Went over to the Record Exchange the other night and Gene, the owner says,
"I've got a little box of your records upstairs." I go like,
"What?" and he says,
"A box of records you made, with sleeves and everything"
So I go upstairs and over by the record player is this little cardboard 45 pack that I recognize, it held 25 copies of a four song 45 EP I released in 1982 - and Gene had said, they were in the jacket sleeves me and my (then) wife put together that included a little insert I'd written up. I hadnt seen any of them, in jackets or with the insert, since sometime in the middle eighties. All I could think was that somebody had ripped me off but as for why or who, I got no idea. Gene later said he didnt know the person who brought them in but that they claimed to find them in a house they were clearing out. I've still got no clue.
Let's say just say, i was feeling lost when i released this record, we had just moved back from a year in Syracuse NY where I'd discovered tons of new music, vicariously experienced art graduate school and was aching to do something musically different. Some recording time had fallen right into my lap and I put some guys together to cut three songs I had burning a hole in my brain. As close as i can come to describing what it wound up sounding like is, "punked out arty shit" or "art saturated post punk wet brain" I was drinkin quite a bit at that time and was achin to come up with something i could get excited about! the results were mixed - It was the last thing my old pal Frankie ever played on and i really reigned him in cause i was feeling pretty fed up with guitars - He died shortly after and I felt forever guilty for not having let him run wild - Fojammy and Dominic Schaeffer of Wax Theatrix played primitive synth and sax parts, I played hard edged punk bass like i did in the Dinosaurs and Kevin Griffin of the Zanti Misfits played drums.
The record was called "Got Dreamin" cause i'd been getting inspired reading about Aborigines and their music, the concept of putting ones self into states of trance and seeing what you come up with. Well, the whole thing was somewhat confused by drinkin and drugs, my wired out city boy sensibilities and various personal neuroses... but I WAS out there trying.
Local rock critic Steve Pick damned the project in Jet Lag, sighting our use of tenor saxs rather than alto (whatever that meant) - NY Rocker sent he a postcard saying they didnt care to waste space killing a record that couldnt possibly sell over 500 copies anyway... and i just generally i drank my pain away into oblivion. I tied real hard to just put the whole thing behind me.
Highlights of the record were 1.) the first recording of the song "Jungle Fighter" a song I wrote after listening to the stories of a Mexican American Cat I befriended while working day labor up in Syracuse. The song is pretty much a straight ahead retelling of what i kind of forced him into talking about - bout people he had killed in VietNam, how he came back home and realized that the way he operated in the jungle was actually the only way to operate in the barrio and so he did till friends staged a forcible intervention... I still do "Jungle Fighter to this day with my band Alley Ghost.
2) The song Flashy Graphics which I had begun doing up in Syracuse with my band Serious Journalism - a song preoccupied with Nazi's and fear I felt already beginning to surface in the American psyche.
3) A very odd and fucked up dub version of the song "Jungle Fighter" done as only a couple of fucked up white city boy drunks (myself and Dominic) could dream up - we was literally bent and twisted on champaign and reefer as we twisted and turned control board faders and knobs much go the chagrin of the studio owners - this was our baby - this was the first and really only case of punk ass dub that I have ever heard!!
The odd part now is that the college age kids I've played it for today all seem to like it pretty well. Go figure.
The cover was inspired by the art work of Eve Kahn, that gal I lived with (and eventually married and then divorced) and the sleeves were assembled by the two of us - these are the last 25 copies in existence. When Gene bought them for nothing he says he figured I ought to have first crack at buying them back - Well, I did. Any body interested in buying a copy give me a holler - I think by it's scarcity alone it qualifies as a "collectors item"!
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