V02-T05 [lightbulb joke]

.....Before making this series of compilation cassettes that drew across the board from my collection of recordings, I had made numerous compilations that each focused on individual bands or of various bands on a unifying theme. One of the themed tapes was entirely spoken word performances. At the time I made that, my collection was perhaps one tenth or less of what it is now and I'm certain that I would program it differently if I had the time or patience to redo it. This bit of stage patter was added to the playlist in order to buffer two unlike musical tracks.

Volume 2: "WE'RE ALL GOING TO JAIL FOR THIS, AREN'T WE?", track 5

• 00:43 [untitled spoken word piece]
• performed by Mr. T Experience
• original source: mini-LP MTX COMES ALIVE (recorded Dec., 1989; unreleased?)
• and my source: CD MAKING THINGS WITH LIGHT Lookout Records 37CD (US) 1990

.....In 1989, Mr. T Experience (which, for the record, has no official affiliation with the 1980's television personality) released an EP with a song entitled "AT GILMAN STREET". By the end of the year they had recorded a live set at the actual Gilman Street venue in Berkeley, CA but had left the UK-based Rough Trade label, which would soon after spiral into bankruptcy. They signed onto the relatively new Lookout! Records, who released their next vinyl studio album, MAKING THINGS WITH LIGHT. The CD packaging for that album adds the live recording from the previous December as bonus tracks, going so far as to explicitly refer to the set as a mini-LP entitled MTX COMES ALIVE. I've never actually found a vinyl version of the mini-LP, but when I went looking around to find a catalogue number for reference here I couldn't find any evidence that it had ever existed. It wasn't mentioned in Martin C. Strong's discography entry for the band, although the same songs were listed as tracks on MAKING THINGS WITH LIGHT. The more exhaustive fan sites also didn't mention it. Lookout!'s Facebook page describes the live songs as bonus tracks on the CD but does not acknowledge them having a separate collective identity. It could be that the title was a joke (more on that below) or that they were expecting it to come out from Rough Trade or some other label at the time the CD was going to press.

.....The title MTX COMES ALIVE refers to the live Peter Frampton double-LP FRAMPTON COMES ALIVE, famous for setting sales records in the 70's. The year before Mr. T Experience recorded their live set the band Alice Donut recorded their debut album, DONUT COMES ALIVE, using the same allusion to Frampton in the title. Alice Donut's label, Alternative Tentacles, would not reissue that LP in the CD format until 1992, but the Mr. T Experience was probably reluctant to be perceived as stealing another band's ideas. Simply giving the project another title would have solved that problem, so it can't be the real reason that there was no vinyl counterpart.

.....The title MAKING THINGS WITH LIGHT was the slogan for the late-1960's toy Lite Brite, an example of which was on the album's cover artwork. It was also an allusion to the fact that recorded music was drifting inexorably towards compact discs, even if punk labels were tenaciously trying to make the audience's choice of format available as long as economically possible. Compact discs, after all, are played using lasers. They literally make sound with light.