Artists
Album Info
Release Date: 2020-05-29Label: NorthSphere Records
Hype sticker reads: 'Remastered - 2020 Definitive Archive Edition Reissue'[from the inlay]
This edition of ‘Background Music For Foreground Times’ is an all-inclusive memoir of just about everything I recorded at 434 W. Park Avenue in Waukesha, WI. in 2002 and 2003 - with few exceptions. Only “Brain Tumor” and “Language of Love” were recorded later, but every track in between has not been re-recorded, and appears in its original rendition here.
During the time this album was written, I was deeply enamored with Jack Kerouac, William Burrroughs, Kurt Vonnegut and Doris Winchell. Doris was my aunt, who suffered from severe schizophrenia, and used to write depraved and disjointed letters to my grandmother (her sister) shortly before she died. My grandmother gifted me her box of letters from Doris, and the song “They Don’t Hide In Me” is essentially a medley of the words I read in those.
All in all, this was a literary time for me - where the content and context of lyrics superseded the structure of song. The spoken cadence of “Saratoga Nut Bar” (a strongly Burroughs influenced recording) was built entirely around the classical musical accompaniment beneath it, and a number of the other cuts here were clearly recorded as exercises in lyrical foreplay instead of songs proper.
This collection is dedicated to Mark and Stephanie, who owned The Neighbors’ Bistro pub and eatery back in the day, and which I used to frequent every Friday night when it was located on Grand Street in Waukesha until about 2005. ‘Background Music For Foreground Times’ wouldn’t have been written without the influence of the experiences I had there.
Long live Bistro Alley…