Hotel Motel

Anne Gomez - bass, vocals Matt Kalb - guitar, vocals Bob Wall - drums, trumpet, vocals (though you don't get to hear them here because we can't include the cover...except he does say "A deer is like a beautiful man" twice before and once after the song of that name)

This was our first record, which we knew while we were making it. We recorded it at the Casa de Hotel Motel in our practice room, on my [Matt's] Tascam 38 reel-to-reel. LOOOOOOOW-budget. We borrowed a lot of mics too.

Mixed by Jay Murphy at Ponchartrain.

Teen Pop Crisis - thanks to David Nahm for seeing a sign for something honest-to-god called a "Teen Pop Crisis Center" in Lexington, KY which inspired this song. I asked Bob to play the trumpet after once seeing him play a keyboard with one hand, wail on the trumpet with the other, and then briefly stop the trumpet (exactly once) to say "Oh hell yeah!". The song lasts one minute if you let the last chord ring out long.

A Deer Is Like a Beautiful Man - Bob wall unofficial vocals at the beginning and end. The first in a series of "Anne's got a cool riff, and I've got some chords that can move asymmetrically under it, so why not??"

Really (Done) It This Time - Maybe the second song we learned together? Parenthetical title not optional, man.

Shark Attack - I think the first song we learned together. One of my favorite to play. OK, geek recording/mixing thing - I had a mic on bass drum, snare drum, and left and right overheads, and when we mixed it we put the bass/snare on one side and the overheads on the other. Put on your headphones and tell me it doesn't sound like asses being kicked. Pass the doob.

The cover you didn't get to hear was "Some Velvet Morning" by Lee Hazelwood/Nancy Sinatra. Bob and and Anne as them, respectively. It was really good and you're missing out so there.

Anne Gomez - bass, vocals, saxophone, toy piano Matt Kalb - guitar, vocals Bob Wall - drums, rhodes, vocals (but, alas, they were on the cover which we can't include. Come to think of it that nixes Anne's toy piano too. We'll have to check what the union rates are after this adjustment)

This was our second record, which we knew while we were making it. Recorded at Casa de Hotel Motel by me [Matt] on my 8-track, in the practice room. But weren't they all? (A: Yes.)

Waitresses of the Avant Garde - We usually all said we like our dinners real, but the sax noises were cool and we hadn't enough tracks so we make choices. It's been pointed out that food is in a number of my songs. Who pointed it out? I'll give you a clue: not Robert Christgau.

Brazilian Sleigh Ride - Don't those keyboards at the beginning scare you??

Lay Down to the Urge Passes - This is a song about old people getting it on. Sweet and gross.

Cut off the Right Hand - My only Prince nod to date is in this song. Spot it and win the satisfaction of having spotted it.

Don Knotts Holiday - Bob has alternate lyrics. My favorite part of recording was playing the acoustic guitar at the same time as Anne played the sax, because did I mention 8 is a small number? Anne gave me a cassette tape to learn this song in the early days and then it seemed like the critical mass of everyone (i.e. me finally) having a CD burner hit and the tape exploded but luckily I wrote it down first.

Implied Monocle - Bob made us play this song twice at a show because we missed the transition into the next song. The preceding sentence takes longer than it took to do that.

The cover on this record was, in my (Matt's) opinion, so far and away our best that it's possibly advisable I don't tell you. OK, it was Steely Dan's "The Boston Rag." There were rumors that my (oh let's admit it) mf'ing honey of a guitar solo won Solo of the Year in Guitar World, but that's urban legend. It was Guitar for the Practicing Musician, and it was second runner up, so get your facts straight. Flanged backup vocals = Bob's "You gotta bring it on home."

Anne Gomez - bass, vocals, sax, flute Matt Kalb - guitar, vocals, electric piano Bob Wall - drums, percussion, vocals

This was our last record, which we knew while we were making it. Too bad too about it being the end of the road, as I see some interesting new directions hinted at ("Woof Woof Rex 84" and "Nuts to You" for Anne and me [Matt] respectively). Like all Hotel Motel recordings, the tracks were recorded by me on my 1/2" reel-to-reel 8-track at the Casa de Hotel Motel, with Anne's bass cabinet in the practice room closet, my amp out in the hall somewhere, and the three of us in the practice room with Bob's drums and the recording setup...movement of any kind was quite a risk. We finished all the tracks in a weekend and wrapped up whatever vocals were left by Monday (usual practice day). Because that's how you do it.

One exception to that: "Pinkytown" was recorded much earlier by Zeno Gill at Pox Studios, and originally appeared on Compulation 2 on the Pox World Empire label. So thanks for letting us use it (twice now!).

Mixed and mastered at Pox Studios by Zeno Gill.

All our records had a cover song and we can't upload those to Cytunes, so let me tell you about a song you won't hear. We'd recently been part of the Minutemen tribute at the 506, where we, let's face it, ruled. One of the songs we'd learned was "One Reporter's Opinion" and we redid that one here. For the recording I changed the lyrics to be about Bob Wall (he had a lot of suggestions) instead of Mike Watt. SCTV gets a nod. The last line remained the same: "He's a stop sign!", but when I sang it I was suddenly inspired to keep the last note held out for a really long time, throwing off my headphones so I could run down the hall outside the room and then back producing this (pretty dumb) siren effect--it wasn't good, but it was pretty great. Bob was manning the tape machine and it got a bemused response, though he was professional enough to hold it in until the tape stopped rolling. Mission Accomplished.

Half Assonant - short skewed poppy number. The lyrics follow a literary device, but that doesn't mean I didn't mean them.

You Must Be Hard of Reading - the would-be title track of our previous record

Woof Woof Rex 84 - The main bass line is something unlike anything I'd heard Anne do prior to this point--she's known for the impossible and this one seems almost probable. Of course that doesn't last, but then it does return.

[Minutemen cover goes here]

Nuts to You - "hamburger sandwiches" Also playing two chords on the acoustic guitar at varying lengths apart.

Pinkytown - Anne's awesome song about maybe a town that's pink. I LOVED playing this song, which is true of all our catalog but this one went more places than even we'd usually go. Bob has alternate lyrics for this song which are I'm sure great. What else, hmm... ok in the free-form(ish) middle section I'd usually quote something. On this recording it was marc faris' fanfare from "An Alternative Community". Live it was the riff from "Aqualung" a lot more than I'd like to admit. OMG I seriously just remembered that's because she plays the flute on this song!