We're coming to your town, we'll help you party it down (right after Matt does his hair).
All notes below by Billy.
Headshot/Baby Gets High - released by Spontaneous Generation. Pre-Johnny drum machine songs. People seemed to prefer the B-side, Baby Gets High. Fair enough. Matt pointed out that it sounded like Love Is All Around Us by The Troggs. Except for the chords and the melody, I don't hear it. We played a pre-Glastonbury radio show in a field with The Troggs. We told them our single was a "tribute" to their song. "Who the fuck are you?" they replied. Then they played Wild Thing and we all drank mulled wine together! Cover art is a sculpture by Matt and I.
Madder Rose/Lights Go Down - released by Rockville. A-side rerecorded for first album under the title Swim. This single also used a drum machine, as we were still searching for our musical motor, Johnny Kick. Both versions came out poppier than expected. My demo was much darker, but that might be because I cannot sing. Cover drawing and lettering by Nib Geebles.
I Wanna Sleep in Your Arms/Nicky Hoeky - released by Seed, Atlantic's faux indie label. Two covers: the A-side is a Jonathan Richman song. Mary found Nicky Hoeky on a Bobbi Gentry record. This is one of my favorite MRose recordings, as it's loose, we did it quick, and we only had one argument. If you look closely at the cover you will notice that Matt and I wrote a message to Axl Rose. It was immediately redacted, due to the delicate temperaments of a few individuals involved. People funny boy.
Bring It Down - released by Seed. Recorded at the fabulous Studio Red in Philadelphia. For various reasons, the band was not crazy about the results. I remember Matt saying, "Who would even like this?" I kinda knew what he meant. I thought it would sound bigger. But happily, we were wrong, so we hit the road. We embraced the myth, and were privileged to live the lives of modern, demented nomads. Almost every where we went, people were nice to us. It was as if the universe was saying. "Do whatever you want!" So we did. Matt and I made the cover painting (and all art associated with this album's campaign). Aesthetically, the art is mostly Matt.
Swim EP - released by Atlantic to help keep us out there while we toured the UK, Europe, and back and forth across Ohio. Another painting by Matt and me.
Panic On - released by Atlantic. Our best one. We came off the road, said awkward hellos to our loved ones, rehearsed for a month, then banged it out at Water Music in Hoboken. Our best and most cohesive group of songs. Mark Freegard co-produced with us, and his English reserve dovetailed nicely with our somewhat petulant Americanisms. Maybe we weren't so bad, who the fuck knows? Anyway, afterwards Matt left the band to do Speedball, Baby with Ron Ward. Chris Giammalvo joined and quickly learned every song. We started touring again almost immediately. Chris had no idea. Cover art is a not so great painting by me, chosen quickly after the first cover was...
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...rejected!!! This cover got the thumbs down from Atlantic Records and Tapes. We were,of course, outraged. The photo taken the morning after a big London show. I wonder what we had gotten up to. One of us barfed soon after this photo was taken. I promised Johnny Kick that I wouldn't say it was him.
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Car Song EP - Atlantic. UK only EP that I forgot about. I don't think I have a copy myself. I know it has a song on it called Why I Married The Widow - I'd love to hear it sometime. I remember the chorus was good, but I wonder what kind of lyric I wrote for such an affecting title. Cover assemblage by me (I was really happy when Matt told me he liked it. Then we didn't speak for 4 years. But now we hang out when I'm in the city!)
The Love You Save EP - released by Atlantic. This came out the year after Panic On. A cover of a Jackson 5 song, my favorite song of all time. Turned out pretty well, but thank god it's not a competition. Also had a cover of Ruler of My Heart, a song made popular by Irma Thomas, written by Alan Toussaint. Cover painting by me.
Tragic Magic - released by Atlantic. I wanted to make a different sort of record, a dub-based one. I was also, obviously, very into Tricky at the time. Not our forte, I guess, as was pointed out to us unanimously by both critics and fans alike. I take responsibility, of course, but will say that our intentions, as always, were excellent. Some nice songs, though, like Delight's Pool, My Star, (She's a) Satelite, Don Greene. After this one, Atlantic released us back into the wild. Cooking Vinyl released a UK version that included two new songs, Narco and Jailbird, which strengthened the thing considerably. This is around the time that the universe told us to "cut it out." So we did. Photo on cover is by Anne Arden McDonald.
Hello June Fool - released by Cooking Vinyl (our second, and kinder home). This was more like it. We went back to our strength, sad songs about drugs with noise. I really like this one, everyone in the band was on top of their game. But by this time, Johnny was in Chicago, Chris in Brooklyn, and Mary and I in Ithaca, NY. It was too hard to hold it together, plus this record didn't do as well as we'd hoped (though considerably better than the last one). The writing, sadly, was...
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...on the wall (photo by Matt).
BUT THEN...
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To Be Beautiful