V01-T16 First National Rag

.....The last track of volume 1 is a free-standing piece but has all the characteristics I look for in a good interstitial. It's short, it speaks directly to the listener and is self-referential in the sense that it acknowledges its format. It could only be used as the end of a two sided format however, and wouldn't translate very well to one-sided digital discs, which is a shame.

Volume 1: THE PITCHFORK APPROACH, track 16

• 00:21 "FIRST NATIONAL RAG" (music by Orville Rhodes)
• performed by Mike Nesmith
• original source: LP MAGNETIC SOUTH RCA Victor LSP 4371 (US) 1970
• and my source: CD MAGNETIC SOUTH Awareness AWCD 1023 (UK) 1991

.....Michael Nesmith produced a lavishly orchestrated album of songs he had written for the Monkees (some of which they hadn't recorded or released) while he was still with the group in 1968. Depending on who you listen to it was an in-joke or a vanity project or a tax write-off or serious resume building. When the group gradually fell apart over the following two years he rebounded most easily. He spent the first half of the 70's recording six underappreciated albums for RCA, the first of which was MAGNETIC SOUTH. He then formed the Pacific Arts label to release his new albums, reissue the RCA ones and eventually pioneer music video formats.

.....The instrumental portion of this track was written by band member Red Rhodes and named for the First National Band, Nesmith's group for the first three albums. (Yes, he also formed a Second National Band.) Rhodes was a talented and much in demand session man on the west coast, possibly the second go-to guy for pedal steel guitar after Sneaky Pete. There was something in there that appealed to me, that sound that reminded me of a vinyl record that isn't warped but sounds like it's being played on a record player that isn't maintaining a consistent speed. There's an irony to consciously choosing an experience unique to playing vinyl records to replicate on a cassette and there's a parallel in the choice for the final track on Volume 2.

.....Speaking of Volume 2, I'm going to be taking a two day break to gather my notes from 1993 and do some appropriate updating and maybe a few 'where-are-they-now's. On my 'off-days' I'll recommend things that I've noticed among current releases.

V01-T15 Weinerschnitzel

.....The following seems like an interstitial, but is in fact an entire song:

Volume 1: THE PITCHFORK APPROACH, track 15

• 00:10 "WEINERSCHNITZEL" (Bill Stevenson, Pat McCuistion)
• performed by The Descendents
• original source: 7"EP FAT New Alliance NAR-005 (US) 1981
• and my source: CD TWO THINGS AT ONCE SST CD145 (US) 1987

.....The label New Alliance was formed by members of the Minutemen. After one of them passed away the others sold the label to SST resulting in much of the catalog being reissued in compilation form on CD. Thankfully much of these combined entire albums, EP's and singles with their program orders intact. Such was the case with "Two Things At Once" (actually four things-- an LP, an EP, a single and a song from a VA album-- but everything but the LP had also been repackaged as "Bonus Fat").

.....There really were Weinerschnitzel fast food restaurants somewhere in the western US. I don't know if Bill and Pat worked at one as teenagers but this pretty much sums up fast food jobs for most people's experience. I do know that they worked in commercial fishing as adults. I had heard that Pat died at sea while Bill was touring, though at that point The Descendents were transforming into ALL. Pat didn't really perform with the band, but was considered a part of the band in a way you rarely see. For one thing he wasn't routinely a non-performing songwriter such as Bernie Taupin (The Elton John Band), Robert Hunter (Grateful Dead), Pete Sinfield (King Crimson) or Meltzer and Pearlman (Blue Oyster Cult). He wasn't a manager or producer. He was a friend in their lives and like most punk bands they drew their art from their lives.

V01-T14 Ice Cream City

.....Now we go from Radio Tokyo to Tokyo on the radio...

Volume 1:THE PITCHFORK APPROACH, track 14

• 02:23 "ICE CREAM CITY" (Naoko Yamano)
• performed by Shonen Knife
• original source: BBC Radio 1 broadcast, October 2, 1992
• and my source: CD5 GET THE WOW August CAUG 003 CDL (UK) Jan/1993

.....I don't know if it existed in 1992, but in Tokyo today there is in fact an Ice Cream City restaurant near Ikebukuro Station. Actually, the song was originally recorded for the 1986 album "Pretty Little Baka Guy", but after a growing base of western admirers (principally Sonic Youth) started name dropping them frequently Shonen Knife began rerecording their earlier songs in English in addition to writing new material in order to meet the sudden demand for recordings abroad. This version was recorded for John Peel about a month before broadcast. The 12" vinyl single (really a four song EP) for "Get The Wow" followed closely on August (a division of Creation Records in the UK) but this so-called "Limited Edition" CD5 replaced the last two songs with "Ice Cream City" and "Neon Zebra". I believe the Peel versions also appear on the US Shonen Knife compilation, "The Birds And The B-Sides", from 1996.

.....Both this recording and the earlier Peel session on this volume (Bauhaus' "PARTY OF THE FIRST PART" interstitial) were produced by Dale Griffin. The same Dale Griffin was known as 'Buffin' when he was the drummer for Mott The Hoople.

V01-T13 Paranoid

.....Long before Gagas aspired to royalty they maintained a sacred Order...

Volume 1: THE PITCHFORK APPROACH, track 13

• 02:41 "PARANOID" (Bill Ward, Ozzy Osbourne, Terry Butler, Tony Iommi)
• performed by The Holy Sisters Of The Gaga Dada
• original source: CD RADIO TOKYO TAPES Vol.4 Chameleon D2-74810 (US) 1989
• and my source: the same

.....Radio Tokyo was a studio in Los Angeles opened by Ralph Kellogg that put out compilations of original recordings made there. The Holy Sisters had released an album and an EP on BOMP!Records by the time this came out, but not much since. Some of the artists on this and previous volumes were unsigned at the time. This radical, cross-culturally arranged reworking of the Black Sabbath song put me in mind to use a Bart Simpson parody of their "Iron Man", but I couldn't find where I had put it. Not only that, but I was running out of tape on side 1. Tomorrow, the last full song and we'll be tied up by this weekend, I promise.

V01-T12 "All-Time Rock'n'Roll Classics Pt.4"

.....This compilation tape started out with a brief snippet of dialogue followed by a T. Rex cover by the Replacements. Although that cover was made for a stateside 12", my source for it was a double album label sampler from the French label New Rose, who distributed their records in Europe before they signed to a major. Although much of the sampler likewise drew material from the label's catalogue, some was recorded exclusively for it:

Volume 1: THE PITCHFORK APPROACH, track 12

• 01:18 medley{"MANIA" (Martin Cowan)
• 00:00 medley{"ANARCHY IN THE UK" (Paul Cook, Steve Jones, John Lydon, Glen Matlock)
• 00:00 medley{"COPACABANA" (Jack Feldman, Barry Manilow, Bruce Sussman)
• performed by Desperate Dave
• original source: VA 2LP LA VIE EN ROSE New Rose ROSE 50 (France) 1985
• and my source: the same

.....New Rose had it's origins with two French record store owners who tried their hand at launching a record label called 'Flamingo' as a sideline in the late 1970's. By 1980 they fell for British punk, and specifically The Damned, in a very big way. They renamed their store "New Rose", after The Damned's first single, and launched a new label by the same name, choosing a business model closer to Rough Trade or Rhino Records, in which the store and label share an identity and symbiosis with a targeted audience. They continued to incorporate references to The Damned throughout the label's terminology and iconography, including their subsidiary label 'Fan Club' and others. In fact, the four sides of this double LP sampler are named for the members of the band: Rat, Brian, Dave and Captain. This leads me to speculate that Desperate Dave may actually be lead singer Dave Vanian. Neither of the label owners are named Dave, nor are any other label employees credited on the album or persons thanked on their website. Each side ends with one of these medleys from Desperate Dave, but none of them include songwriting or production credits. And of the nearly 1000 releases, albums and singles, on all of their various subsidiary labels, not one other recording is credited to Desperate Dave. It's obviously a joke of some kind, I genuinely don't know if it's by Vanian or on him. With the unplugged electric guitar and janitor's closet production values, it could possibly be Brian James taking a poke at his bandmate. I just found it hilarious that someone, when they can't remember the lyric to a punk standard, panics and veers off into "COPACABANA".

.....The original versions of these songs, for the record, were (in order) by Irish band The Outcasts, British band Sex Pistols and American Barry Manilow. This volume has one more cover song and it's the next track up, but that one is going to be more reconstructed than deconstructed.

V01-T11 Mr. Rogers

.....Yes, it's another cover. No, it's not the last (not by a long shot). And, yes, it's the second punky deconstruction of a childhood memory in a four-song string of childhood memories. I couldn't pass this one up though, because I knew one of the members and because this spot on the playlist was the most comfortable fit.

Volume 1: THE PITCHFORK APPROACH, track 11

• 02:48 "MR. ROGERS" (Fred Rogers)
• performed by PBS
• original source: B-side, 7" Troubled Youth Records TR-001 (US) 1986
• and my source: the same

.....First I should explain the name. In the late 70's there was a British punk band who called themselves "GBH", short for the criminal charge of "grievous bodily harm". American police use different terminology, so the meaning is lost on many people over here. To slightly nerdy northeasterners, it meant WGBH, Boston, Massachusetts' Public Broadcasting System affiliate. Because that channel produced or co-produced a great deal of programming syndicated for the rest of the network, the station's call letters became synonymous with national public television. Ergo, the name "PBS" was an acknowledgement of the band GBH.

.....Having recorded a pop-punk original for the A-side ("Girl Of My Own"), recording a b-side alluding to the network would have been too good a joke to resist. The theme to the "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" show (minus the instrumental introduction) would be instantly recognized no matter what they did to it, for those 'of a certain age' at least. Because they worked so prolifically for children, Fred Rogers and his free-form jazz pianist John Costa are usually underestimated as composers (Rogers wrote the songs, Costa the subtle vamps and mood music). A good rule of thumb is that when people will gladly sing along to something you wrote that they haven't heard themselves in decades and they remember all the words, you're a good composer. The new arrangements work for me, too, and lest you think that I'm letting personal bias interfere with my judgement, I should point out that Robert Christgau placed this single at number 22 on his list of top singles for 1986. It beat out Bruce Hornsby's "The Way It Is" at number 23. (From The Village Voice, March 3, 1987)

.....Speaking of punky deconstruction, it continues on the next track but veers away from television. And to switch things up a bit, it's our first medley.

V01-T10 Bubblegum Music

.....So many years later I can't remember exactly if this song, with its opening line about "the B-Splits on the TV" was chosen to follow the Dickies cover in the previous post, or if the cover was chosen to lead into this:

Volume 1: THE PITCHFORK APPROACH, track 10

• 03:03 "BUBBLEGUM MUSIC" (Alex Garvin)
• Performed by Pianosaurus
• original source: CD GROOVY NEIGHBORHOOD Rounder CD9010 (US) 1987
• and my source: the same

.....Yes, they are toys. Pianosaurus is a band that plays exclusively instruments that were manufactured to be children's toys. What has made this one album endure for as long as it has is that the idea of playing toys is treated as any other operating parameter for a band. If the intention had been to garner attention using the novelty of toy instruments and had always been a gimmick, it would have grabbed some attention briefly and then faded when the novelty wore off. Instead they set ground rules as one would for any experiment. They used functional instruments. They could not custom design anything-- it must be mass-produced and marketed to children, something that any kid or their parent might buy for purposes of unstructured play. They could not used "child-sized" professional quality instruments (such as quarter-size violins). Also, they could not simply make horrific, arhythmic noise and try to convince people it was "jazz". They had to create recognizable, hummable pop songs. The album is actually full of them.

.....Before posting just now I did a term search for the band and came up with numerous listings, nearly all for the above album. A Facebook page lists two homemade live cassettes preceding it, this debut album and a second title which remains unreleased. There are several references to Garvin disappearing just before it was completed and vague speculations about "mental exhaustion" and being "M.I.A.", with open inquiries to his whereabouts. "If you have seen this man..." sort of things. They couldn't have been looking too hard. He's listed on the faculty of the Peekskill Extension Center of Westchester (NY) Community College. It's part of the state university system.