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THE PATRON SAINTS ~ FOHHOH BOHOB ~ lp & 7inch (TIME-LAG 039/040)deluxe and exact official reissue of one of the rarest & most unique gems of the 60s private press psychedelic underground. home recorded in a suburban new york living room over just a couple weeks in 1969 by three enthused teenagers, and then self released by the band in an edition of only 100 copies complete with hand assembled covers and booklet insert. dreams of rock stardom may have faded quickly, but from such humble beginnings these kids totally transcended their limited resources… an album overflowing with naive creativity, huge ideas, deep bedroom mysticism, and more then a hint of stoned teenage humor, not to mention a rather unusual assortment of instruments and some very unconventional but brilliant "studio" maneuvering. two singers/songwriters both with wonderfully deep, poetic & introspective lyrics and unique voices, chiming 12 string & electric guitars, unusually cool use of piano, crude drum kit, autoharp, banjo, tambourine, subtle bursts of fuzz bass, off kilter unison vocals, washes of reverb modulation, weird tape edits, and a seriously one-of-a-kind vibration. there's truly been nothing like it before or since… highest quality production throughout with better then ever master tape sounds and warm analog mastering, audiophile 180gm vinyl, exact reproduction of the original heavy weight cover with front & back mind-blowingly cool crude black & white art just like the original, exact reproduction of the thick insert booklet with gold printed covers on multiple colors of construction paper. plus a bonus 7inch of two essential tracks intended for the original lp but left off due to time restrictions, complete with colored construction paper picture sleeve and lyric insert. without a doubt, the definitive reissue of this lost masterpiece. released in full cooperation with founding member eric bergman. strictly limited to 1000 copies. THE PATRON SAINTS ~ FOHHOH BOHOB ~ cd (TIME-LAG 039)the full original lp plus the two extra tracks from the 7inch, as well and 4 previously unreleased bonus tracks from private demos and live recordings, as well as an alternate version of the lp's closing track. heavy miniature lp style gatefold cover with all original lp art, plus notes inside from founding member eric bergman. cd sized version of the original booklet insert complete with metallic printed covers. woven japanese inner sleeves. Here's info about the 1997 official reissue: The graphic collage below depicts what's in The Patron Saints' Fohhoh Bohob reissue package, which was released in July, 1997. Hopefully, you've read the the story of how the original album was created; this section tells how the reissue came to be, including the CD version of Fohhoh Bohob, which contains an extra track not included in the album reissue. If you'd like to hear what the reissue tracks sound like, check out the Fohhoh Bohob Songs page . |
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 An infamous Fohhoh Bohob bootleg rears its ugly head... |
About two years ago, my Garrison bandmate and best buddy, the late Dan Brown, was in Boston, MA record store In Your Ear! looking for a rare Procol Harum album. As he flipped through the P's, he suddenly stopped. There before him was a familiar record...sort of; it was Fohhoh Bohob, but with a different, green cover. Now, Dan, having known me for years, was well aware of Bohob...but what was this? He brought it up to the front of the store where he was told by store owner Reed Lapin that it was a European bootleg. Quite a few had been sold, and a local guy came in once in a while to restock his supply. Dan was completely in shock! Could this really be happening? He bought one for $35, went home and immediately called me in New York to tell me of his fantastic discovery. I was...yes, that's right...completely in shock! Since about 1989, I had received a great many phone calls and letters about Bohob from all over the world. I had heard rumors of Bohob bootlegs existing, but I never really believed them to be true...until Dan's call. He described the altered cover, the label, the "libretto," and tried to find out any information about it's origin from the package. Nada. Not a thing. Hmmmm. He promised to buy me one the next time he was in the store. I just wrote the whole incident off as one of life's bizarre little coincidences. |
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About a month later, Dan went back to In Your Ear!. This time, as he's flipping through albums, a guy comes into the store with three Bohob bootlegs under his arm! Yes, that's right, ladies and gentlemen, another of life's bizarre little coincidences! Reed said, "Hey, see that guy over there? He's played with the guy on the albums you're holding!" Dan recalled that "Bootleg Boy" was very excited and asked him question after question about Bohob, the Patron Saints, etc., etc., which amused Dan greatly. Finally, Dan told him that he'd give me his phone number...maybe I'd call him sometime. When I heard this story from Dan, I was completely flipped out! I knew that I just had to call this guy...maybe he knew where the bootleg came from! So I jotted down his number and his name: Mike Albertini. |
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 Mike Albertini's American Sound Records logo. |
When I finally did call Mike in April 1995, I was astonished at what a nice, honest guy he seemed to be. We talked for a fairly long time; he answered a lot of my questions, and I answered a lot of his. I told him how various people had wanted to re-release Bohob, and how I hadn't quite trusted any of them. He explained that through his company, American Sound Records, out of Middleboro, Massachusetts, he had produced and released a number of records for artists in similar situations. He had a huge network of friends and colleagues who could get us anything we needed. He was completely forthright, not pushy at all. For the first time since this Bohobmania thing began, I felt I had finally found someone I not only trusted, but liked! And so that day, we began our plans to reissue Fohhoh Bohob. Mike and I exchanged letters and calls every couple of weeks, plotting and planning our strategy. The most important aspect of doing this project for both of us was (and still is) making sure that it was as faithful to the original release as possible, while adding some "goodies" for avid collectors. A couple of years earlier, I had transferred the original analog 1/4-track 7.5 IPS stereo Bohob master tapes to 1/2-track 15 IPS reel-to-reels for safety purposes, so I decided to use those for the reissue and not touch the original tapes unless I needed to. The original release of the Bohob LP was mastered using inferior tape and I always felt it never sounded as good as the master tapes did. At long last, the album would be heard the way it was supposed to sound! In December 1995, I sent the "safety" tapes to Mike so that he and his crew could evaluate their usability. Not long after that, Mike sent me 500 blank, white record jackets which were almost identical to the original release jackets. We were on our way! |
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While Mike was taking care of the "sonic" side at this point, I spent the next few months working on the graphic elements: the front and back covers, the "libretto" cover and lyric sheets, the label and the reissue insert sheet. To make everything as authentic as possible, I went to the best available source...my own copy of Bohob, which I've kept in a plastic liner over the years. I took the album cover (very carefully!) to Paul Biskup, a local printer friend of mine. We experimented with settings and came up with accurate stats of both covers. The next step was finding crack-and-peel paper to match the original production. That done, Paul and co-worker Frank Pugliese printed the cover sheets and trimmed them to the correct dimensions, eleven inches high by twelve inches wide. With 500 record jackets and 1000 cover sheets in hand, I was now ready to begin the arduous task of putting them together. After completing about 25, I suddenly had a stunning revelation: I hated doing this!!! I hated it in 1969 and I hated it now. What to do? Enter Heather Sadlo Palkewick. Heather, a friend of mine, had recently purchased a computer from me on time and still owed me a fair amount. I offered her a way of paying off the rest of the debt: put 475 Fohhoh Bohob cover sets together! And to my everlasting admiration, she did! Picked them up, took them away, and a couple of months later appeared with them finished! I sent them back up to Mike and proceeded to the next project: the record labels. |
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 A reissue Fohhoh Bohob label. |
Even though I had enough labels leftover from the initial release of Bohob for the reissue, Mike said that the company he was using for pressing wouldn't use them, so it was literally back to the drawing board. I scanned the real labels from sides one and two, and recreated them on the computer as faithfully as I could (including the incorrectly flipped quotation marks in front of the word 'Fohhoh'). I sent the camera-ready labels to Mike in March 1996 and began trying to figure out how to accurately recreate the peace sign cover for the accompanying book. | ||
 Fohhoh Bohob reissue libretto covers, with three new colors. |
As you may recall, they were initially made by spray-painting a stencil onto construction paper with gold paint. One hundred was bad enough, but five hundred? Not this boy! I decided to scan my original cover and use a computer to create a template file that could be used to print it, rather than stencil it. That completed, I bought 1200 sheets of multi-colored construction paper. The original book colors were red, blue, green, yellow and black; in the reissue package the colors gray, orange and pink have been added. Paul and I found a gold ink that matched what we were looking for, and he and Frank printed the front "libretto" covers. They came out amazingly well; it's really hard to tell the old cover from the new. | ||
 A reissue Fohhoh Bohob lyric sheet. |
Matching the lyric sheets wasn't as much of a challenge, just more tedious. I gingerly removed the staples from my 1969 Bohob booklet and had all nine sheets duplicated on a high quality copier. I would have used the actual sheets I first created, but time and discoloration had not been kind to them. Once I had 500 collated sets, I brought them home, pulled out the finished construction paper covers, and personally stapled each and every reissue book together! Since I had stapled the first books by myself, I felt it was my Bohob-ic duty to attend to these as well! This time around, I was careful not to use the dreaded "fifth staple" that had caused so much distress for collectors in the past...in fact, this time I only used two! Many days and carpal cramps later, they were completed, packaged, and sent off to Mike. Around this time, summer 1996, Mike and I decided to add a bonus single to the package. It would contain Shine On Heart and Do It Together, two of Jon Tuttle's songs that never made it to the final release, due to running time constraints. This required me to create a label that matched the LP label in design and spirit, which I did and mailed to Mike. |
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 The reissue insert page, with an original Bohob label attached. |
The only package piece left was the reissue insert page, which would contain additional liner notes, contact information and the original lyric sheets to both of the bonus tracks. As an extra added treat for collectors, Mike and I decided to attach one of the extra labels from the 1969 Bohob pressing run to each sheet (Mike "volunteered" himself and his family to handle this chore). All of the parts of the Bohob reissue puzzle were almost ready. Almost. Sometime in the fall, we finally received test pressings. I slapped mine on the turntable and had a listen; something just didn't sound right. It seemed noisier and "hissier" than it should have, and just didn't have the requisite "punch" I was looking for. Reluctantly, I call Mike, but he voiced similar reservations. We discussed a number of options, but only one seemed feasible to me: transfer the original Bohob analog master tapes to DAT format, and proceed from there. I didn't want the sound altered or changed...just correct. We dealt with the possibility of collectors taking exception to any digital intervention, but ultimately decided that a sonically superior product was the goal all along, so we went with it. A long time had been spent on this project and we wanted to be totally satisfied with the final product. Besides, it allowed us to kill two birds with one stone; we would have a digital CD-R reference version all ready prepared for creating the CD release of Bohob. |
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I was leery of playing the Bohob master tapes again. How would they sound? Would they break at critical points? How would the 27-year-old splices hold up? Incredibly well, as it turned out; every single splice held perfectly, even the intense ones at the end of The Goodnight Song (Semi-interesting factoid: when I transferred the master tapes of my two solo albums to DAT, I had to replace many of the splices on the Modern Phonography masters and every splice on the Sending Out Signals masters. Seems the farther back in time you go, the better and more reliable the splicing tape). When Mike received the DAT tape, he passed it (along with timing and track sequencing notes I had made) to Erik Lindgren, who performed his digital magic (with assistance from the multi-talented Aram Heller) and provided us with a CD-R master for our review. It sounded unbelievably good! Eric had done a terrific job of maintaining fidelity and clarity without making it sound "digitized." Mike and I were thrilled. The next step involved using the CD-R to produce analog test pressings of the LP and the single. They sounded great; the final puzzle piece was in place. The Patron Saints' Fohhoh Bohob LP reissue package was finally ready to ship in early July, 1997. It took over two years to complete, but we think it was well worth it. We hope you'll agree! |
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