The Strange Things Out in the Front Yard

From 1977 through the 1980's, a number of odd audio experiments were performed in the studio known as the Thick System, on Addison Street in Berkeley California. The original equipment consisted of an old Japanese 2-head stereo 1/4" reel-to-reel deck, found abandoned in an attic on Carleton Street, which happened to have sound-on-sound, with one beat-up old Shure dynamic microphone and a Y-connector instead of a mixer.  In 1978, the system was upgraded to a TEAC A3340 4-track deck, with matching cheapo TEAC mixer.

Madison was recorded by Richard Evans and myself, some time in 1977, as a completely improvised piece.  We just rolled tape, I started playing guitar, and Rick began clucking, muttering, and finally singing. A rather insignificant guitar overdub was added on the other track, along with a very few more words from Richard. This MP3 was digitally remastered and remixed in May 2003.

Video Woman is a later project, which began as the distorted and flanged bass figure (yes, that's an Epiphone Embassy electric bass doing the shreiking bend) that I was working on one afternoon, when Dan Harder walked into the studio and ranted "Video Woman, when I hear you scream....".  I thought that was as good a place as any to begin.  The first take was done with Dan doing backing vocals and playing bongos. I then redid the whole thing solo on the TEAC, which is what you'll hear here. This MP3 was ripped from a late-80s cassette mixdown.

People of the Black Van is a collaboration with Gary Coil and Jesse Fisher (guitars), with me on bass and vocals.  The proximate inspiration was the film "Slither", a surrealsit "comedy" from the 1970s featuring Louise Lasser. In the film, the protagonists are followed by mysterious people in black vans. "Tonight, we have a new prize, very nice" and "I think it's broken up inside" are both lines from the film. The strange vocal effect at the end was me playing with a vintage tape Echoplex while singing through it. The MP3 was ripped from the same cassette as Video Woman.