Anatomy of a Compilation in Progress
This blog exists partly as an aid in documenting my voluminous creative workload. Recently I have have been corresponding quite a bit with my "biographer" and sometime collaborator Greg Fernandez, who is helping me catalog and account for my work (he has a sizeable resource of his own of my recordings in his archive based in Columbus, Ohio.) We have been corresponding specifically about the not-so-far issued Hospital Records release "Would You Like to Have Fun?"
This is a compilation, as complete as is now possible, of the recordings of the band
Qi-ZZ, which toured throughout Ohio as "Fun Incorporated" in 1980-1981. I was a singer, keyboardist and bass player with this band, which featured John Murray and Tood Cheek on guitars, Lu Linden (and sometimes Todd Witt) on drums and John Maynier as leader, singer and second keyboardist.
John Maynier had befriended the members of Devo well before they were known to the public at large, and wanted to start a band that reflected their sound and influence. I took it a bit more in the direction of brit-pop and avant-garde, and the resulting musical tug of war was interesting and the band itself clicked. We were really pretty popular, but had a lot of critics among our friends, who were older and didn't respect Devo very much. Many younger fans thought we were great, and ended up eventually peopling the more progressively-minded Cincinnati bands as the 80s wore on.
But eventually the voices of the critics, and internal strife, wore Qi-ZZ down. We played our 30th and last show at Stache's in Columbus on March 13, 1981. Ironically, the Devo association, and the fact that our single was produced by Devo member Bob Mothersbaugh, kept interest in Qi-ZZ fairly high over time compared to my other bands, which were longer lasting and generally more influential in a local sense, in addition to being more difficult to swallow stylistically.
The information below was written as a letter to Greg to outline the progress of the CD compilation of Qi-ZZ' opera omina. He has offered to post it to a Devo mailing list, and to cover my ass I figured I'd better publish it here also. Also it may afford some insight into the considerations I go through in putting together compilations like this.
Hospital Record HDO-19
Qi-ZZ "Would You Like to Have Fun?"
First burn
1. New Baby
2. 2-Dimensional Love Affair
3. Beach Music
4. John Lennon
5. Mars Needs Women
(Group Effort Sound Studio)
6. Funky Adolf (The Mistake)
7. Secretary at Large (Sam's)
8. Industrial Blonde (Sam's)
9. One System (Sam's)
10. Targets of Opportunity (Barrister House)
11. St. Louis (The Pit)
12. Don't Come Too Close (The Pit)
13. All Day All Night (The Pit)
14. La Bamba (The Pit)
15. Hong Kong Blues (The Pit)
16. Targets/Beach Music (The Pit)
17. Catharsis (Oxford)
18-20. **Dead Tracks**
21. Cheaper by the Dozen (Barrister House - rehearsal)
22. Spencer take 1 (Barrister House - rehearsal)
23. Spencer take 2 (Barrister House - rehearsal)
24. **Dead Track**
25. Spencer take 2/2 (Barrister House - rehearsal)
26. Gold Gamma Stomp (Barrister House - rehearsal)
27. Just For Fun (Sam's)
28. I Can't Stand You (Sam's)
29. E.D. (Sam's)
30. Minimoog noodling between songs (Sam's)
31. Lamb saying "Am I gonna have to clear this place out?" before Don't Come Too Close (Sam's)
32. Dave Lewis "BASF Tape Talk" prior to Funky Adolf (Sam's)
Second burn
1. New Baby (incomplete)
2. New Baby
3. 2-Dimensional Love Affair
4. Beach Music
5. John Lennon
6. Mars Needs Women
(Group Effort Sound Studio)
7. Just For Fun (Sam's)
8. St. Louis (The Pit)
9. Don't Come Too Close (The Pit)
10. E.D. (Sam's)
11. All Day All Night (The Pit)
12. Catharsis (Oxford)
13. Industrial Blonde (Sam's)
14. La Bamba (The Pit)
15. We Can Work it Out (Sam's)
16. Hong Kong Blues (The Pit)
17. Secretary at Large (Sam's)
18. Targets of Opportunity (Barrister House)
19. I Can't Stand You (Sam's)
20. Dave Lewis "BASF Tape Talk" prior to Funky Adolf
21. Funky Adolf (The Mistake)
22. John Lennon (Sam's)
23. One System (Sam's)
24. Spencer take 2/3 (Barrister House - rehearsal)
25. Gold Gamma Stomp (Barrister House - rehearsal)
**Dead tracks** result from a feature peculiar to the Philips CDR Recorder which I used to compile these sub-masters in May of 2001. You start the tune, but if the Philips doesn't sense any sound coming from the source in 7 seconds, it jumps forward a track. A most annoying feature.
All of the best versions of the various songs listed above (but see note E) below) are in use. There are many alternates of certain songs, yet only one extant version of others, even of songs played many times live (for example, "Catharsis"). The only deliberate exclusion I have made is "Xiqq" which makes more sense in the context of (the 1980 cassette compilation) QNQ anyway, as it was created for that project.
As you can see the order in the first burn is determined mostly by the sources involved. These were fully investigated and broken down onto two chromium tapes in Los Angeles in 1998, although I used the originals to master these CD versions. However the LA- made tapes were helpful in terms of deciding what to work with out of the scant three hours of surviving material by this band.
The second burn follows with an order derived from the approximate locations of these songs in the setlist over time, however minus the five songs already recorded in the studio which are naturally placed at the front, as they have the best sound quality. I simply tried to copy the first five tracks from the first burn to the second - a bad idea as it turned out, because the sound quality didn't hold up and I screwed up "New Baby" at the beginning. All of the remaining tracks in the second burn represent fresh remasterings of the succeeding material and another try at the second take of "Spencer" which has about the poorest sound of all the tracks. I also added and dropped certain items.
In a final breakdown I will need to pick the better of the two masters or decide to go back to the original. This second option may not be available in some cases; for example I'm pretty sure at this point the Oxford tape will not play due to deterioration. In which case I may need to revisit the chromium submasters made in LA.
Looking at the listings now nearly three years later, a few things are apparent:
a) The combined "Targets/Beach Music" from The Pit, withheld from the second burn because it wouldn't fit once the "John Lennon" from Sam's was added, really belongs on the disc because it demonstrates how the two were dovetailed together in performance. Also that particular "Beach Music" is the kickinest live version of the number there is.
b) "Cheaper by the Dozen" should also be included, as that idea was directly inspired by something that Bob Mothersbaugh said over breakfast.
C) Naturally things will have to be dropped if these two edits are to be included. "La Bamba" is certainly expendable, as it makes no sense in the context of our set anyway, and I'll have to shell out enough as it is to the Fox agency to get the other covers on here (why couldn't we have just changed the lyric to "All Day All Night"? Sheesh!) The only thing that gives me pause is that "La Bamba" was quite well recieved by our audiences, who might remember that we did it. We also beat Los Lobos to it by about five years. Ironically there are more surviving recorded versions of "La Bamba" than of any other Qi-ZZ song save "New Baby".
D) Another possible candidate for exclusion is "I Can't Stand You". This is not the early four-chord punk version of the song which John Murray later recorded on the Squelch single (a non-Hospital records 45 issued in 1983); rather this is an arrangement I made by turning it into a rockabilly styled number. Lu hated it, and it is rather weak, but I still like some things about it. I would prefer your comments if you have heard it.
E) The performance of "Secretary of Large" from Sam's is really poor - I make a jumble of the lyric. I have an alternate that was not located until after these discs were made recorded at Mr. Jim's Steakhouse by Bill Hermann from the audience. Unfortunately I transferred these in May 1981 with a lot of reverb added, and it doesn't sound so great, but might work and give us one more location to include (provided that the source track is complete).
F) "Spencer" can be dropped if needed, but I'd like to keep it if I can. I love the tune, but it was John's Maynier's song and he wasn't happy with it, so we never really worked it up.
Lost Qi-ZZ Songs
(Just in case you have any of these, but I doubt it. NOTE: And as it turns out, Greg Fernandez doesn't have any of them.)
Japanese Cowboy (only the tail end of one recording survives)
Rastamandy
Cock Fight (an out-and-out terrible Max Romeo cover - I'm positive this was never recorded)
Modern Art Dub (I had a couple of versions of this which survived into the mid-1980s. Perhaps you got a copy?)
Who's in Command? (No Qi-ZZ recording extant at all. There is one by 11,000 Switches with Lamb singing, and later Dolt! did record it.)
Fast Food Fast Living
Little Stabs at Happiness
Uncle Dave Lewis
udtv@yahoo.com