The Vandelays
A New Day (on CD Baby)
This is an album of 70s rock made in 2004 by some old friends. It’s probably the best thing to come out of the Bedford Street studios jam-band scene, at least that I’ve heard.
After I returned to Madison (WI) I threw in my lot with a good friend named Ben Kidwell, whose band Mercury’s Wake had just broken up. The co-leader of that group, Dave Pankin, was a true classic of hippie-rock. When I knew him, Dave would regularly try to incite sluggish burnouts to dance to his rawk music by alternately hollering at them and offering them free marijuana-laced brownies. That was in the Dave Pankin Band, to which Ben and Dave assigned themselves in the wake of the Wake.
Dave and Ben occupied Studio A, in the basement of an awesome office building just down Bedford Street from the studios of famous radio-WORT. You were allowed to make loud noises of various kinds from 7 PM to 7 AM every day of the week and all day on the weekends.
Ben and I lived just around the corner, and wasted no time installing our band We’re Freaks in Studio A with fellow cosmonaut Tim Morgan. Down the hall, in Studio G, Ben Johnson and Matt Krueger held court. They rythm sectioned for a string of bands, including Primitive Feet with Dave, and were currently rocking the Zen Cats (maybe Kats? Katz?). There were a few pop and punk (there was a difference at that point) groups down the hall, but the jamming was loud and proud and no one stopped to breathe.
Tim and I also worshipped at the feet of Joe Shur. Some people enjoy music, others are obsessed with it, but Joseph Ambrose Shur had drowned in it and was reincarnated as a wooly turtle. Tim sometimes played in his band Colorful Psychosis, and We’re Freaks had a wild time playing at one of Joe’s parties.
Meanwhile, Ben Kidwell and I made music with the Studio G gang. The Azimuth Alignment turned into Onomatopoeia turned into I Sporgle Matusis, as we gradually became less acquainted with reality.
Eventually various persons began suggesting that Kidwell and I were overtaxed by our three groups, and as Ben began to agree the choice had to be made. Tim and I had been causing difficulty for Ben in We’re Freaks out of concern for certain repeated thematic material in his playing. Furthermore, WF was rather an odd group. Well anyway, and much to my shame, We’re Freaks was left behind.
It really came down to loyalty. I had thrown in my lot with Ben, and he with Dave Pankin. Given that he couldn’t leave that band, which was not to be frank a group that had it together, he and I chose the band which we thought would succeed socially over the one which, at least for me, was more satisfying musically.
Of course, soon enough I made a stink, which led to music leaving my life for a while.
Ben Johnson and Matt went on to make a group called… maybe that was the group called Onomatopoeia. It turned into this, which is really not a bad piece of 70s rock.
Those guys are still playing together, as the Gadjo Players
