Warfrat Tales (Warfrat SLP 0183) -5/83

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Where the songs came from

by Joe Nolte

TRY TO RISE Listen to a clip of this song: (Real Audio)

(written Summer 1982) Another manufactured Joe song with a Vitus riff - this time the riff came first. He would play this organ bit frequently, but hadn't come up with a song to go around it. So I wrote one. I actually like some of the chord changes I did for this one, but as a whole the thing is kinda meandering, musically. Lyrically, forget it. For the first few months there weren't even any words - I would just mouth garbled syllables. The words I finally wrote weren't much better - another song about nothing. This is from our "Warfrat Tales" compilation.

BRAND NEW DRUG Listen to a clip of this song: (Real Audio)

(probably written mid-late 1982) Also from "Warfrat Tales". I should probably mention that "Wharf Rat" was a song I'd written in high school for a rock opera Vitus and I were concocting with our co-conspirator Henry Spiller (I stole large parts of it for "Everybody Had It With You"). It became the name of our new independent label in the '80's, since former manager Randall Wixen had co-opted the name "Backlash". I think Vitus deliberately mangled the spelling to Warfrat to avenge himself for all his songs I'd butchered in '79 and '80. Fair enough. This one is Vitus', start to finish. My favorite bit is the ending, where my backup singing is actually my only contribution to the thing - as I recall, Vitus played all the guitars.