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1.
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California VS New York
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The "California Versus New York" main riff was written during a baseball game, Tim was a nut
over the California Angels, he & Rich were watching the Angels give the Yankees a home run clinic
one day, and the riff just jumped through Rich into the Gibson E335. Mondo wrote the lyrics
to try & stretch the metaphor.
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2.
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Magic Eyes
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"Magic Eyes" started out as a collaboration between Philo & Rich Hunter &
Jim Lofrano in Coup d'etat, it then evolved into this version with some silly
lyrics from me, also a true story, or at least a true rant, about a Realtor
I knew back then...
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3.
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Lifestream
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"Life's Dream" is the ballad, this one was pretty much my baby, the guys had never
played it before we got into the studio. Actually, the lyric was not even written
until the backing tracks were done, I gave Mondo the plot, inspired by a true story,
and he did the rest, pretty much on the 1st take.
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4.
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How Long
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"How Long" was Mondo's baby, this was a band with
some really different influences, but
the beer helped us see "common goals", whether
they were actually there or not...
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5.
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1979
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This is the song the Cigarettes never finished, Mondo added the overly hopeful & naieve
Jetson lyrics, they always bring a smile back for me.
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6.
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The Heart of A Darkened City
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"Heart of a Darkened City" was obviously inspired by a
popular film from 1979 or so, I got to use Prophet V
in the studio, which was a very cool synth from those days. We played a party
once, it got broken up by the police with helicopters that
sounded just like a Prophet V,
our Manager Terry Grey's fiance Tammy took some pictures of
us setting up. Nobody can remember who this fill in bass player was.
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| Instrumental Outakes & Rarities: |
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7.
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The Shed
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"The Shed" is a piece of 4 track documentary footage from any
early jam, with overloaded microphones all around. The title came
from a Super Bowl incident, Tim was not happy about a Rams loss one
year, and he took it out on the landlord's metal / tin tool shed
in the backyard. He smashed it into a pulp heep with his bare hands.
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9.
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The Deadly Diner
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"The Deadly Diner" is another 4 track documentary, if you make it far
enough into this instrumental there are some lead guitar / mini-moog
exchanges that were inspired by Todd Rundgren's Utopia. Title also came
from Tim, basically a hiliarious review he was giving us during
a practice one night of his culinary experience at Dupar's, a local
greasy spoon. I guess you had to be there.
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8.
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For Mom - Part I
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Yet another 4 track bit of precious noise, "For Mom" had something to do with
Tim's mom. Maybe she liked Disco?
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10.
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For Mom - Part II
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In the middle I play "Here Comes The Bride" on the mellotron,
in whole tone scale, which was in honor of what we thought were
the pending nuptuals of Judge & Jeannie.
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11.
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Magic Eyes
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With the original intro, before it got dropped. Lord, we played this song a lot.
Here is a great picture of Rich from our gig at McArthur Park, we opened for
a prog rock band called Manekin (?).
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1.
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Mystery Love
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Mondo recorded this song of his in my music room at Fallbrook, which dates
the recording as somewhere between May 1980 - January 1981.
The song was inspired by an interview with John Lennon, where he
said that Yoko was known to him as a presence in the universe,
before he ever met her. I always wondered what Cynthia thought when she
read stuff like that. That's Mondo playing my old upright piano, which was detuned
by 3/4 of a step to keep the strings from snapping the sound board.
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| 2.
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Here We Go
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Another Mondo song, recorded within minutes of Mystery Love. These were recorded so
that I could learn them, Mondo is singing acapella, I am playing Dos Equis
beer bottles in the background. The idea was
that I would come up with an arramgement that Rich & Tim would like. I really liked these
songs, and I was pretty good at arranging...probably not that good though.
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| 3.
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The Spider
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So this was done at Napa, maybe 1982 or so? Big Business had been shut down, but
I think we always thought it might kick back up eventually. I think I got
Jeff McLane to show up with his Chapman Stick one day, on the strength of this tune.
Then he invited me to a jam in Hollywood, and I was a no show. I cannot get into
what I was doing when I did not show up, but it was WAY worth it. Sorry Jeff.
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| 4.
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Thin Ice
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Another Napa era experiment, the Roland SH1000 synth that Roger Struthers sold me
in January 1974 was by now only good for these drone beat sort of growl sounds,
this 7/4 theme eventually shows up again in Milestones as part of "Overboard".
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| 5.
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I Really Don't Know
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Recorded at Napa, Kathleen used to cut Mondo's hair in our kitchen, that's her
saying I don't make mistakes at the beginning. Hah! Mondo on piano & all
vocals (unless I am in there doubling a low part, which I doubt). At the very
end you can hear my dad in the background saying, "ha ha, touche".
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| 6.
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When I Doubt
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Trying to do Mondo one better, I wrote this during the 1st years of Kathleen & I
being together, I think I was very, very happy. And I still am!
At the beginning you can hear my dad talking in his fake Japaneese, then Kathleen
talking about lobster. The ended up on Acts & Intermissions as an instrumental, the
5/4 theme was written at a cigarettes rehearsal in the mid 1970's,
and keeps trying to show up in everything.
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| 7.
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Actions From The Heart
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Another shot at the 7/4 theme in "Thin Ice", recorded in my music room at Napa,
so 1982 or so, using a little lap steel guitar that Philo let me borrow
(belonged to Spit Stix I think), this one I eventually sent to Mondo, we
were going to try & do something with this one. Drup Drops in 4, song in 7.
Somewhere there is an interview with Spit where he talks about writing songs
where people play in different time signatures and it all lines up, he says
he & Philo came up with that stuff, but I think maybe Philo got the idea from
this. Anyway, I still had to give the steel guitar back.
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