Love Sucks 30 Years Later

Sorry I haven't been here much.  Usual reasons but here I am.  Since 2013 marks the 30th anniversary of my music career, I've been taking a look back at the albums in question.  Which makes no sense since most of the internet doesn't know anything about the albums of 30 years ago but maybe when I'm dead and gone somebody will come across this and may want to discover the forgotten tunes of yesterday.

But anyway.....Love Sucks was the 4th and final album of 1983, which started with So Much For That, found our muse on Town's Edge Rock and tried to take over Mike Swearingen's advice of go into comedy with Living In The Twilight Zone (now deleted).  There was actually some decent songs that I did write and Be With Me became a prom slow dance song in 1991, eight years after the fact and a failed attempt to convince Doug Bonesteel's ex GF to take a chance on me when I dropped the tape off at McDonald's where she was working and waited by the phone.

And waited
and waited.

For the most part, the rest of Living In The Twilight Zone has been retired forevermore, since most of the songs were cornball but somehow Russ thought that Cocaine Train, a throwaway would work better on the Paraphernalia band output.  To which it actually did, somewhat.

The original title of Love Sucks was Hey You (don't ask why) and the majority of songs were written around that time I was actually seeing somebody, some girl who passed out her phone numbers on our wild and wacky famed Squaw Creek Show, which would have been a classic album upon itself had Doug or Dennis would have bought the damn four track with them. Even though Teresa did that to everybody in the band, pass out her phone number, I was the only idiot who called her and we managed to have a brief three week meet and greet.  But at that time of recording, Paraphernalia was rehearsing in our basement but the folks didn't really go for that but since I had the amps and guitars home, I decided to put them to use whereas making excuses why we couldn't rehearse over.

Starting out with the wacky instrumental Attack & Conquest Of The Giant Cosmic Oatmeal Cookie, it borrows from the introduction of Rush 2112 of all things and then moving on to more chaos.  Credit must be given to my dad who actually set the recording up, placing of the mikes and reminding me to get things done before he came home at around 5 30.   After Attack, we move into Hey You, which basically was a rip off John Mellencamp's Crumbling  Down and basically it's another stuck in this town with the stuck up bitches again although me and Miss OConnor were still dating but time and age was playing against me.  There was a six year difference and age and although it never occured to me, I had no intentions of taking it further and just hold hands and maybe go out to the drive in but that never happened.  Hey You got redone in the 1998 The Art Of Deception Live album and is better heard that way than the original.

The End Of It All, is me trying to sing in a higher octave and this song had more in tune with what Mike Swearingen taught me in recording things.  I can still listen to it but it's not something I'd revisit anytime soon. I outgrew it.  But I think it had more to do with the end of me and Teresa than what let on.

It's So Hard remains the signature song, written and conceived upon my love affair and wanting to leave this shit state in favor of Arizona has hope and dreams written all over it.  The call and response of I've been doing some thinking/maybe out and go for a ride/See my GF in Tempe/Surprise her and talk for a while (which surprise I had no GF in Tempe at that time).  But I think it has the perfect antidote of cruising down Route 66 and thinking good times with my lady by my side.  But then again I've always been a dreamer to the point of hiding from reality.  Especially after the breakup and having the infamous girl in my PR class at Kirkwood who somehow thought I was cute enough to warrant a one on one chance meeting at Kitty's Showcase Bar one night and ended up being a big disappointment for both of us.  And thinking one day I'll meet her again and hopefully say hi and hope for a better outcome, than me sitting frozen in my seat while she and her friend stalked out the room.   Sad to say, that we never met again, even when trying to find her at Kirkwood and forgetting her name in the process.

One Little Girl, I don't sing that one anymore, it's too creepy.  Everybody in the band had a GF, why not me? Why not never?

Well All Right, has been done from time to time, a more Bo Diddley arrangement than the one heard on Love Sucks, I had a good eye and ear for song arrangement due to Jack Orbit helping out and the breaks and drum bits that was more than just 4/4 time.   My own version of Who Do You Love.  Travelogue has the live version done five years later.

Ain't Life A Bitch (Especially When You're Married To One) was aimed at a certain band mate's wife at that time, thinking she was causing a riff between the guys in the band and basically we didn't need our own Yoko Ono tearing us apart.  Very sarcastic in tone and lyrics, but never played live in concert.

The second side of the album, the songs are more downtrodden for it was at this point that Theresa and I were going different directions and neither one of us knew how to end it but we did on a very rainy and windy October night.  Went home and wrote this song about the aftermath.  It's a sad song about breakups but the last verse is more about liberation from a stagnagtic relationship that wasn't going anywhere.  The final line of accept the fact that it's all over to the final accept the fact that we are over.  And nobody going to help you in the dead of night when you're all alone and can't deal with being alone.  I was 22 at the time and thinking my life was over since another relationship is done but as we found out 30 years that sometimes there will be chances to find that special someone.  And then blow it all over again. Anyway, Dead Of Night has been used a lot in my life performances and it keeps the fans happy when they hear it.

Around And Around, have no idea how this song came to be, but I think it's more of an extension of Dead Of Night but more of a story of a guy looking for a one nighter and telling her to hit the road in nicer terms.

Midnight Madness, another rewrite of Around And Around or Dead Of Night but the two things that make this song stand out is the reggae type of break at the chorus and then the crash ending of this song. Now all I need, is one good reason, to make her feel, make her feel, make her feel, like I do.... and then the usual chaotic ending.

I think at this point the rest of the album isn't much to comment on.  What I Need is a bitchy list of things that I don't need and tried to make it sound punk.  The words are trash but the melody would be reused for the next album and retitled It's Not Easy.

Goin Home is the summary of the breakup of myself and Teresa and the first couple verses are positive and then we go into a Who like smash and crash of guitars and drums, the next verse finding the singer becoming more puzzled of things not going well and then the last two verses, saying goodbye and good riddance and the last verse  redemption at the record shop.  With a little bit more patience and arrangement this could have been a better song than what was presented at the time.  But at the time, I was very depressed.

What Is Love was the final song. By then Dennis claimed his amp and guitar and so I used my old cheap K Mart amp and guitar.  My mom was using the laundry room for washing clothes at the time so you get the hear the dryer in the background.

The Day After, was written seeing the show of the same night and wondering what happened if the big one was dropped upon us.  Bombs of peace are causes of war  was a nice start to the song but me and the late Larry Maier added cliche upon cliche and building up to an effects laden middle, thanks to the effects on Mr. Lancaster's amp.  At the end his amp would make a WHOOSH at the end and I wanted to balloon it out to a minute and half but we ran out of tape and it came to be about 20 seconds.

And with that, 1983 ends with Love Sucks, to which we found a picture of a cat grinning in front of the camera that I ended up using (Thanks Yuri).  I think at the time it was a worthy followup to Town's Edge Rock, more so than Living In The Twilight Zone.  But even back then, I had no idea of who could be the right one for me, since Teresa wasn't the one and the woman in my PR class was there for the taking. Until 1989, I was on my own.  After Love Sucks, I returned to the sprawling failure that was Paraphernalia and for the next year tried our best to get that band off the ground.   And knowing that my love life of 1983 was a even bigger failure.  But I continued to write more songs and a half year later, after taking a break from the other band, came up with a more raw, and stripped down affair I would call Infinite Loop.

The next step ahead in a career that seem to be destined to stay in the basement or the bedroom forever.