Album Archives: Travelogue

Live albums have never been one of my better efforts.  Mistakes are made, words are fucked up and sometimes the whole thing becomes a trainwreck, however it was 5 years ago that time that Town's Edge Rock came out and I thought that perhaps a live effort would be in the works.  Alas, the bars in town were not friendly to alternative garage rockers, so I rented out the Whitter Community Center for one night of messed up versions of the the better known numbers.

A lotta showboating came about on the cassette version of Travelogue, a whopping 90 minute montage of the Whittier showcase on that October 15th 1988 night.  Another set of songs were done at Garden Theater in Marion on talent night, and a few were added to the fray.  Plus, All Over Now, which dated back to March of 1987 at the IMU in Iowa City on their infamous No Sleep Shows.  Which after working a shift, I managed to bring about three cymbals and the old Zickos drumset, to set up and do a 4 minute song to an indifferent crowd.  As far as memory serves me, the Whittier crowd about 50 people did support the effort and applauded whereas the Marion crowd stood in stoned silence, not knowing what to think of Nowhere City or Well All Right.

Way too much filler on the Cassette, so I edited it down to around an hour and took off the excess fat on CD., although the crazed ending of All It Ever Does Is Rain would have been nice to save.  However on Gloria, we got booed off the stage, you won't hear that version anywhere.

However on Travelogue, the longer version of Walk A Thin Line appears.  I think I talked bout the short version and poor recorded sound robbed the song of its charm.   Strange how the song came about, I tuned the guitar in a different chord pattern. It may have been a G chord instead of E when turning the guitar, but it sounded savage.  The old K Mart guitar thrashing through the Gorilla Amp Tube stack all the way up to 10.  Another new song Barbed Wire Fence was  recorded live at the Garden Theater and surprisingly it was well received.   Still, the bash and crash drumming was typical of 1980s Rod Smith drumming.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.  But the best of the live sides are on the CD.  I don't plan to release the ones that didn't make it, I'm surprised that I left Just Another Someday as one of the cuts that did make it.  Hugh McConnell remastered the whole thing on CD and managed to eliminate about half of the WOW and FLUTTER tape hiss that was on the original cassette.  It's not digitally perfect but it does capture the spirit of the band in full glory and full sound.   And I'll leave it at that.


The Songs: (CD Version)

Sail Away To A Brand New Day  4:50
I Wanna Make You Mine  2:35
On Highway 94  3:10
Down Around And Back Again  3:05
Midnight Run  3:10
Just Another Someday  5:15
Fix  2:35
Running In The Rain  4:48
Barbed Wire Fence  2:55
Train Around The Bend  3:17
Someone Like You  5:09
It's So Hard  3:10
Never Again  2:40
Well All Right  3:55
Nowhere City  5:10
All Over Now  4:49
Walk A Thin Line  4:00

Recorded live at Whittier Community Center, Whittier IA  October 15, 1988
Garden Theater, Marion IA 10-20-1988
All Over Now Recorded at IMU, Iowa City IA 3/31/1988

Recorded by Terry Bainbridge, George Stanton and Neil Cheshire
Mixed and mastered by Hugh McConnell (Soundwerks, Iowa City for CD in 1998

Rodney Smith-Vocals, some guitar, and drums
Jack Orbit-Main guitarist, backing vocals
Ken Miller-Bass and so forth

Produced by Rodney Smith, Jack Orbit, Brian Mullahan and Terry Bainbridge

Released as Maier Records QMR-24466 in November 1988