Before Town's Edge Rock, there was So Much For That, the first attempt to do real songs and overdub them to make them sound like a proper album. Prior to that, Jack Orbit was producing the last echophonic album and it wasn't going anywhere so he basically said if you're going to get anywhere, write your songs.
For three weeks I basically practiced playing the guitar and writing off hand lyrics left and right. It was fairly easy, since I wasn't working anywhere and I was going to Kirkwood to learn to get into the field of radio (which turned out to be a bust). And I had parents that actually supported my rock and roll wanna be and my father still had that reel to reel player that I used for the earlier stuff.
When recording, I used the reel to reel tape to do the guitar and vocals and for overdubbing the drums I would record them on cassette and used the reel to reel to set the recording levels. Very primitive especially later albums would be from cassette to cassette which was a good idea in theory BUT, the Realistic cassette deck played tapes faster than the other cassette player, which meant the songs sounded slower. This was before the days that I got a 4 track recorder but for the most part it did the job.
The Songs:
LuWanna (Smith/Schminkey) 3:41
You Were With Me (Smith/Schminkey) 3:30
Don't Take It Home (Smith/Glarington) 3:08
Train Goes Nowhere (Smith) 3:49
Movin On To Better Things (Smith/Willard) 6:05
The Wire (Smith) 3:45
We Had Met The Enemy And They Are Us (Smith) 4:00
Headbanger (Smith) 5:00
I Wanna Make You Mine (Smith) 1:33
Flattery Will Get You Nowhere (Smith/Orbit/Glarington) 4:10
Arizona Nights (Smith/Orbit) 3:20
Crackpot Experiment (Smith) 1:25
Why Me Why You (Smith) 2:40
Unfinished Song (So Much For That) (Smith/Orbit/Miller/Glarington) 4:47
Production By Jack Orbit with Rodney Smith
Recorded By Kyle Guttenburg, assisted by Ken Miller
Recorded April 1983 Maier Studios
A lot of the songs were slapped together from old written lyrics, Don't Take It Home was co written with Ron Glarington, whose son Mark would help me write some of the new album No Exit. Movin On To Better Things was given another shot but on this version, the guitar was tuned way out of tune to try to match the original version off Paraphernalia which was out of tune. You Were With Me originally done by The Open Highway band since I wanted to do an original song and they did this one just to shut me up. Arizona Nights would appear later on Living In The Twilight Zone with drums added on.
30 years onward, So Much For That has been forgotten although I Wanna Make You Mine and Headbanger were done live with the TEs from time to time as well as The Wire. Back in the 80s, Movin On To Better Things was the last song we would do before calling it an evening. Another problem was that the songs were done in various tempos and measures, meaning it was hard to hit the right breaks on We Have Met The Enemy....or LuWanna which has that walking blues shuffle that I have trouble playing at times. The call and response of drums and guitars hitting the breaks on Why Me Why You has worked better in the studio than playing live plus the fact that Geoff Redding never cared much for it. Train Goes Nowhere was worked into our playlist in the 1990s but since has been retired. Arizona Nights was supposed to be a statement about loving the Arizona desert and it was honest at the time but for the most part I simply outgrew it. The Unfinished Song is snippets of noise and guitar and drum solos featuring a goofy ending.
Well it's a beautiful day today, wouldn't you agree?
So We're taking the rest of the day off but will leave you with some advice
Stay cheerful and smile all the time and we'll see you on the other side.
It took about 20 takes to do the final guitar line, which goes to show that sometimes having a lead guitarist would work better for me. The guitar line that ended the scene of Beverly Hillbillies before they went to commercial.
So Much isn't a perfect album but it was much better than the last album of this multitude but it did suggest that with more practice and better songs this band would get better. Which lead to Town's Edge Rock.
And a new era.
