouncing baby boy later” at the end. This may have also rivalled my “Everybody’s Fucking” lyrics for obnoxiousness in the view of our detractors. Makes me think of a book I once read called The Tyranny of Sex. Also John Lennon saying that his first son was the result of a bottle of wine, as most children really are. Oh and of course, that’s what you get for makin’ whoopie! (One only hopes it’s at least “whoopee”!!) Ed plays slide whistle on the main part, but he doesn’t blow into it, rather he shook the shaft back and forth to get that little sort of bubbly sort of sound. Evan and I overdubbed the “wa-wa-wa’s” later, with a bit of delay, and Evan thought that was something that people really responded to, and in fact I just found myself laughing at it moments ago….
“Palisades Park”
EC:
Another song that I knew from songbooks. David plays the carnival theme on the kazoo. There is an uncharacteristically mellow Ed guitar lead in the middle. This is, again, the bored vocal approach, playing with being in-and-out of key. I remember that we were mightily amused by the fact that the author of this song, Chuck Barris, went on to become the host of television’s “Gong Show”, an off-beat talent show that featured a gong, which would sound when someone’s act was deemed so bad that it deserved immediate termination.
LF:
Our rendition of the early rocker “Palisades Park” was Evan’s idea and Evan’s arrangement and had Evan’s vocals. He hams it up, albeit within moderation. Ed plays a pretty lead guitar part and Brad may or may not be playing drums or percussion, I can’t readily tell from listening but I vaguely seem to remember him being there, and it’s recorded right after “Kings Of Speed”. And I played kazoo, imitating the carnival theme from the original plus adding some accents throughout. I felt very inhibited, though, I kind of wanted to do more, but it didn’t seem as though it would fit in. There was a very controlled and restrained atmosphere to this performance, such that going apeshit like in the old days (like a few months ago?) would have felt like crapping in the punch bowl. And so I held back. But I didn’t like that. I think Debbie Jaffe echoed my feelings when she said that we should have butchered this song more. But not, on my part anyway, because I disliked the song at all, but because that’s where the fun is, that’s where all the good times are, that’s how I got my ya-ya’s out. And that’s what I had loved about WoG. Sure, change and growth, etc., I can see that, but I didn’t really like the direction this seemed to be taking us in, and I didn’t like feeling restrained and worrying about making it sound tasteful and correct. I was also beginning to notice that Evan no longer seemed interested in giving me cover songs to sing on, but rather just wanted to sing them himself. I never discussed this with him, and that was surely an unhealthy thing that likely led to me expressing anger at times when it had more to do with my sense of frustration over this (and other things) than over whatever was happening at the moment. Oh well, this is still a fun track and I certainly can understand why Evan wanted to do it this way. I played it more extrovertedly when we played this song live, and that’s a time honored rock ‘n’ roll tradition, to polish a slick product in the studio and then let loose more live. (I should make clear that I realize we’re talking in very relative terms here with regards to slickness in our case, but regardless, that’s how it felt at the time!) I don’t think there was any overdubbing on this….
“Eight Hours In Newark”
LF:
I frankly don’t remember much at all about recording “Eight Hours in Newark”. I believe there were some more tape speed variations. It’s most likely me on synthesizer again and Evan on percussion again, though maybe me too on percussion as there seems to be a lot of it. Sounds like Ed on guitar, which I’m guessing he would have overdubbed since he didn’t get writing credit as he likely would have had he been there for the original jam, unless the jam was based on some specific idea that Evan and I had cooked up? Sorry, but I’m reduced to mostly being just a researcher here, just as you could be! Well, except that I do think I remember there being tape speed variations involved (probably of the record fast play slow type), but I’m not even sure of that. I do know for sure (not that I’ve never been wrong when knowing something for sure!) that the title derives from someone having said just that, referring to Newark Airport and some sort of air travel snafu. It seemed like a very tongue-in-cheek nightmarish vision to us – eight hours in Newark!!! Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!! And it complemented the airport theme….
EC:
This is one of two Evan & David collaborative pieces on the album. It continues the airport theme, evoking a long layover at Newark International. Lest you’ve been lulled into complacency by the cheesy 50s rock parodies, this piece brings you back to the wild, weird world beyond. Evan’s lead guitar screams along with David on doom organ, lots of percussion and synthesizer.
“Looking Into Cat’s Eyes
EC:
This is my solo piece, a rockin’ minor key selection with some of the best lead guitar I ever played in my entire life. It actually featured a lead melody riff that intertwined with the rhythm guitar part, very sophisticated for me at the time (and now as well!). The bridge is reminiscent of “Pictures Of Matchstick Men” [on Embarassing Moments Cassette] with nice dual leads screaming the theme. The title is a double-entendre, not entirely intended. Strictly speaking, what I “meant” was “Looking Into A Cat’s Eyes” or “Looking Into Cats’ Eyes” (plural cats). As it stands, it is more like looking into the eyes of someone named “Cat”. Either way, it is meant to invoke the inscrutable feline gaze of a woman who does not intend to let you go farther than first base.
LF:
“Looking Into Cat’s Eyes” was Evan’s stab both at giving the tape another killer final track in the vein of “It’s A Scary World Out There” [Before ...and After] and at creating a kind of psychedelic magnum opus. He really wanted to take his psychedelic vision to the max, to 11, balls to the wall psychedelic. He wrote an ascending chord structure (blast off!) and pulled out all his fuzz guitar tricks. He played some frenzied flourishes on acoustic guitar and some harmonica through a delay that derived some influence from our old semi-namesake, Wall Of Voodoo. He played everything on this track. There was no percussion, but the rhythm was in the guitar (obscure rock history reference there). Um, y’know Evan said in his “Scary World” notes that that song ends with feedback, but I heard no feedback on that one, only sustained fuzz, but there’s feedback (and sustained fuzz) at the end of this one, so -- maybe he was thinking of this one? He came up with the title afterwards to match the music, as we probably did with most of our instrumentals….
I remember our KGNU deejay friend Davide Andrea, who most liked European arty stuff (someone told me his favorite band was Kraftwerk) told me this song was too “garage rock” and seemed to think I had no choice but to agree, and I was like, “Huh? What? No! It’s fine….”
“Terminal”
EC:
Ed made a recording at Stapleton Airport, where he worked for Midwest Airlines at the time. Going along with the tape is Evan’s electric guitar run through a digital delay and David’s synth explorations. Bells and percussion were added after the fact. This is typical for how a Fowler song would be constructed at this time. Ed was (and is) a terrifically talented musician and a very creative intellect, but he was also very un-motivated a lot of the time. We would browbeat him to bring his ideas to the sessions and this was one of the results. We credited it to Ed alone, but the truth of the matter is that David and I had as much to do with the piece as did Ed. What Ed did was make the recording where he worked, at Stapleton airport.
LF:
Ed worked at the airport. In baggage handling, I think. This was Stapleton Airport, which was Denver’s main, big, international airport till they tore it down to be replaced by DIA in the 90’s. Once while he worked there, there was a plane crash and it made big national headlines and they stuck the plane in a secreted hangar pending some big, secret hush-hush investigation into what the hell happened, and Ed knew what hangar it was in and opened the door one day and took a peek at it – yeah, he reported to us, that plane was pretty messed up! Knowing that we were using tapes of stuff in our music, he got in the act by making some field recordings of his own in his own domain, just while walking around in his stomping ground. He made one recording of sounds in the terminal and another of sounds in a ramp. I believe we then jammed on both of them, but apparently we only used the terminal jam. Ed led the way playing guitar chords through his Echoplex – but wait, I would have thought that was Ed since the piece was his idea and he gets sole writing credit and that’s more consistent with my vague memory of it, but the guitar playing actually sounds a wee bit more like Evan’s to me now, so, I’m not sure? Anyway, that’s definitely me manipulating siren sounds on my synth. That is, there was a setting, a button or two to switch, that would get you these sweeping sounds (probably some kind of wave form, but I never paid attention to that stuff) that would play automatically yet you could also twiddle knobs to change the sound as it was doing this sweeping, which is what I did. You can hear the sounds of the airport terminal, especially some loudspeaker announcements, in the background. Evan makes intermittent scratchy noises on my little Jamaican drum and there’s some other percussion, probably overdubbed. Must be Ed on bells, based on his liner notes credit. And then the music ends and the sounds of the terminal come to the fore….
“Prom Night”
EC:
This is a story song in parody fashion after fifties pop music styles. It starts with David’s organ melody and Evan, in a very blasé, kind-of-bored voice, recites a fake memoir of going to the senior prom. It switches over to Evan’s operatic take on 50s romantic songs, “I fell in love that night” and “She had her hand in my pants”. It returns to David’s organ theme for the end of the story. “It was all-right. I had some fun”, Evan has now repeated several times. He sounds so bored, you have to wonder how much fun he really had.
LF:
My childhood chum Ed Granat makes his second consecutive appearance on a Walls Of Genius tape’s liner notes via the songwriting credit we gave him for the section of “Prom Night” that he inadvertently wrote as a result of making mistakes while he and I were trying to play “Midnight Cowboy” in my family’s living room as kids. Actually, Ed (Granat) and I turned his mistake into a new song that we kind of jammed on, back in that day, and that’s probably why I remembered it. It’s the descending part at the beginning of “Prom Night” that I’m talking about, and you might see the resemblance to the “Midnight Cowboy” theme’s opening lines. I added a few notes to this section, and Ed (Fowler) had a four chord pattern that he knew as something that he associated with sock hop era music which we used for the break in the middle (Ed may not have considered this his own original music but rather something “standard” for that time period). And Evan made up the words, probably mostly extemporaneously on the spot. So that’s where all the writing credits come from! As you can hear, Evan alternates between a “laconic” vocal and a quite over-the-top melodramatic one, each expressing in its own way a rather cynical view of finding love, or some semblance of it, on prom night. I remember someone, maybe Hal’s partner Debbie Jaffe, expressed getting a big kick out of the bit about “two abortions and a bouncing baby boy later” at the end. This may have also rivalled my “Everybody’s Fucking” lyrics for obnoxiousness in the view of our detractors. Makes me think of a book I once read called The Tyranny of Sex. Also John Lennon saying that his first son was the result of a bottle of wine, as most children really are. Oh and of course, that’s what you get for makin’ whoopie! (One only hopes it’s at least “whoopee”!!) Ed plays slide whistle on the main part, but he doesn’t blow into it, rather he shook the shaft back and forth to get that little sort of bubbly sort of sound. Evan and I overdubbed the “wa-wa-wa’s” later, with a bit of delay, and Evan thought that was something that people really responded to, and in fact I just found myself laughing at it moments ago….
“Palisades Park”
EC:
Another song that I knew from songbooks. David plays the carnival theme on the kazoo. There is an uncharacteristically mellow Ed guitar lead in the middle. This is, again, the bored vocal approach, playing with being in-and-out of key. I remember that we were mightily amused by the fact that the author of this song, Chuck Barris, went on to become the host of television’s “Gong Show”, an off-beat talent show that featured a gong, which would sound when someone’s act was deemed so bad that it deserved immediate termination.
LF:
Our rendition of the early rocker “Palisades Park” was Evan’s idea and Evan’s arrangement and had Evan’s vocals. He hams it up, albeit within moderation. Ed plays a pretty lead guitar part and Brad may or may not be playing drums or percussion, I can’t readily tell from listening but I vaguely seem to remember him being there, and it’s recorded right after “Kings Of Speed”. And I played kazoo, imitating the carnival theme from the original plus adding some accents throughout. I felt very inhibited, though, I kind of wanted to do more, but it didn’t seem as though it would fit in. There was a very controlled and restrained atmosphere to this performance, such that going apeshit like in the old days (like a few months ago?) would have felt like crapping in the punch bowl. And so I held back. But I didn’t like that. I think Debbie Jaffe echoed my feelings when she said that we should have butchered this song more. But not, on my part anyway, because I disliked the song at all, but because that’s where the fun is, that’s where all the good times are, that’s how I got my ya-ya’s out. And that’s what I had loved about WoG. Sure, change and growth, etc., I can see that, but I didn’t really like the direction this seemed to be taking us in, and I didn’t like feeling restrained and worrying about making it sound tasteful and correct. I was also beginning to notice that Evan no longer seemed interested in giving me cover songs to sing on, but rather just wanted to sing them himself. I never discussed this with him, and that was surely an unhealthy thing that likely led to me expressing anger at times when it had more to do with my sense of frustration over this (and other things) than over whatever was happening at the moment. Oh well, this is still a fun track and I certainly can understand why Evan wanted to do it this way. I played it more extrovertedly when we played this song live, and that’s a time honored rock ‘n’ roll tradition, to polish a slick product in the studio and then let loose more live. (I should make clear that I realize we’re talking in very relative terms here with regards to slickness in our case, but regardless, that’s how it felt at the time!) I don’t think there was any overdubbing on this….
“Eight Hours In Newark”
LF:
I frankly don’t remember much at all about recording “Eight Hours in Newark”. I believe there were some more tape speed variations. It’s most likely me on synthesizer again and Evan on percussion again, though maybe me too on percussion as there seems to be a lot of it. Sounds like Ed on guitar, which I’m guessing he would have overdubbed since he didn’t get writing credit as he likely would have had he been there for the original jam, unless the jam was based on some specific idea that Evan and I had cooked up? Sorry, but I’m reduced to mostly being just a researcher here, just as you could be! Well, except that I do think I remember there being tape speed variations involved (probably of the record fast play slow type), but I’m not even sure of that. I do know for sure (not that I’ve never been wrong when knowing something for sure!) that the title derives from someone having said just that, referring to Newark Airport and some sort of air travel snafu. It seemed like a very tongue-in-cheek nightmarish vision to us – eight hours in Newark!!! Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!! And it complemented the airport theme….
EC:
This is one of two Evan & David collaborative pieces on the album. It continues the airport theme, evoking a long layover at Newark International. Lest you’ve been lulled into complacency by the cheesy 50s rock parodies, this piece brings you back to the wild, weird world beyond. Evan’s lead guitar screams along with David on doom organ, lots of percussion and synthesizer.
“Looking Into Cat’s Eyes
EC:
This is my solo piece, a rockin’ minor key selection with some of the best lead guitar I ever played in my entire life. It actually featured a lead melody riff that intertwined with the rhythm guitar part, very sophisticated for me at the time (and now as well!). The bridge is reminiscent of “Pictures Of Matchstick Men” [on Embarassing Moments Cassette] with nice dual leads screaming the theme. The title is a double-entendre, not entirely intended. Strictly speaking, what I “meant” was “Looking Into A Cat’s Eyes” or “Looking Into Cats’ Eyes” (plural cats). As it stands, it is more like looking into the eyes of someone named “Cat”. Either way, it is meant to invoke the inscrutable feline gaze of a woman who does not intend to let you go farther than first base.
LF:
“Looking Into Cat’s Eyes” was Evan’s stab both at giving the tape another killer final track in the vein of “It’s A Scary World Out There” [Before ...and After] and at creating a kind of psychedelic magnum opus. He really wanted to take his psychedelic vision to the max, to 11, balls to the wall psychedelic. He wrote an ascending chord structure (blast off!) and pulled out all his fuzz guitar tricks. He played some frenzied flourishes on acoustic guitar and some harmonica through a delay that derived some influence from our old semi-namesake, Wall Of Voodoo. He played everything on this track. There was no percussion, but the rhythm was in the guitar (obscure rock history reference there). Um, y’know Evan said in his “Scary World” notes that that song ends with feedback, but I heard no feedback on that one, only sustained fuzz, but there’s feedback (and sustained fuzz) at the end of this one, so -- maybe he was thinking of this one? He came up with the title afterwards to match the music, as we probably did with most of our instrumentals….