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LINER NOTES

Unlike most of my earlier “studio” recordings (notwithstanding the Dog & Bone sessions, where I played Fred’s twelve-string), here I play acoustic guitar for the most part. I obtained my first acoustic, a Fender, when I bought my Telecaster in the summer of 1985. I promptly loaned it to my brother Bob. I think I eventually retrieved it in 1989. Though it’s not a particularly good-sounding instrument, it has served its purpose over the years, and may pop up again in the future, should I need an acoustic guitar that I can punish.

I recorded Turret Tapes after the breakup of I.Q. Bonehead in late 1993, as a sort of diversion from the labor of writing my dissertation. I was back on the four-track, kindly lent by Dave Vernick. The songs were recorded in the house that Stacey and I were renting in Hartford. The house featured a turret which faced a street corner.

Although six of the eleven songs here are on the Gong Hits! CD (recorded in late Spring 1994), at the time I had not decided to do the whole professional studio thing. Two of the songs—”The Vamp” and “Butt Naked”—had been rehearsed by I.Q. Bonehead but, if memory serves me, never played at a gig. Most of the songs were of recent origin and I was eager to get them down on tape.

This is a (very) rough mix of some songs I was recording in the same little studio that I recorded I.Q. Bonehead’s Barely Almost. My intention was to record eight songs that were not in the band’s repertoire. The songs on the original list but never recorded were “As the Night Is Long”, “Byron and Me”, “Can It Be”, “Days Gone By” and “Worried No More.”

I started the recording process probably in late May/June of 1993. Later, the studio closed for a month for remodeling. When I came back, the original four-track tape was gone! I had neglected to label the box it was in. As far as I know, the tape was recorded over by someone who thought it was blank. In listening through cassettes while working on this collection, I found this dub, to my great surprise. The original tape had dBX noise-reduction, but I hadn’t patch it through on this dub, which accounts for the high level of hiss and strange equalization.