Sixteen years after the initial release of Sending Out Signals, the CD reissue finally shipped. The set, which also contains the CD debut of my first solo album, Modern Phonography, contains all of the original tracks from both LPs, as well as a number of selected bonus tracks. These include original and early demo versions of a number of the songs on both albums, unreleased demos, studio and live tracks, with some featuring The Patron Saints and Garrison. The package contains all of the original artwork for both albums, and all of the cuts were digitally transferred directly from the original master tapes, so at last, everything finally sounds the way it was supposed to without any vinyl-induced hiss, pops or clicks.
[Note: If, for some reason, the individual embedded MP3 player controls below each song don't appear or work correctly in your particular browser, you can still click on any song title to hear a soundbite with the QuickTime player.]
I've been listening to shortwave radio since I was about 11 and like a lot of other kids, I built my own Heathkit shortwave at 13. It was only fitting, then, to pull it out of storage to use on Signals for the opening sequence. I taped a number of "short-wavy" sounds that appealed to me and then narrowed them down to two for the left and right channel stereo spread. I then used a tone generator and a key to produce the S.O.S. Morse code signal. The original version also contained L-O-V-E, but the whole intro was about a minute, so I bagged it. You can, however, hear the L-O-V-E in the coda at the end of the record. Eric Bergman: shortwave radio, "S.O.S.
A number of people have told me that they really relate to the sentiment in this song, which is, basically, not knowing how to read someone else's amorous advances. Signals was one of Garrison's live staples from 1979 on, and an early studio version (well, actually recorded during a practice while I had a cold) was used on the Spotlight 107 program (and also appears as a bonus track on the Sending Out Signals CD reissue). As luck would have it, Dan was back in town (after moving to Seattle) during this period and was able to reprise his bass parts on Signals, as well as Ace In The Hole. Signals was written and being performed by us well before the Police's Message In A Bottle was released, so they ripped off the S.O.S. theme from me, not vice versa! Well, maybe not... Kevin Brennan: drums
Roy Ellingsen: lead guitar, rhythm guitar, harmony vocals
Dan Brown: bass
Eric Bergman: 12-string guitar, lead vocals, harmony vocals
I can't tell you how many questions I've had about this song! Here's the skinny: one day, Dan Brown and I were driving around when we happened to look up and see a dead bird (at right) hanging on a telephone wire under a roof hangover. The sight triggered thoughts of "The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, " which soon mutated into "a pigeon on the wires of Babylon." The music for the song was written while I was napping; I basically dreamed the melody, woke up and worked it out. The "harpsichord" effect was created by playing an electric 12-string guitar along with the master tape at half-speed, and then playing the tape back at normal speed. The same trick was used on Ripe On The Bough off the Modern Phonography album. Eric Bergman: 12-string guitar, bass, keyboards, lead vocal
This song was written for my brother, Tom. At the time, he was seeing a fairly jealous woman who often accused him of all sorts of things, so this song is from her point of view. My brother was/is heavily into audio/video technology, so there are references to that fact: oath of fidelity, true guarantee, etc. I'd decided that every album I put out had to have something reggae-ish on it...this is one; Dead Battery On The L.I.E. is the other.
P. Lynn Radok & Joann DiBello: harmony vocals
Kevin Brennan: drums
Roy Ellingsen: lead guitar, rhythm guitar
Eric Bergman: rhythm guitar, bass, lead vocals, harmony vocals
The epitome of bogus rock-and-roll swagger, lovingly referred to as "boy music." Wildly misunderstood, Ace was supposed to be an amusing power-chord ditty; a surprising number of people took it very seriously, indeed. Well, you know what they say about taking a joke. What a world.
Kevin Brennan: drums
Roy Ellingsen: lead guitar, rhythm guitar, harmony vocals
Dan Brown: bass
Eric Bergman: rhythm guitar, percussion, lead vocals, harmony vocals
I wrote this about the time that Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson were topping the charts. It occurred to me that they both probably had the crap kicked out of them when they were young and sensitive, only to outshine all of their tormentors by a wide margin. I grew up with a kid who did the same thing to me; we've reconciled as adults, but it's a pretty personal song.
Kevin Brennan: drums
Roy Ellingsen: rhythm guitar
Eric Bergman: rhythm guitar, 12-string guitar, slide guitar, bass, percussion, lead vocals, harmony vocals
Back in 1978 or so, there was a commercial for batteries which started off with the chilling phrase "Dead battery on the L.I.E.," designed to scare you into purchasing a new one at your earlist convenience. New York disk jockey Vin Scelsa of legendary WNEW-FM thought that it would be a great name for a song, so he put together a contest. I kept meaning to write something, but never actually got around to it. Ironically, on the night that WRNW-FM played my segment about Modern Phonography, they also happened to play the winning entry in Vin's contest. My first reaction was, "I can do better than that!," so I finally wrote my version. I sent a copy to Vin, but I never heard back from him. The character in the song is based on a Jamaican guy I used to work with at my "day" job; all in all, I'd have to say that this is probably the most popular song I've written. My father liked it, anyway. Kevin Brennan: drums
Roy Ellingsen: lead guitar, rhythm guitar, harmony vocals
Dan Brown: bass
Eric Bergman: rhythm guitar, 12-string guitar, bass, percussion, lead vocal
When my parents took a well-deserved vacation in the Greek Isles in the late seventies, they stopped on the island of Crete and bought me a authentic bouzouki (sort of a cross between a mandolin and a balalaika) as a surprise. I promised them that someday I would write a song with it. Soon, I had written some music, but had no words. One night, after a particularly emotionally trying day, I came home and happened to look at the photo to the right, a shot of (l-r) me, my father and my brother, Tom, taken at Cape Cod, circa 1958. I remember thinking, "God, things were so much easier back then." Everything just fell into place from there. Eric Bergman: bouzouki, bass, keyboards, lead vocals
My tribute to the late John Lennon, plain and simple. Written shortly after his death, I tried to incorporate a number of "Beatle-isms" into the mix, hence Roy's stunning backwards guitar solo, and the Day Tripper quote during the long fade. The first audio bite presented is taken from the body of the song, while the second clip offers some of the backwards guitar/Day Tripper section. P. Lynn Radok & Joann DiBello: harmony vocals
Kevin Brennan: drums
Roy Ellingsen: lead guitar
Eric Bergman: rhythm guitar, bass, percussion, lead vocals, harmony vocals
Just a little tacked on coda with a reversed Love Is The Answer as the musical bed. The Morse code for L-O-V-E is in there somewhere. Eric Bergman: shortwave radio, Morse code
As with the Modern Phonography CD reissue, all of the cuts included as bonus tracks on the CD reissue of Sending Out Signals are either original/early/live demos of tunes that appear on the original LP or songs that were considered for inclusion at one point. I engineered all of these bonus cuts with the exception of Love Is The Answer (Un-reversed guitar ending), which I co-engineered with the ever-patient Ward Bennett.
I ran across this gem while picking out bonus cuts and I knew it had to be included. It has the un-reversed forward guitar solo which Roy Ellingsen performed to be used for the backwards guitar section at the end of the LP version of Love Is The Answer. When we set about recording this part in July of 1981, I asked Roy to try to create a solo which sounded somewhat reversed to begin with and this is what he came up with. The boy can play.
Roy Ellingsen: lead guitar
Kevin Brennan: drums
Eric Bergman: rhythm guitar, bass, percussion
This original version of Wires is fairly similar to the LP rendition, the main difference being that I used a 12-string for the break instead of a keyboard. It was recorded in May of 1978, just as Modern Phonography was being released. A couple of months earlier and it would probably been on that album instead. Eric Bergman: 12-string guitars, bass, percussion, vocals
Another close-to-the-LP version, I actually wrote this in the same house in which Fohhoh Bohob was recorded, eleven years later. Strange but true! This is an example of how I often use muted guitar scratching in demos to indicate where I envision drum parts going. I believe the "guitar amp" used on this August, 1980 recording was a little homemade transistor job with a three-inch speaker. I think I may have used it on the LP version as well... Eric Bergman: guitars, bass, percussion, vocals
In The Mourning, April's Fool (both Patron Saint numbers reworked for Garrison usage) and Sending Out Signals were all put on tape in July of 1979 at a marathon Garrison recording/practice session in Mofo's basement. Clubs and radio stations were inquiring about our demo tape, and for some reason, we didn't have an acceptable one at that time, so we decided to remedy that. I set up the equipment, got acceptable levels, pushed "record," and we were off; it basically engineered itself. Everything was live with no overdubs, just a little added cross-echo. I was just getting over a cold, so my vocals are sort of questionable, but instrumentally, we were at the peak of our tightness and energy. We recorded a lot at that session, much of which is included on the Garrison Anthology double CD package.
(If you'd like to hear a comparison of four different versions of In The Mourning from the first demo in 1970 until the latest version on the Patron Saints' new CD, Time and Place, click here.)
Kevin Brennan: drums
Roy Ellingsen: lead guitar, harmony vocals
Dan Brown: bass, harmony vocals
Eric Bergman: Electric 12-string guitar, lead vocals
Kevin Brennan: drums
Roy Ellingsen: lead guitar, harmony vocals
Dan Brown: bass, harmony vocals
Eric Bergman: Electric 12-string guitar, lead vocals
I've made an Adobe Acrobat PDF (553 K) of both sides of the lyric sheet for Sending Out Signals, available by clicking here. If you don't have the free Acrobat plug-in, you can get that here.
