Gin and Innuendoes
(SST) - 5/96
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| GIN & INNUENDOES - where
the songs came from |
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How terribly sad - the last (no pun intended) of my song histories.
Hmmm, clearly, we'd better start making some new albums!
Of course, I've promised to add a making of/marketing of/destruction
of set of notes for each album, so . . .
After that, we'll be delving into ANCIENT past, i.e. early
'70's, and possibly even MP3-ing some of that stuff. If I can
find any of it.
Anyway, the "Gin" album.
"Awakening" was our follow-up to SST album #1 "Confession".
"Awakening" bombed. Miserably. SST, saints that they
are, were nevertheless ready for another Last record.
I wasn't.
The '89 tour had left me somewhat disillusioned, and restless.
We did one or two gigs when we got home, and then I took a year
off.
Of course, I wasn't idle during 1990 - I put together an outfit
with brothers Mike & Dave, and Dave's wife Kristi Callan
(were they married then? Can't remember). I saw it as initially
an acoustic singing aggregation that might develop into a lovely
psychedelic little electric outfit. We practiced a lot, worked
out lots of songs.
And played twice.
Ah well, there didn't seem to be much of a buzz for what we
were attempting (although if we'd done it a year & a half
later, who knows . . .), and I was looking for something else
by the end of the year.
At which point I had new songs suited for The Last, and within
a week in December I'd gotten impromptu calls from SST and all
the Last members. It was a sign. It was time to get back together,
and do the Magnus Opus, the SST album that would finally do -
Well, I don't know what it was supposed to do, but it didn't.
Brother Dave hooked me up with producer extraordinaire Earle
Mankey, and we began recording in mid-'91. Realizing that we
could have any 2 of "do it fast, cheap, or good", we
opted for "cheap" (had no choice) and "good"
(somewhat obviously).
"Fast" was therefore thrown out the window, and
we continued recording in spurts, subject to Earle's studio schedule
and my school schedule.
Which meant that we didn't finish till 1994.
Now, by that time I'd experienced yet another epiphany or
two, and we actually ditched a couple of tracks to make room
for some brand new ones. Then Ed Urlik came in on bass after
the thing was done, and we ended up getting caught up in a strange
renegotiation phase with SST that put the release of the disc
on hold from fall '94 till early '96.
"Gin" came out, and sank without a trace. It's one
of my favorite Last albums.
I don't even think it's available, except perhaps at the SST
site (see our links page).
Doesn't matter - even as I began to sink into my withdrawal
from the world we recorded, in early '97, the three songs we've
had up on this site for a while, and as you know I am now reemerging
into the world, and am writing songs as we speak.
Maybe we shoulda gone with Fast and Cheap, and gotten the
thing out in early '92 . . .
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DRYWOOD TOWN
Listen to a clip of this song: (Real Audio)
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(written Feb 12, 1991)
What do you mean, Neil Young influenced? I've never heard
the guy!
Ok, it's true. An obvious Neil rip-off. I do like the song, though,
and the lyrics clearly owe more than a bit to Dylan's "All
Along the Watchtower". I was almost asleep one night when
this came to me, and I realized I could simply close my eyes
and forget about it. Literally. I knew that if I didn't get up
and write the thing down I'd lose it forever.
Obviously, I got up, as the thing exists.
Thematically it's your typical post-apocalypse vision.
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SLEEP
Listen to a clip of this song: (Real Audio)
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(written Mar 16, 1989)
Another song for K1 (remember "Awakening"?). This,
as you have already observed, was written at the same time as
"Awakening", but being an electric song had no chance
of being included on that album. We also did the 3rd K1 song
for "Gin", whose title has changed so many times I
can't recall which version I currently use, but scrapped it for
"It's Not That Way" and some others. It will return
someday.
Anyway, fun little song, inspired by real events (a welcome change
of pace), and, as with other songs from this era, I'm not sure
myself what some of the words mean. I only know they're true
. . .
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IT'S NOT THAT WAY
Listen to a clip of this song: (Real Audio)
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(written Apr 30, 1994)
Totally true story. Never fall in love with a lesbian.
Written for "J", as are 2 others on this disc, and
a few more yet to be recorded.
Mostly written in a car while negotiating packed freeways, and
finished just in time to play for friends at a rather strange
Van Nuys party.
Grim and strange time for me, but ultimately it, more than SST
or any previous situations encountered since 1980, was the thing
that finally returned me to myself, that conjured Old Joe up
out of wherever the hell he'd been hiding.
And he's still here, writing to you now.
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(probably written mid 1990)
Mike wrote it, I didn't. I'll talk more about this in the "how
did we record the song and why" section, but the lyrics
are probably self-explanatory, at least until Mike finally contributes
his long overdue submissions and enlightens us all.
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Mike Nolte says:
The few times I was in love, I always used to think that the
object of my affection was going to meet with a ghastly end .
. . car crash or something along that line. It still haunts me
to this day and I guess writing this song was just my own way
of dealing with this psychosis. Everytime I would be waiting
for my new love to come over, and I'd hear a siren outside, I'd
be absolutely positive that siren was for them . . . it put a
lot of pre-mature gray hairs on my head! Silly!
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DON'T MAKE NO SOUND
Listen to a clip of this song: (Real Audio)
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(written Jan 31, 1991)
As you may have discerned from the date, this is indeed a Gulf
War song. Thanks to recent events, it's as topical as ever. Based
on T.S. Eliot's "The Second Coming".
What strange beast now shambles off to Bethlehem to be born?
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(written Summer 1975)
Had a friend named Larry Matthews, who wrote the lyrics. I still
need to track him down, if he's still alive. He could then get
his share of the royalties - oh wait, there aren't any!
He basically had lyrics sitting around, and I whipped up some
appropriate music, and thus one of the few songs I wrote in '75
was born.
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UNORDINARY SUBSTANCE
Listen to a clip of this song: (MP3)
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(written Summer 1977)
I was getting ready, that summer, to do a 4 track demo of the
aforementioned "Song", when I chanced on some Mike
lyrics. Inspired, I came up with the music for "Substance"
in about five minutes. Rather than worry about recording two
demos, I simply put them together for expediency's sake.
It worked well enough to leave them joined together for the next
16 years, at which point we finally recorded them, pretty much
in the style we would've at the time, with the exception of the
ebow I play, which did not exist in 1977.
Thematically a look at Mike's Mental Hospital years.
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Mike Nolte says:
I wrote the lyrics, Joe wrote the music. I remember when I
wrote the lyrics, I showed them to some co-worker of mine's boyfriend
who was a musician himself. He slammed the entire song from beginning
to end . . . actually making notes next to each line on how it
could be drastically improved.
Thank God I never changed them and gave them to Joe instead.
He wrote a wonderful melody to it and it remains my all-time
favorite! I only regret we never perform it live. it's one of
those songs that was meant to be "performed"!
As far as what inspired me to write the song, MENTAL INSTITUTION!
Need I say more?
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(written Apr 3, 1994)
Another J song thrown in at the last minute - 7/21 being her
birthday.
This was the first song I wrote for her.
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(written Jan 12, 1991)
Larry submitted this to us back in '87 when he joined, but though
I liked the song I thought his lyrics ("just call me up
I'll be right there") were a little too obvious and happy.
Still, I wanted to do it at some point.
Finally, as we were about to get together to rehearse songs for
"Gin", I came upon the grim, country-goes-to-hell in
a trailer lyrics that we ended up using.
Not about a specific girl, but I dearly hope every girl who broke
my heart assumes it's about her . . .
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(written Apr 16, 1994)
The 3rd J song. It was a Saturday morning, and I realized that
I needed to either write a song or kill myself. I chose the former,
as self evidenced by the fact that:
A. it exists.
B. I'm still here.
Grim and true, true and grim. Don't go there.
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(probably written mid 1990)
Lord preserve us. The Irish in Mike gone mad. He'll have to tell
you more about it. He did a lovely job with this, the backing
vocals are all his, made up on the spot, in fact, and I'll elaborate
on this in the "making of" section.
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Mike Nolte says:
I wrote this song as my way of railing against people who
get in the way of people who are generally sincere about finding
their purpose in life and getting shit for their searching from
these so-called "born again" religious fanatics.
You see, I knew from the age of five that God wasn't looking
for converts who congregated in churches every Sunday... I knew
He saw through that whole game that was being played. I knew
He wasn't a big fan of organized religion and I knew He was looking
for the simple man/woman who just tried to do what was right
and not make any airs about it. Hence the lyrics "we always
try to do our best with what You've given us . . . we're blessed".
I wrote the arrangements Brian Wilson style and sang it Neil
Young style.
Interesting combination, huh?
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THE TIME IS GONE
Listen to a clip of this song: (Real Audio)
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(written Nov 30, 1990)
"Time" was written for the Joe-Mike-Dave-Kristi aggregation,
and was created as a tongue in cheek look at aging. I was not
getting any younger, and decided to mock the few pangs of mortality
I'd begun feeling.
So, lyrically just a joke song, mostly, but musically I liked
it, and wrote it with the vocal interplay in mind that we were
somehow able to pull off. And, as you know, Joe Mike Dave &
Kristi did indeed do the vocals for it.
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(written January 1988)
The latest of the H songs to be recorded. You remember H - "Confession"
would never have existed without her!
Anyway, she did indeed have a car that would tend to Not Start.
Not much to say, the story's true, and self explanatory. I liked
the idea, musically, of mixing Power Pop and Woodstock motifs.
Flipside had someone review "Gin" when it came out,
and he didn't like it. He did, however, understand what I was
trying to do. I'd found my love for the '68-'71 rock era rekindled,
and was moving toward attempting some kind of unholy synthesis.
The reviewer remarked that "Gin" as an album sounded
like what would have happened if the hippie era had evolved gradually
and naturally into the punk thing, rather than the violent revolution
that ensued instead. He went on to say that such a fusion wasn't
his bag. Fair enough. He's still the only one who figured it
out.
I do hope Flipside returns . . .
Anyway, this song is probably the definitive example of all that.
It's equal parts vintage Who and Dead.
Sick, ain't I?
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(written late Spring 1991)
Well, Luke spontaneously came up with this mutation of the "Sleep"
riff, and we ended up jamming on it for way too long. Its subsequent
inclusion was, of course, a given.
Great riff, Luke
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THE TIME IS GONE (REPRISE)
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(written Aug 3, 1994)
Yeah, so "Time" was, lyrically lightweight. Initially,
anyway.
When we did the initial backing tracks in '91, we did this little
reprise as well. I knew I wanted it for musical reasons, but
hadn't a clue as to what lyrics I'd use.
So - back to J. I was about to go record overdubs at Earle
Mankey's , when I learned that she (J) had just been diagnosed
with an incurable, deadly illness.
Hoo boy - I wrote the lyrics in 10 minutes, recorded them
within the hour. The reprise to the joke song had become all
too real, and every word is heart felt. And was recorded that
very day.
I won't recover from that, nor should I. Some things happen
that simply change you. You can't quite get over them, or bury
them. They simply change you. It's life.
All this would have been my ultimate traumatic life experience
if the "Take Care of Her" scenario hadn't happened
a year later.
And you wonder why I stayed a hermit for so long . . .
Final album done now. More magic to come, and if you don't
come to us, we'll get to you
Somehow . . .
Especially D.C.
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